Mexico's president channels Trump as he targets his country's electoral system

Story by Evan Dyer • Saturday 11/20/22 POSTMEDIA

Canadians have gotten used to a certain politician south of the border who has a habit of only accepting election results when he wins, who invites his followers to lay siege to the capital when he loses, and who seeks to replace neutral election officials with people loyal to him.

In fact, there are two such leaders on the continent. One just saw his prestige within the Republican Party take a beating in the U.S. midterm elections. The other is Andrés Manuel López Obrador — still riding high as elected president of Mexico.

Donald Trump failed thoroughly this month to undermine the U.S. electoral system from the outside. But Lopez Obrador — better know in his country as AMLO — is in a far stronger position as a sitting president with Mexico's congress on his side, and he has set his sights on dismantling the country's independent elections authority.

An unexpected kinship

Speaking in New York City this week, former U.S. president Barack Obama warned that "the threat to democracy doesn't always run along a conservative/liberal, left/right axis. This has nothing to do with traditional partisan lines or policy preferences. What we are seeing, what's being challenged, are the foundational principles of democracy itself."

Obama could have been describing the curious affinity between Donald Trump and AMLO, who inhabit different ends of the left-right spectrum but who share a tendency to challenge principles of free elections and declare electoral institutions to be corrupt.



Then-U.S. president Donald Trump speaks next to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador before signing a joint declaration in the Rose Garden at the White House on July 8, 2020 in Washington, DC.© Win McNamee/Getty Images

Trump has referred to AMLO as a "socialist" but also a "good guy," a "great gentleman" and a "friend of mine." On Tuesday, AMLO seemed to sympathize with Trump's current struggles: "He's a capitalist and he's not perfect, but he's a good person and I respect him."

Both men have used the language of "only I can fix it" to describe their missions to weed out the supposed "deep state" actors they claim are flouting the true will of the people. In AMLO's case, the deep state is embodied by Mexico's National Electoral Institute, the country's equivalent of Elections Canada, known by its Spanish-language acronym INE.

'Hands off the INE'

This weekend, Mexico City and two dozen regional centres saw massive protests under the slogan "Hands off the INE." The protests brought hundreds of thousands of Mexicans into the streets — the biggest popular challenge AMLO has faced since winning office in 2018.

AMLO dismissed the marchers' concerns about the INE as "just an excuse."

"Those who marched yesterday did it because they are against the transformation that is taking place in this country," he said at his morning news conference. "They did it in favour of corruption. They did it in favour of racism."



Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador showed photos of the 'Hands off the INE' protest during his daily press conference at the National Palace in Mexico City on Nov. 14, 2022. He accused the marchers of supporting© AP

The INE, previously called the Federal Electoral Institute, began life in 1990 at the beginning of Mexico's transition away from one-party rule.

The INE worked to change a political system that for seven decades offered only a simulacrum of democracy. And it succeeded: the past three elections have seen each of Mexico's three main parties win office in turn, with peaceful transfers of power each time.

AMLO has a history of poor relations with, and allegations against, the INE.

During the 1990s, the Party of the Democratic Revolution, of which AMLO was a member, enjoyed several victories at the state level. But AMLO lost on the two occasions he ran for governor in his own state of Tabasco, and on both occasions he claimed fraud — a pattern he would repeat throughout his political career.

AMLO cries foul

In 2000, AMLO was elected mayor of Mexico City, a job he held with considerable success and high approval ratings. That left him ready to mount a presidential campaign in 2006 which saw him run neck-and-neck against Felipe Calderón of the centre-right National Action Party.


Thousands protest in Mexico against electoral reform proposal 

When the federal election authority declared Calderón had prevailed by a quarter of a million votes (0.58 per cent of the total) in an election that European Union observers declared to be fair, AMLO called on his supporters to set up a permanent protest camp in the centre of Mexico City. That blockade remained in place for 48 days, causing serious financial losses in the city.

AMLO continued to be a fixture on the Mexican political scene until the stars finally aligned for him with a new party of his own creation — MORENA — four years ago.

"The great paradox," former Mexican ambassador to Washington Arturo Sarukhan told CBC News, "is that Lopez Obrador himself is president today in Mexico thanks to these institutions that were created over the past two or three decades in Mexico, and which allowed for electoral processes to be run cleanly, fairly, transparently."

Other countries drawn into dispute

AMLO is proposing to eliminate the INE and replace it with a new body over which he would have considerable control. The seven individuals who would run the new elections agency — individuals AMLO has said would be chosen by "the people" in some unspecified way — would come from a group of 60 nominees.

Twenty of those nominees would be chosen by the executive (controlled by AMLO), 20 would be chosen by congress and the senate, and the remaining 20 would be picked by the judiciary.

Both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden are expected to travel to Mexico next month for the traditional "Three Amigos" summit.

Although Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly met with her Mexican counterpart Marcelo Ebrard this week at the G20, threats to the independence of Mexico's election body were not among the topics they discussed.

But the U.S. government has been drawn into the fray.

"Independent institutions free of political influence are a cornerstone of democracy, and non-partisan electoral institutions in particular ensure that all voices are heard in fundamental democratic processes," said a statement from the U.S. State Department.

The Russian Embassy in Mexico City, eager to curry favour with a Mexican president who has described Vladimir Putin as "a friend," subsequently denounced "another intervention in Mexico's internal affairs by the government of the United States.

"This time, the representatives of a 'free democracy' have decided to advise Mexico on the best way to carry out electoral reform," the embassy said in a media statement.

Also speaking out on the proposed changes is the European Union, which instructed its Venice Commission of constitutional experts to look at the proposed changes.

"This reform, if adopted, will radically change the electoral system in Mexico and the management of its electoral process," they concluded.

"Previously all constitutional electoral reforms had been proposed by the opposition. This is the first time that the president, whose political supporters have the majority in the Congress, initiates such ambitious constitutional changes, which will significantly affect the next elections to take place in 2024."

The commission said the reform law "should be reconsidered as it is not in line with the international standards and best practices in the electoral field."

The 'Fourth Transformation'

AMLO does not see himself as merely another in a long line of presidential administrators, but rather as a historic figure whose arrival has inaugurated what he calls the "Fourth Transformation" of Mexico (the first three being the War of Independence begun in 1810, the reforms of Benito Juarez in the mid-19th century, and the Mexican Revolution of 1910).

That grandiose vision, combined with his history of disputing election results, leads some Mexicans to fear what AMLO might do as he approaches the end of his six-year term.

Some of his critics see his plan to abolish Mexico's independent election authority as part of a plan to smooth the path of an anointed successor, or perhaps even to try to hang on to power himself — even though Mexico's constitution strictly forbids a second run for office.

AMLO has denied any such intent, saying that the INE is "corrupt" and he merely wants to clean it up while streamlining the system for electing the Mexican congress.

'Return to the past'

At the weekend's mass rally at Mexico City's Angel of Independence monument, former head of INE José Woldenberg reminded the crowd how the independent authority had transformed Mexico since the 1970s.

"As a country, we were able to build a budding democracy. We left behind the country of only one party, of oppressive presidentialism, of elections without real options or competition," he said.

"I want to call your attention to one fact: peaceful, constitutional transfer of presidential power occurred, for the first time in Mexico, thanks to that democratizing process. In almost 200 years of independent life, our country had never achieved it.

"Mexico cannot go back to an electoral institution aligned with the government, incapable of guaranteeing impartiality in the whole electoral process. Our country doesn't deserve to return to the past."

AMLO's supporters don't appear to acknowledge the progress of the past 30 years, said Sarukhan.

"It's like the debate between creationists and evolutionists. Many Mexicans, including yours truly, believe that democracy has been slowly evolving in Mexico over the past decades," he told CBC News. "Central to this has been the slow creation, modernization of a fully autonomous, effective centralized electoral authority.

"Lopez Obrador believes that democracy in Mexico started with his electoral victory."

This week, AMLO organized his own march to the Angel of Independence for November 27, inviting his followers to show support for the proposed overhaul and promising to create a new corps of "incorruptible" election overseers, "not lackeys, employees of the oligarchy, people without moral scruples."

Tonga's strange volcanic eruption was even more massive than we knew

Story by Maya Wei-Haas 

NAT GEO 

Saturday, 11/20/22

Crimson hues flushed across the early morning skies over the Kingdom of Tonga as Grace Frontin-Rollet spotted a pair of small rocky islands from the bow of the RV Tangaroa. Though the scene was picturesque, a tinge of sulfur in the air reminded the marine geologist what she and a team of scientists had traveled for six days over rough waters to see. In the expansive gap between the two bits of land, hidden on the ocean floor, lay the crater of a massive volcano that erupted just months before in one of the largest and strangest blasts ever seen.


In December 2021, a volcano in the Kingdom of Tonga, known as Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai, began erupting in an event that culminated in an explosion so powerful it sent atmospheric ripples circling the planet multiple times. The eruption destroyed much of the volcanic peak that poked above the waves, shown here.© Photograph by Maxar via Getty Images

"I don't think the scale of what had happened hit us until we reached the site," says Frontin-Rollet, who is from New Zealand’s National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA).

In December 2021, the volcano—called Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai after the two islands that sit on its rim—awoke in a series of tantrums that turned into outright turmoil on January 15, 2022. The peak unleashed a blast so loud it was heard in Alaska, some 6,000 miles away. But much of what happened that day has remained a mystery, until now. Scientists, including the team aboard the RV Tangaroa, are finally putting together the pieces, and the picture that has emerged is mind-boggling.

The Tonga eruption explained, from tsunami warnings to sonic booms

As the team announced today, recent surveys of the seafloor suggest that the blast excavated about 2.3 cubic miles of rock. If confirmed, the eruption would be the largest recorded in the last century, surpassing the 1991 blast at Mount Pinatubo.

Other recent analyses reveal even more record-breaking measures. The blast jettisoned a plume of searing hot gas and ash 35.4 miles into the sky, higher than ever seen before. It injected an unprecedented 146 teragrams of vaporized water into the atmosphere, which some speculate might result in a slight, temporary warming of the climate. And it sparked a tsunami that surprised scientists when it traveled around the world.


This photograph, taken by an astronaut on board the International Space Station, shows clouds of ash lingering in the atmosphere a day after the intense explosion of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai.

© Photograph by NASA

"It's just a massive event," says Kevin MacKay, a marine geologist at NIWA who was also on the RV Tangaroa. "The more we study it, the bigger the event becomes."

Understanding the explosive peak's many effects is far from just scientific curiosity. Many similar submarine volcanoes lurk offshore coastlines around the world. Most that have been identified are not monitored—and even more are yet to be discovered.

"We along with other nations of the Pacific Ring of Fire know only too well how at mercy we are to nature," says Taaniela Kula, Tonga's Deputy Secretary for Natural Resources, in a May press conference. The eruption, he says, "is a reminder that there's always more to learn about the giants of our home planet Earth."

Window into the deep

An ancient tectonic battle between the Pacific and Indo-Australian plates birthed a line of volcanoes in the South Pacific Ocean, including the mighty Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai. Today, the only parts of the volcano that poke above the sea are the two little islands that signaled to Fontin-Rollet that the team had arrived. She describes the sobering realization that their nearly 230-foot ship was tiny compared to the geologic beast that lay hidden under the water before them

This shroud of water has made it challenging for scientists to learn what happened during the tumultuous eruption last January. Whenever magma and water mix, billowing steam forms and thus big eruptions ensue. But what sparked the surprising cascade of events at Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai? To find answers scientists had to get a closer look.

In April, the RV Tangaroa arrived on site in the first leg of a two-part survey conducted as a collaboration between NIWA and The Nippon Foundation called Tonga Eruption Seabed Mapping Project (TESMaP). The expedition was followed in August by SEA-KIT International's uncrewed vessel Maxlimer, which was remotely operated by a team in the United Kingdom. The research efforts scrutinized the region, mapping the seafloor, snapping pictures and taking video, analyzing the water column, and collecting samples of volcanic rock and ash.

In total, the team mapped almost 8,500 square miles around the volcano, discovering much of the area devoid of life, blanketed in a ghostly white layer of fine sediments. Rocky cores collected in these zones reveal the source of devastation: a deadly fast-moving avalanche of hot ash and volcanic rubble called a pyroclastic flow that forms from the collapse of the rising plume of ash and gas.

Scientists can only speculate about the dynamics of pyroclastic flows under the water, MacKay cautions, because none have been witnessed in person. It’s theorized that as the debris plunges into the sea, the hot ash may vaporize the water to form a gas layer that helps propel the tongue of material across the ocean floor like a Slip ‘N Slide.

Evidence of multiple pulses of pyroclastic flows radiated around the caldera's rim. The volcanic avalanches traveled up over rises and into valleys, extending to the edge of the team's survey area some 50 miles away, hinting debris perhaps traveled even further.

The pyroclastic flows likely were also behind the severing of both domestic and international communication lines for Tonga, which hindered initial recovery efforts. Modeling conducted by NIWA's Emily Lane suggests that volcanic material poured into a valley that housed one of the cables, ricocheting off the walls of the depression. Such behavior could help explain how a broken fragment of the cable was dragged northward back toward the peak.

The latest research also documented that the volcano’s blast excavated down 2,300 feet of rock in the central crater. That confirms results from an earlier survey in May by volcanologist Shane Cronin from the University of Auckland in New Zealand and a team from Tonga Geological Services. "There's a huge hole in the ground where it wasn't before," says Richard Wysoczanski, a marine geologist with NIWA. "It's quite spectacular."

Three quarters of the excavated and erupted rock appears to have landed within 12 miles of the volcano. Much of the remaining material likely circulated in the atmosphere as dust for months, intensifying the colors of sunrises and sunsets, MacKay says. The same phenomenon happened after the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, and likely inspired the red skies in Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream.”

While the eruption has quieted, the volcano hasn't fully returned to its slumber: Now it’s piping out hot water laced with fragments of volcanic glass. "It's not completely dead," Wysoczanski says, but adds that another big eruption in the near future is unlikely.

View from the sky

Scientists were surprised to find that the blast left the volcanic slopes intact. All the eruptive energy seems to have been directed straight up to the sky, says MacKay. This oddity may help explain another remarkable feature of the eruption: plume height.

When the volcano let loose, gas and ash billowed skyward, captured by Earth-orbiting satellites. Just how high did the plume travel? When Simon Proud, an expert in satellite remote sensing at the UK's National Centre for Earth Observation, worked through the calculations, he initially stared at his numbers in disbelief. A double check of his work confirmed the improbable figure: The plume shot 35.4 miles high into a layer of atmosphere called the mesosphere, a zone where most planes can't fly and shooting stars light night skies.

"We've never seen anything get up anywhere near this high before," says Proud, lead author of the paper on the plume height. "It really was quite breathtaking."

As the terrifying plume spread over the island nation, tsunami waves began crashing on nearby shores; by some estimates, swells were more than 50 feet high. To scientists' surprise, the disturbance spread to oceans around the globe, causing sea levels to rise by a foot in the Mediterranean Sea on the opposite side of the world.

A multitude of events conspired to produce such an unusual tsunami. Close to the volcano, factors like the collapse of the caldera floor and pyroclastic flows stirred the turbulent sloshing of the sea. The blast also caused sharp drops in the air pressure, "pumping energy into the tsunami," says NIWA's Lane, who is an expert in the violent phenomena.

Far from the volcano, a slightly different process was at work. The enormous volcanic plume bursting into the sky shoved aside the atmosphere, sending ripples racing around the world four times over six days. "The explosion was so large that it started making the atmosphere oscillate," says Quentin Brissaud, a geophysicist with the Norwegian Seismic Array and an author on a paper describing the eruption's atmospheric effects.

As they zipped around the globe, these ripples disturbed the ocean surface in what's known as a meteo-tsunami. The only other time this has been recorded was during the 1883 explosion of Krakatau, one of the most powerful and deadly volcanic eruptions in recorded history.

Still, many questions remain unanswered about Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai, including exactly what triggered the volcano's ferocious bellow.

As Wysoczanski says, "The science is just starting."

FASCIST REACTION

Bolsonaro supporters hold encampments in front of barracks to call for a coup d’état

Supporters of Brazil's outgoing president, Jair Bolsonaro, continue with protests and rallies in front of military bases calling for a coup d'état two weeks after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's victory in the Brazilian presidential elections.


Protests by Jair Bolsonaro supporters calling for a coup d'état - 

SILVIA MACHADO / ZUMA PRESS / CONTACTOPHOTO

Story by Daniel Stewart • News 360  Saturday 11/20/22

The rallies have turned into encampments and vigils of hundreds of activists in a territorially extensive initiative --with presence in Sao Paulo, Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, Florianopolis or Recife--, but without defined national leaders.

The state and federal authorities - Ministry of Defense or Public Security - have not provided data on the number of people attending these rallies or on how many protest points are active, according to the newspaper 'Estadao'.

The demonstrators are camped to ask for "relief" and have punctually carried out blockades and roadblocks, as reported by the Federal Traffic Police.

Related video: Right-wing protesters in Vila Velha demand military intervention to prevent 'communism' in Brazil   Duration 3:34   View on Watch

Protest breakout across Brazil as Bolsonaro suffers defeat

Reports from the Military Police, the Civil Police and the Federal Police point to a majority presence of elderly people, with hardly any young people, and state that they are financed by politicians, policemen, trade unionists and rural workers.

"We are staying here until the Armed Forces prevent the real coup, which is the inauguration of Lula", explained Luiz, one of the demonstrators gathered in front of the Eastern Military Command, in the center of Rio de Janeiro.

The encampments are plagued with tarpaulins and gazebos and adorned with banners with slogans such as "Armed Forces, save Brazil", "We want clean elections" or "The people are camping so that the thief does not go up the ramp" in reference to the ramp of the Planalto Palace, presidential headquarters.

Stops to sing the national anthem are common and the Brazilian national soccer team t-shirts, symbol of Bolsonaro's campaign, abound.

"If Bolsonaro doesn't speak, we will be robbed," added another man who accuses Lula's Workers' Party of wanting to confiscate the population's assets. "God willing this will end before the World Cup," has indicated another participant, in reference to the start of the World Cup in Qatar this Sunday, November 20.

Yangtze River estuary sees improving ecology

Aerial photo taken on Nov. 13, 2020 shows the scenery along the Yangtze River in Nantong City, east China's Jiangsu Province. (Xinhua/Ji Chunpeng)

Yangtze River estuary sees improving ecology© Provided by XINHUA

Story by Zhao Jiasong,Zhu Guoliang

NANJING, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- Zhang Zhiping, 59, has finally seen clear water and jumping fish in the river again, a scene that had been common in his childhood but disappeared in the 1980s.

"The finless porpoises are back. And when the river gate opened, I could see the fish jumping!" said Zhang, a resident of Nantong City, east China's Jiangsu Province.

Living near the Kuzigang River, which runs to the Yangtze River, in Chongchuan District, Zhang is a witness to the improved environment and ecology, which was accelerated by a series of policies on the protection of the river, especially in the past decade.

He recalled that in the 1980s and 1990s, factories along the Yangtze River increased, bringing about much pollution. Oil and garbage floated in the river, and with overfishing, there were fewer fish.

In recent years, the Yangtze River has become better protected, more factories along the coast have been closed, and fishermen have returned to the land for other businesses. Zhang, who fished almost throughout his lifetime, stopped in 2018.

Related video: Migrating White Swans Stay At The Sanggan River in Zhangjiakou, China

Duration 4:06   View on Watch

"Although I can no longer fish, I am happy to see such changes," Zhang said.

Now, Zhang goes to the river banks every two or three days and volunteers as an inspector for river protection. Finding improper behavior or environmental damage, he will stop it or report it to the relevant authorities.

Yuantuojiao Tourist Resort of Nantong, located in the estuary of the Yangtze River, also sees a dramatic change. Xu Nannan, a staff member with the resort, said it used to be a chaotic fishing port crowded with illegal ferries. Many fishermen from other cities lived on boats, and illegal behaviors such as heavy fishing were often reported.

Since 2017, the resort has conducted a radical renovation, cleaning up 20,000 square meters of illegal construction, more than 300 abandoned ferries, and 12 unlawful docks, and taking advantage of social funds to build a tourist and leisure block.

"The environment has become beautiful. The number of tourists in the resort has surged in recent years, reaching more than 2 million. The income obtained by residents through opening homestays and farmhouses far exceeds that from farming and fishing," Xu said.

According to data from the Nantong ecology and environment bureau, Nantong has closed two chemical parks along the Yangtze River and more than 400 chemical enterprises in recent years.

Yang Jian, a researcher at the Freshwater Fisheries Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, said the monitoring of the Yangtze River estuary and its adjacent waters showed the Yangtze long-tailed anchovy resources are continuously recovering. Such flagship migratory species in the Yangtze even appeared in Dongting Lake and other waters where the fish had not been found for more than a decade.

On Jan. 1, 2021, a 10-year fishing ban took effect in pivotal waters of the Yangtze, after 332 conservation areas along the river enforced the fishing ban a year ago, to help the river recover from dwindling aquatic resources and degrading biodiversity.

The fishing ban lays the foundation for the sustainable recovery of estuarine migratory species in rivers and seas. The green development of coastal areas along the Yangtze River estuary, especially in water pollution prevention and shoreline regulation, has improved the environment of the habitat, said Zhong Xiaming, Party secretary of the Jiangsu Marine Fisheries Research Institute. ■

Are humans inherently violent?

Story by Joe Phelan • Sunday, Nov 20,2022

The earliest human civilizations appeared between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago; since then, humans as a species have been entirely at peace for approximately 268 years. And as many as 1 billion people may have perished as a direct result of war, according to "What Every Person Should Know About War" (Free Press, 2003)


A soldier stands among the ruins of war.© Diy13 via Getty Images

Violence is clearly not a modern phenomenon, but is it an inherent part of being human? Have we evolved to be aggressive?

It turns out the answer isn't simple. A 2014 study published in the journal Nature noted that lethal violence was common in the communities of one of our closest living primate relatives: chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

That suggests that violence may have been part of the human repertoire at least as far back as our last shared ancestor with chimps, which would have lived about 8 million years ago.

Related: What's the deadliest month of the year?

So clearly, violence has been prevalent for as long as humans have been around, experts told Live Science.

"Violence is a driver of much of human history," David C. Geary, a cognitive scientist and evolutionary psychologist at the University of Missouri in Columbia, told Live Science in an email. "All of humanity's early empires were built through intimidation and violence."

"There's also evidence of aggression before recorded history: bones with evidence of violent death, like embedded arrow points or skulls staved in," Pat Barclay, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario told Live Science in an email. That suggests violence predated complex societies and the rise of civilization.

But on the flip side, rates of violence vary (and have historically varied) wildly across cultures and communities, Barclay said. That suggests violence can be dialed up or down dramatically in our species.

Nomadic peoples, for example, tend to have lower levels of lethal interpersonal human violence, while eras filled with societies bent on plunder and conquest, unsurprisingly, had higher levels.

And modern day American culture is more violent than most of those in Europe.

"There's wide variation in violence rates — order of magnitude difference," Barclay noted. "In some specific recorded societies, up to half of all men die violently at the hands of other men. In other societies, physical violence is very rare, like in modern Japan."

Related video: People gathered to discuss solutions to end violence

Duration 2:51 View on Watch

Why do people become violent?

Violence tends to breed violence, meaning that cultures where conflict is common are more likely to experience violence generation after generation, Geary said. In this way, violence is "transmitted" as a contagious disease would be, according to University of Illinois epidemiologist Gary Slutkin.

However, Brad Evans, a professor of political violence at the University of Bath in the U.K., pointed out that even people in the most progressive and peaceful communities are capable of violence. "Ordinary, lawful persons can quickly turn into monsters once conditions change; equally, some who are most dislikeable can end up showing remarkable acts of kindness. There is no clear formula as to why a person acts in a violent way. And that is why it is such a complex problem," Evans told Live Science in an email.

Additionally, according to both Barclay and Evans, it can be far easier to carry out violent acts if the individual committing the violence is distant from their victims; it is far easier to press a button launching a nuclear missile than it is to physically and directly strike a killing blow.

For instance, in Stanley Milgram's classic studies of obedience, in which an experimenter told participants to deliver electric shocks of increasing intensity to other people, participants were more reluctant to shock victims if they were physically closer to them, Barclay noted.

And historically, acts of genocide occur after perpetrators dehumanize, or create psychological distance, between themselves and those of a different race or ethnicity.

Types of violence

There may also be "two types" of aggression in human evolution: proactive and reactive, Richard Wrangham, a research professor in the Department of Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, reported in 2017 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. Proactive violence has historically been related to conquest, when a group is determined to take the resources or land of another. Reactive violence, on the other hand, can be described as the direct response to such aggression.

However, despite violence seeming to be an ingrained human characteristic, Barclay is confident there is room for optimism — up to a point.

"Objectively speaking, any individual is much less likely to suffer violence today than in previous eras," he said. "We are currently in history's most peaceful era. But that doesn't guarantee it'll stay that way. Unless we fight climate change, there will be more scarcity, more disasters, more desperation and more reason for conflict."

Originally published on Live Science.

Cows fed hemp produced milk with THC, acted buzzed: Study

Story by Postmedia News • Sunday, 11/20/22

A cow takes a close up during the Canadian Dairy XPO on April 4, 2019 in Stratford

.© Provided by Toronto Sun

Dairy cows fed industrial hemp produced milk that had detectable levels of THC, the intoxicating ingredient in marijuana, says a German study.

The cows fed THC — delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol– also displayed signs of behavioural changes including yawning, salivating more than usual and moving unsteadily on their hoofs, according to the study, published last week in the journal Nature Food.

The study of Holstein cows in Berlin was peer-reviewed and is said to be one of the first major looks into how industrial hemp can be used as a supplement in animal feed.

Hemp goes under the common name Cannabis sativa. Industrial hemp plants are different from marijuana, which is cultivated for its high concentrations of THC.

In the U.S., under the Farm Bill of 2018, industrial hemp is not listed as a controlled substance as long as it contains no more than 0.3% THC. That’s led to a surge in cannabidiol or CBD products.

Some believe that hemp could be a good source of animal food if it gets approved because its seeds are high in protein. It also could be used as a stress reducer for cows when they are being transported.

The German study found no effect on the cows when given the entire hemp plant. Only when they received the parts of the hemp plant with high THC concentrations did the behavioural effects show, the study found.
The animals also ate less and produced less milk, according to the study.

Japanese interior minister resigns in third resignation of Kishida government in less than a month

Story by Daniel Stewart • Sunday, Nov 29,2022

Japan's Interior Minister Minoru Terada resigned Sunday over a bribery scandal in what is the third resignation of an official in Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's government in less than four weeks.

Japanese Minister of the Interior, Minoru Terada - RODRIGO REYES MARIN / ZUMA PRESS / CONTACTOPHOTO© Provided by News 360

"I have just submitted (my) resignation to the prime minister," the minister said Sunday, blaming his resignation on "political problems" that could not "become an obstacle."

'Shukan Bunshun' magazine reported that Terada paid around 40,000 yen (280 euros) as a reward to six local assembly members in his constituency in Hiroshima prefecture for their support in his election campaign in October last year. Such payments are prohibited by the election law for public office.

The minister had also admitted to parliament that his local support group had listed a deceased person as treasurer in its annual political fundraising report.

Related video: Japan's Kishida battered by resignations: Kishida's cabinet approval rating slips below 30%

Duration 5:56

View on Watch

Terada, a close associate of Kishida who served as a special adviser before taking the cabinet post, has insisted that he was not responsible for the documents, as the support group is headed by someone else, Japan's official Kyodo news agency reports.

Kishida, according to the media outlet, plans to appoint fellow Liberal Democratic Party deputy and former foreign minister Takeaki Matsumoto as Terada's successor, according to a source close to the prime minister. The announcement will be official this Monday morning.

Last October 24, the Minister of Economic Revitalization, Daishiro Yamagiwa, resigned because of his ties with the Unification Church, now a target of criticism after the assassin of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denounced the relations between the organization and Japanese politicians.

More recently, Kishida dismissed then Justice Minister Yasuhiro Hanashi on November 11 after frivolous comments on the death penalty.

Approval of the Japanese prime minister's government is at rock bottom with only 33 percent approval, according to the latest survey by Japanese public television NHK, the lowest since he was elected prime minister in October 2021.

It is the fourth consecutive month of falling approval for Kishida's cabinet and the 33 percent figure is down 5 points from the previous month. In contrast, the rate of disapproval of the Kishida government's work has risen three points to 46 percent.

Canada's Lundin Mining to fill in giant mystery Chile sinkhole

Story by By Fabian Cambero • Thursday, 11/18/22

A sinkhole is exposed close to Tierra Amarilla town, in Copiapo

© Thomson Reuters

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Canada's Lundin Mining is planning to fill in a giant mystery sinkhole near its copper mine in Chile, an ambitious plan that will also see it attempt to pump out water that has seeped into the mine, a senior company executive told Reuters on Thursday.

The huge 36-metre-diameter sinkhole that opened up in late July in the Tierra Amarilla commune, around 665 kilometers (413 miles) north of capital Santiago, drew widespread global attention and saw charges by authorities against Lundin.

Studies to determine the causes of the sinkhole are already in "decisive stages" and a "technical body is already receiving all the information to be able to draw conclusions," Luis Sanchez, president of a local unit of Lundin, told Reuters.

The executive said that regardless of the outcome the firm planned to fill the hole using material such as sand and rocks with the same characteristics as a river bed, as well as fully sealing the affected part of the mine.

Sanchez declined to predict the amount of material that would be needed or the total cost, though he said the firm had already spent some $10 million resolving the issue.

The executive said that from 300-330 liters per second of water that had been leaking into the mine initially, the level has dropped to 10-30 liters per second due to sealing work.

"We are observing a positive development in the recovery of the levels in the aquifer and this means that we can look positively at this solution and we can say that we are not facing irreparable damage, as some authorities have indicated," Sanchez said.

The program will also try to pump 1.3 million cubic meters of water that remains in the lower levels of the reservoir to other industrial users in the area in exchange for them stopping extracting those resources from the aquifer, Sanchez said.

(Reporting by Fabian Cambero;Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)

Canada used to have one of the best doctor ratios in the world. What happened?

AUSTERITY IN THE NINETIES KILLED MEDED

Story by Special to National Post • Thursday,Nov. 17,2022

Canada is still grappling with an acute crisis in our hospitals stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic while the slow-moving quagmire caused by the country's aging population threatens to become a larger disaster.© Peter J. Thompson/National Post

Canada’s health-care system is under siege. The country is still grappling with an acute crisis in our hospitals stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic while the slow-moving quagmire caused by the country’s aging population threatens to become a larger disaster. Can our system handle it? This joint five-part series produced by the National Post and The Hub looks deep into the world of Canadian health care, not just to identify problems, but to offer solutions for the future.

Efe Türker received his third dose of the COVID vaccine in February and quickly realized he was in for a rougher bout of side effects than he endured from his first two shots.

Türker developed a fever in the evening that got progressively more severe until he fell into a fitful sleep. At 5 a.m., he woke up, shivering in a pool of his own sweat. When he went to wash his face, Türker lost consciousness and collapsed in his apartment, banging his head on the floor as he went down. His dog found him lying there a few minutes later, and was able to wake him up.

Head trauma can result in anything from an uncomfortable bruise, an excruciating concussion or a deadly brain hemorrhage. But Türker did not seek serious medical attention, or even a checkup. Not worth the trouble, from his perspective.

“There’s absolutely no way you see a doctor at any logical time in Victoria, be it a general practitioner, or anything,” says Türker. “I have never seen a doctor since I arrived in Victoria.”

Medical Meltdown

A shortage of practitioners, and laborious wait times, are not a new problem in Canada, but they are especially acute in Greater Victoria, where news reports of walk-in clinics closing down have become a frequent occurrence. Walk-in clinics in the Victoria-proper neighbourhoods of James Bay , Cook Street , as well as the nearby municipalities of Colwood and View Royal , have closed, leaving as many as 3,000 more people per closure without a go-to medical facility.

An estimated quarter of Greater Victoria’s nearly 400,000 residents did not have a family doctor in February. In April, the wait times to see a doctor at a walk-in were the highest in Canada, at 161 minutes .

The story is beginning to look the same across the country. In Hamilton , the city’s hospitals are short 675 workers, in Toronto , paramedics are practising “hallway medicine” in the ERs and in Airdrie , just outside Calgary, staffing shortages are keeping the urgent care centre closed overnight for at least the next eight weekends. Local news broadcasts across the country are packed with stories about wait times, staffing shortages and the frustration these problems are causing Canadians.



Patients wait in hallways due to an at-capacity emergency room during the pandemic at the Humber River Hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto on Tuesday, January 25, 2022.

Victoria is no longer a cautionary tale, but a microcosm of the rest of the country. Especially frustrating is that Canada once had one of the highest ratios of physicians to population in the developed world.

Canada’s universal, taxpayer-funded, health-care system remains a pillar of national pride, but when compared to the country’s peers in Western Europe, it now ranks near the bottom of the pack. The favourite solution of the federal government and provincial premiers has been to boost funding, but it has created an expensive system that consistently underperforms in delivering quality health care when compared to similar countries.

The Commonwealth Fund’s 2021 report comparing the health-care systems of 11 developed countries, put Canada in 10th place, just ahead of the United States. Canada placed 10th in equity and health-care outcomes, 9th in access to care, 7th in administrative efficiency, and 4th in care processes.

According to the World Health Organization’s pre-pandemic rankings of global health systems in 2015, Canada ranked 30th out of 190 countries. France is ranked number one, while the United States comes in at 37, making Canada out as a lubber, rather than a leader, in providing health care for its citizens among its peers.

According to a 2015 Commonwealth Fund Report , 38 percent of Canadians felt the system worked well, 51 per cent wanted fundamental change, and 10 per cent believed it needed to be totally rebuilt. It would be quaint to still believe nearly 40 per cent of Canadians feel the system worked well in 2022.

As waiting times continue to lengthen , and the number of doctors plummets in many of the country’s leading cities, both the health-care system, and its cherished status among Canadians, is waning.

Shortages

Camille Currie is the organizer and founder of BC Healthcare Matters , a grassroots advocacy group that emerged as a result of the province’s medical shortages. Currie says doctors in B.C. face several unique challenges when compared to the rest of the country.

“We have the highest cost of living in Canada,” said Currie in an email. “Our family doctors can’t afford to stay in business here while making the lowest median salary in the country, while 30-50 percent of their pay goes to overhead costs, which are higher here than anywhere else due to our cost of living.”

In 2019, B.C. doctors were described by the CBC as being paid the third-least after their counterparts in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Victoria is annually ranked as one of Canada’s most expensive cities in the country, with higher costs for everyday needs like groceries and energy . High commercial rents are driving long standing businesses out of the city’s downtown.

Currie says the province continues to fund urgent primary care centres, but they are being used as walk-in clinics due to the shortages.

“The people using these facilities are citizens without family doctors and without access to walk-in clinics,” says Currie. “The B.C. government has wasted millions of dollars on these facilities, and still claims they are also the answer to our family doctor crisis.”

In February, the provincial government committed $57 million for 10 more urgent and primary care centres in the province by 2025, increasing the total number in the province to 50. Just six will be on Vancouver Island.

“Overhead is higher than anywhere else, doctors can only bill the government for $31 per patient, the lowest in the country,” says Currie. “Doctors can only see a maximum of 50 patients a day and can’t bill for countless tasks that use up their time, like checking labs, writing referrals, doing full physical exams.”

Currie also says that while there is demand, the supply of doctors is insufficient to meet it, and B.C. cannot attract more physicians without change. In October, the B.C. government announced a plan to raise the salaries of doctors in the province by over $100,000 per year, which some doctors labelled a “seismic shift.”
The big fix: Canada’s health system is melting down. Is ‘liberalized’ care the answer?
Kelly McParland: How alarmism keeps health care in crisis

Federal and provincial politicians in Canada often respond to surges of complaints regarding health care by promising to funnel millions or billions of dollars to the provinces to help alleviate the shortages. Currie says this does not solve the issue.

“Our problem isn’t a federal funding issue, our problem is an effective use of health care funds,” says Currie. “Alberta has a similar health ministry budget as B.C., so how are they able to provide for all their citizens and we aren’t?”

For many Albertans, however, the situation is not optimal either. Alberta’s residents have complained about their own long wait times, and many have opted for out-of-province treatment.

B.C. continues to place highly in provincial health-care rankings , largely due to the overall health of the population. However, that could change, especially as the population of Canada continues to age , and current trends continue.

Shirley Bond is the B.C. Liberal MLA for Prince-George Valemount, and once served as the minister of health during her party’s 16 years in government from 2001 to 2017. With the B.C. NDP now governing the province, Bond is the health care critic, and is aware of the pressures facing walk-in clinics, such as the costs of overhead.

Regarding federal funding, she says it continues to play an important role in improving B.C. health care, especially in the province’s more rural regions. Her riding of Prince George-Valemount, located almost 800 kilometres away from Vancouver, is serviced by the University Hospital of Northern British Columbia and lacks many vital facilities.

“It is a regional centre, and we have no cardiac care,” says Bond. “We need enhanced surgery, surgical capacity, we need significant investment in my community.”

Nonetheless, Bond acknowledges the need to re-examine the health-care system in B.C.

“We do need additional resources, and we also need to look at how we utilize those resources and are there ways that we need to consider a more innovative approach,” says Bond. “We certainly need to have more dialogue with the people who actually can operate the system, they’re the experts.”

Credentialing

Bond says she is looking at the Ontario government’s recently announced plans to revamp the province’s health-care system, which includes additional training spots for nurses , and removing barriers for foreign-trained medical professionals to begin practising.

Ontario’s plan for credentialing foreign doctors has been slow and controversial , but Bill Tholl says the provinces can provide templates for each other when formulating policy, due to Canada’s decentralized health-care system.

“Historically, one of the big upsides of having a decentralized system is we learned from one province to another,” says Tholl. “It’s kind of a natural experiment, in fact, our national Medicare program might be referred to as kind of a provincial experiment in my home province of Saskatchewan.”

Tholl is one of Canada’s leading health-care policy analysts, an author, and has served on numerous health care-related committees and organizations.

“I’d say the fundamentals are still pretty darn good, but the rest of the world is changing and we’re not keeping up,” says Tholl, regarding Canada’s medical delivery. “We really haven’t taken up the challenges of change very well in the Canadian health-care system.”

Tholl says many of the problems with Canadian health care can be traced back to the 1990s. Following the 1980s, Canada was racked with fiscal chaos, chronic budget deficits and inflation. It prompted a major policy shift towards balanced budgets and getting government spending under control.

Tholl says the federal government prioritized costs over care as part of its program of austerity and fiscal rebalancing, resulting in a reduction of enrolments in medical and nursing schools, by respective rates of 15 per cent and 50 per cent.

“I know it sounds odd to say, but we’re still recovering from that shock to the system,” says Tholl.

Tholl says that while the federal government subsidizes both undergraduate and residency training programs, they remain below their pre-1990s ratios, keeping not only the number of homegrown surgeons and family doctors capped, but also residency training spots.

When asked why the federal government would not simply increase the number of spots to generate more medical professionals, Tholl says the pandemic may spur those changes.

“I think they’re realizing just how much the pendulum swung too far in terms of constraining physician supply and nursing supply,” says Tholl. “God only knows the pandemic has shown just how fragile….how we were operating beyond the capacity limits of the currently available doctors and nurses.”

Even if changes were to be made, Tholl says it could take anywhere from six to 12 years for new professionals, such as cardiac surgeons, to enter the system.



Nurses, doctors, and respiratory therapist prepare to intubate a COVID-19 patient as Omicron puts pressure on Humber River Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada January 20, 2022.

Tholl cites the “South African Solution” as a way to help alleviate health-care shortages in the short term. It’s a policy developed by Saskatchewan’s government to enable the province to effectively lure South African doctors, who undergo similar training to their Canadian counterparts and push them into the province’s medical workforce. In 2016, more than half of Saskatchewan’s doctors had been trained outside Canada, with most coming from South Africa, Nigeria, and India.

Immigrant doctors would be a welcome addition to Canada’s medical workforce in 2022, as many medical professionals across Canada are retiring due to burnout from the pandemic, lessening the already short supply.

“You’re seeing a lot of concern in the health-care sector about the ‘Great Resignation,’ that those that can’t afford it, those that have had enough,” says Tholl.

Tholl mentions the Ontario government is resorting to awarding thousands of dollars in individual bonuses to nurses to remain on the job. The purpose is to stave off resignations and retirements as a short-term fix until nursing schools can begin producing more graduates to replace the retiring ones.

However, Tholl points out that medical school is still an expensive and a highly competitive process.

“It’s always been competitive, but I suspect it’s more competitive now than it’s ever been,” says Tholl.

Tholl explains that the competition continues past medical school, and affects how graduates can obtain residency training spots. The already-subsidized cost of medical school cost $17,000 CAD per year on average in 2021, and nearly $30,000 per year in Ontario.

Tholl says that once students graduate, often with significant debt, they go into specializations that pay more than a general practitioner, such as becoming a dermatologist. While dermatology may be a huge help for acne-ridden teenagers, they do not surgically repair injured knees or perform heart transplants.

Federal funding

“If you got in a car and drove yourself from St. John’s, Newfoundland, all the way to Victoria, British Columbia, you would find yourself in 10 very different provinces with 10 different realities,” says Nadeem Esmail, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute. “The decentralization of health care and giving the provinces the ability to determine health-care policy allows them to tailor their system to their provincial realities.”

Like Tholl, Esmail says the decentralized approach could allow the provinces to individually experiment with different health-care policies being undertaken around the world, if only the federal government would give more autonomy to the provinces.

“The involvement of the federal government is in fact, holding the provinces back from setting optimal health-care policy or ideal health-care policy for the population,” says Esmail.

Esmail says the Canada Health Act is limiting policy innovation because it governs what provinces can and cannot do in terms of health-care policy in return for federal health transfer payments. He says that the provinces are dominated by government-run monopolistic hospitals, and a health-care system that precludes any cost-sharing of user fees.

“We’re not able to encourage more informed decision-making among those who can afford it,” says Esmail. “We’ve trapped ourselves in this very ineffective set of health-care policies as a result of federal interference and provincial policy making.”

One common practice of federal and provincial governments when addressing health care is to pledge further funding, especially during election seasons. Like Camille Currie, Esmail does not consider federal funding to be the problem, or the solution.

In March, Ottawa announced an additional $2 billion would be delivered to the provinces to help alleviate pandemic-related medical backlogs. This is on top of the $4.5 billion that was already given to the provinces during the pandemic to assist in handling the crisis.

Bill Tholl says it can’t always be known if the provinces are actually spending the transfers on health care as intended. The federal government and the premiers are currently locked in a dispute over future transfers, with Ottawa demanding guarantees it be spent on healthcare.

“It’s literally a transfer from a federal banking account that goes across the street to a series of provincial accounts,” says Tholl. “With no accountability attached to those funds, they become general revenue for the provinces, indistinguishable from all the taxes that the provinces raised.”

Tholl says the transfer payments not only perpetuate problems in the health-care system, but also widened interprovincial disparities in aspects like waiting times, and the ability to attract doctors.

“I think we have to focus on what is important here, and that is delivering the best possible universal access health-care system to the population,” says Esmail. “In that regard, allowing the provinces to experiment, allowing the provinces to learn from one another, to try policies that have been successful elsewhere has incredible power.”

Esmail says that Canadians want a comprehensive, affordable and universal health-care system, but the way it has been structured ties the provinces to a system that monopolizes the delivery of both medical treatment and health-care insurance.

“This disallows cost-sharing for universally accessible services, which is unfortunate because those are the very policies employed by 100 per cent of the developed world’s most effective, highest-performing universal access health-care systems,” says Esmail.

Esmail advises understanding what countries like Australia , France , Germany , or Japan have done, all of whom deliver high quality, but faster health care at lower costs than in Canada, while allowing for cost-sharing between public and out-of-pocket spending.

In France, for example, state-run health care remains the backbone of medical delivery, while the smaller private options help to alleviate the pressure of costs and backlogs.

“It’s private alternatives to the publicly funded health-care system, or to the government-run health-care system,” says Esmail. “Allowing that project competition in encouraging more informed decision making through cost sharing creates a better universal access health-care system for everyone.”

Private alternatives

Efe Türker says going back to Turkey would be a preferable option if he needs medical attention, rather than stewing on waiting lists in Victoria, or seeking private treatment elsewhere.

“It is easier, simpler, and in most cases cheaper, for me to literally buy a ticket, fly across the world to my home country, to see a doctor and get free treatment and fly back,” says Türker.

One of Türker’s friends has made the trip back to Turkey after being injured, and received both treatment and physiotherapy before his scheduled appointment in Canada. When Türker is sick and needs medical advice, he calls his uncle, who is a practising physician in Turkey.

“It would get diagnosed from an 11-hour time zone away,” says Türker. “This shouldn’t be the case for anyone.”

The solution may be found by a nationwide imitation of a successful provincial health-care policy innovations, which was the genesis of Canada’s universal system in the first place. Whether the new solution is re-funding medical and nursing schools, nationalizing the South African Solution or expanding access to private alternatives, boosting provincial autonomy on health-care policy, or all of those combined, the headlines across the country show that Canadians need solutions fast.

“At the end of the day, provinces are too busy shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic, implementing small adjustments here and there without recognizing, or at least while deliberately avoiding, the larger picture for political reasons,” says Esmail.

SPACE RACE 3.0 
India to launch country's first privately developed rocket, Vikram S

Space sector in India is largely led by the government but private participation was opened in 2020 to enable the Indian space program to remain cost competitive

Taniya Dutta
Nov 17, 2022

India is all set to launch its first privately developed rocket into space, which many believe will open new avenues and herald a new era for start-ups in the country’s space sector.

Skyroot Aerospace, a space start-up in Hyderabad, will launch the Vikram S on November 18.

The rocket will carry three payloads — two Indian and one foreign ― on a sub-orbital mission, a trajectory that does not complete the Earth's orbit.

READ MORE
India to launch 75 payloads developed by schoolgirls into orbit

In rocket science jargon, a payload can differ depending on the rocket's mission, but in civilian space missions, it is normally a suite of different sensors that monitor factors such as temperature, humidity and radiation levels.

Vikram S will be launched from the Indian Space Research Organisation’s launchpad at Sriharikota, a barrier island in southern Andhra Pradesh, in an event overseen by the country's Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh.

The rocket will help validate the technology in Skyroot’s Vikram series of space launch vehicles, Skyroot co-founder Naga Bharath Daka said.
The Vikram series

The Skyroot Vikram series is named after Dr Vikram Sarabhai, the founder of India's space programme.

Skyroot Aerospace, which is developing three variants of the Vikram rocket, has named the maiden mission Prarambh, meaning “the beginning” in Hindi.



The three-stage rocket will have a sub-orbital flight to demonstrate the technological advances being made by the private sector in the country.

It will carry the three payloads to an altitude of 120 kilometres above Earth's surface to cross the Karman line at an altitude of 100km ― the point between the Earth's atmosphere and space.

The rocket was unveiled last week by S Somanath, the chairman of ISRO, the national space agency of India. It was scheduled to be launched on November 15 but was delayed due to weather conditions.

It has been given clearance for technical launch by In-Spacee, the regulator for private space industry investors and technology developers.

The space sector in India is largely led by the government.

Despite being among a handful of spacefaring nations in the world, India accounts for about 2 per cent of the space economy, according to government figures.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in 2020 opened the sector to allow private sector participation and enable the Indian space program to stay cost competitive in the global space market, and thus create more jobs in the space sector.

ISRO has signed agreements with more than 40 companies to assist them with space technology and build processes from the ground up.

Skyroot Aerospace, established in 2018, has more than 200 team members, and became India's first private space technology company after it signed an agreement with ISRO for sharing facilities and expertise last year.

"Vikram S is our technology demonstrator launch vehicle. We have a fleet of launch vehicles on series and this is specifically designed to demonstrate our technology for the other rockets, like Vikram 1," Sireesh Pallikonda, business development lead at Skyroot Aerospace, told The National.

“This will open access to space, so far it was just the government that was launching, but now it will be a new horizon for companies to have access to space. With participation of more companies and private participation we can generate more revenues and also there is a lot of talent and it will give opportunities to fulfil ambitions of those who want to work in rocketry,” he said.
Payload

The 545m rocket will carry three satellites from Space Kidz India, a Chennai-based aerospace start-up, N-Space Tech India and Armenia's Bazoomq.


At 25 seconds after lift-off and at an altitude of 17.9km, the rocket’s engine will burn out, ejecting its payload at an altitude of 81.5km.

“FunSAT is a 2.5kg mass with 80 payloads built by students from the US, Indonesia, Singapore and India. These are middle school students who are patiently and with absolute excitement waiting to see their satellite go up,” Srimathy Kesan, the founder and chief executive of Space Kidz India, told The National. “The entire process took eight to nine months to complete.”

Updated: November 17, 2022

Isro scientists work on the orbiter vehicle of Chandrayaan-2. EPA-EFE