Beirut blast victim's parents wage lonely battle for justice

Layal Abou Rahal
Tue, August 2, 2022 


Paul and Tracy Naggear have lived in grief since the massive explosion that tore through the Lebanese capital in 2020 killed their three-year-old daughter, and their anger boils over the stalled investigation.

The August 4 mega-blast, blamed on a fire that ignited tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertiliser haphazardly stored for years at Beirut harbour, was one of the largest non-nuclear detonations ever recorded.

It destroyed thousands of homes, including the couple's apartment which overlooked the harbourside. Their daughter Alexandra was one of the youngest among the more than 200 people killed.

Failed attempts to hold accountable the state officials whose negligence is widely blamed for Lebanon's worst peacetime disaster have made Alexandra's death even more bitter.

"Our sadness is not the same, it keeps growing, because as time goes on, we miss Alexandra and feel her absence," said Tracy, 36.

"Although we can learn to live with sadness, there is an anguish and anger that continues to grow" in the absence of justice, she told AFP in the lead-up to the tragedy's second anniversary on Thursday.

Paul and Tracy moved out of Beirut and settled in the mountain town of Beit Mery, 10 kilometres (six miles) away following the blast.

The walls and shelves of their home are adorned with pictures of Alexandra.

Like hundreds of relatives of blast victims, they have received no answers from those at the top. And with investigations stalled, not a single official has been put on trial.

"In the beginning, we were hopeful" about the fight for justice, Tracy said. "But now we feel that we are alone."

- 'Exhausting' -

The port blast -- which was heard as far away as the island of Cyprus -- briefly reignited public anger against a ruling class that had already flared in a 2019 protest movement.

The demonstrations were drained of momentum by a severe economic crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, before the monster explosion presented a stark reminder of the negligence of the country's leaders.

In the wake of the disaster, Lebanon's ruling elite drew even more public ire by interfering in a local probe that aimed to pinpoint culpability.

The lead investigator, Tarek Bitar, who was chasing after some of the country's top brass, has been barred from proceeding by a series of lawsuits filed by political leaders since last year.

The lawsuits against Bitar are part of a wider campaign spearheaded by the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement which has called for his replacement, accusing him of bias.

"It is exhausting to live in a country that lacks justice," Paul said, a painting of his daughter raising a Lebanese flag during the 2019 protests on a shelf behind him.

"The criminals won't prosecute themselves," he added.

For the bereaved father, justice can only be served through an international fact-finding mission -- a demand of many relatives and rights groups.

The stalled domestic probe has been coupled with a decline in public mobilisation, as only relatives of blast victims still join demonstrations calling for accountability.

"Unfortunately, we feel as though people have either lost hope or become lazy," Paul said.
- 'Until death' -

Parliament member Melhem Khalaf, a former Beirut bar association head, has tried to fight the official impunity.

During his time at the helm of the Beirut bar, the association helped 1,200 families affected by the explosion to file lawsuits against the state.

But both domestic and external factors have hampered official investigations.

Khalaf said international powers have yet to provide Lebanon with satellite images or reports drafted by foreign experts who participated in preliminary investigations.

Back in Beit Mery, the living room is filled with pictures of Alexandra -- as well as with the belongings of Tracy's infant son Axel, who was born in March.

Tracy took Axel to a protest organised by victims' families last month.

"August 4 will be a big part of his life," Tracy said of her son.

"We will fight for truth and justice until the day we die. But if we die before, I would want Axel to carry on the cause."

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Clashes erupt in Bolivia between police and coca farmer

 -

August 3, 2022 

Coca leaf farmers fleeing from tear gas fired by the police during the second day of clashes in La Paz. (AP pic)

LA PAZ: Clashes broke out Tuesday in the Bolivian capital La Paz between police and coca leaf producers in a dispute over control of the coveted commercialisation of the plant.

Several uniformed officers and a journalist were injured, several sources reported, as hundreds of growers from the Association of Coca Producers (Adepcoca), as well as opponents of the government of leftist president Luis Arce marched to demand the closure of a parallel market for the plant, which they say is illegal and enjoys government support.

Last October, thousands of coca leaf growers stormed the country’s main coca market in La Paz following violent clashes with security forces.

The Adepcoca market has become the centre of a dispute between two groups of coca growers – one loyal to the government, the other opponents – since last year.

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Some 90% of Bolivia’s legal coca leaf business, worth US$173 million a year, passes through the Adepcoca market, according to UN figures.

The dispute centres around who should control the market.

Violence erupted last year when the group loyal to, and supported by, the government ousted an opposition figure to take control of the premises.

Armin Lluta claimed he was held hostage for hours and beaten up by the government-backed group before they took control of the market.

On Tuesday, protest leader Carlos Choque announced over a loudspeaker: “We are asking that this alleged market for the sale of coca, which has nothing to do with the legal market of Adepcoca, be closed immediately. We will not be afraid if they want to ‘shoot’ us, we are here.”

The growers began to launch firecrackers and low-intensity explosive devices known as dynamite caps, while police responded with the profuse use of tear gas, AFP witnessed.

“We have several police officers injured by the blast wave of the dynamites that were aggressively thrown at us,” the police said in a statement.

Adepcoca leaders said they will not end their protest until the market closes.

Colombian deforestation policy 'failure' a headache for new government

Author: AFP|Update: 03.08.2022 

A Colombian farmer carries a chainsaw at a coca plantation after cutting down trees to plant coca in Guaviare department, Colombia in December 2021 / © AFP/File

Colombian President Ivan Duque's environmental policies "failed" according to experts who dispute the outgoing right-wing government's claims to have reduced deforestation.

With conservative Duque due to hand over to his left-wing successor Gustavo Petro on Sunday, the new government will have to find solutions to the problem.

The South American country is one of the most biodiverse in the world, according to the United Nations, but between 2018 and 2021 it lost an area of forest larger than the size of the Gaza Strip (7,000 square kilometers, 2,700 square miles), according to official data.

The Duque government "focused on military and judicial operations" to tackle deforestation, particularly in the Amazon rainforest, but these "failed," according to former environment minister Manuel Rodriguez (1991-96).

And even though the deforestation figure is worse than the previous four years, from 2014-2017 (6,500 square kilometers), the government has defended its record.

"This phenomena reduced by 34 percent compared to the trend model," said environment minister Carlos Correa when presenting the 2021 deforestation figure of 1,741 square kilometers.

But instead of comparing that figure to the 1,717 square kilometers from 2020, the government contrasted it against a projection model based on the trend between 2008 and 2017, when deforestation was out of control.

"So, faced with a hypothetical catastrophic scenario, is losing 1,700 square kilometers of forest good? I don't think so," said Rodrigo Botero, director of the Conservation and Development Foundation.

Botero says the authorities' own figures show that rainforest loss increased between 2019 and 2021.

"We are still at a very high point on the deforestation curve," Botero told AFP.

"The fact that we have had three consecutive years of increase means that there is no control over the structural variables, it's an alarming sign."

Colombia is not the only South American country struggling to rein in the loss of forests.

Neighboring Brazil, which is home to the majority of the Amazon rainforest, saw a record amount lost in the first half of 2022.

The figure of 3,750 square kilometers topped the previous record for the first half of the year, set in 2021.

- 'Modest' government success -

An aerial view of a coca field and remains of deforested trees in Guaviare department, Colombia in November 2021: experts say the outgoing conservative government to reduce deforestation 'failed' / © AFP/File

President-elect Petro, who will be Colombia's first ever left-wing leader, has said he will prioritize the fight against climate change and environmental protection.

Petro says he will suspend oil exploration to progressively move to clean energy and will restrict the expansion of farming in the Amazon.

He also aims to create environmental reserves where indigenous and peasant communities can develop sustainable projects.

But before then, the new president will need to decide what to do about his predecessor's strategy.

In April 2019, eight months after coming to power, Duque launched the Artemisa military operation to fight deforestation using 23,000 soldiers.

Since then, around 100 people have been arrested and a similar number of pieces of machinery confiscated.

"Artemisa had 20 interventions, over four years that's a pretty modest number," said Rodriguez.

"You have to create a state presence in terms of education and the generation of employment."

Peasants have complained that the military operation attacked the weakest links in the chain rather than the large-scale architects of deforestation.

Farming, land grabbing and the growing of drug crops are the main sources of deforestation.

As part of the Paris climate accords, Colombia committed to eliminate deforestation by 2030.

To do so, the environment ministry projects a reduction to 1,550 kilometers squared of lost forest in 2022 and just 1,000 square kilometers a year by 2025.

The government of Norway, which like Germany and the United Kingdom sends millions of dollars in aid to Colombia to preserve its forests, has expressed its alarm at the likelihood that Colombia will miss its first target.

And it could cost the country.

"We are not seeing a constant reduction in the rate of deforestation ... the country could lose up to $260 million up to 2025 for not slowing it," Ole Bergum, Norway's climate and forests advisor in Colombia, told the El Tiempo newspaper.

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Focus on Samira, celebrity snapper of southern Iraq


Ali Allaq
Tue, August 2, 2022 


She's southern Iraq's celebrity photographer, a former political prisoner who has spent more than 60 years behind the lens documenting people and places and defying convention.

Samira Mazaal is 77 and still going strong more than half a century after turning to photography to feed her family -- because she had no choice.

"Peasants, intellectuals, I've photographed them all," says the mother of two, her black hijab framing a face lined by life.

"I have photographed Amarah in all its beauty -- I went deep into the marshes," to the south of the city in the floodplain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Everyone in the area turns to Studio Samira, be it for a passport photograph or to have a couple's portrait taken ahead of their wedding.

She tells how she became the first female photographer in Maysan province aged just 16, despite familial conventions that ruled in the Iraq of the 1960s, and also how political activism led to imprisonment and torture.

"My family has never known any other business -- we're all photographers," Samira says.

Framed photographs lining the walls bear witness to her trade, in both black and white or in colours faded by time.

She has albums of images showing Iraq as it used to be: black-clad women carrying huge bales balanced on their heads; a smiling peasant woman in a flowery dress, her hair braided, standing near a cow; a mother and child filling a pot with water from the river.

- 'Society can be cruel' -

Samira's father was among the first to introduce photography to the province.

"I asked him to initiate me into the craft, but he said: 'No, you're too young. You can't -- society can be cruel'," she recalls.

But soon circumstances would force him to change his mind. He was rendered blind in a botched operation, and could no longer provide for his family.

So Samira had to step in.

She started off using the daguerreotype method of the 1800s that uses silver-plated copper sheets, but then her father sold off some land so she could buy more modern equipment.

"My studio became extraordinarily successful," she smiles. "Because I was a young woman, I could take pictures of families."

Samira exploited the norms of a conservative society: the male heads of households preferred that a woman photographer, not a man, take the pictures of their wives and daughters.

Bassem al-Subaid is one satisfied client of Studio Samira.

"There isn't a single household in all of Maysan province that doesn't know Samira the photographer," he tells AFP.

"My generation got to know Samira when we came to be photographed by her," adds the man in his forties. "It was the previous generation that saw her political activism."

In 1963, Iraq was being torn apart by revolutions and bloody crackdowns, and the then adolescent had no idea that a communist tract would put her behind bars.

- A source of pride -

After General Abdel Salam Aref took power in a Baath party coup, three militants came to Samira's studio and asked her to mass-produce a poster denouncing the new regime.

She accepts that she had not yet completely formed her own political opinions, and was swayed at the time by her brother's sympathies.

"In all of Amarah, there wasn't a single wall without a pasted copy of the poster," she boasts. "It wasn't a crime -- it's a source of pride."

A picture of herself, which she still has today, made her famous. It shows her lying on a hospital bed after being tortured in a building in Amarah.

"I was screaming so hard I thought the whole town would come and save me," she recalls.

It was not to be: she spent the next four years, ill and abused, in a Baghdad prison.

She was freed after an international campaign that led to pardons for several political prisoners in Iraq.

In 1981, she was again jailed briefly under the rule of then dictator Saddam Hussein. And then again 10 years later over a protest in Amarah against the repercussions of the Gulf War over Kuwait.

Like several other women prisoners, she was granted a pardon after just a few months.

Today the photographic studio is still welcoming clients, and despite her age, the revolutionary flame still burns brightly in Samira.

She hails the October 2019 uprising, sparked by angry young Iraqis seeking to bring those in power to account.

"The protesters should have transformed their movement into a massive revolution to root out corruption and the corrupt," Samira says.

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MILLIONAIRE KULAKS
Dutch farmer protests reap populist support
Author: AFP|Update: 03.08.2022 

The farmers have wreaked havoc for weeks / © ANP/AFP/File

Dutch farmers' rowdy protests against government climate plans have caused a stir at home and abroad, with populists worldwide jumping on the bandwagon and even former US president Donald Trump backing them.

"We take all the support that we can get," says Jaap Kok, a 62-year-old cattle farmer standing in a meadow full of cows near Barneveld in the central Netherlands' farming belt.

The farmers have wreaked havoc for weeks, dumping manure and garbage on highways, blockading supermarket warehouses with tractors and rallying noisily outside politicians' houses.


They oppose plans to cut emissions of nitrogen in the Netherlands -- the world's second-biggest agricultural exporter after the United States -- by reducing livestock and closing some farms.

While a small group has been blamed for much of the unrest, there have also been large protests involving thousands of tractors.

With the protests garnering global headlines, right-wing figures have been quick to voice support. As well as Trump, they include French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, and Dutch far-right politicians Geert Wilders and Thierry Baudet.

"I would have preferred that the support came from the left but from the right is fine too," said Kok, whose own farm risks closure.

"Farmers are always the scapegoat."

- 'Very angry' -

The tiny Netherlands produces huge amounts of food thanks to industrialised farming -- but at the cost of being one of Europe's largest greenhouse gas emitters.

That is especially true of nitrogen, with much of this blamed on ammonia-based fertiliser and cattle-produced manure. Agriculture is responsible for 16 percent of all Dutch emissions.

Nitrogenous gases play an important role in global climate change. Nitrous oxide is a particularly potent greenhouse gas as it is over 300 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

The Netherlands' flat landscape sitting just above sea level makes it vulnerable to extreme weather.

In July the Netherlands recorded its third-highest temperature since records began -- 39.4C in the southern city of Maastricht.

In July the Netherlands recorded its third-highest temperature since records began -- 39.4C in the southern city of Maastricht / © ANP/AFP

Nitrogen-containing substances are also blamed for damage to plant and animal habitats.

Following a 2019 court ruling that the Netherlands was not doing enough to protect its natural areas from nitrogen pollution, the Dutch government said in June that the only way to meet climate goals by 2030 was "radical" cuts to farming.

This would involve a reduction in particular of around 30 percent to the Netherlands' herd of some four million cows.

The government has offered some 25 billion euros to help farmers adapt -- but has also warned that some closures are possible.

"The farmers are very angry," said Jos Ubels, vice president of the Farmers Defence Force (FDF), one of the groups coordinating the demonstrations.

"In history, every time there is a problem with a minority they have to shout really hard to be heard, so this is what we are doing."

The flat landscape sitting just above sea level makes the Netherlands vulnerable to extreme weather 

/ © ANP/AFP/File

Ubels said his group was not responsible for the roadblocks, saying that it was "just organised by local farmers -- they are very angry because they are played with."

Prime Minister Mark Rutte recently called the protests "life-threatening", yet there is a groundswell of support.

- 'Climate tyranny' -

Upside-down Dutch flags -- a symbol of the farmers' movement -- can be see hanging from many houses, lamposts and road bridges.

The Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), a centre-right party founded in 2019, would increase its current one seat in parliament to 19 according to latest opinion polls.

But their campaign is also going global.

The FDF's Ubels was in Warsaw last week for talks with Agriculture Minister Henryk Kowalczyk, of Poland's right-wing Law and Justice Party-led populist government.

"I will support the position of Dutch farmers in maintaining production... and I hope that their government will change its mind," Kowalczyk said in a statement.

Trump's backing has also been a boost.

Former US President Donald Trump: 'Farmers in the Netherlands of all places are courageously opposing the climate tyranny of the Dutch government' / © AFP

"Farmers in the Netherlands of all places are courageously opposing the climate tyranny of the Dutch government," Trump told a rally in Florida in July.

In the Netherlands, a recent farmers' demo in Amsterdam brought also drew many conspiracy theorists and Covid-sceptics.

British comedian-turned-YouTuber Russell Brand recently told his 5.8 million followers that the Dutch farm plan was part of the "Great Reset" -- a conspiracy theory alleging that world leaders orchestrated the pandemic.

The support "says a lot" and shows the government's "absurd" plans "don't hold water", says Wim Brouwer, a farmer in Barneveld and local president of the main Dutch agricultural union LTO.

Brouwer admitted that farmers must do more to cut emissions, but said their sacrifices already far exceeded those made by the industrial and transport sectors.

"The biggest problem is that we have been innovating in agriculture for years, but it's never enough," he sighed.

U.S. judge rejects parts of Boy Scouts' $2.7 billion sex abuse deal

By Dietrich Knauth



July 29 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Friday rejected key aspects of the Boy Scouts of America's reorganization plan and its underlying sex abuse settlement, delaying the national youth organization's ability to emerge from bankruptcy.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein in Wilmington, Delaware, ruled she could not approve all aspects of the plan and settlement, which would establish a $2.7 billion trust to compensate more than 80,000 men who say they were sexually abused as children by troop leaders.

While the ruling blocks the settlement from moving forward as is, the Boy Scouts organization called it a "significant milestone" in the case. Silverstein approved most aspects of the settlement framework, while overruling many objections to the deal, the Boy Scouts said.

"We are committed to working with all constituents to make the necessary changes required by the ruling to drive this process forward and we remain optimistic about securing approval of a final Plan as soon as possible," the Boy Scouts of America said in a statement.

The Coalition of Abused Scouts for Justice, which represents many victims in the bankruptcy case, said the decision would protect future Scouts from abuse.

“Throughout this case, what we’ve heard time and again from survivors is that it’s not only about the money, because no amount of money in the world will make up for being sexually abused as a child," the coalition said in a press release.

Ricky Mason, an attorney representing local Boy Scouts councils in the case, said he was pleased that Silverstein's decision recognized "the importance of both bringing closure to survivors and preserving the Scouting mission through the global settlement," even if she did not outright approve the current restructuring plan.

Silverstein approved many aspects of the settlement, but wrote she could not approve a $250 million settlement between the Boy Scouts and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and could not make determinations related to the Boy Scouts' insurance coverage.

The judge suggested the overall deal was going to take significant time to rework, writing that the Boy Scouts "have some decisions to make."

Silverstein's ruling follows more than two years of Chapter 11 proceedings for the youth group, which filed for bankruptcy in February 2020 after being hit by a flood of sexual abuse lawsuits when several U.S. states passed laws allowing accusers to sue over allegations dating back decades. Since the outset of the case, more than 82,000 abuse claims have been filed.

Those claimants became creditors of the organization, who had to sign off on any plans to restructure and exit bankruptcy.

The amount of money claimants stood to gain from the $2.7 billion trust would depend on the severity of the alleged abuse, as well as where and when it occurred, among other factors. Claimants could receive as little as $3,500 or up to $2.7 million for the most severe cases, according to court papers.

The Boy Scouts has apologized and said the organization is committed to fulfilling their "social and moral responsibility to equitably compensate survivors."

OUR PEACE LOVING ARCTIC NEIGHBOUR

Russian President Vladimir Putin says no one can win a nuclear war

By REUTERS - Yesterday 

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday there could be no winners in a nuclear war and no such war should ever be started.

© (photo credit: REUTERS/MAXIM SHEMETOV)Russia

Putin made the comment in a letter to participants of a conference on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), more than five months into his war on Ukraine.

"We proceed from the fact that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be unleashed, and we stand for equal and indivisible security for all members of the world community," he said.


"We proceed from the fact that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be unleashed, and we stand for equal and indivisible security for all members of the world community"Russian President Vladimir Putin

International concern about the risk of a nuclear confrontation has heightened since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. In a speech at the time, Putin pointedly referred to Russia's nuclear arsenal and warned outside powers against any attempt to interfere.


Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida addresses the United Nations General Assembly during the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference in New York City, New York, US, August 1, 2022. (credit: REUTERS/DAVID 'DEE' DELGADO)

"Whoever tries to hinder us... should know that Russia's response will be immediate. And it will lead you to such consequences that you have never encountered in your history," he said.

Days later, he ordered Russia's nuclear forces to be put on high alert.

The war in Ukraine has raised geopolitical tensions to levels not seen since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in March: "The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility."

Politicians in both Russia and the United States have spoken publicly of the risk of World War Three. CIA director William Burns said in April that given the setbacks Russia had suffered in Ukraine, "none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons."

Russia, whose military doctrine allows for the use of nuclear weapons in the event of an existential threat to the Russian state, has accused the West of waging a "proxy war" against it by arming Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Moscow.


The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility"Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General


United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addresses the media prior to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference in New York City, New York, US, August 1, 2022.

 (credit: REUTERS/DAVID 'DEE' DELGADO)

Earlier on Monday, a Russian foreign ministry source questioned the seriousness of comments by US President Joe Biden calling for talks on a nuclear arms control framework to replace a treaty expiring in 2026.

In April, Russia conducted a first test launch of its new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, capable of mounting nuclear strikes against the United States, and said it planned to deploy the weapons by autumn.

Urging the nuclear states to act "responsibly"

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Monday urged all nuclear states to conduct themselves "responsibly" in non-proliferation efforts at a time when he said the road to a world without nuclear arms had become much more difficult.

Kishida, the leader of the only nation to have suffered wartime nuclear attacks, warned that global divisions were deepening, particularly since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with Putin at the start of the conflict obliquely raising the possibility of a nuclear strike.

North Korea, which has carried out numerous missile tests this year, is also believed to be preparing for a nuclear test.


Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida addresses the United Nations General Assembly during the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference in New York City, New York, US, August 1, 2022. (credit: REUTERS/DAVID 'DEE' DELGADO)


"The world is worried that the threat of the catastrophe of use of nuclear weapons has emerged once again"Fumio Kishida, Japanese Prime Minister

"The world is worried that the threat of the catastrophe of use of nuclear weapons has emerged once again," he said in a speech.

"It must be said that the path to a world without nuclear weapons has suddenly become even harder."

Kishida was speaking at the Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) at the United Nations in New York City, the first Japanese leader to do so.

A native of Hiroshima, which on Aug. 6, 1945 became the first city in the world to suffer a nuclear bombing during the waning days of World War Two, Kishida has made nuclear non-proliferation something of a cause.

The second nuclear bombing, of Nagasaki, came three days later.

Kishida was foreign minister when US President Barack Obama visited Hiroshima in 2016 as the first sitting US president to do so, and has selected Hiroshima as the site for next year's Group of Seven nations summit.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Monday he will visit Hiroshima for the Aug. 6 anniversary.

"We call for all nuclear states to conduct themselves responsibly," regarding non-proliferation efforts, Kishida said.

"From this standpoint, we support negotiations on arms control and nuclear reduction between the United States and Russia, and encourage similar talks between the United States and China."

He said other efforts should include boosting transparency regarding nuclear weapons, strengthening efforts such as the non-proliferation treaty, and announced the establishment of a $10 million fund to educate youth leaders about the dangers of nuclear weapons.

"Nagasaki must become the last bombed city," Kishida said.

He also said peaceful uses of nuclear energy should be promoted while maintaining its safety, lessons learned from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Following a surge in fuel prices and a June heat wave in which Japan skirted a power shortage, Kishima has promoted nuclear power and and has said he has asked for nine reactors to be online by the end of the year, up from the current five.

The nuclear deal is best for the US, Iran the world


US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at a sideline meeting of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference in New York City, New York, US, August 1, 2022.

 (credit: REUTERS/DAVID 'DEE' DELGADO)

A return to the 2015 nuclear deal remains the best outcome for the United States, Iran and the world, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at global nonproliferation discussions at the United Nations on Monday.

Blinken also repeated a US warning that North Korea is preparing to conduct its seventh nuclear test.

US President Joe Biden said earlier that Washington was ready to outline a new nuclear arms deal with Russia and called on Moscow to demonstrate its ability to negotiate in good faith at the talks that began on Monday.

US Cities face crisis as fewer kids enroll and schools shrink

By MILA KOUMPILOVA 

and MATT BARNUM of Chalkbeat, 

and COLLIN BINKLEY of The Associated Press

yesterday

1 of 17

Students attend a class at Chalmers Elementary school in Chicago, Wednesday, July 13, 2022. America's big cities are seeing their schools shrink, with more and more of their schools serving small numbers of students. Those small schools are expensive to run and often still can't offer everything students need (now more than ever), like nurses and music programs. Chicago and New York City are among the places that have spent COVID relief money to keep schools open, prioritizing stability for students and families. But that has come with tradeoffs. And as federal funds dry up and enrollment falls, it may not be enough to prevent districts from closing schools. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)


CHICAGO (AP) — On a recent morning inside Chalmers School of Excellence on Chicago’s West Side, five preschool and kindergarten students finished up drawings. Four staffers, including a teacher and a tutor, chatted with them about colors and shapes.

The summer program offers the kind of one-on-one support parents love. But behind the scenes, Principal Romian Crockett worries the school is becoming precariously small.

Chalmers lost almost a third of its enrollment during the pandemic, shrinking to 215 students. In Chicago, COVID-19 worsened declines that preceded the virus: Predominantly Black neighborhoods like Chalmers’ North Lawndale, long plagued by disinvestment, have seen an exodus of families over the past decade.

The number of small schools like Chalmers is growing in many American cities as public school enrollment declines. More than one in five New York City elementary schools had fewer than 300 students last school year. In Los Angeles, that figure was over one in four. In Chicago it has grown to nearly one in three, and in Boston it’s approaching one in two, according to a Chalkbeat/AP analysis

Most of these schools were not originally designed to be small, and educators worry coming years will bring tighter budgets even as schools are recovering from the pandemic’s disruption.

“When you lose kids, you lose resources,” said Crockett, the Chalmers principal. “That impacts your ability to serve kids with very high needs.”

A state law prohibits Chicago from closing or consolidating schools until 2025. And across the U.S., COVID-19 relief money is helping subsidize shrinking schools. But when the money runs out in a few years, officials will face a difficult choice: Keep the schools open despite the financial strain, or close them, upsetting communities looking for stability for their children.

“My worry is that we will shut down when we have all worked so hard,” said Yvonne Wooden, who serves on Chalmers’ school council. Her children went to the pre-K through eighth-grade school, and two grandchildren attend now. “That would really hurt our neighborhood.”

The pandemic accelerated enrollment declines in many districts as families switched to homeschooling, charter schools and other options. Students moved away or vanished from school rolls for unknown reasons.

Many districts like Chicago give schools money for each student. That means small schools sometimes struggle to pay for fixed costs — the principal, a counselor and building upkeep.

To address that, many allocate extra money to small schools, diverting dollars from larger schools. In Chicago, the district spends an average of $19,000 annually per student at small high schools, while students at larger ones get $10,000, according to the Chalkbeat/AP analysis.

“I love small schools, but small schools are very expensive,” Chicago schools chief Pedro Martinez told the school board recently. “We can get some really creative, innovative models, but we need the funding.”

At the same time, these schools are often stretched thin. Very small schools offer fewer clubs, sports and arts programs. Some elementary schools group students from different grades in the same classroom, although Martinez has vowed that won’t happen next year.

Manley Career Academy High School on Chicago’s West Side illustrates the paradox. It now serves 65 students, and the cost per student has shot up to $40,000, even though schools like Manley offer few elective courses, sports and extracurricular activities.

“We’re spending $40,000 per pupil just to offer the bare minimum,” said Hal Woods of the advocacy group Kids First Chicago, which has studied declining enrollment in the district. “It’s not really a $40,000-per-pupil student experience.”

Small schools are popular with families, teachers and community members because of their tight-knit, supportive feel. Some argue districts should pour more dollars into these schools, many in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods hard hit by the pandemic. Schools serve as community hubs and points of local pride even as they lose students — as is the case in North Lawndale.

Race also looms large. Nationally, schools with more students of color are more likely to be closed, and those in affected communities often feel unfairly targeted.

The prospect of closing schools is particularly fraught in Chicago, where 50 schools were shuttered in 2013, most in predominantly Black neighborhoods. The move frayed trust between residents and the district and, according to University of Chicago research, markedly disrupted learning for low-income students.

In Boston, where the district had been losing students well before the pandemic, families are skeptical of closures.

Among the schools most at risk is P.A. Shaw Elementary School in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. Revived from a previous closure in 2014, the school had just over 150 students last year, down from 250 in 2018. After making plans to eliminate two classrooms earlier this year — seen by some as a harbinger of closure — the district faced blowback from parents and teachers.

Parents rallying behind the school included Brenda Ramsey, whose 7-year-old daughter, Emersyn Wise, is entering second grade. When Ramsey became homeless and went to stay with family during the pandemic, teachers from Shaw drove half an hour to deliver schoolwork. Later, the school’s staff helped Ramsey find permanent housing.

Ramsey, 32, still remembers the joy she felt when she and her two daughters first visited Shaw.

“The principal looked like them — she was a young Black woman who was excited to see them,” she said.“ They were really big on family engagement, family involvement, and that’s just something you don’t see that often.”

Now, with the school’s fate in question, Ramsey is debating whether to keep Emersyn there.

Ramsey’s dilemma illustrates what the district calls its “cycle of declining enrollment”: Schools’ enrollment falls, leading to financial instability — which prompts even more families to leave. The problem is often worse at schools with more students of color.

And when schools face closure, it’s “devastating” for families, said Suleika Soto, acting director of the Boston Education Justice Alliance, which advocates for underrepresented students.

“It means you have to uproot,” she said. “And then if parents don’t like it, then they’ll remove their children from the public school system, which again adds to the toxic cycle.”

Nevertheless, some urban school districts that are losing students, including Denver, Indianapolis, and Kansas City, Missouri, are considering school closures. Earlier this year, the Oakland, California, school board voted to close several small schools despite furious protests.

“School budgets have been cut as a way to keep more schools open,” said former Oakland board member Shanthi Gonzales, who resigned in May soon after voting to support school closures. “There are really awful tradeoffs.”

Elsewhere, leaders — buoyed by federal COVID-19 relief funds — have continued to invest in these schools.

Chicago will use about $140 million of the $2.8 billion in COVID-19 relief it got to help prop up small schools this school year, officials said. Martinez, who took over as schools chief last fall, has sidestepped talk of closures, saying he wants to study how the district can make its campuses more attractive to families — and push for more money from the state.

In Los Angeles and New York City, officials say they’re focused on luring students back into the system, not school closures.

But federal relief money will run out soon: districts must budget that money by September 2024. When it does, districts may be hard pressed to keep all of their small schools afloat.

“It’s a huge problem,” said Bruce Fuller, an education researcher at University of California, Berkeley. “It’s going to be increasingly difficult for superintendents to justify keeping these places open as the number of these schools continues to rise.”

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Barnum reported from New York and Binkley from Boston. Chalkbeat journalists Kaitlyn Radde in Washington and Thomas Wilburn in Chicago, and AP journalist Sharon Lurye in New Orleans contributed.

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The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Germany argues over nuclear shutdown amid gas supply worries

By GEIR MOULSON

August 1, 2022

The nuclear power plant (NPP) Isar 2 is pictured in Essenbach, Germany, Thursday, March 3, 2022. Rising concern over the impact of a potential Russian gas cutoff is fueling an intensifying debate in Germany over whether the country should switch off its last three nuclear power plants as planned at the end of this year. (Armin Weigel/dpa via AP, File)


BERLIN (AP) — Rising concern over the impact of a potential Russian gas cutoff is fueling the debate in Germany over whether the country should switch off its last three nuclear power plants as planned at the end of this year.

The door to some kind of extension appeared to open a crack after the Economy Ministry in mid-July announced a new “stress test” on the security of electricity supplies. It’s supposed to take into account a tougher scenario than a previous test, concluded in May, that found supplies were assured.

Since then, Russia has reduced natural gas supplies through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany to 20% of capacity amid tensions over the war in Ukraine. It cited technical issues that Germany says are only an excuse for a political power play. Russia recently has accounted for about a third of Germany’s gas supply, and there are concerns it could turn off the tap altogether.

The main opposition Union bloc has made increasingly frequent demands for an extension of the nuclear plants’ lives. Similar calls are coming from the smallest party in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government, the pro-business Free Democrats.

“A lot speaks for not switching off the safe and climate-friendly nuclear power plants, but if necessary using them until 2024,” Finance Minister Christian Lindner, the Free Democrats’ leader, told Sunday’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper. He called for Economy Minister Robert Habeck, who is responsible for energy, to stop the use of gas to generate electricity.

Calls for extending the use of nuclear power are awkward for the other two governing parties, Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats and, particularly, Habeck’s environmentalist Greens. Opposition to nuclear power is a cornerstone of the Greens’ identity; a Social Democrat-Green government launched Germany’s exit from nuclear power two decades ago.

A government made up of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Union and the Free Democrats set the nuclear exit’s current form in 2011, shortly after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. It calls for the three still-operational reactors to go offline at the end of December.

Habeck has long argued that keeping those reactors running would be legally and technically complex and do little to address the problems caused by a shortfall of gas, arguing that natural gas isn’t so much a factor in generating electricity as in fueling industrial processes and providing heating.

“We have a heating problem or an industry problem, but not an electricity problem — at least not generally throughout the country,” he said in early July.

In this year’s first quarter, nuclear plants accounted for 6% of Germany’s electricity generation and gas for 13%. Lindner said “we must work to ensure that an electricity crisis doesn’t come on top of the gas crisis.”

A view of the Neckarwestheim nuclear power plant on June 27, 2022. Rising concern over the impact of a potential Russian gas cutoff is fueling an intensifying debate in Germany over whether the country should switch off its last three nuclear power plants as planned at the end of this year. 

(Bernd Weissbrod/dpa via AP, file)

Some Greens have indicated a degree of openness in recent days to allowing one or more reactors to keep running for a short period with their existing fuel rods, if the country faces a power supply emergency — though not to a longer extension.

Others aren’t impressed by the idea. That “is also a lifetime extension” for the reactors that would require a change to the existing law, “and we won’t touch that,” prominent Green lawmaker Juergen Trittin — Germany’s environment minister when the nuclear phaseout was first drawn up — told Saturday’s Tagesspiegel newspaper.

Critics say that isn’t enough anyway. Opposition leader Friedrich Merz has urged the government to order new fuel rods for the remaining reactors immediately. Senior opposition lawmaker Alexander Dobrindt called for three already-shut reactors to be reactivated and told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that “in this situation, lifetime extensions for nuclear energy of at least five more years are conceivable.”

And Scholz’s position? Government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann said last week that he is waiting for the results of the “stress test,” which are expected in the coming weeks.

The government has already given the green light for utility companies to fire up 10 dormant coal-fired power plants and six that are oil-fueled, and plans also to clear the way for dormant lignite-fired plants to be reactivated. Another 11 coal-fired power plants scheduled to be shut down in November will be allowed to keep operating.

ARACHNOPHOBIC PYRO

Utah man accused of causing wildfire by burning a spider
yesterday

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Firefighters battle a wildfire from the ground as a helicopter drops water above them in Springville on Monday, Aug. 1, 2022. The fire started when a man tried to burn a spider with a lighter. (Kristin Murphy/The Deseret News via AP)


SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Utah man has been arrested on accusations he started a wildfire while trying to burn a spider with his lighter.

Cory Allan Martin, 26, told deputies that he spotted the spider Monday while he was in a hiking area in the foothills south of Salt Lake City near the city of Springville, shows a probable cause statement. He acknowledged starting the fire, but didn’t explain why he was trying to burn the spider.

Deputies found a jar of marijuana in his belongings, but he didn’t appear to be high, said Utah County Sheriff’s Sgt. Spencer Cannon.

There is no evidence to suggest he intentionally started the blaze, said Cannon, but he called it a reckless and puzzling decision. This area and most of Utah are bone dry amid extreme drought conditions.

“What led him to stop and notice a spider and decide to try to burn it, we don’t know,” Cannon said. “There may not be a why. He might not even know a why.”

Martin was arrested on suspicion of reckless burn and possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, court documents show.

He was in the Utah County jail Tuesday on nearly $2,000 bail. It was unknown if he had an attorney.

The wildfire quickly spread up the mountain and had burned less than 1 square mile (1 square kilometer) as of Tuesday, according to fire officials. No homes had been damaged.