ANY OF THEM TRAIN/SUBWAY DRIVERS?!
Mexico deploys National Guard in metro after accidents

Thu, January 12, 2023 


Thousands of National Guard members will be deployed in the Mexico City metro following a series of safety incidents, including a crash this month that left one person dead, officials said Thursday.

Safety concerns have shaken public confidence in a transport system used by millions of people in the congested megacity.

From Thursday, around 6,000 members of the National Guard will be present in the metro, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters.

The move comes after two metro trains collided in a tunnel Saturday, killing a young woman and injuring dozens.

It was the most serious incident since a section of elevated track collapsed in May 2021, killing 26 people and injuring dozens.

Other less serious but unusual incidents, including problems with wheels, have been reported in recent months, Sheinbaum said.

She denied they were the result of budget cuts, as alleged by critics of the mayor, who is seen as a leading candidate to replace President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador next year.

Lopez Obrador has been accused by his opponents of overseeing the "militarization" of Mexico by giving increased responsibility to the armed forces.

Commenting on the National Guard deployment in the metro, Lopez Obrador said: "If they call that militarization or whatever they call it, we assume responsibility."

pam-axm/dr/bfm

US judge orders museum not to move Van Gogh painting caught in row

Thu, January 12, 2023


A US judge has ordered a museum to keep hold of a Vincent Van Gogh painting after a collector filed a lawsuit alleging the work had been stolen from him.

"The Novel Reader," also known as "The Reading Lady," is on display at the Detroit Institute of Arts until January 22 as part of an exhibition of the impressionist painter.

Brazilian Gustavo Soter said in a complaint filed Tuesday in a Michigan court that he acquired the painting in 2017 for $3.7 million.

He immediately transferred possession -- but not ownership of the 1888 painting -- to a third party, according the lawsuit.

"This party absconded with the painting, and plaintiff has been unaware of its whereabouts for years," says the complaint, which now values the work at $5 million.

Soter learned recently that the painting was in the possession of the museum in Detroit, apparently on loan from a private collection.

Fearing that the institute would return the painting to the third party at the end of the exhibit, Soter's lawsuit seeks the art be turned over to him.

On Wednesday, judge George Caram Steeh barred the institute from "damaging, destroying, concealing, disposing, (or) moving" the painting.

The ruling was a temporary move ahead of a court hearing on the matter on January 19.

The museum, which isn't accused of wrongdoing, did not immediately reply to a request for comment from AFP.

ube/pdh/caw

Ancient ostrich eggs found in southern Israeli desert

The ostrich eggs were found in fragments.

Ostrich eggs estimated to be at least 4,000 years old have been found in Israel, archaeologists announced on Thursday, providing insight into the life of ancient peoples in the region.

The eight crushed eggs were discovered in fragments in the Negev desert's Nitzana sand dunes near the Egyptian border.

They were located close to a fire pit that was part of a camp site used by nomads "since prehistoric times," said Lauren Davis, the Israel Antiquities Authority excavation director.

Their proximity to the fire alongside stones, flint, tools and pottery sherds, implies that the eggs were to be cooked, said Davis.

Wild ostriches used to roam the area until they became extinct in the 19th century, the IAA said.

To Davis, the eggs could provide clues into the enigmatic lives of the ancients, whose lifestyle did not provide much lasting physical evidence.

"Although the nomads did not build permanent structures at this site, the finds allow us to feel their presence in the desert," Davis said.

She noted "the exceptional preservation of the eggs" and said they will be taken for examination which should yield a more exact timeline for the site and its function.

Israel Antiquities Authority excavators dig at the site in the Negev desert.

© 2023 AFP

Israeli archaeologists dig up large tusk of ancient elephant

Colombia VP Says Assassination Bid Foiled

By AFP Published on: January 10, 2023

In this file photo taken on October 7, 2022, Colombian Vice President Francia Marquez arrives at a Territorial Dialogue Forum in Guachene, department of Cauca, Colombia. (Photo by JOAQUIN SARMIENTO / AFP)

Marquez said that her security had carried out "the deactivation and destruction of a high-capacity explosive device" in the road leading to her family home in Colombia's southwest.

Her security team discovered the bag after being alerted to suspicious behaviour by "outside elements" on the road leading to the village of Yolombo in the Suarez municipality where Marquez was born.

Colombia Vice President Francia Marquez on Tuesday claimed her security detail had foiled an assassination attempt close to her home.

Marquez, the first black vice president in the South American country, said on Twitter that her security had carried out "the deactivation and destruction of a high-capacity explosive device" in the road leading to her family home in Colombia's southwest.

"It is another attempt on my life," added the 41-year-old, who survived an attack in 2019 linked to her work as an environmental activist in her home department of Cauca.

The latest bid, she said, involved "a plastic bag containing a high-powered explosive substance made of ammonium nitrate, powdered aluminium and... nails."

Her security team discovered the bag after being alerted to suspicious behaviour by "outside elements" on the road leading to the village of Yolombo in the Suarez municipality where Marquez was born.

She is part of Colombia's first-ever left-wing government, led by President Gustavo Petro.

He has attempted to end decades of armed conflict in the country by negotiating with left-wing rebels and armed groups such as drug traffickers.

In August, a few days after Petro was sworn in, a vehicle in the presidential motorcade came under gunfire in the northeast of the country.

Brazil's muscular response towards far-right rioters means 'endgame might be nearer than we think'

Issued on: 12/01/2023 - 

05:15 Video by:Mark OWEN

Skittish Brazilian authorities on Wednesday spared no effort to boost security in the face of a social media flyer promoting a “mega-protest to retake power” in two dozen cities that fizzled amid preventative security measures. For more on the future of Brazil's far-right, FRANCE 24 is joined by Lauri Tähtinen, non-resident Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the founder of Americas Outlook.

Brasilia rioters likely had inside help: Lula

Issued on: 12/01/2023

Brasília (AFP) – Brazil intensified a mop-up operation Thursday after the weekend sacking of government buildings in the capital, as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the rioters likely had inside help.

Lula told reporters he had ordered a "thorough review" of presidential palace staff after Sunday's violent uprising, which saw backers of his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro storm the presidency, Congress and Supreme Court, and cause widespread damage.

"I am convinced that the door of the Planalto (presidential) palace was opened for people to enter because there are no broken doors," the president said in Brasilia.

"This means that someone facilitated their entry," added Lula, who is dealing with the aftermath of the violent reaction by so-called "bolsonaristas" to his brand-new presidential term.

The rioters looted offices, destroyed priceless works of art and left graffiti messages calling for a military coup in their wake

The exact extent of the damage is still being calculated.

"We will investigate calmly to see what really happened," said Lula, who defeated Bolsonaro by a razor-thin margin in an October vote that followed a deeply divisive election campaign.

Authorities are seeking to determine who planned and financed the riots.
'Under pressure'

Seeking to prevent a repeat of Sunday's destruction, the security forces were placed on a war footing Wednesday in response to threats of fresh protests in Brasilia and other cities.

But the promised mass mobilization to "take back power" from Lula and his leftist government never materialized, leaving riot police with helicopter backing twiddling their thumbs as they maintained a security ring around the Esplanade of Ministries in Brasilia.

A poll published by the Datafolha institute Wednesday said 93 percent of Brazilians condemned Sunday's violent uprising, though another -- by Atlas Intelligence -- found that one in five supported the rioters.

The arrest of nearly 2,000 and continued detention of more than 1,100 rioters as well as the strong security deployment appeared to act as a deterrent to renewed mobilization Wednesday.

Many were discouraged "for fear of being arrested," said Guilherme Casaroes, a political scientist with the Getulio Vargas Foundation.

For Geraldo Monteiro of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, "the Bolsonaro movement is under pressure and does not have the organization for a counteroffensive."

Following the attacks on Brazil's symbols of democracy, Lula's hand was strengthened after he received the public backing of leaders of Congress and governors -- some of whom are in the Bolsonaro camp.

Efforts continue, meanwhile, to track down more of those involved, with suspected rioters identified through security cameras or selfies they themselves posted on social media.

Heads rolling

High-level heads have also been rolling: An arrest warrant is expected to be executed in the coming days against Anderson Torres -- a justice minister under Bolsonaro who served as Brasilia security chief when the riots happened.

He has since been fired, and is expected to return to Brazil from a holiday in the United States on Friday to face accusations of collusion with the rioters.

Brasilia's military police chief and the region's governor have also lost their jobs.

According to national chain TV Globo, investigators have identified some of the alleged financiers of Sunday's riots in ten of Brazil's 26 states, including leaders in the pro-Bolsonaro agro-business sector.

They are suspected of having paid for the food and transport of rioters who arrived in Brasilia from several regions of the country on about 100 passenger buses.

Benedict's confidant spills beans on two-popes tension

Ella IDE
Wed, January 11, 2023 


Just one week after the funeral of Benedict XVI, his closest aide released a much-trailed memoir Thursday, revealing details of tensions between the late pope emeritus and his more liberal successor Pope Francis.

Georg Gaenswein's book reveals private conversations with both popes in charting the German ex-pontiff's rise to power and the decade spent in retirement following his shock resignation in 2013.

The Vatican has not officially responded but Pope Francis called Gaenswein in to a private meeting on Monday, following days of pre-publication interviews in which the 66-year-old German aired years of grievances.

In one, he claimed it had "pained Benedict's heart" when Francis effectively reversed his predecessor's decision to relax restrictions on the use of the traditional Latin mass.

Up until his death on December 31 at the age of 95, Benedict had remained a figurehead for the conservative wing of the Catholic Church, which views Pope Francis as too liberal.

- Shocked and speechless -

As his secretary since 2003, Gaenswein was a constant presence at Benedict's side, and during his final years living in a monastery in the Vatican grounds, his gatekeeper.

After Benedict's death, Gaenswein led the mourners, greeting visitors to his mentor's lying-in-state and kissing the coffin in front of tens of thousands at St Peter's Square during the funeral led by Pope Francis.

In "Nothing But the Truth: My Life Beside Pope Benedict XVI", Gaenswein describes Benedict's perplexity at some of Francis's decisions, and the latter's apparent attempts to keep his predecessor in check.

After becoming in 2013 the first pope in six centuries to resign, Benedict promised to live "hidden from the world", but broke that pledge to speak out on several explosive issues.

The last straw appears to have been a book Benedict co-authored on priestly celibacy in 2020 -- a PR disaster that Gaenswein said Francis appeared to blame in part on him.

Gaenswein was effectively fired as head of the papal household with immediate effect.

"Stay home from now on. Accompany Benedict, who needs you, and act as a shield," he said Francis told him.

Gaenswein, who had been propelled into the limelight on Benedict's election, says he was left "shocked and speechless" by his demotion.

On hearing the news, Benedict half-jokingly said "it seems Pope Francis doesn't trust me anymore, and is making you my guardian".

The ex-pontiff intervened and tried to get Francis to change his mind, but to no avail, Gaenswein wrote.

- 'Gorgeous George' -

Like Benedict, Gaenswein was born in Bavaria. He describes his young self as "a bit transgressive", sporting unruly locks and listening to Pink Floyd.

THE REBELLIOUS YOUTH TURNS REACTIONARY

The son of a blacksmith, he was ordained in 1984 and rose through the ranks to become secretary to the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

When Ratzinger was elected to the papacy in 2005, the international media was instantly smitten by his dashing blond-haired assistant.

He was nicknamed "Bel Giorgio" ("Gorgeous George") and gossip magazines gleefully began splashing paparazzi-style photographs of him in his tennis whites.

His close relationship with Benedict sparked jealousy, he said in the memoir.

But the new pope, Francis, appeared not to want him nearby, Gaenswein said, citing the pontiff's refusal to allow him to live in the palace apartment that Benedict had used.

The memoir is not expected to improve relations between the pair, and it was not clear what job Gaenswein will be given now.

Some Vatican commentators have speculated he could be appointed as a Vatican ambassador, or as director of an important shrine.

ide-ar/ams/pvh

Nuclear reactor experiment rules out one dark matter hope

Pierre Celerier and Daniel Lawler
Thu, 12 January 2023 


It was an anomaly detected in the storm of a nuclear reactor so puzzling that physicists hoped it would shine a light on dark matter, one of the universe's greatest mysteries.

However new research has definitively ruled out that this strange measurement signalled the existence of a "sterile neutrino", a hypothetical particle that has long eluded scientists.

Neutrinos are sometimes called "ghost particles" because they barely interact with other matter -- around 100 trillion are estimated to pass through our bodies every second.

Since neutrinos were first theorised in 1930, scientists have been trying to nail down the properties of these shape-shifters, which are one of the most common particles in the universe.

They appear "when the nature of the nucleus of an atom has been changed", physicist David Lhuillier of France's Atomic Energy Commission told AFP.

That could happen when they come together in the furious fusion in the heart of stars like our Sun, or are broken apart in nuclear reactors, he said.

There are three confirmed flavours of neutrino: electron, muon and tau.

However physicists suspect there could be a fourth neutrino, dubbed "sterile" because it does not interact with ordinary matter at all.

In theory, it would only answer to gravity and not the fundamental force of weak interactions, which still hold sway over the other neutrinos.

The sterile neutrino has a place ready for it in theoretical physics, "but there has not yet been a clear demonstration that is exists," he added.

- Dark matter candidate -

So Lhuillier and the rest of the STEREO collaboration, which brings together French and German scientists, set out to find it.

Previous nuclear reactor measurements had found fewer neutrinos than the amount expected by theoretical models, a phenomenon dubbed the "reactor antineutrino anomaly".

It was suggested that the missing neutrinos had changed into the sterile kind, offering a rare chance to prove their existence.

To find out, the STEREO collaboration installed a dedicated detector a few metres away from a nuclear reactor used for research at the Laue–Langevin institute in Grenoble, France.

After four years of observing more than 100,000 neutrinos and two years analysing the data, the verdict was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

The anomaly "cannot be explained by sterile neutrinos," Lhuillier said.

But that "does not mean there are none in the universe", he added.

The experiment found that previous predictions of the amount of neutrinos being produced were incorrect.

But it was not a total loss, offering a much clearer picture of neutrinos emitted by nuclear reactors.

This could help not just with future research, but also for monitoring nuclear reactors.

Meanwhile, the search for the sterile neutrino continues. Particle accelerators, which smash atoms, could offer up new leads.

Despite the setback, interest could remain high because sterile neutrinos have been considered a suspect for dark matter, which makes up more than quarter of the universe but remains shrouded in mystery.

Like dark matter, the sterile neutrino does not interact with ordinary matter, making it incredibly difficult to observe.

"It would be a candidate which would explain why we see the effects of dark matter -- and why we cannot see dark matter," Lhuillier said.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for DARK MATTER 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for DARK ENERGY

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for ETHER 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for AETHYR 

Cloned horse raises hopes for equestrian sports in China

"Zhuang Zhuang", a cloned horse bred by the Chinese company Sinogene, is presented

 after being approved by the China Horse Industry Association. It is hoped cloning will help

 reduce the cost of breeding and raising horses.

A Chinese company presented a cloned horse to the public on Thursday that is the first of its kind born in the country and approved for equestrian sport

The cloning of competition and thoroughbred horses has been practiced in several countries since the early 2000s, particularly for genetic improvements.

Born last June from a surrogate mother, "Zhuang Zhuang" was produced by the Beijing laboratory Sinogene and is a clone of a horse imported from Germany.

The black animal is the first from the "warmblood" group of breeds to be born in China and to be officially approved by the China Horse Industry Association.

"Warmbloods" are generally light horses with a lively temperament.

Equestrian sports, especially show jumping, have been making strides in China in recent years.

But a shortage of high-performance horses and a lag in breeding technologies are limiting growth.

"I spoke with (Chinese) riders who participate in the Olympics. All of them have more than one horse, usually two or three. Each horse costs from a few million to 10 million yuan ($1.5 million)," Mi Jidong, CEO of Sinogene, told AFP.

"Cloning can help reduce the price of breeding and raising horses."

Producing competitive horses in China by cloning should make it less dependent on costly imported animals to supply Chinese equestrian sports.

The world's first cloned horse was born in Italy in 2003.

Chinese animal cloning companies have made significant progress in recent years, with technologies now relatively mature for sheep, cows, pigs, dogs and cats.

© 2023 AFP

Shaping the sport of kings: Key genes linked to successful racehorses identified by international team

IMPERIALISM NEVER APOLOGISES
Macron says won't apologise to Algeria for colonisation

Issued on: 12/01/2023 - 

Paris (AFP) – President Emmanuel Macron has said he will not "ask forgiveness" from Algeria for French colonisation but hopes to continue working towards reconciliation with his counterpart Abdelmajid Tebboune.

"It's not up to me to ask forgiveness, that's not what this is about, that word would break all of our ties," he said in an interview for Le Point magazine published late Wednesday.

"The worst thing would be to decide: 'we apologise and each go our own way'," Macron said.

"Work on memory and history isn't a settling of all accounts," he added.

But in the interview, he also expressed hope that Tebboune "will be able to come to France in 2023", to return Macron's own trip to Algiers last year and continue their "unprecedented work of friendship".

France's 100-year colonisation of Algeria and the viciously fought 1954-62 war for independence have left deep scars on both sides, which Macron has by turns prodded and soothed over his political career.

In 2017, then-presidential candidate Macron dubbed the French occupation a "crime against humanity".

A report he commissioned from historian Benjamin Stora recommended in 2020 further moves to reconcile the two countries, while ruling out "repentance" and "apologies".

Macron has also questioned whether Algeria existed as a nation before being colonised by France, drawing an angry response from Algiers.

"These moments of tension teach us," Macron told the Algerian writer Kamel Daoud in the interview.

"You have to be able to reach out your hand again and engage, which President Tebboune and I have been able to do," he added.

He backed a suggestion for Tebboune to visit the graves of Algerian 19th-century anti-colonial hero Abdelkader and his entourage, who are buried in Amboise in central France.

"That would make sense for the history of the Algerian people. For the French people, it would be an opportunity to understand realities that are often hidden," Macron said.

Algeria and France maintain enduring ties through immigration, involvement in the independence conflict and post-war repatriations of French settlers, touching more than 10 million people living in France today.

© 2023 AFP

Church of England sets up fund to address 'shameful' slavery links

Issued on: 12/01/2023 

01:35

More than 15 million men, women and children were victims of one of the darkest chapters of human history - the transatlantic slave trade. Last year the Church of England apologised for its role as an early investor in the unethical business and this week, it announced that it would spend around 105 million euros in communities affected by historic slavery in an attempt to reconcile for its sins.