HE LIES

Putin assures Grossi that they are ready for dialogue to address the situation at the Zaporiyia plant

Daniel Stewart - TODAY
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday at a meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, in the Russian city of St. Petersburg that they are ready to discuss the situation at the Zaporiyia nuclear power plant.


Russian President Vladimir Putin and IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi - -/Kremlin/dpa© Provided by News 360

The Russian president affirmed to Grossi that Moscow "is open to dialogue" on the future of the plant, located in Zaporiyia, one of the regions annexed after the recent referendums held in the areas occupied by Russian troops, together with Donetsk, Lugansk and Kherson.

For his part, Grossi has expressed concern about the situation at the nuclear power plant, as the situation is "increasingly dangerous, precarious and challenging", with "frequent military attacks that can also threaten nuclear safety".

"Now more than ever, during these extremely difficult times, a protection zone must be established around the Zaporiyia nuclear power plant. We cannot afford to waste any more time. The stakes are high," he remarked, according to an IAEA statement.

During the meeting, Putin also stressed that there are "elements of excessively dangerous politicization of everything related to nuclear activity", a "dangerous" rhetoric that we should try to reduce in order to cooperate with each other "in a normal situation", despite "all the turbulence and complex processes taking place on the world stage".

"We have always advocated that all states have equal access to the benefits of peaceful atomic energy and, at the same time, we believe that everything possible should be done to limit the spread of military (use) nuclear energy," he said, according to the TASS news agency.

Thus, Putin recalled that "Russia has not only always supported the IAEA, but has been at the origins" of the UN nuclear agency since 1957. "In many respects, Russia occupies a leading position in the world in the field of nuclear development," he added.

In recent hours, Russia has intensified its attacks on several cities, including Kiev, but also Lviv, Zaporiyia, or Kharkov, in response to what Russian President Vladimir Putin called a "terrorist attack" in connection with Saturday's destruction of the Kerch bridge, which connects Russia to the Crimean peninsula.

NATURAL CAPITALI$M

Should nature have financial value in Canada’s accounting system? YES!

What experts say

Aya Al-Hakim - Sunday


Canada is already feeling the impact of changing climate, much like the rest of the world. When a heat dome settled over British Columbia this summer, 570 people died. Last month, Hurricane Fiona wreaked havoc across the East Coast. While there may be no easy way out of this, some experts believe that adding financial value to natural assets may help in tackling climate change.


A forest is shown in Kingsboro, P.E.I. in this undated handout photo.

 Mike Dembeck, Nature Conservancy of Canada 

Roy Brooke, the executive director of the Municipal Natural Assets Initiative, which aims to make natural asset management a mainstream practice, said the first step in ensuring Canada has healthy biodiverse ecosystems is to recognize the value of nature in its financial and accounting systems because by doing so governments would be able to properly assess the conditions of natural assets like forests and wetlands.

Read more:

Germany wants climate losses to be discussed at United Nations talks

This means that by keeping a financial record of natural assets, if any of the trees in a forest, for example, get a disease, governments would be able to provide maintenance that would increase the quality of its resilience.

"We cannot address climate change without also addressing nature and biodiversity. We cannot reach any climate change targets. We cannot mitigate and we cannot adapt properly without also ensuring that we have healthy, connected, biodiverse ecosystems," said Brooke.

According to Natural Resources Canada, an infographic states that "in 2020, natural resources, directly and indirectly, accounted for 15.5% of Canada’s nominal GDP," with the biggest natural resource being energy.

Climate change linked to extreme drought in new study

About 909 communities were also found to be "economically reliant on at least one natural resource sector."

"Of those communities, 609 are either significantly or highly reliant on at least one of the natural resource sectors," the government website says, with the resources being minerals and metals or forests.

Forests make up a huge portion of Canadian landscape, with Canada having nine per cent of the world's forests, according to the government.

"Forests cover only 40 per cent of Canada’s land base," the website states. "Depending on where you live in Canada, forests may cover over 80% of your region, such as in the Atlantic Maritime ecozone or only 3% of the Prairies."

Read more:

Arctic rainy days are likely to double by 2100. Here’s why

In addition, Canada has "about 1.29 million square km of wetlands, covering 13% of Canada's terrestrial area."

"This is close to one quarter of the world's remaining wetlands," it states.

Brooke explains that if natural assets like rivers, wetlands, and forests were to have a financial value, the economic decisions taken by governments won't end up leading to further degradation of nature.

"Nature provides us with services like flood risk reduction or stormwater management...but (right now) we are ascribing zero value to nature and all of the services that it provides," said Brooke.

For example, Brooke says a local government might build a mall on top of a wetland and not find out for 20 or 50 years that the natural asset was actually providing vital services that helped the environment.

Wetlands have been recognized to absorb large waves or floods and are also found to filter toxic substances, according to the government of Canada website, so losing such a natural asset would harm the environment, says Brooke.

"For the most part, local governments, for example, when they're thinking about nature, they're thinking about it pretty narrowly. They're thinking about it mostly as kind of a social or recreational loan," said Brooke.

"As a result, every hour of every day, we're taking decisions, whether it's the zoning of land, investment decisions, or asset management (we) don't take nature and its services into account," he added.

READ MORE: Under water: Is the real estate industry waking up to ‘climate risk’?

Brooke was part of a study released on Oct. 5 calling for recognition of the financial value of natural assets, conducted by the University of Waterloo’s Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, KPMG, and the Municipal Natural Assets Initiative ahead of the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference in November, which Canada will be a part of.

"Canada can be a leader in changing these rules and act now...And over the next number of months, there is a very clear choice," he said.

"Are we going to start counting nature into our accounting frameworks, into our decision making? Or are we going to lean back on the status quo, which is evidently not working for any of us?"

Brooke said in Canada's current accounting handbook there is a specific prohibition against considering natural assets to be tangible capital assets, which is a key barrier.

"We have to lift that prohibition and then provide guidance or direction to the people who do the numbers in local governments and public institutions so that they can start to think about nature more accurately and more practically," said Brooke.

Video: New report highlights growing economic impact of climate change

"From an accounting point of view, we're at a bit of a crossroads here," Brooke said, but added that the Public Sector Accounting Board, which establishes accounting standards, is "absolutely listening."

However, Brooke is worried that the rules won't change fast enough.

"Will they change in the next few years, or will they change in 20 years when it's too darn late?" he said.

The report co-authored by Brooke states that since 2016, over 90 "local governments across Canada have been undertaking asset management-based approaches that recognize natural assets as infrastructure to be protected and managed for the long-term."

The majority of these local governments are based in British Columbia and Ontario, where the making of inventories, modelling, valuing, and managing of natural assets are being overseen.

Like Brooke, Bailey Church, the National Leader of Public Sector Accounting Advisory for KPMG Canada and one of the co-authors of the report, says the problem lies in the pace of the process — it is "really slow."

"It's a time-consuming task...So the 90 municipalities cited, most are working with the Municipal Natural Assets Initiative and building out their inventories of practice. And there are a lot of varying degrees of progress. Some are extremely advanced, and others are in the very early days of it," said Church.

READ MORE: Hurricane Fiona shows how climate change is fuelling severe weather events in Canada, expert says

"You have to involve a lot of stakeholders in that whole process. And there are a lot of pressing issues, demanding resources, demanding attention. But the focus on this has shifted so much in the past 24 months...it's very timely," said Church.

The managing director of the Climate Resilient Infrastructure at the University of Waterloo, Joanna Eyquem, says what concerns her is that Canada doesn't "have time when it comes to tackling climate change and biodiversity loss."

Video: More climate change adaptation needed after storm Fiona: expert

According to the government of Canada website, the feds have "committed to conserving 25 percent of lands and inland waters in Canada by 2025, working toward 30 percent of each by 2030. Canada is also committed to working to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030 [in Canada] and to achieve a full recovery for nature by 2050."

Eyquem says that's eight years in the future, so there isn't a lot of time to change the standards.

"We need to be moving forward maybe with interim guidance, but we want this to be mainstream practice," she said.

Climate Changed: Catastrophe experts say retreat from flood risk is 'critical option'

Sunday


VANCOUVER — All climate disasters are not created equal and the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction recommends retreat in the face of only one type of threat.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

"In our opinion, retreat is not an option that is important for most climate hazards in Canada. The hazard where retreat is really important and quite viable and a critical option involves flooding," executive director Paul Kovacs said.

There are relatively affordable ways individual property owners can protect themselves against wildfires, hail and extreme wind like tornadoes and hurricanes, he said.

The institute found that residents of Lytton, B.C., which mostly burned down in a 2021 wildfire, would be significantly better shielded from another blaze if they invested an average of $5,000 to rebuild using fire-resistant material for things like roofs and patios and reducing vegetation near structures.

After Calgary's 2020 hailstorm, the first in Canadian history to cause more than $1 billion in damage, the city offered $3,000 to homeowners who installed hail-resistant roofs.

"The program was incredibly successful," Kovacs said.

Floods caused by rising oceans or overflowing rivers are a different beast, he said. If one property owner builds a wall around his property, it just means the water flows to another. Preventing damage in those cases requires a more costly community-level response, he said, whether that means property buyouts or expensive dyking systems.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 9, 2022.

Amy Smart, The Canadian Press

FARMER BROWN DONE IT

Six endangered wolves found dead in Washington were poisoned, officials say

Guardian staff and agency - TODAY

Six endangered wolves found dead in north-east Washington this year were poisoned, officials announced Monday, and a reward is being offered for tips leading to a conviction in the case.


Photograph: AP© Provided by The Guardian

Washington state’s department of fish and wildlife said the agency has been investigating wolf deaths within the territory of the Wedge pack in Stevens county since authorities there discovered four dead wolves on 18 February.

The agency found two more dead wolves in the following month and toxicology results revealed all six animals died from ingesting poison.

Officials are now asking anyone who might have relevant information to come forward. Conservation groups are offering a $51,000 reward for tips that lead to convictions in the poisonings.

“Anyone with the good fortune to see a wolf in the wild knows of their beauty, intellect and tight family bond,” said Zoe Hanley, a wolf biologist with Defenders of Wildlife, a conservation organization. “This cowardly act flies in the face of committed efforts from biologists, policymakers and ranchers working to recover and coexist with wolves in Washington.”

“It is deeply disturbing that even with the use of publicly funded deterrents and state intervention in response to depredations, there is still a situation where someone felt compelled to do this,” said Paula Swedeen, the wolf policy lead for Conservation Northwest, another conservation organization. “We need to find solutions that allow wolves to inhabit this wild country without constant death threats hanging over their heads.”

Parts of Washington state are prime wolf habitat. There were a minimum of 206 wolves and 33 packs in Washington state in 2021, according to an annual survey conducted by state and tribal biologists, and the animals are listed as endangered under state law. The unauthorized killing of one of the animals is a gross misdemeanor and punishable by up to one year in jail and a $5,000 fine.

In Oregon last year, wildlife troopers found eight dead wolves in the north-eastern part of the state. The animals were poisoned, but the deaths remain unsolved and rewards also have been offered for tips.

Iran: alarm raised over ‘bloody’ crackdown on protesters in Kurdistan

Weronika Strzyżyńska and Haroon Janjua -TODAY- THE GUARDIAN

Rights groups have sounded the alarm over an intensifying crackdown by Iranian security forces against protesters in the western province of Kurdistan, as Tehran summoned the British ambassador in response to UK sanctions against the morality police.

Security forces in the provincial capital Sanandaj have used firearms and fired teargas “indiscriminately”, including into people’s homes, Amnesty International reported.

A female protester in the city told the Guardian that a “massacre” by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was taking place. “They have shut down the city and are slaughtering people inside with guns and bombs just because they are chanting for freedom,” she said.

Related: ‘The fire of our anger is still burning’: protesters in Iran speak out

Despite the authorities’ disruption of internet, videos showing apparent gunfire in Sanandaj have been posted online by the Norway-based human rights group Hengaw.

Hengaw said Iranian war planes had arrived at the city’s airport overnight and buses carrying special forces were on their way to the city from elsewhere in Iran.

On Monday – as protests sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody entered their fourth week – Britain said it was imposing sanctions against the “morality police in its entirety”, as well as against Iran’s police commander and the head of the Basij militia, linked to the Revolutionary Guards.

The Iranian government responded by summoning the British ambassador to Iran, Simon Shercliff, to Tehran later the same day. Iran described the sanctions as “baseless” and accused the UK of interfering in its internal affairs.


The protests were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody. 

Photograph: IRANWIRE/Reuters© Provided by The Guardian

Protests have been especially intense in Sanandaj in Kurdistan, Amini’s home region, where rights groups fear heavy casualties.

Related video: London rally urges UK gov't to back Iranian protests

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The New-York based Center for Human Rights in Iran said there was a risk of a similar situation in Sistan and Baluchistan province, in the south-east, where activists say more than 90 people have been killed since 30 September.

“The ruthless killings of civilians by security forces in Kurdistan province, on the heels of the massacre in Sistan and Baluchistan province, are likely preludes to severe state violence to come,” its director, Hadi Ghaemi, told Agence France-Presse.

In a new development on Monday, workers from Iran’s oil industry joined the demonstrations.

Footage posted on Twitter showed workers blocking the road to the Bushehr petrochemical plant in Assaluyeh, on the Gulf, and chanting “death to the dictator”. A regional official said the workers were protesting over wages and not the death of Mahsa Amini.

“The situation in Assaluyeh is really alarming,” the 23-year-old wife of an oil worker told the Guardian. “I am concerned about the safety of my husband. There is no way to communicate and reach him.”

The woman, who said she had previously burned her hijab in protest over Amini’s death, added: “We will throw the regime out through our continued struggle this time.”

Iran has the fourth largest reserves of crude oil in the world and the industry is key to its economy. Strikes of oil workers were a major factor in the success of the 1979 revolution.

“If these unrests continue and expand, especially if the energy sector joins the protests, the regime will irreversibly be in trouble,” Fatemeh Aman, senior fellow at the Washington based Middle East Institute, said from Erbil. “I don’t know if at this point there is a will within the establishment to reconcile, but even if there is, bloody crackdowns on ethnic minorities [like in Sanandaj] will make any reconciliation almost certainly impossible.”

The authorities have pinned the blame for the unrest and violence on a wide array of actors including armed Kurdish dissidents, American and Israeli agents, as well as “traitorous Iranians abroad”. No evidence of foreign involvement has been provided.

France’s foreign affairs minister, Catherine Colonna, said five French citizens had been detained by Iranian authorities, after a video of a French couple confessing to “spying” was aired in Iran.

A week prior, France urged its citizens to leave Iran saying they were at risk of arbitrary detentions.

Prompted by the repressions of protesters, EU is set to join the US, Britain, and Canada in imposing sanctions of Iranian security forces.

“The EU agreed yesterday the technical aspects of a sanctions package that will target those behind the repression,” Colonna said on Tuesday.

Iran’s crackdown on protests intensifies in Kurdish region

By JON GAMBRELL

TODAY

This is a locator map for Iran with its capital, Tehran. (AP Photo)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran intensified its crackdown Tuesday on Kurdish areas in the country’s west amid protests sparked by the death of a 22-year-old woman detained by the morality police as oil workers demonstrated at a key refinery, activists said.

Riot police fired into residential neighborhoods in Sanandaj, the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province, as Amnesty International and the White House’s national security adviser criticized the violence targeting demonstrators angered by the death of Mahsa Amini.

Meanwhile, some oil workers Monday joined the protests at two key refinery complexes, for the first time linking an industry key to Iran’s theocracy to the unrest. Workers claimed another protest Tuesday in the crucial oil city of Abadan, with others calling for protests on Wednesday as well.

Iran’s government insists Amini was not mistreated, but her family says her body showed bruises and other signs of beating after she was detained for violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code. Subsequent videos have shown security forces beating and shoving female protesters, including women who have torn off their mandatory headscarf, or hijab.

From the capital, Tehran, videos emerged showing students at two universities demonstrating and chanting. Some women and girls have marched through the streets without headscarves as the protests continue into a fourth week. The demonstrations represent one of the biggest challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the 2009 Green Movement protests.

“There is just so much anger and frustration in the country that it’s hard to imagine that the current generation of protesters in Iran would be cowed just by the system resorting to its traditional iron fist and trying to put down protests,” said Ali Vaez, an analyst who covers Iran for the International Crisis Group.

Videos posted online by a Kurdish group called the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights showed darkened streets with apparent gunfire going off and a bonfire burning in Sanandaj, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of Tehran.

Another showed riot police carrying shotguns moving in formation with a vehicle, apparently firing at homes.

A video posted later Tuesday purportedly showed a massive bullet hole inside the home of one Sanandaj resident, a hole that Hengaw alleged came from a heavy .50-caliber machine gun — the type often mounted on armored vehicles. Another video purportedly showed security forces randomly firing in the air while arresting someone there on Monday.

Videos later Tuesday showed protesters throwing stones and wielding clubs in the city as they confronted security forces, who fired tear gas into the crowd. Hengaw reported a “fierce conflict” there Tuesday night, as well as in the nearby cities of Baneh and Saqqez, Amini’s hometown.

The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran posted another video showing what it described as a phalanx of motorcycle-riding security forces moving through Sanandaj.

“They reportedly broke the windows of hundreds of cars in the Baharan neighborhood,” the center said.

Amini was Kurdish and her death has been felt particularly in Iran’s Kurdish region, where demonstrations began Sept. 17 at her funeral there after her death the day before.

Amnesty International criticized Iranian security forces for “using firearms and firing tear gas indiscriminately, including into people’s homes.” It urged the world to pressure Iran to end the crackdown as Tehran continues to disrupt internet and mobile phone networks “to hide their crimes.”

Iran did not immediately acknowledge the renewed crackdown in Sanandaj. However, Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the British ambassador over the United Kingdom sanctioning members of the country’s morality police and security officials due to the crackdown.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry called the sanctions “arbitrary and baseless,” even while threatening to potentially take countermeasures against London.

Jake Sullivan, U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, similarly noted that “the world is watching what is happening in Iran.”

“These protestors are Iranian citizens, led by women and girls, demanding dignity and basic rights,” Sullivan wrote on Twitter. “We stand with them, and we will hold responsible those using violence in a vain effort to silence their voices.”

On Monday, workers held demonstrations in Abadan and Asaluyeh, a key point for Iran’s massive offshore natural gas field in the Persian Gulf it shares with Qatar.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency on Tuesday claimed the Asaluyeh demonstration was a strike over wages. Videos of the protests included workers chanting: “This is the bloody year Seyyed Ali will be overthrown,” referring to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei without his Shiite religious title of ayatollah. Workers also said several of their colleagues had been detained by authorities after their protests Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the Contractual Oil Workers Protest Organizing Council claimed another strike at Abadan, posting videos outside of the massive refinery complex in the city near the Iraqi border. The details in the videos correspond with each and to known features of the facility compared against satellite photos taken in recent months.

The council later called on other oil workers to join them in solidarity — potentially raising the stakes further. The council’s contractors typically build oil facilities, so their demonstrations haven’t affected Iran’s oil and gas production. Drawing in other workers potentially could change that.

It remains unclear how many people have been killed or arrested so far in the protests.

An Oslo-based group, Iran Human Rights, estimates at least 185 people have been killed. This includes an estimated 90 people killed by security forces in the eastern Iranian city of Zahedan amid demonstrations against a police officer accused of rape in a separate case. Iranian authorities have described the Zahedan violence as involving unnamed separatists, without providing details or evidence.

Iran’s judiciary spokesman Masoud Setayeshi reportedly said Tuesday that Iran has released some 1,700 people arrested in the recent demonstrations, without offering a total figure for those detained so far.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, Iranian government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi alleged without providing evidence that U.S. sanctions affected Amini’s ability to get medicine for the chronic illnesses she faced. However, an Iranian government report Friday said that she was taking hydrocortisone and levothyroxine — two medicines made in Iran available in pharmacies in the country.

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Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Protests in Iran over woman’s death reach key oil industry

By JON GAMBRELL

YESTERDAY

This is a locator map for Iran with its capital, Tehran. (AP Photo)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Workers at refineries crucial for Iran’s oil and natural gas production protested Monday over the death of a 22-year-old woman, online videos appeared to show, escalating the crisis faced by Tehran.

The demonstrations in Abadan and Asaluyeh mark the first time the unrest surrounding the death of Mahsa Amini threatened the industry crucial to the coffers of Iran’s long-sanctioned theocratic government.

While it remains unclear if other workers will follow, the protests come as demonstrations rage on in cities, towns and villages across Iran over the Sept. 16 death of Amini after her arrest by the country’s morality police in Tehran. Early on Monday, the sound of apparent gunshots and explosions echoed through the streets of a city in western Iran, while security forces reportedly killed one man in a nearby village, activists said.

Iran’s government insists Amini was not mistreated, but her family says her body showed bruises and other signs of beating. Subsequent videos have shown security forces beating and shoving female protesters, including women who have torn off their mandatory headscarf, or hijab.

From the capital, Tehran, and elsewhere, online videos have emerged despite authorities disrupting the internet. Videos on Monday showed university and high school students demonstrating and chanting, with some women and girls marching through the streets without headscarves as the protests continue into a fourth week. The demonstrations represent one of the biggest challenges to Iran’s theocracy since the 2009 Green Movement protests.

Online videos analyzed by The Associated Press showed dozens of workers gathered at the refineries in Asaluyeh, some 925 kilometers (575 miles) south of Tehran, on the Persian Gulf. The vast complex takes in natural gas from the massive offshore natural gas field that Iran shares with Qatar.

In one video, the gathered workers — some with their faces covered — chant “shameless” and “death to the dictator.” The chants have been features across protests dealing with Amini’s death.

“This is the bloody year Seyyed Ali will be overthrown,” the protesters chanted, refusing to use the title ayatollah to refer to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. An ayatollah is a high-ranking Shiite cleric.

The details in the videos correspond with each and to known features of the facility compared against satellite photos taken Sunday.

Iran did not acknowledge any disruption at the facility, though the semiofficial Tasnim news agency described the incident as a salary dispute. Iran is one of the world’s top natural gas suppliers, just after the U.S. and Russia.

In Abadan, a city once home to the world’s largest oil refinery, videos also showed workers walking off the job. The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran cited a statement it said came from the Contractual Oil Workers Protest Organizing Council that called for a strike over “the suppression and killings.”

“We declare that now is the time for widespread protests and to prepare ourselves for nationwide and back-breaking strikes,” the statement said. “This is the beginning of the road and we will continue our protests together with the entire nation day after day.”

The violence early Monday in western Iran occurred in Sanandaj, the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province, as well as in the village of Salas Babajani near the border with Iraq, according to a Kurdish group called the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights. Amini was Kurdish and her death has been felt particularly in Iran’s Kurdish region, where demonstrations began Sept. 17 at her funeral there.

Hengaw posted footage it described as smoke rising in one neighborhood in Sanandaj, with what sounded like rapid rifle fire echoing through the night sky. The shouts of people could be heard.

There was no immediate word if people had been hurt in the violence. Hengaw later posted a video online of what appeared to be collected shell casings from rifles and shotguns, as well as spent tear gas canisters

Authorities offered no immediate explanation about the violence early Monday in Sanandaj, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of Tehran. Esmail Zarei Kousha, the governor of Iran’s Kurdistan province, alleged without providing evidence that unknown groups “plotted to kill young people on the streets” on Saturday, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported Monday.

Kousha also accused these unnamed groups that day of shooting a young man in the head and killing him — an attack that activists have roundly blamed on Iranian security forces. They say Iranian forces opened fire after the man honked his car horn at them. Honking has become one of the ways activists have been expressing civil disobedience — an action that has seen riot police in other videos smashing the windshields of passing vehicles.

In the village of Salas Babajani, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of Sanandaj, Iranian security forces repeatedly shot a 22-year-old man protesting there who later died of his wounds, Hengaw said. It said others had been wounded in the shooting.

It remains unclear how many people have been killed so far. State television last suggested at least 41 people had been killed in the demonstrations as of Sept. 24. There’s been no update from Iran’s government since.

An Oslo-based group, Iran Human Rights, estimates at least 185 people have been killed. This includes an estimated 90 people killed by security forces in the eastern Iranian city of Zahedan amid demonstrations against a police officer accused of rape in a separate case. Iranian authorities have described the Zahedan violence as involving unnamed separatists, without providing details or evidence.

Meanwhile, a prison riot has struck the city of Rasht, killing several inmates there, a prosecutor reportedly said. It wasn’t immediately clear if the riot at Lakan Prison was linked to the ongoing protests, though Rasht has seen heavy demonstrations in recent weeks since Amini’s death.

The semiofficial Mehr news agency quoted Gilan provincial prosecutor Mehdi Fallah Miri as saying, “some prisoners died because of their wounds as the electricity was cut (at the prison) because of the damage.” He also alleged prisoners refused to allow authorities access to those wounded.

Miri described the riot as breaking out in a wing of a prison housing death penalty inmates.

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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

Protesters defiant in Iran amid crackdown

NEWS WIRES
Mon, 10 October 2022 

© AFP

Iranian protesters remained defiant Monday with students staging sit-ins and some industrial workers going on strike despite a crackdown activists say has left dozens dead and hundreds more imprisoned.

Videos posted on social media indicated that protests flared at various points in the capital and other cities over recent days, with women burning headscarves and shouting slogans against the Islamic republic.

Kurdish rights group Hengaw accused the authorities of using heavy weaponry, including "shelling" on neighbourhoods and "machine gun fire", in the northwestern city of Sanandaj -- claims which could not be independently confirmed amid widespread internet blocks.

Gunshots were also heard in Amini's home town of Saqqez, said the Norway-based group.

The unrest erupted over three weeks ago over the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, an Iranian woman of Kurdish origin who died following her arrest by the notorious Tehran morality police who enforce the strict dress rules on women including compulsory headscarves.

Activists say she was beaten in custody, while the authorities in Iran have released a medical report blaming a pre-existing condition.

The protests have channelled anger among some Iranian women over the compulsory headscarf, but have also seen slogans shouted against the Islamic system created by late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after the ousting of the shah in 1979.

Oslo-based non-government group Iran Human Rights (IHR) shared images of a sit-in protest at the northern Gilan university and of high school girls in the northern town of Mahabad removing their headscarves.

It also posted a video which it said showed a large crowd of students outside Tehran polytechnic on Monday denouncing the "poverty and corruption" in Iran and shouting "death to this tyranny".

Workers on strike

Footage shared on social media, including by news site Iran Wire, said students at Tehran women's university Al-Zahra shouted criticism of the regime during a visit Saturday by President Ebrahim Raisi.

Student at universities including Tehran Azad also painted their hands red to evoke the crackdown by the authorities on the protests, images showed.

Analysts say that the multi-faceted nature of the protests -- ranging from street marches to student strikes to individual actions of defiance -- has complicated the state's attempts to quell the movement.

This could make the protests an even bigger challenge to the authorities under supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 83, than the November 2019 protests against energy price hikes that were bloodily put down.

One viral video said to show a woman bare-headed in defiance of the dress code, in a street in the northwestern city of Kermanshah with outstretched arms and offering "free hugs" to passers-by.

There have also been signs of labour unrest. Videos broadcast by Persian media based outside Iran showed striking workers burning tyres outside the Asalouyeh petrochemical plant in the country's southwest.

IHR said workers were blocking roads there, and there were also reports of strikes at refineries in Abadan in the west of Iran and Kengan in the south.

'Chaos and disorder'

In an act of cyber defiance, the hacking group Edalat-e Ali (Ali's Justice) had posted an image during the main state TV evening news on Saturday of Khamenei in crosshairs and being consumed by flames.

The crackdown on the protests sparked by Amini's death has claimed at least 95 lives according to Norway-based group Iran Human Rights.

Another 90 people were killed by the security forces in Iran's far southeastern city of Zahedan from September 30 after protests sparked by the alleged rape of a teenage girl by a police chief in the Sistan-Baluchistan province, said IHR, citing the UK-based Baluch Activists Campaign.

State media have said 24 members of the security forces have been killed overall, including in the Zahedan unrest.

Foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani warned Monday the government would "not stand with its hands tied in the face of chaos and disorder".

Campaign groups including IHR have also pointed to videos showing brutality by the security forces, including a defenceless protester beaten by baton-wielding police while taking cover in a building.

Activists also accuse the authorities of a campaign of mass arrests and travel bans to quell the protests, with celebrities caught up in the dragnet.

Ali Daei, once the world's top international goalscorer in men's football, had his passport confiscated on returning to Tehran from abroad after bitterly criticising the Islamic republic on social media, Iranian media reported.

Daei told AFP on Monday the passport was returned to him "after two or three days".

(AFP)

France says Iran now holding five French nationals

NEWS WIRES - 

France's foreign minister said on Tuesday five of its nationals were being held in Iran and the European Union had agreed the technical aspects to impose sanctions on Tehran, which would come into force next week.


France says Iran now holding five French nationals© Ed Jones, AFP

France lashed out at Iran on Oct. 6 accusing it of "dictatorial practices" and taking its citizens hostage after a video was aired in which a French couple appeared to confess to spying, after weeks of unrest that Iran has linked to foreign foes.

Related video: Iran Pres Faces Protest

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France subsequently urged its nationals to leave Iran as soon as possible, saying they were exposed to the risk of arbitrary detentions.

"I hope to speak to the Iranian foreign minister today to ask once again for the immediate release of all our compatriots, who are held in Iran," Catherine Colonna told France Inter radio.

 "There are currently five."

Until now, Paris had not confirmed that a fifth citizen had been detained during the nationwide protests. Iran said last month that nine Europeans had been arrested in the unrest.

Ties between France and Iran have deteriorated in recent weeks as efforts to revive nuclear talks in which France is one of the parties have stalled. Neither country has an ambassador in place.

The anti-government protests in Iran over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody last month have pushed the EU to follow the United States, Canada and Britain in imposing sanctions.

"The EU agreed yesterday the technical aspects of a sanctions package that will target those behind the repression," said Colonna.

(REUTERS)

Analysis-Brazil's new pro-gun lawmakers aim to advance Bolsonaro's firearms agenda

By Maria Carolina Marcello and Gabriel Stargardter -


Protest in support of gun rights and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro

© Reuters/ADRIANO MACHADO

BRASILIA (Reuters) - A new wave of pro-gun lawmakers in Brazil, elected this month as part of a more conservative Congress, are likely to ensure far-right President Jair Bolsonaro's vision of a more armed citizenry lives on - even if he fails to win re-election.

Brazil's "bullet caucus" in Congress has long represented the interests of police and farmers interested in self-defense, traditional voting blocs with boots and budgets. But a series of looser gun regulations under Bolsonaro has forged a new breed of U.S.-style pro-gun politicians who put the individual's right to bear arms at the center of their conservative identities.

"The idea is to form a caucus whose priority is to defend the citizen's right to have access to firearms," said Marcos Pollon, the most-voted lawmaker-elect from his midwest farm state and the head of lobby group PROARMAS, which models itself on the U.S. National Rifle Association.

Speaking ahead of the Oct. 2 general election, Pollon told Reuters he hoped some 80 PROARMAS-backed candidates would get elected. In the end, 39 won seats, including eight senators, 20 federal lawmakers and 11 state lawmakers, according to research from the Sou Da Paz and Igarape Institutes.

Although explicitly pro-gun candidates fell short of Pollon's hopes, their conservative peers were the surprise winners of Brazil's election, giving parties allied with Bolsonaro about half the seats in the Senate and lower house of Congress.

Bolsonaro is now scrambling to win votes and endorsements ahead of a tense Oct. 30 runoff against Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a leftist former president. But even if Bolsonaro loses, his pro-gun allies in Congress are well positioned to complicate da Silva's pledge to "disarm" Brazil.

Ivan Marques, the managing director of The International Action Network on Small Arms, said it was "very likely" that newly elected conservative lawmakers would enact major reforms to broaden gun access in Brazil, the country with the world's highest number of murders.

"The Senate is really going to change the configuration of that debate," he said.

The upper house, where Bolsonaro's party is now the largest, has until now been the major obstacle to his legislative agenda on gun liberalization.

"READY-TO-USE" GUN CARRY PERMITS

Since taking office in 2019, Bolsonaro has signed dozens of executive orders to loosen gun laws, making it easier to buy weapons if Brazilians register as hunters, marksmen or collectors, or "CACs." Nearly 700,000 Brazilians have now accredited as CACs, up almost 500% since 2018.

Bolsonaro's executive orders have successfully stimulated private gun ownership, but they are fragile, and can easily be overturned by the courts or an eventual Lula administration. Even with the electoral gains for the pro-gun lobby, the next step toward legislation is not without obstacles.

For example, PL 3723, a bill which would embed the rights of CAC permit holders, allowing them to carry "ready-to-use" weapons, has already passed the lower house, putting it a Senate vote away from becoming law.

However, Senator Carlos Portinho, a leader of the Bolsonaro government's coalition, told Reuters he did not expect PL 3723 to reach a vote this year, given other legislative priorities.

The current Senate leader, centrist Senator Rodrigo Pacheco, will not allow a plenary vote on the proposal, known as PL 3723, according to a person with knowledge of his thinking.

In response to a question from Reuters, Pacheco's press office said he would wait for the bill to exit committee before deciding whether to bring a floor vote.

Pacheco's role next year is far from assured, given the new composition of the Senate. If Bolsonaro fails to hold onto the presidency, analysts say, his conservative coalition in Congress could fray, hurting the leverage of pro-gun lawmakers.

Still, the bill now stands a better chance than before the election of reaching a final vote early next year.

Experts also said they expected the renewed "bullet caucus" to push fresh legislation shoring up gun rights in Congress.

Reuters has previously reported that the Federal Police, Brazil's most respected law enforcement organization, have long opposed broadening gun access. Reuters has also revealed how Bolsonaro's gun laws have made it easier for criminals to get hold of high-caliber weapons.

The new breed of pro-gun lawmakers are united behind the effort to pass legislation formalizing CAC permits in law.

Pollon, the lawmaker-elect who got over 100,000 votes in the farm state of Mato Grosso do Sul this month, founded PROARMAS as a way to elect more pro-CAC lawmakers, and has close ties to the president via his son, federal lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro.

In an interview, Pollon said the legislative priorities for his group of CAC-affiliated lawmakers include the approval of PL 3723, broader self-defense protections for armed Brazilians and tax changes to encourage firearm ownership.

"We need to approve self-defense as a constitutional right," he said.

(Reporting by Maria Carolina Marcello in Brasilia and Gabriel Stargardter in Rio de Janeiro; Editing by Brad Haynes and Frank Jack Daniel)

Image of N.S. officers at ‘freedom fighters’ event shared without context: RCMP

Karla Renić - Yesterday 


An image of a Nova Scotia RCMP officer wearing a "thin blue line" patch while responding to a self-proclaimed "Freedom Fighters" event this weekend circulated on social media.


RCMP officers appeared in a photo at a self-proclaimed "Freedom Fighters" event.

© Twitter @Seebo429

It was posted by Twitter user @Seebo429 on Saturday night, among others on social media, with the caption reading: "RCMP checking out the convoy cookout in the valley. What's that patch on the officer's chest? I don't want to get my colours mixed up again." The post received nearly 400 likes and over 100 retweets.

RCMP responded to the tweet on Sunday, saying, "The photo and information has been sent to the appropriate unit for follow up as necessary."

In a Monday news release, RCMP said the image was shared "without the accurate context."
In the release, RCMP said police were called for a noise complaint in Nictaux, located southeast of Middleton in Annapolis County, at around 8:30 p.m. Saturday.

Nova Scotia Tattoo ends partnership with group amid Thin Blue Line controversy

The complaint was made against a home where about 50 self-proclaimed "Freedom Fighters" gathered, according to police, "with a clear indication of alcohol being consumed."

Police say there was a poster displayed at the end of the driveway of the home, stating “Freedom Fighter PTSD Drive."

Police said in the release that two officers arrived to the house and a large group of men told them they were not welcome there.

"One of the RCMP officers spoke with a man who identified himself as the president of the Freedom Fighters to explain the noise by-law in Annapolis County," read the release.

"Meanwhile, the second officer was working to maintain calm among the group of event attendees that had approached the officers."

Read more:
Montreal police force reviewing uniform policy after calls to ban ‘Thin Blue Line’ patches

Police said the music was turned down to address the noise complaint.

"When the RCMP officers went to leave, one man stated that police didn’t pay the $5 entry fee which was quickly seconded by another and followed by individuals who were surrounding the officers. To keep the situation diffused and avoid the potential for violence, the entry fee was paid with the RCMP officer’s personal funds," the RCMP said Monday.

"The RCMP is not affiliated with the 'Freedom Fighters' group."

The release also said the group of men requested a photo with the police officers, and "in an effort to mitigate an escalation of the situation," the officers agreed to the photo. That's the photo circulating online.

RCMP said the officer wearing the thin blue line patch has since removed it from his uniform, and "this has been addressed by his supervisor."

The thin blue line symbol depicts a blue line across a black and grey Maple Leaf. While some consider the image a sign of police solidarity, it has also been criticized as a symbol of white supremacy.

Freedom Fighters Nova Scotia Chapter is part of a larger national group composed of veterans and civilians who say they defend Canadians' ``freedoms.'' They did not immediately return a request for comment.

In the release, RCMP also said "we would like to extend our appreciation to the man who identified as the president and quickly addressed the noise complaints."

-- With files from Alessia Simona Maratta and The Canadian Press.

RCMP say they paid Freedom Fighters group and took photo to 'avoid violence'

Tyler Dawson -  National Post

Police in Nova Scotia say they paid $5 to so-called Freedom Fighters and took a group photo in order to “ avoid the potential for violence” as they enforced a noise bylaw.

On Saturday night, Annapolis District RCMP officers responded to a noise complaint at a property near Nictaux, a community about 150 kilometres northwest of Halifax.

When they arrived, officers discovered that they had stumbled upon a “Freedom Fighter PTSD Drive,” according to a poster displayed at the end of the driveway.

There were more than 50 people in attendance, the RCMP said, and there was a “clear indication of alcohol being consumed.”

“A large group of men approached the two RCMP officers and stated that police were not welcome in the area,” an RCMP press release said.

One officer, the release says, spoke to the president of the group, while the other attempted to keep the rest of the men calm. The president provided his phone number in case of future noise complaints.

As the officers went to leave, one of the men noted that they had not paid the $5 entry fee. The men surrounding the officers agreed.

“To keep the situation diffused and avoid the potential for violence, the entry fee was paid with the RCMP officer’s personal funds,” the release says. “The RCMP is not affiliated with the ‘Freedom Fighters’ group.”

The officers also took a photo with the men, which, according to the release, was done at the request of the men in a further attempt to keep the peace.

“ The photo is circulating online without the accurate context of the situation,” the release says.

The photo shows one officer wearing a “thin blue line” patch, which is contrary to RCMP policy. The release says it has been removed.

Two further noise complaints were received that night, although the president of the group dealt with it quickly.

“We would like to extend our appreciation to the man who identified as the president and quickly addressed the noise complaints,” the release says.

MI5 missed early chance to expose Soviet agent Kim Philby, files reveal

Caroline Davies - Yesterday -The Guardian


Kim Philby could have been unmasked as a Soviet double agent more than a decade before his eventual defection had MI5 not missed an opportunity to question his close friend Flora Solomon, according to newly released intelligence files.


Photograph: PA

Solomon, born in Russia to a wealthy family, was a former lover of Alexander Kerensky, the Russian leader deposed by Lenin. She told MI5 in 1962 that Philby had tried to recruit her as a Soviet spy in 1937-38.

Philby, a British intelligence officer, was suspected to be the “third man” who tipped off Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, two of the “Cambridge five”, in 1951 when they fled to Moscow. He was exonerated in 1955, and subsequently worked in Beirut as a journalist for the Observer.

But in 1962, Solomon, then the welfare superintendent at Marks & Spencer and the widow of an English army officer, approached MI5 through the former MI5 officer Victor Rothschild. She said she had known Philby since he was a child, and that he had an infatuation with her.

She said that, after returning from covering the Spanish civil war, Philby had met her for lunch in a “highly agitated state” and said: “Don’t you see ... I am 100% on the Soviet side, and I am helping them ... I am carrying [out] a terrifically important and difficult assignment, and I am in danger.”

He then tried to enlist her, she said, but she refused, telling him: “I am not of that type. It doesn’t interest me,” according to files released by the National Archives on Tuesday

Her information “clinched” the case against Philby, who had already been named by a Soviet defector to the US, according to the Spycatcher author Peter Wright, then an MI5 agent working on the case. Philby would defect shortly afterwards, in January 1963.

When the MI5 agent who interviewed her asked her why she had not come forward in 1951, Solomon replied: “Look, if you had come to me, if I had been directly approached … I certainly would have come out.”

According to a 1971 report on the case by Stella Rimington, the security services had been alerted to Solomon in 1951-52 as a result of telephone tapping at Philby’s home. But Solomon was judged at the time to be “innocuous and fairly inconsequential”.

Solomon, an ardent Zionist, told MI5 she was at one time sympathetic to the Russian cause but that changed with the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact. She had come forward in 1962 because she wanted to unburden her conscience, and because she wanted to somehow prevent Philby writing articles that were, she said, violently anti-Israel.

In her report, Rimington, who would go on to become the first female director general of MI5, questioned Solomon’s motives for not coming forward sooner. She might have – as Solomon’s sister claimed – had an emotional tie to Philby, a younger man who had “swept her off her feet at the end of her affair with Kerensky”.

She might also been under the control of the Russian intelligence service at the time, though Rimington thought if that was the case Solomon would have a more convincing reason for not coming forward other than her “feeble excuse”.

It could not be discounted, however, that the Russians wanted Philby to defect to escape the clutches of western intelligence but he was refusing to do so, and that Solomon’s story was meant to exert more pressure so “they could more easily persuade him to defect”.

It was hard to understand “why having kept this story to herself for so long, she came forward with it at the time which appears to be so consonant with Russian interest”, said Rimington, acknowledging that because of Solomon’s declining mental state in old age they would probably never know.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Pharma company linked to Brett Favre made pitch for welfare funds

THE GREAT MISSISSIPPI WELFARE FRAUD

Michael Kaplan - TODAY


NFL Hall of Famer Brett Favre hosted Mississippi officials, including then-governor Phil Bryant, at his home in January 2019, where an executive for a pharmaceutical company Favre invested in solicited nearly $2 million in state welfare funds, according to pitch materials obtained by CBS News.

A document distributed at the January 2, 2019 meeting describes plans to secure money from the state's Department of Human Services, which operates Mississippi's welfare program. The pitch was led by Jacob VanLandingham, then the CEO of pharmaceutical company Prevacus, which was attempting to develop a concussion drug.

The effort to infuse a for-profit business venture with money intended for some of the neediest families in the nation is the latest development in a welfare fraud investigation that has been swirling around the famed quarterback, a Mississippi native, and former state officials.

Former federal prosecutor Brad Pigott, who investigated the transactions for the state, told CBS News the agreement between the state and Prevacus was "an egregious betrayal, both of the poor and of the law."

The meeting at Favre's Mississippi home was not his first interaction with state officials about the company. One month earlier, text messages first reported by Mississippi Today appear to show the former NFL quarterback personally lobbied Byrant. The news site reported that VanLandingham offered Bryant stock in the company, and Bryant agreed to accept it after leaving office.

"It's 3rd and long and we need you to make it happen!!" Favre wrote to the governor, according to Mississippi Today.



Former NFL quarterback Brett Favre. / Credit: Hannah Foslien / Getty Images© Provided by CBS News

"I will open a hole," Bryant replied, a reference to the work of a football offensive lineman. Favre later updated Bryant after Prevacus began receiving state funds, according to Mississippi Today.

Eric Herschmann, an attorney for Favre, said in an interview with CBS News that state officials, including Bryant, never told Favre that the money Bryant would provide would be derived from welfare funds. Herschmann pointed out that Bryant had previously served as Mississippi state auditor, leading the department that oversees public funds.

"He knew who all the parties were involved. If there was an issue about these funds not being used, or unable to be used, he should have been the first one that stood up and said something," said Herschmann. "He never said anything to Brett Favre, nor did anyone else ever tell him that this was restricted welfare funds."

On January 19, 2019, VanLandingham and Zach New, an executive for a nonprofit tasked with doling out Temporary Assistance for Needy Families welfare funds, signed a contract for $1.7 million promising Mississippi that, in return for the money, it would have the "first right of refusal for clinical trial sites" in a future study phase described as "1B." New and his mother Nancy entered guilty pleas to state and federal charges related to bribery and fraud stemming from their work for the nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center.

Months later, VanLandhingman asked a state welfare official for the money in a text message exchange, a screenshot of which was obtained by CBS News.

"We would love 784k," VanLandingham wrote to an employee associated with the nonprofit.

"Jake, you cannot even imagine the word stress for us right now! At any rate, we can send 400k today. I will need to let Brett (Favre) know that we will need to pull this from what we were hoping to help him with on other activities. 😩," the employee replied, before also asking for "status reports."

VanLandingham replied, "Thx sister. Can we stay in line to get the other 380k ? I Ly (sic) you guys."

Pigott is a former U.S. attorney who investigated the transactions while representing the state in a civil lawsuit seeking millions from dozens of people and companies, including Favre and Prevacus.

Pigott said Favre "was the largest single outside investor" in Prevacus when it received the state grant.

"Both Federal and Mississippi law required 100% of that money to go only to the alleviation of poverty within Mississippi and the prevention of teenage pregnancies," said Pigott, who said Prevacus ultimately received $2.1 million.

And Pigott said the grant has so far failed to live up to its promise. "They did not, as we understand it" run clinical trials of Prevacus in Mississippi, Pigott said.

Prevacus was purchased in 2021 by Nevada-based Odyssey Group International, where VanLandingham is now an executive vice president. In September, the company completed its Phase 1 clinical trial. The study was done in Australia, according to National Institutes of Health records and a September 2021 press release. The company said in a separate press release five days ago that it is moving onto Phase 2 trials.

An attorney for VanLandingham said in a letter to CBS News that VanLandingham and Prevacus were "never aware that the money received was sourced by TANF funds or that it was earmarked to help welfare recipients."

The attorney, George Schmidt II, said VanLandingham is currently identifying potential sites for the next clinical trial, "which includes sites in Mississippi per the contract."

Favre has previously acknowledged soliciting state funds for a volleyball stadium at his alma mater, the University of Southern Mississippi, where his daughter was on the team. Favre also repaid more than $1 million in speaking fees, for speeches that were never delivered and radio spots, paid for from the Mississippi welfare fund.

Favre said in a statement to CBS News that "I have been unjustly smeared in the media. I have done nothing wrong, and it is past time to set the record straight."

"No one ever told me, and I did not know, that funds designated for welfare recipients were going to the University or me. I tried to help my alma mater USM, a public Mississippi state university, raise funds for a wellness center. My goal was and always will be to improve the athletic facilities at my university," Favre said.

Neither Favre nor VanLandingham has been charged with any crime.