Japan Tried to Build a Hydrogen Society. It Backfired Spectacularly.

Darren Orf
Thu, January 26, 2023 

Japan Tried—and Failed—to Build a Hydrogen Society

Andriy Onufriyenko - Getty Images

Japan has long been a leader in hydrogen energy and fuel cell technology.

Companies like Toyota plan to build entire cities entirely powered by hydrogen.

A new report from an environmental think-tank argues that Japan is investing in the wrong applications for hydrogen technology and the determine of its decarbonization efforts.

In the past couple decades, scientists and engineers have come up with lots of ways to rapidly decarbonize the planet—but some ideas are better than others.

Take, for instance, hydrogen. Thanks to the discovery of electrolysis, hydrogen’s been a known source of energy for centuries, but Japan became a frontrunner in that energy source in recent years because of its status as a resource-poor country. A steady supply of renewable energy isn’t just an important climate initiative, it’s a matter of national security.

However, Japan may have taken things a bit too far.

In 2017, the country became the first in the world to adopt a national hydrogen plan, and companies like Toyota have committed to constructing futuristic cities powered by the technology. In 2021 alone, Japan spent around $800 million on investments into hydrogen power and fuel cells.

But according to the Renewable Energy Institute (REI), a Japanese environmental think tank, this push to use hydrogen in every conceivable energy sector is actually doing more harm than good.

From the report:

“The 2017 Basic Hydrogen Strategy is misguided, both in terms of what hydrogen is used for and how it is produced. Moreover, it promotes the use of gray hydrogen, which does not contribute to emission reductions.”

Gray hydrogen is the most common form of hydrogen production, which uses the greenhouse gas methane.

The 20-page report doesn’t argue for hydrogen’s complete removal from the energy mix. In fact, REI argues that hydrogen is vital for industries where decarbonization is particularly tricky (think: aviation, shipping, and steelmaking). However, to use hydrogen in place of electrification via other renewable sources is a mistake, REI says.

The report continues:

“The scope of applications where energy demands can be met with electrification has grown, and the range of areas that need hydrogen have decreased. This has led to a common understanding worldwide that hydrogen should be limited to applications where it would be difficult to achieve decarbonization with other methods.”

The report identifies “bad idea applications” that have already gobbled up 70 percent of the country's hydrogen budget—things like hydrogen cars, refueling stations, and residential power systems. Adoption of this hydrogen technology has lagged far behind Japan’s estimations, and the report argues that fuel cell cars will hit just 1/40th of their sales target by 2030. This lopsided interest in hydrogen could also be harming the country’s solar panel adoption as the report notes Japan lags behind some European peers when it comes to building out its solar infrastructure.

REI punctures the often-reported facts about Japan’s utopian-esque hydrogen society. It’s unlikely the report will put a stop to megaprojects like Toyota’s “Woven City,” but those cities might not live in the green-energy future that they imagined.

Elon Musk says his biggest Tesla competition will be a Chinese automaker: ‘They work the smartest’



Tristan Bove
Thu, January 26, 2023

Elon Musk temporarily shed his “Mr. Tweet” cap for Wednesday’s Tesla earnings call to identify the biggest challenger to his electric car giant: competition from China.

With Tesla coming off its worst year in markets, Musk, who has been the company’s CEO since 2008, had some tough questions to answer during the investor call covering the company’s performance during the fourth quarter of 2022. The company’s shares have fallen 50% over the past year after a meteoric rise in 2020 and 2021, nestling in at a two-year low in November of last year.

Investors in the electric vehicle company have fretted over Musk spreading himself too thin after acquiring Twitter last year, while his appearance in court this week for allegedly misleading Tesla investors in 2018 with his “funding secured” tweet has certainly not helped matters.

So Tesla investors were likely relieved when the company reported record revenue on Wednesday. Musk said during the call that the company saw the “strongest orders year to date than ever in our history” in the first few weeks of January, suggesting that a series of price cuts worldwide had helped boost demand.

But when pressed on the state of the electric vehicle industry in China, where Tesla has lost ground in the past year, Musk conceded that Chinese companies are the most likely to challenge Tesla’s dominance.

“We have a lot of respect for the car companies in China. They are the most competitive in the world in our experience, and the Chinese market is the most competitive,” Musk said. “They work the hardest and they work the smartest, and we have a lot of respect for the Chinese companies that we are competing against.”

“If I were to guess, it would probably be some company out of China as the most likely to be second to Tesla,” he added.

China’s growing EV industry

Electric vehicles are big business in China, with the market accounting for two-thirds of EV demand last year, and Tesla, which began producing cars in its Shanghai Gigafactory in 2019, is far from the only game in town.

Demand for EVs in China is huge; a record 6 million electric cars were sold in China last year, accounting for over a quarter of new vehicle sales, and Chinese electric car companies are rising to meet demand. Chinese carmaker BYD, which is backed by Warren Buffett, raced past Tesla in electric car sales in China last year.

In 2021, roughly 300 EV-manufacturing companies operated in China, benefitting from over a decade of investments and generous subsidies by the Chinese government to grow the industry, which now includes around 4 million charging stations spread throughout the country’s provinces, one of which has three times as many charging units as the entire U.S.

EV subsidies were initially intended for electric cars to reach price parity with combustion engine vehicles, and the sector has matured and diversified in the decade since they were first implemented. The box-size Mini EV developed by Chinese company Wuling cost just over $5,000 last year, and in 2021 it ranked as the best-selling electric car in China.

Subsidies for consumers were scaled back in 2021 and scrapped on Jan. 1 of this year, but some tax exemptions remain in place, while industry analysts have forecasted that the industry will become more market- than policy-driven in the coming years.
A threat to Tesla

Musk has praised Chinese automakers in the past, calling them the “most competitive in the world” in 2021 while adding that Chinese electric carmakers boasted advanced software designs that could “shape the future of the automobile industry.”

But they also represent an enormous threat to Tesla’s waning power as demand for its vehicles softens in China, which currently makes up 40% of the company’s sales. BYD, Tesla’s main competitor in China, and other Chinese manufacturers posted huge sales growth towards the end of last year, while Tesla’s numbers slumped more than 40% in December.

Tesla lowered car prices in China twice in the past few months once the Chinese government removed its EV subsidies to prop up sales amid slowing demand. The company has since cut prices in the U.S. and other markets too.

Musk suggested during the earnings call that the price cuts seemed to have worked, given Tesla’s record profits last quarter, and added that the outlook for demand in the year ahead was optimistic, despite “probably a contraction in the automotive market as a whole.”

A BloombergNEF analysis forecasted Tesla sales to grow by 40% in 2023, while its in-demand Model Y car could become the best-selling EV in the world and even break into the top three cars of any type globally. But while Tesla is still performing in some places, increased competition from China’s domestic automakers might push that all-important market further out of reach.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Nigeria launches domestic card scheme in cashless bid


The Central Bank of Nigeria's logo is seen on its headquarters in Abuja

Thu, January 26, 2023

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria's central bank on Thursday launched a domestic card scheme to rival foreign cards like Mastercard and Visa, hoping to enhance its drive to make Africa's biggest economy a cashless society and save the country foreign transaction fees.

The announcement by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor Godwin Emefiele follows the bank's decision last year to phase out old higher denomination bank notes.

Emefiele told a virtual launch of the "AfriGo" card scheme that although penetration of card payments in Nigeria had grown over the years, many citizens remained excluded.

"The challenges that have limited the inclusion of Nigerians include the high cost of card services as a result of foreign exchange requirements of international card schemes and the fact that existing card products do not address local peculiarities of the Nigerian market," said Emefiele.

AfriGo is owned by CBN and Nigerian banks and Emefiele said that Nigeria was joining China, Russia, India and Turkey in launching a domestic card scheme.

International card service providers like Mastercard and Visa would not be stopped in Nigeria, he added.

"Rather, it (AFRIGO) is aimed at providing more options for domestic consumers whilst also promoting the delivery of services in a more innovative, cost effective and competitive manner," he said.

Africa's most populous nation Nigeria, has more than 200 million people and the majority still use cash because they live in rural areas where there are not banks.

(Reporting by Camillus Eboh; Writing by MacDonald Dzirutwe; editing by Diane Craft)

Power surge crashes Pakistan grid, plunging millions into darkness

 A country-wide power breakdown in Peshawar

Thu, January 26, 2023 
By Asif Shahzad and Sudarshan Varadhan

ISLAMABAD/SINGAPORE (Reuters) -Pakistan's generators produced more power than was required on Monday, causing voltage fluctuations that culminated in a system collapse that plunged 220 million people into darkness, an internal government document reviewed by Reuters showed.

Complete grid failures are rare, and operators of modern grids count local shocks from integration of renewable energy as their primary challenge. But the blackout in Pakistan on Monday was its second near-complete grid failure and the third in south Asia in three months.

The grid's failure plunged 220 million people into darkness for a whole day and disrupted commercial activity as outages also hit internet and mobile services.

The blackout was triggered by the power grid's frequency rising to 50.75 hertz (hz) early on Monday, causing severe voltage fluctuations in transmission lines in the south, according to the internal note. A frequency over 50 hz indicates the power generated exceeds demand, while a frequency under 50 hz points to supply falling short of demand.

Grid operators attempt to keep the frequency of the grid stable at 50 hz, with deviations over 0.05 hz typically considered abnormal. The frequency of the grid was already 50.30 hz moments before the incident, according to the note.

The severe frequency fluctuations in the transmission lines caused it to trip, Sajjad Akthar, general manager at state-run National Transmission and Distribution Company (NTDC) wrote in the note drafted on Tuesday.

"Transmission lines tripped, which resulted in isolation of north and south system," Akthar said in the note.

Pakistan's energy ministry did not respond to a request for comment. The note did not mention why supply overshot demand.

About 11.35 gigawatts (GW) of power plants were in operation across the country when the transmission lines tripped and separated the northern and southern grid, the note read.

Such separations are intended to protect parts of the grid not primarily affected by instabilities.

However, demand potentially far exceeded supply in the northern grid after the isolation, as most power generators were located in the south, causing further instability, according to an industry official who reviewed the note.

The official declined to be named as he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Pakistan's Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir had said in a tweet on Monday a "large voltage swing" in the south had "cascaded northwards" to cause a breakdown, but did not elaborate.

Pakistan started restoring power by operating hydropower stations in the north, and gas-fired utilities in the south, the note read, as they take the least time to start generating power.

While gas-fired utilities in the south started operating, it took nearly ten hours for the hydro plants to operate consistently and for the power restoration process to begin in the northern grid, according to the report.

Akthar said mechanisms meant to save the system from a blackout had worked, but the grid was overwhelmed by the magnitude and range of fluctuations.

"Though under frequency, cross-trip and rate of change of frequency schemes operated, system could not survive and (it) led to a complete blackout," the report read.

(Writing by Sudarshan Varadhan;Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Europe’s Energy Crisis Leaves Almost All Of Pakistan Without Power

Editor OilPrice.com
Wed, January 25, 2023 

The long-awaited winter energy crisis has finally hit…but it wasn’t in Europe after all. On Monday, almost the entirety of Pakistan was left without power when a misguided energy saving strategy by the government backfired. Runaway inflation, a severely weakened currency, and rapidly emptying foreign exchange reserves have left Pakistan on the brink of economic collapse. The country of 230 million people is plagued by overdue energy payments, and was seeking to cut costs by lowering energy use when the plan went off the rails, leaving people across the country without power or water for more than 12 hours.

Pakistani officials had planned to save on energy costs by turning off electricity across the country overnight. Nighttime has the lowest usage hours for energy in Pakistan, where winters are relatively mild. The problem came when technicians tried to reboot the electric system in the morning, and found out that the infrastructure wasn’t capable of booting up the entire nation’s energy grid all at once. Major cities, including the capital city of Islamabad, as well as smaller cities and towns across the country were left in the dark for 15 hours on Monday, lasting into the night.

“As an economic measure, we temporarily shut down our power generation systems” Sunday night, Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir told local media. He went on to explain that when engineers tried to turn the systems back on, a “fluctuation in voltage” occurred, which “forced engineers to shut down the power grid” stations altogether.

Millions of people were left without drinking water as electric-powered pumps failed. While some schools and hospitals were able to turn to backup generators, many were left without power entirely throughout the day. Pakistani authorities went as far as deploying additional police at markets around the country as the sun went down, for extra security in the darkness.

This isn’t the first time that Pakistan has suffered from widespread blackouts. Reporting from the Associated Press noted that Monday’s outage was “ reminiscent of a massive blackout that occurred almost exactly two years ago, in January 2021, attributed at the time to a technical fault in Pakistan’s power generation and distribution system.” This week’s blackout has catalyzed pre-existing nationwide distrust of the government’s tactics and capacities, and stoked fears and outrage about the government’s handling of the nation’s economic crisis.

A significant energy shortage is one of the main drivers of the nation’s current economic crisis. Pakistan’s high level of dependence on imports of foreign fossil fuels to keep the lights on has left the country “acutely vulnerable to to hikes in global oil and gas prices.” This has led to devastating consequences for the cash-strapped country as the energy war between Europe and Russia has caused widespread market volatility and driven energy costs up to painful levels.

According to the Asian Development Bank, Pakistan imports “nearly a third of its energy resources in the form of oil, coal, and liquefied natural gas (LNG).” Pakistan’s own Dawn Newspaper slammed the government this week for its ‘self-inflicted’ economic crisis based on “unsustainable energy policies — price and availability — coupled with constant currency volatility,” which it says “have kept the country’s export potential capped.”

Indeed, experts say that the nation has barely enough left in its coffers for one more month of crucial energy and fuel imports. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is currently discussing how to mitigate the crisis unfolding in Pakistan, starting with softening some conditions for a proposed $6 billion bailout, which the government fears will only fuel inflation. It would come on the heels of another $1.1 billion in IMF aid given to Islamabad in August. “Since then,” Associated Press reports, “discussions between the two parties have oscillated due to Pakistan’s reluctance to impose new tax measures.”

While there has been no shortage of mismanagement on the part of the Pakistani government, this problem is not just a Pakistani problem. Far from it. Economists and development experts have been warning for months that Europe would not be the real victim of the European energy crisis. Rather, it is the import-dependent and cash-poor countries in the developing world that will suffer the most. The International Energy Agency cautioned that as Europe has managed to stay afloat through a mild winter, for the rest of the world, the crisis is just beginning. Following in Pakistan’s footsteps, oil-importing nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America will be extremely hard-hit, as fuel prices continue to batter their relatively weak currencies.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

FEMICIDE U$A

Opinion: She had abortion in Detroit warehouse. It inspired 50 years of service.

Nancy Kaffer, Detroit Free Press
Wed, January 25, 2023 at 9:06 PM MST·12 min read

It was quiet at Northland Family Planning, so quiet that it was hard to believe anything unusual had happened.

The day's patients were gone. A staff member worked alone at the front desk. Renee Chelian, the abortion clinic's founder and executive director, couldn't stop crying.

It was Friday, June 24, in the clinic Chelian built, a place where women and girls can find the care and compassion she couldn't, and it had been just hours since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, the decision that affirmed American women's constitutional right to abortion.

For five decades, Renee, now 71, has been the woman she wishes had been there for her in the summer of 1966, when she was a scared, pregnant teenager: The woman who holds your hand and tells you everything will be all right. Who makes sure her clinic is clean, and safe, and comfortable; that the lighting in the exam rooms is gentle, that the soap in the washroom smells nice, anything that could make the hardest day of your life just a little bit easier. Who cares enough to say no, when she sees that a patient isn't sure whether to end a pregnancy. The woman who can't quit, and who knows she cannot fail.

It has been 49 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not bar American women from access to abortion, granting women the full citizenship a person can only claim when she has the right to control her own body.

On June 24, the court's six-justice conservative majority determined that Roe had been wrongly decided, that the right to privacy first identified in 1965 in Griswold v. Connecticut, a ruling that barred states from restricting access to birth control, did not exist, and that the right to abortion was not rooted in our nation's history and traditions.

Renee Chelian, executive director and founder of the Northland Family Planning Centers poses Friday, June 24, 2022 in a clinic wearing a shirt with a nod to the year Roe v. Wade was sworn into law.

More: Michigan ballot initiative seeks to guarantee abortion rights after Roe v. Wade decision

More: Whitmer, Planned Parenthood lawsuits loom large in Michigan after high court overturns Roe

In Michigan, that means abortion might become a crime again, like it was when 15-year-old Renee got an illegal abortion in a Detroit warehouse, a procedure that would have killed her if not for antibiotics and a doctor who was willing to prescribe them.

The high court's 1973 ruling rendered a 1931 law criminalizing abortion unenforceable, so Michigan's Legislature never repealed it. With Roe out of the way, abortion would already be a crime here, if not for two lawsuits asking state courts to declare that the old law violates Michigan's constitution, and a state judge who issued an injunction barring enforcement of the law while the cases are pending.

So for now, abortion is legal in Michigan. Abortion rights advocates are also collecting signatures for a petition drive to place a constitutional amendment before voters this fall that would enshrine not just abortion rights but access to contraception. If the amendment passes, Northland Family Planning won't have to close.
1966

Renee Chelian was 15, and she had just finished her sophomore year of high school. She knew she was pregnant, and she was terrified.

Her 16-year-old boyfriend had been trying to talk her into having sex, and she'd said no, over and over. He had broken up with Renee, started dating her friend. They lived in the small community of Highland Park, where everyone knew each other's business, and everyone said that the friend was sleeping with him. When he asked Renee to get back together, she knew what she was agreeing to. The boyfriend tried to buy condoms. No one would sell them to him, but her boyfriend thought he could pull out. Renee figured, later, that she got pregnant the first time.

Trying to hide her condition, she wrapped up pristine maxi pads and tossed them in the bathroom trash. She thought about ending her life. One night, she found a razor, and filled the bathtub with hot water. She cut her thumb, and realized she couldn't do it — she couldn't let her parents find her this way.

Finally, her mother figured it out. In 1966, there weren't a lot of options, so Renee was packing a suitcase, preparing to marry her boyfriend and move to Ohio to live with his relatives — this would mean leaving high school to become a wife and mother — the night her parents came into her bedroom. The boyfriend's politically connected father had found a doctor who would perform an abortion.

Renee Chelian, executive director and founder of the Northland Family Planning Centers, walks through her office Friday, June 24, 2022.

Renee didn't know what an abortion was, but she knew it was a lifeline.

"I said to my mom, 'I would do anything not to be pregnant,' " she said. "I really felt like God had given me a second chance at my life."

The boyfriend's father paid for the procedure, more than $22,000 in today's dollars; Renee's family didn't have that kind of money.

On the appointed day, she and her father met another man in a nearby parking lot. He blindfolded them, and took Renee and her father to what seemed like a warehouse. It was packed with women and girls, and it wasn't very clean. Renee was afraid to look at anyone, fearful that if she violated some unwritten rule she'd be denied the abortion.

She doesn't remember a lot about that day. She was put under, and when she woke up, someone was telling her father that she had been farther along than they thought. They'd packed her uterus with gauze. In a few days, they explained, she would go into labor. The family's doctor had referred her parents to another gynecologist, newly arrived from South America, who had lost a family member to an illegal abortion. He prescribed antibiotics.

It took more than a week, and a trip to another warehouse.

A few days after the second visit, she went into labor. It was hot that day, probably a hundred degrees, but the windows at home were closed, so no one could hear her scream. When it was over, the boyfriend's father paid another $200 — nearly $2,000, in today's dollars — and someone came by to dispose of the evidence.

Renee's father spoke to her very seriously that night.

"'You can never tell anyone, because no man will ever marry you if he knows that this has happened. You're going to be OK. We're going to take care of you. After this conversation, we'll never discuss it again.'"
1976

Renee had been working in abortion clinics for three years, since Roe made the procedure legal in Michigan. Before that, she'd booked flights for Michigan women to Buffalo, where abortions could be legally performed.

She worked, at first, with that South American doctor who had saved her life, but Renee had grown frustrated with his rigid approach to medicine.

Renee Chelian at her Northland Family Planning Clinic in Detroit in 1992.

The clinics she'd worked in were clean, but she wanted spotless. Anyone who walked in should feel so safe that they'd bring their own daughter there. She wanted the clinic to be pretty, so patients would feel valued, that they would know Renee and her staff had considered what might please them. She wanted to give them information without an office visit, a formality most doctors insisted on. She wanted to offer counseling, to help patients reach the decision that felt right, whether that meant having an abortion, or keeping the baby.

What Renee wanted was a refuge, and she knew that no physician could create it. It was compassionate care, a new model built by Renee and that first generation of abortion providers.

She and her husband had been saving for a house, and they had $100,000. Renee asked him, "What if I use this money to open a clinic?

"He said, 'Do you think you can succeed?' I said, 'Well, I don't think I can fail.' And that was that."
1982

Renee had never told anyone her story, just as her father had instructed, not even her husband. But it was 1982. NARAL, the National Abortion Rights Action League, was calling for a "speak out," and Renee knew it was time.

First, she talked to her parents. Her mother understood. Her father ... he didn't approve, but he trusted her instincts.

When she told her husband, he shared his own experience with her: A former Highland Park police officer, before Roe, part of his job had been to go to the local emergency rooms and interrogate women who'd been admitted for complications from illegal abortions. Feverish, bleeding, they looked sick, and Renee's husband was supposed to badger them about who'd performed the procedure. He'd hated it, he told her. He did everything he could to avoid it.

Renee wanted to tell her mother-in-law, too. They shared a last name, and it only seemed fair.

Renee Chelian, executive director and founder of the Northland Family Planning Centers, talks about the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade from her office Friday, June 24, 2022.

"We told her in the car driving to Frankenmuth. My mother-in-law was born in Syria, and she was very old country. I was in the back seat, and I leaned forward, and I started telling her, and she told me, 'Good for you. I almost died of an illegal abortion in Syria.' My husband took the car off the road, back on the road, I thought he was going to have a heart attack. And she's like, 'I'm really proud of you. Because nobody should have to risk their life.' That was the first time somebody else told me their abortion story."

She also told her ex-boyfriend.

"Anybody who knew us was going to know who I was pregnant by. I met with him for lunch. He told me that his father sent him away to camp, because his father was worried that he would not stay away from my house. While he was at camp, he said he wanted to kill himself, because he thought I was going die, and he was cut off from everything. He didn't have anybody to talk to. When he came to visit me when he came home, I kept him at arm's length, because we couldn't talk about this."

After high school, he joined the army, and served in Vietnam. He'd volunteered for the most dangerous assignments, the suicide missions, and got hooked on painkillers because of injuries he sustained. He later died of a drug overdose.

He has helped Renee to understand that men, too, have a role in this process. "If the patient is OK with us talking to them, we try to include them. Because from my own personal experience, they're just as scared."
Now

In 1980, and 1983, Renee had opened two more clinics. Everything she hoped has come to pass: Northland is a quiet, helpful place. A refuge.

Except for the protesters.

Most Saturdays, anti-abortion protesters throng the road leading to the Westland clinic, intent on harassing Northland's patients.

Signs at the turnoff direct patients not to lower their windows, not to stop. Escorts wait in the parking lot to help patients inside, shielding them with umbrellas. There are armed security guards, at least two, every Saturday. When Renee had a wall of trees planted around Northland's parking lot, protesters started bringing ladders. One man would climb his ladder, leaning over the tree line to point his AK-47 at the clinic, until Renee called the police, and the police told the man to knock it off. Now, he carries the weapon in a duffel bag.

Open carry is his right, he has explained to Renee, protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Renee doesn't really like to talk about the protesters; the women her clinic treats have been through enough. They're tired, they're worried, and they're scared, and knowing that someone with an AK-47 might be waiting at the end of this long, unwelcome journey might be just too much. Of course, that's what the protesters want.

And now, they've kind of won. The Saturday after the court ruled, they didn't show up. Probably celebrating somewhere, Renee figured.

That Friday morning, Renee was putting on makeup, the U.S. Supreme Court news site SCOTUSblog up on her phone. She didn't think the ruling would land that day, and when it did, she started to sob.

"My daughters both called me right away. Then the people in the management team at the clinic. Family members (of patients waiting at the clinic) had called and told their daughters, and everybody was crying. We had something that was going up on our Facebook to let patients know that abortion was legal, that we were operating under a court order, and they didn't have to rush in. It's reassuring staff, reassuring patients, that we would never do anything illegal. I texted with our attorneys. To be perfectly honest, I don't even know how many text messages I got. There was media, and also former employees who wanted to come back, or who want to know, what can I do? And lots of condolences."

She was heartbroken. She was also angry.

She still is.

Northland is open. Renee believes — and polling suggests — that the constitutional amendment will pass this fall, and that abortion rights will be safe here in Michigan. But Renee worries about women who live in deep red states. Like Mississippi, where Illinois is now the closest place for legal abortion. Or Ohio, where a six-week abortion ban passed before the day was out.

No exception for rape or incest or the life of the pregnant person can account for the totality of a woman's experience, of the moments that brought her here, to this clinic. To Renee.

"The patient comes here, because in her life situation, she can't have another baby. Women are not stupid. The decision about bringing new life into the world is not one that I have ever seen a patient take lightly."

Patients, she said, don't skirt around the word "baby."

"They don't come in and say, 'I'm exercising my constitutional right.' They come in and say, 'I can't have a baby right now.' The other side would have us believe that they didn't think about this. Nothing could be farther from the truth."

That is what Renee has learned, in five decades of service: Everybody's story means everything, to them.

And that is why she will not quit.

Nancy Kaffer is a columnist and member of the Free Press editorial board. She has covered local, state and national politics for two decades. Contact: nkaffer@freepress.com. Become a subscriber at Freep.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Opinion: She opened abortion clinic, now jeopardized by Roe's fall

Amsterdam’s New $65M Underwater Bike Garage Isn’t Even the Biggest in the Netherlands


Owen Bellwood
Thu, January 26, 2023 

A photo of crowded racks of bicycles outside Amsterdam station.

How many bikes on the racks?

There are some good things about life in America: gas is cheap, potatoes taste better and you’ll struggle to go a day without seeing a Ford Mustang. But then, it also has its drawbacks: cross-country trains are basically unusable, there’s no easy access to a Greggs and everyone seems happy to walk down the street and pay to do their laundry. Weird.

But one of the biggest flaws in America is its reluctance to properly invest in cycling infrastructure across its cities. This is a fact that becomes painfully apparent when you look across the Atlantic to The Netherlands.

This tiny country, which has an economy roughly 25 times smaller than the U.S., has just opened the doors to a new $65 million underground bike store. It’s an incredible site that has space to park 7,000 bikes right outside Amsterdam’s central station. And, perhaps the most interesting thing about the new site, it’s almost entirely underwater.

According to Bloomberg, the new bike store in the Dutch capital has been in the works for four years. This rather satisfying time lapse shows that its construction involved draining a section of Amsterdam’s famous canal, before assembling the garage and then re-flooding the area. It’s all mighty impressive. Bloomberg reports:



“Before construction began, engineers had to dam the entries to the basin from Amsterdam Harbor and pump the sealed-off area dry. Layers of sand were dredged before the basin’s edges were reinforced with concrete walls.

“Then the garage’s floor was laid and planted with a labyrinth of columns, shipped to the site by barge, to support the roof before water could refill the basin, completely inundating the submerged parking facility.”

While all that was going on, access routes to and from the station remained open, meaning Dutch travelers and commuters could carry on with their journeys as normal.

A photo of a tram passing the train station in Amsterdam.

A real city.

The garage is part of a mammoth infrastructure project to modernize the station in the Dutch capital. As well as the bike garage, there is also a new metro station, which quickly whisks travelers to the city’s outskirts, and a tram stop nearby can take you all around Amsterdam. Bloomberg reports:

“The garage, which opens Wednesday, is part of a wider revamp of the grand but extremely busy space in front of Amsterdam Centraal, the city’s main train station. Referred to locally as De Entree (because it is where rail passengers — and before them, ship passengers — enter the city), this sweeping space abutting the city’s harbor has been overhauled since 2017.

“Above ground, space has been taken from cars and given to pedestrians and bikes, while some roads have been cleared away to allow more room for the site’s defining feature: water.”

It means you can easily travel or cycle ‘round town and travel to the station with ample space for parking. What’s more, a second underwater, 4,000 bike garage will open to the public next month.

But biking in The Netherlands isn’t just big in Amsterdam. It’s big all across the country. And that means that this new flagship site isn’t even the biggest biking garage in the country, surprisingly.

A photo of the stacks of bikes in an underground garage in The Netherlands.

The biggest bike garage in the world is in Utrecht, NL.

That title instead goes to the city of Utrecht, which has a single cycle garage capable of storing 12,000 bikes. For anyone running a comparison, this one garage has almost half as many bicycle parking spaces as the whole of New York City.

What’s more, spaces in the garage are basically free to use! Cyclists are given their first day free of charge, and then subsequent days are charged at €1.35, which is about $1.50 today.

 Jalopnik

GM, Ford must convince investors they can profit as prices fall



Fri, January 27, 2023

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Co and Ford Motor Co are expected to report strong profits for 2022 next week, powered by premium-priced pickup trucks and sports utility vehicles (SUVs).

Now, the Detroit rivals must convince investors that last year's profit formula can keep working when costs for EV batteries are rising, high interest rates are cutting consumer purchasing power, and Tesla Inc is slashing prices.

Already there are signs the Detroit automakers are scaling back spending to offset competitive and economic pressure. GM has shelved for now plans to build a fourth EV battery plant in North America.

Ford is in talks with German unions to cut thousands of jobs in its European operations and possibly sell a German vehicle assembly plant. In October, it stopped funding autonomous vehicle affiliate Argo AI.

GM and Ford both rely on sales of pickup trucks and SUVs in the United States for the bulk of their global profits. This year, both automakers plan to ramp up sales of much less profitable electric vehicles in North America and other markets.

The risk to the Detroit automakers' profitability would be a challenge in the best of times. But now, GM and Ford must factor in forecasts for a slowdown, or even a recession, in the U.S. economy.

EV battery raw material costs are rising, but U.S. EV market leader Tesla is cutting prices on its best-selling Model 3 and Model Y vehicles by as much as 20%.

The Model Y SUV competes with Ford's Mustang Mach-E, GM's Cadillac Lyriq EV, and with combustion SUVs the Detroit automakers sell.

Morgan Stanley estimated increased prices added an average of $3 billion a year to Ford's pre-tax bottom line and was the equivalent of more than 200% of the improvement in the company's pre-tax profits for 2022.

GM, the No. 1 U.S. automaker by sales in 2022, said higher prices added $2.1 billion to pre-tax profits in the third quarter compared to the same quarter in 2021 - equivalent to nearly half of pre-tax profits for the period overall.

The company has told investors it will spend $35 billion on electric and automated vehicles between 2020 and 2025. Ford has put its planned EV investments at $50 billion through 2026.

"If we are entering a downturn," Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said, "what steps can they take to keep investing and remain strong?"

(Reporting by Joe White; Editing by Jan Harvey)

Yellen seeks to drum up private sector support for South Africa's energy transition




Fri, January 27, 2023 
By Andrea Shalal

EMALAHLENI, South Africa (Reuters) -U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday visited South Africa's coal mining region of Mpumalanga, pledging America's firm support to ensure the country's transition to renewable energy does not leave its workers behind.

Yellen met with South African officials after touring a U.S.-funded facility where workers are training for jobs in the solar industry and other renewable energy.

She said she would meet later Friday with philanthropists and private sector officials and hoped Washington's focus on a just transition would underpin their interest in backing the massive project aimed at supporting South Africa's gradual phasing out of fossil fuels.

The United States, Britain, France, Germany and the European Union backed South Africa's "Just Energy Transition Partnership," or JETP, in late 2021 with a combined $8.5 billion, but the total cost could be ten times that high.

"The financial package of $8.5 billion is a substantial down payment," Yellen said at the U.S.-funded Top of the World Training Center.

"Importantly, it is designed to mobilize additional money from the private sector and philanthropies, and I will meet with representatives from both groups later today," she said.

Yellen told reporters she had no specific sums in mind for how much donors and the private sector could contribute, but said she believed that focusing on "the just part" would be "extremely important" in leveraging additional funds.

She said U.S. officials also discussed anti-corruption efforts in great detail with South African officials, and were looking to help Pretoria strengthen its rules and enforcement.

"We agree that it's really critical to address corruption in order to have an effective government that South Africans can have confidence in, and it's a critical part of the business environment," she said, when asked if corruption concerns could dampen interest by donors and the private sector.

South Africa's plan calls for job retraining and reskilling, cash payments to support displaced workers, redevelopment of former coal mines and coal power plants as clean energy production sites and other productive uses, as well as investment in roads, rail, ports, and digital infrastructure.

"The United States' commitment to the energy transition being 'just' is firm. That is why President Biden made an additional commitment to President Ramaphosa of $45 million in grant funding to support South Africa’s efforts," Yellen said.

Owing to its reliance on coal for electricity, South Africa is the world's 14th biggest carbon emitter, three places ahead of Britain, an economy seven and a half times the size, according to data from the Global Carbon Atlas.

But President Cyril Ramaphosa's plan to transition South Africa away from coal and towards renewable energy has divided the governing African National Congress (ANC). Union leaders allied to the party fear massive job losses in the coal belt that they doubt the renewables business will be able to plug.

The Treasury secretary had a "frank" exchange of views with both Ramaphosa and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe - a vocal defender of keeping South Africa's coal mines and power stations open - about the partnership, the U.S. ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety, told reporters on Thursday.

They agreed on the need to transition to a low-carbon-emission economy, but raised questions about how they could get there and on what timetable, he said.

Yellen is wrapping up a three-country visit to Africa, with stops in Senegal and Zambia, that is aimed at deepening U.S. economic ties with the continent and countering China's long dominance of trade and lending with many African nations.

(Reporting by Andrea ShalalEditing by Tim Cocks, Toby Chopra and Mark Potter)

Yellen welcomes South Africa's energy transition, steers clear of Russia mention





Thu, January 26, 2023 
By Andrea Shalal and Kopano Gumbi

PRETORIA (Reuters) -U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday lauded South Africa's "bold" participation in an energy transition partnership backed by the United States and other Western nations but steered clear of mentioning U.S. concerns about Pretoria's planned military drills with China and Russia.

Yellen spoke to reporters alongside South African Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana in Pretoria on the third leg of her nearly two-week tour of Africa, and just days after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited South Africa.

She welcomed Godongwana's "cooperation and insightful views" in their previous discussions, and said she would raise several issues, including Zambia's stalled sovereign debt restructuring effort, given South Africa's key role on the country's creditor committee.


"The United States strongly values our relationship with South Africa," Yellen said in remarks that included no mention of Russia or China, or White House concerns about Pretoria's plans to hold joint military drills with both countries.

Washington was not asking countries to choose sides, focusing instead on America's plans in South Africa and beyond, a senior Treasury official said.

U.S. officials did brief the South Africans on U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia over its war in Ukraine to avoid possible misunderstandings, the official told reporters.

Godongwana said the two would discuss countering the financing of terrorism, climate financing, resolving sovereign debt crises in Africa and global topics that will form part of a meeting of the G20 group of major economies next month.

He said Yellen's visit was a "momentous" occasion, noting that the previous visit by a U.S. Treasury secretary was in 2014, and praised Yellen's announcement on Wednesday that the United States and South Africa were setting up a joint task force on combating the financing of wildlife trafficking.

South Africa has remained one of Moscow's most important allies on a continent divided over Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Yellen's trip has kicked off a yearlong charm offensive of U.S. top leader visits to Africa aimed at deepening U.S. economic ties with the continent and countering China's long dominance of trade and lending with many African nations.

Throughout her visit, Yellen has emphasized the right of countries to choose their trading partners while pitching the greater transparency and lasting nature of engagement with the United States.

The Treasury secretary, who met with South Africa Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe later on Thursday, singled out South Africa's "Just Energy Transition Partnership," backed in late 2021 by the United States, Britain, France, Germany and the European Union, as a key to future growth.

They pledged a combined $8.5 billion to accelerate South Africa's transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, but South Africa's plan could cost five times that much.

"This partnership represents South Africa's bold first step toward expanding electricity access and reliability and creating a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy," Yellen said, adding that it would "alleviate the deep fiscal strain the energy sector is putting on South Africa's economy."

Yellen had a "frank" exchange of views with both Ramaphosa and Mantashe about the partnership, the U.S. ambassador to South Africa, Reuben Brigety, told reporters.

The need to transition to a low-carbon-emission economy was not in dispute, but South African officials questioned how they could get there and on what timetable, he said.

Yellen assured them that the partners would continue to support South Africa's transition and work with them on their plans, Brigety said.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Kopano Gumbi in Pretoria; Editing by Matthew Lewis, Alexander Winning, Toby Chopra and Mark Porter)

IT'S HIS WAR ON THE KURDS

Analysis-Erdogan thrusts NATO expansion issue into Turkey's tense election campaign

  


Thu, January 26, 2023 
By Huseyin Hayatsever, Birsen Altayli and Jonathan Spicer

ANKARA (Reuters) - Two provocative incidents in Stockholm this month have energised Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan ahead of tight elections and dimmed Sweden and Finland's hopes of joining NATO before the summer, diplomats, analysts and opposition politicians say.

Erdogan was quick to thrust the issue of NATO expansion into domestic politics after a copy of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, was burned at the weekend, and an effigy of the Turkish leader was strung from a lamppost a week earlier.

The incidents, while not illegal in Sweden, hobbled Stockholm's effort to win Ankara's support for its bid to join U.S.-led NATO, which Sweden made last May alongside Finland in the face of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

For Erdogan, it was an opportunity to rally support and distract from a cost-of-living crisis weighing on voters' minds, analysts said, with polls showing he could lose to some presidential challengers in the May 14 vote.

Facing his biggest political test in two decades in power, he took a stance that has proven effective before - criticising perceived Islamophobia in Europe and support for "members of terrorist organisations and enemies of Islam" in Sweden.

Leaders of the opposition alliance looking to topple Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted AK Party scrambled this week to fall in line with his view, and even take a harder line.

Meral Aksener, leader of the IYI Party, parliament's fourth-biggest, said it would take "an even more concrete step" and file a criminal complaint against both the Swedish government and perpetrators of the "vile act".

"Erdogan and his fellows want to use these foreign policy issues in general for domestic political gains," she told party members on Wednesday.

The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) also condemned the incidents in Sweden and said they would serve Erdogan's re-election campaign.

The Koran was set alight on Saturday by a far-right Danish politician, while earlier a pro-Kurdish group strung up the Erdogan effigy. Both incidents were criticised by Swedish government officials.

But Erdogan said this week that Sweden could no longer expect Turkey's support for its NATO bid, and Ankara cancelled a planned trilateral meeting. Finland said the sides need a "time out" for a few weeks until "the dust has settled".

WAITING GAME

All 30 NATO member states must approve newcomers.

To address Turkey's concerns, Sweden and Finland pledged last summer to take a harder line against what Ankara labels as mainly Kurdish "terrorists" - allegedly linked to PKK separatist militants in Turkey's southeast - living there.

Washington, Stockholm and Helsinki had hoped Ankara would ratify the NATO bids before Turkey's election. But that prospect faded even before the Stockholm protests, given Erdogan's calls for dozens of extraditions and deportations that Swedish law would not allow.

Ozer Sencar, chairman of pollster Metropoll, said that amplifying foreign policy and security issues ahead of elections allows Erdogan to consolidate his voter base.

He "creates a perception of a 'strong leader' inside Turkey," he said. "If you can come up with a security problem, then people rally behind the strong leader."

Both Swedish and Finnish officials have acknowledged that Turkey's reaction to their membership bids - and security concerns - has had domestic political dimensions.

"Of course they feel the pressure from the upcoming elections in mid-May and because of that the discussion understandably has become heated in many ways in Turkey," Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto told Reuters.

He said Turkey is likely to ratify the Nordic countries' membership after the May presidential and parliamentary elections, and before a NATO summit in Vilnius on July 11-12.

But a Western diplomat who requested anonymity said the issue was "completely taken over by election politics" and that ratification could come as late as October, when the Turkish parliament reconvenes after the summer.

While Erdogan's government backs the Nordics' NATO bid with conditions, his political opponents had been more supportive - before the Stockholm incidents.

ECONOMY TRUMPS FOREIGN POLICY?

His AK Party, now the biggest, is likely to remain a powerful force in parliament after the elections, but opinion polls show Erdogan trailing some potential presidential challengers including CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu and the popular mayors of Istanbul and Ankara.

Erdogan has sought to ease Turks' economic woes by delivering a large hike to the minimum wage this year and reducing the age limit for retirement for millions, among other fiscal stimulus measures.

But analysts say the economy will likely remain the determining factor for most voters rather than foreign policy.

Sinan Ulgen, director of the Istanbul-based Centre for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies and a former diplomat, noted that NATO enlargement is a non-partisan issue.

"This time the ruling and opposition parties have the same position on the (NATO Nordics) matter, so it does not seem to be a topic for domestic politics," he said.

(Writing by Huseyin Hayatsever and Ali Kucukgocmen, editing by Mark Heinrich)

Why Turkey is blocking NATO's expansion

Joel Mathis, Contributing Writer
Thu, January 26, 2023 

Turkey, Finland, and Sweden. Illustrated | Gettyimages

The expansion of NATO is going … haltingly. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland have applied to join the military alliance that includes the United States and much of Western Europe. But the process has hit a stumbling block. The Associated Press reports that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this week said Sweden "can no longer expect any charity from us regarding their NATO membership application" after right-wing protesters burned a Koran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. Finland's foreign minister followed that by suggesting his country could join the alliance without Sweden if necessary. Why is Turkey opposed to NATO expansion? And how might this affect the war in Europe? Here's everything you need to know:
Why do Finland and Sweden want to join NATO?

One word: Russia. Finland shares a long border with Russia, and Sweden sits on the Baltic Sea where much of the Russian Navy operates. But both were longtime holdouts against joining the military alliance — they were officially neutral throughout the Cold War — until Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade another neighbor, Ukraine, in 2022. "Public support for NATO membership in the Nordic countries shot up virtually overnight after the start of the invasion," Axios reports. The two countries jointly applied for membership in May 2022. "Everything has changed when Russia attacked Ukraine," Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said at the time. "And I personally think that we cannot trust anymore there will be a peaceful future next to Russia."

What's the holdup?

NATO can't add new countries without approval from the government of every single country in the alliance. That wasn't a big deal when NATO had just 12 members, but now there are 30 countries in the organization. (In the United States, that requirement means two-thirds of the Senate must approve such applications: That happened by a 95-1 vote in August.) That means any single country can slow down the process if it chooses. "Joining NATO was never meant to be this hard, but because the alliance is now so big it just complicates things because you have to get 30 different leaders lined up and on the same page and 30 different legislatures lined up on the same page," The Atlantic Council's Christopher Skaluba tells The Hill.
Who are the holdouts?

Turkey and Hungary, but Hungary is expected to approve the applications this year. Erdogan, meanwhile, wants Sweden to "do more to tackle terrorist support among a Kurdish population of about 100,000, and to extradite suspects," Bloomberg reports. The Financial Times adds that Turkey wants Sweden to cut ties with Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) — a Kurdish militia that led the campaign against ISIS in Syria, but which also has ties to the Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) that has waged an insurgency against Turkey since 1980. Sweden has tried to "distance itself" from the offending group, Reuters reports. (And it has also lifted an arms embargo against Turkey.). But it hasn't extradited the suspects that Turkey seeks.

What is the U.S. doing?

The United States, of course, is first among equals in the NATO alliance — so you would expect American leaders to push Turkey toward approving Sweden and Finland's applications. Indeed, U.S. and Turkish officials met in mid-January to discuss both NATO and other "defense cooperation" topics. EuroNews reports that Turkey made clear that it wants to upgrade its fleet of U.S.-made F-16 jet fighters. But Voice of America says complying with that request might not be so simple: Congress has to approve the sale of fighters to Turkey — and NATO expansion won't be the only condition of approval. The U.S. also wants a promise that Turkey won't take military action in northern Syria. In other words: It's complicated.

How does this affect the war in Ukraine?

Bloomberg's editors say the holdup "puts Europe's wider security at risk." Both countries have "considerable" defense capabilities that could come in useful "at a time when the alliance's resources are stretched from assisting Ukraine." But Russian leaders seem to think that — despite the slow process — the addition of Finland and Sweden is a done deal: Valery Gerasimov, the top Russian general in Ukraine, says planned reforms to the military include the ability to respond to threats posed by "the aspirations of the North Atlantic Alliance to expand to Finland and Sweden."

What's next?

The future is still muddy. Pekka Haavisto, the Finnish foreign minister, reportedly "backpedaled" after suggesting his country might join NATO without Sweden at its side — though The Associated Press notes it was the first time an official in either country had "raised doubts" about joining the alliance together. A resolution might not be in the offing for a while yet: The Wall Street Journal reports that Turkey won't officially take up approval of NATO expansion until its national elections, most likely in May

 

'Constant danger': Life after leprosy, a long neglected disease

Issued on: 28/01/2023 

There are fears that pandemic disruptions have led to thousands not being diagnosed with the age-old disease 

Paris (AFP) – Dan Izzett has lived with leprosy's effects on his body for 70 years, and has lost much to what he calls an "ancient, fascinating, very unkind disease".

The Zimbabwean former civil engineering technician and pastor was diagnosed at the age of 25 in 1972, but first contracted the disease when he was just five.

That long incubation period gave the bacteria that causes leprosy, Mycobacterium leprae, lots of time to spread through his body.

His right leg was amputated in 1980 in Zimbabwe's capital Harare. Now 75, Izzett has no feeling above his elbows, below his knees or in 70 percent of his face.

That lack of feeling poses a "constant danger," Izzett told AFP in a phone call from his home in southwest England.

In October 2020, "I put my hands on a hot plate and hadn't noticed it until I could smell my flesh burning," he said, leading to the amputation of the middle finger of his right hand.

The following year, the little toe on his left foot was amputated. Last month, he lost another toe.

Izzett said he chose to speak out about his experience because millions of survivors who were less well off were unable to, partly because of the stigma and discrimination that still surrounds the disease.

The 'forgotten' patients

Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, has been haunting humanity for at least 4,000 years, often affecting the poorest communities.

It is a considered a neglected tropical disease by the World Health Organization, and remains under researched and little discussed compared to many other illnesses.

In 2021, more than 140,500 new cases were detected worldwide, nearly three quarters of them in Brazil, India and Indonesia, according to the WHO.

However pandemic-related disruptions have led to nearly 40 percent fewer cases being detected a year, with fears that tens of thousands have gone undiagnosed.

Even before the pandemic, the official numbers likely did not reflect reality.

"We know the number of patients who have been tested, but we do not count the forgotten, undetected patients," said Bertrand Cauchoix, a leprosy specialist at the Raoul Follereau Foundation in France.

This is in part because the disease's incubation period can last up to 20 years. Testing and diagnosis also takes time, during which patients could potentially infect their family members.

Before he received his diagnosis, said Izzett, "my wife got the disease from me".

Back in the 1970s, Izzett was given the antibiotic Dapsone, which was then a lifetime treatment.

In the mid-80s, a combination of drugs including Dapsone known as multidrug therapy (MDT) became available. It can cure leprosy over a 12-month course -- though nerve damage and other remnants of the disease remain.

Mathias Duck, a former chaplain in Paraguay's capital Asuncion, only needed six-months of MDT after being diagnosed with leprosy in 2010.

"I consider myself the luckiest person affected by leprosy because I was diagnosed and treated in time and so I have no impairments whatsoever," the 44-year-old told AFP.

The WHO provides MDT to patients worldwide for free, with Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis donating doses since 2000.

However there has been little progress for new treatments.

"There is no money for leprosy, only charitable donations," Cauchoix said.

Don't use the 'L word'

Alexandra Aubry, a specialist at the Centre for Immunology and Infectious Diseases in France, evaluates whether every new antibiotic developed for other illnesses could also be used for leprosy.

Her laboratory is one of the few in the world able to carry out tests on the leprosy bacteria, which does not survive in a petri dish.

They are trying to find a way to "simplify" treatment so it can take less than six months, she said.

There are also a couple of vaccines being developed, though they remain in early phases of human testing.

"It is very complex to get funding for this," Aubry said.

"To assess the effectiveness of a vaccine, you have to follow the vaccinated population for 10 to 15 years," with the timeframe extended further by the disease's long incubation period, she said.

In comparison to how swiftly the world responded to Covid, leprosy efforts are "a drop in the bucket," Duck said, calling for far more research and political action.

But he added that there is something everyone can do for World Leprosy Day on Sunday -- stop using the word "leper".

"We call it the 'L word'," Duck said, describing it as discriminatory.

"It's a little step that most people can do," he added, "to give people affected by leprosy "the dignity they deserve".

© 2023 AFP