Who is Joseph Kony? The altar boy who became Africa's most wanted man

Tonny Raymond Kirabira, Teaching Fellow, University of Portsmouth

Dennis Jjuuko, Doctoral Candidate, UMass Boston

THE CONVERSATION
Tue, March 7, 2023 

Joseph Kony speaks to journalists in southern Sudan in November 2006. 

Stuart Price/AFP via Getty Images

Eleven years ago, a documentary catapulted the name Joseph Kony onto the global stage. The controversial film Kony 2012 told the story of a Ugandan warlord whose forces are believed by the United Nations to be responsible for the deaths of more than 100,000 people, the abduction of at least 20,000 children and the displacement of more than two million people.

Though most of the world hadn’t heard of Kony before then, Ugandans knew and feared him. The founder of the Lord’s Resistance Army unleashed a wave of violence across northern Uganda for two decades.

In 2005, the International Criminal Court brought charges of crimes against humanity against Kony and four of his top commanders. In 2013 and 2021, the US announced a US million bounty for information leading to Kony’s capture.


Read more: ICC upholds jail term for Ugandan rebel commander Ongwen - why it matters for Africa

He remains at large.

Now the International Criminal Court wants to confirm the charges against Kony in his absence. The hope is that this will renew international efforts to find Africa’s most wanted fugitive.

So, who is Joseph Kony?

His early life

Joseph Rao Kony was born in 1961 in Odek sub-county in northern Uganda. He was one of six children in the Acholi middle-class family of Luizi Obol and Nora Oting.

Kony’s parents were farmers. His father was a Catholic, his mother an Anglican. Kony was an altar boy until 1976. He dropped out of school at age 15 to become a traditional healer.

In 1987, aged 26, Kony founded the Lord’s Resistance Army, a Christian fundamentalist organisation that operated in northern Uganda until 2006.
Altar boy turned rebel leader

Kony rose to prominence after taking over the Holy Spirit Movement, a rebel group led by Alice Lakwena, his aunt, to topple the Ugandan government.

The Holy Spirit Movement was formed after Ugandan president Tito Okello, an Acholi, was overthrown by the National Resistance Army – led by Yoweri Museveni – in January 1986. The Acholis largely occupy northern Uganda.

Museveni’s National Resistance Army was a rebel outfit that later metamorphosed into the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces. Today it’s the national army.

When it came to power, the National Resistance Army appeared to deliberately target the Acholi population in the north. Villagers were violently attacked by army troops and subjected to food shortages. Houses were burnt down, leading to forced displacements. The scale of these attacks was never documented or substantiated.

Kony joined the Holy Spirit Movement to fight for the rights of the Acholi. By 1987, however, army troops had crushed the movement – Lakwena escaped into Kenya where she died in a refugee camp in 2007.

Kony established the Lord’s Resistance Army and proclaimed himself his people’s prophet. He soon turned against his supporters, supposedly in an effort to “purify” the Acholi and turn Uganda into a theocracy.

The rebel group carried out indiscriminate killings. It forcibly recruited boys as soldiers and girls as sex slaves.

Read more: In one of 2016's best books, a former Lord's Resistance Army child soldier reveals the reason behind the mayhem

Ideologically, the group espoused a mix of mysticism, Acholi nationalism and Christian fundamentalism. It claimed to be establishing a theocratic state based on the biblical 10 commandments and Acholi tradition.

Kony proclaimed himself the spokesperson of God. He claimed to have been visited by a multinational host of 13 spirits, including a Chinese phantom.
Kony’s military offensive

Kony and his rebel outfit committed a string of atrocities against civilians. The group waged war for more than two decades within Uganda – and later in the politically unstable neighbouring countries of Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Central African Republic – in an effort to topple Museveni. The actual number of militia members varied over this period, hitting a high of 3,000 soldiers in the early 2000s.

After the 11 September 2001 terror attacks in the US, the American government designated the Lord’s Resistance Army a terrorist group.

In 2005, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for top commanders of the Lord’s Resistance Army for crimes against humanity.

In August 2008, the US declared Kony a global terrorist, a designation that carries financial and other penalties.

Read more: Ugandan rebel Joseph Kony: the latest US arrest bid raises questions

The Lord’s Resistance Army was eventually forced out of Uganda following the failed Juba peace talks of 2006-2008 between the group’s leadership and the Ugandan government. The talks were mediated by the government of southern Sudan.

Kony and his militia went into hiding in the DRC. In December 2008, Uganda, DRC and Sudan launched an offensive dubbed Operation Lightning Thunder to track them down.

Kony’s rebel group attacked Congolese civilians suspected of supporting the operation. Villagers were raped, their limbs mutilated and hundreds killed. The group eventually splintered to evade capture, with most members escaping into the Central African Republic.

Uganda called off the operation in March 2009, saying the Lord’s Resistance Army was at its weakest point ever.

In November 2013, Central African Republic officials reported that Kony was ready to negotiate his surrender. He was reported to be in poor health in Nzoka, a town in the country’s eastern region. He never showed up.

By 2017, the rebel group’s membership had shrunk to an estimated 100 soldiers. In April that year, the US and Ugandan governments ended efforts to find Kony. They stated he no longer posed a significant security risk to Uganda. But he is still wanted by the International Criminal Court.
Kony today

Some of the fighters from the Lord’s Resistance Army took advantage of Uganda’s 2000 amnesty programme, which offered blanket immunity to any rebel who had taken up arms against the government since 1986.

Kony’s exact location, however, remains unknown. He’s thought to be hiding in the vast jungles of the Central African Republic or in Sudan.

While attempts to bring Kony to justice continue, post-conflict northern Uganda is on the slow path to economic and social recovery.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. 

It was written by: Dennis Jjuuko, UMass Boston and Tonny Raymond Kirabira, University of Portsmouth.

Read more:

Child victim, soldier, war criminal: unpacking Dominic Ongwen’s journey

Kony 2012 and the case of the invisible media

Flirting with fire: African leaders and international law

Georgia's opposition calls fresh protests over new law after clashes

Wed, March 8, 2023 

Georgian opposition and civil society groups called for new protests Wednesday against government plans to introduce controversial "foreign agent" legislation, reminiscent of Russian legislation to pressure critics.

The calls came after more than sixty of people were detained and dozens of police officers wounded in violent clashes that broke out in the capital Tbilisi late Tuesday, amid fears of democratic backsliding in Georgia.

"Starting from 3:00 pm (1100 GMT), Georgians will start to gather on Rustaveli Avenue and that will continue every day," politician Nika Melia said.

Civil society groups called for protests outside parliament later Wednesday.

They are opposing a bill on the "transparency of foreign funding", which critics say resembles a Russian law against "foreign agents".

In Russia, the foreign agent label, which recalls the term "enemies of the people" of the Soviet era, has been used extensively by the authorities against political opponents, journalists and human rights activists accused of conducting foreign-funded political activities.

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili has defended his "balanced" Russia policy as aimed at ensuring "peace and stability".

After lawmakers gave initial backing for the draft law, thousands took to the streets on Tuesday.

Georgia's President Salome Zourabichvili expressed support for the demonstrators and vowed to veto the legislation.

Police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse the protesters.

Demonstrators had "thrown various objects -- stones, inflammable and blunt objects... physically assaulted and resisted policemen," the interior ministry said.

- Molotov cocktails -

"Later, people started an organised attack on the parliament building, throwing so-called 'Molotov cocktails' and fireworks," the ministry said.

It added that 66 people has been arrested for minor hooliganism and disobeying law enforcement forces.

Up to 50 police officers were wounded in the clashes, the ministry added, with several still hospitalised.

"No matter how many times they disperse us, no matter how much gas they use, we will gather again and again, and there should be more and more of us," Melia was cited as saying in local media.

Melia is chairman of the United National Movement party of Georgia's jailed ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili.

Georgia's treatment of Saakashvili, whose health has drastically deteriorated in jail, has drawn international condemnation.

Late last month, European Union member states issued a formal diplomatic warning to Georgia's leaders over Saakashvili's health.

In recent years Georgian authorities have faced mounting international criticism over a perceived backsliding on democracy, seriously damaging Tbilisi's ties with Brussels.

Georgia applied for EU membership together with Ukraine and Moldova days after Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year.

In June, EU leaders granted formal candidate status to Kyiv and Chisinau but said Tbilisi must implement a number of reforms first.

Plans to join NATO and the EU are enshrined in Georgia's constitution and are supported by at least 80 percent of the population, according to opinion polls.

bur/dt/js

Clashes in Georgia over contentious 'foreign agents' law

Tue, March 7, 2023 

Georgian police used tear gas and water cannon against protesters Tuesday as thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in the capital Tbilisi to oppose a controversial "foreign agents" bill.

At one point a protester opposed to the law, which would impose registration requirements on media and NGOs with foreign ties, threw a Molotov cocktail at a cordon of riot police, according to television footage.

The demonstration took place after Georgian lawmakers earlier Tuesday gave their initial backing to the draft law, which is reminiscent of Russia's legislation used to crack down on dissent.

In recent years Georgian authorities have faced mounting international criticism over perceived backsliding on democracy, seriously damaging Tbilisi's ties with Brussels.

In 2012, Russia adopted a law that allows authorities to take action against NGOs, media outlets and others deemed "foreign agents".

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili expressed support for the demonstrators and vowed to veto the legislation.

"I stand with you because you are representing today the free Georgia which sees its future in Europe and will not let anyone steal this future," she said in a video from the United States where she is on an official visit.

"Nobody has the right to take away your future," she said in the address, with the Statue of Liberty seen in the background.

The US embassy in Georgia called the legislation "Kremlin-inspired" and said it was incompatible with the country's desire to join the European Union.

"Today is a dark day for Georgia's democracy," the embassy said in a statement, adding that the legislation raised questions about "the ruling party's commitment to Euro-Atlantic integration".

In Russia, the foreign agent label, which is reminiscent of the term "enemies of the people" of the Soviet era, has been used extensively by the authorities against political opponents, journalists and human rights activists accused of conducting foreign-funded political activities.

According to recently amended Russian legislation, anyone "under foreign influence" or receiving support from abroad -- not just foreign money -- can be declared a "foreign agent".

- Democratic backsliding -

Georgia applied for EU membership together with Ukraine and Moldova, days after Russia on February 24 invaded Ukraine.

In June last year, EU leaders granted formal candidate status to Kyiv and Chisinau but said Tbilisi must implement a number of reforms first.

Plans to join NATO and the EU are enshrined in Georgia's constitution and, according to opinion polls, are supported by at least 80 percent of the population.

In 2008, Russia and Georgia fought a five-day war but in recent years rights activists have accused the Georgian authorities of drifting towards the Kremlin.

Thousands of Russian men have fled to Georgia after President Vladimir Putin announced a military mobilisation last September.

Initially welcoming, Georgia has over the course of the past year deported a number of Russian activists with opposition views.

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili has defended his "balanced" Russia policy as aimed at ensuring "peace and stability".

The authorities have also been criticised over the worsening health of the jailed former president Mikheil Saakashvili.

Late last month European Union member states issued a formal diplomatic warning to Georgia's leaders over Saakashvili's health.

Sharks surround couples' fishing boat in stunning footage: 'Never seen anything like it'

Fishermen spot shark feeding frenzy off Louisiana coast


Kaitlin Stanford
Mon, March 6, 2023 

A group of friends was deep-sea fishing when they suddenly found themselves in a scary situation: A massive school of sharks not only appeared in the water beneath them but also quickly swam toward their boat, surrounding it on all sides.

The TikTok was shared by Kaitlyn Dix (@kaitlyndix), a Jacksonville, Florida, woman who frequently shares videos of her fishing trips and even runs an Etsy shop selling handmade shark-tooth jewelry. That may be why Dix was more stunned than terrified, writing in her post caption that she’d “never seen anything like it.”

But according to CBS News, the video was actually filmed by her boyfriend, Dillon May, who was equally amazed by what he saw.

The couple was reportedly fishing about 15 miles off the coast of Venice, Louisiana, in search of yellowfin tuna. But when the water around them started moving rapidly, they realized they might be in the presence of more than just a school of tuna.

Apparently, it was a group of hungry sharks in a feeding frenzy. And though they didn’t pose a threat to the fishermen, all the water they were splashing around seemed to have made its way on board. At one point during the video, you can hear a voice say, “It’s soaking wet!”

As the video continues to go viral, it’s received a wide range of responses in the comments section.

Some people couldn’t help but make jokes about the wild scene.

“When you change your status to ‘single,'” one person wrote.

“when just 1 girl shows up at the party,” another person joked.

“Dam. Can y’all take my ex wife fishing,” asked someone else.

But most commenters simply couldn’t hide their shock over the video, with many saying they would be absolutely “terrified” if they had been in that boat themselves.

“This would give me so much anxiety that I wouldn’t trust myself not to fall over so I’d have to lay down unfortunately,” one person wrote.

“I’m scared just watching this,” admitted someone else.

Cornwall's underground power source could turbocharge Britain

Rachel Millard
Tue, March 7, 2023 

Geothermal energy pioneers also want to extract lithium from Cornwall's waters 

- eye35 / Alamy Stock Photo

The race to develop cleaner energy has sent engineers in several directions: out to sea to plant wind turbines, to the desert to plant solar panels, and into the laboratory to try and develop nuclear fusion.

At an industrial site in Cornwall, however, they are looking in another direction: deep underground.

Private company Geothermal Engineering has drilled more than three miles underground near Redruth, tapping into water at temperatures of up to 180 degrees centigrade.

It plans to harness that heat to generate electricity for the national electricity grid and warmth for nearby homes.

It would be the first deep geothermal power plant in the UK, when up and running as planned in 2024.

Geothermal Engineering has now raised £15m to get the project over the line, £12m of which is coming from Kerogen Capital, the private equity firm.

The $2bn [£1.6bn] asset manager has been best known for its investment in oil and gas, but is pushing into lower carbon sources and has a dedicated clean energy division, CelerateX.

Its investment into Geothermal Engineering comes amid a wider global push into deep geothermal energy as part of efforts to replace fossil fuels and cut carbon emissions.

Companies are rapidly developing new ways of drilling and extracting the warmth from deep underground, raising hopes deep geothermal could move from the niche into the mainstream.

“I think it can be very significant,” says Michael Liebreich, energy expert and chairman of Liebreich Associates, who is also chairman of the advisory board of deep geothermal developer Eavor.

“I think there's always been a strong understanding that it's a big opportunity - the challenge is how do you get it out, and how do you get it out economically.”

Deep geothermal currently makes a tiny contribution to the global energy system, with projects generally providing heat and electricity for small, local communities.

The complications, risk and expense of drilling deep underground and drawing out warmth has held the industry back, with little reason to invest heavily when other, competitive sources of energy are plentiful.

That equation is changing, however, because of efforts to diversify away from oil and gas, with billions of pounds now flowing into finding cleaner energy solutions and the price of carbon emissions going up in several economies.

Global concerns over energy security this winter after Russia’s war on Ukraine rocked oil and gas markets is also focusing minds on new solutions.

“The current situation – characterised by highly volatile oil and gas prices – provides renewed opportunities for geothermal energy to further develop as a strategic alternative in electricity generation, heating and cooling worldwide,” Irena, the International Renewable Energy Agency, said in a report last month.

New drilling techniques, including some developed through the natural gas fracking boom in the US, are also helping to push the industry forward.

In the US, for example, Quaise Energy is developing a new technique which uses super high energy laser beams to ‘drill’ through hard rock deep underground.

The company says the “radical new approach” should enable them to reach depths of up to 20 kilometres and temperatures up to 500 degrees celsius.

The technology was developed by scientists working on nuclear fusion at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Carlos Araque, chief executive and co-founder, says he wants to build “clean electric generation and heat distribution plants within a short distance of every major population and industrial centre on the planet”.

In June, Quaise Energy raised $52m from companies including Techint Group, the Argentine conglomerate, and Safar Partners, US technology venture fund.

Before setting up Quaise, Mr Araque worked as a technology development manager at Schlumberger, the oilfield services company.

He is not alone in seeing the potential for assets and expertise from the fossil fuel industry to be redeployed.

In the oil and gas heartlands of Texas, oil and gas companies including Chevron and Halliburton have signed up to the new Texas Geothermal Energy Alliance.

"We've been drilling oil and gas wells for so long in Texas – over 1 million wells – that we have all this data about what's below the surface," Barry Smitherman, a former regulator in Texas, told S&P Global Platts last year. “That can inform geothermal developers about where to concentrate."

Meanwhile, in Europe heat is being extracted from an abandoned oil well in Kiskunhalas, Hungary, in a project officials hope could be replicated.

In South Wales, officials have been exploring whether water swirling through disused coal mines could be used to heat local homes.

Some investment is also coming from the fossil fuel sector. BP and Chevron have both backed Alberta-based Eavor.

Its approach involves using the geothermal warmth to heat water it pipes underground – acting like a large radiator – without needing to extract water from deep underground.

“Eavor has just dug the world’s deepest geothermal lateral in the world – we are really pushing the limits of drilling capability,” adds Mr Liebreich.

Geothermal is not without its problems: The process is energy intensive. In many cases, carbon dioxide dissolved in low quantities in water will also need capturing and sent back into the ground.

Geothermal drilling near Cornwall’s Eden Project had to be halted in March 2022 owing to seismic activity.

The UK’s banned natural gas fracking industry has argued geothermal drillers are treated unfairly given seismic risk.

However, the push away from fossil fuels gives geothermal a second impetus: electric car batteries need lithium, which can be extracted from geothermal waters at the same time as the heat.

In the UK, Geothermal Engineering is using a “binary” power plant.

Hot geothermal waters are piped from deep underground and used to heat a second fluid using a heat exchanger. The secondary liquid is used for steam to drive a turbine to produce electricity. The geothermal fluid is sent back underground.

Weekend; Beautiful park runs; Pix show the park run at the Eden Project, near St Austell, Cornwall.

Pic Jay Williams 14-09-19 - JAY WILLIAMS

Once that project is up and running, the company wants to build a fleet of small power stations around Cornwall.

Much will depend, however, on the outcome of an upcoming government auction to secure its electricity prices, where geothermal will compete against other technologies.

Ryan Law, Geothermal Engineering’s chief executive, estimates the cost of generating electricity from the plants could be in the region of £100 per MWh, which is far more expensive than offshore wind and other technologies.

As well as power supplies and heat, it also wants to extract lithium from the geothermal waters, and has been testing the viability with various approaches.

Law says an announcement should be made on that front in the next couple of months.

“It's a very exciting sort of development for us and potentially huge for UK PLC," he says.

“We’ve taken it step by step to try and get the solutions right, so that when we do produce lithium then we have meaningful quantities.”

He and Kerogen Capital, which is taking a majority stake, argue its investment “fires the starting gun” on a wider deep geothermal energy industry in the UK.

“Right beneath our feet, we’ve got the potential to heat every home in the UK with geothermal,” says Jason Cheng, chief executive of Kerogen Capital.

“It's been a niche industry, but now it's set to scale."

Two Google engineers built a ChatGPT-like AI chatbot years ago, but execs reportedly shut it down due to safety concerns

Aaron Mok
Wed, March 8, 2023

Years before ChatGPT, two google engineers developed an advanced AI chatbot.Leonardo Munoz/VIEWpress

Ex-Google engineers developed a conversational AI chatbot years ago, per The Wall Street Journal.


But Google execs thwarted their efforts to release it to the public due to safety concerns.


Google is now racing to catch up with Microsoft's AI and plans to release its AI chatbot this year.

Google is expected to release its widely anticipated AI chatbot Bard in the near future. But years ago, two ex-Google engineers pushed their former employer to release a similar chatbot to the public — and they were met with resistance, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.

Around 2018, Daniel De Freitas, who was a research engineer at Google, started working on an AI side project with the goal of creating a conversational chatbot that mimicked the ways humans speak, former colleagues familiar with the matter told the Journal. Noam Shazeer, a software engineer for Google's AI research unit, later joined the project.

Per the Journal, De Freitas and Shazeer were able to build a chatbot, which they called Meena, that could argue about philosophy, speak casually about TV shows, and generate puns about horses and cows. They believed that Meena could radically change the way people search online, their former colleagues told the Journal.

But their efforts to launch the bot — which they renamed LaMDA, which would become the language model behind Bard — reached an impasse after Google executives said the chatbot didn't adhere to its AI safety and fairness standards, per the Journal. Executives thwarted multiple attempts made by the engineers to send the bot to external researchers, add the chat feature into Google assistant, and launch a demo to the public, the Journal reported.

Frustrated by the executive response, De Freitas and Shazeer left the company near the end of 2021 to start their own company called Character Technologies Inc. — despite CEO Sundar Pichai personally requesting they stay and continue working on the chatbot, per the Journal. Their company, which now goes by Character.ai, has since released a chatbot that can roleplay as figures like Elon Musk or Nintendo's Mario.

"It caused a bit of a stir inside of Google," Shazeer said in an interview with investors Aarthi Ramamurthy and Sriram Krishnan last month. "But eventually we decided we'd probably have more luck launching stuff as a startup."

De Freitas and Shazeer declined an interview request from the Journal, and did not respond to Insider's request for comment. Google did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

Google has been thwarting its AI efforts since 2012

Google's hesitancy to release its AI tools is nothing new.

In 2012, Google hired computer scientist Ray Kurzweil to work on its language processing models, TechCrunch reported. About one year later, Google bought British AI firm DeepMind which aimed to create artificial general intelligence, per TechCrunch.

However, academics and tech experts pushed back on using the tech due to ethical concerns around mass surveillance, the Journal reported, and Google committed to limit how it would use AI. In 2018, Google ended its project to use its AI tech in military weapons in response to employee backlash, per the Journal.

But Google's AI plans may now finally see the light of day, even as discussions around whether its chatbot can be responsibly launched continue. The company's chatbot, Bard, will come after Microsoft — whose stock is on the rise — released its own chatbot through Bing.

After Google's Bard chatbot generated a factual error during its first public demo last month, Google employees were quick to call the announcement "rushed" and "botched." Alphabet chairman John Hennessy agreed that Google's chatbot wasn't "really ready for a product yet."

CEO Pichai has asked all Google employees to spend two to four hours of their time helping test the product so it can be ready for launch.

"I know this moment is uncomfortably exciting, and that's to be expected: the underlying technology is evolving rapidly with so much potential," Pichai wrote to Google employees in a February memo.

"The most important thing we can do right now is to focus on building a great product and developing it responsibly," he said.

CUT DEFENSE BY 90%
If you want to balance the budget without raising taxes or cutting defense, Social Security, and Medicare, you'd probably have to fire nearly every park ranger and cut 70% of anti-poverty spending


Juliana Kaplan,Ayelet Sheffey
Tue, March 7, 2023



Republicans want to reduce the deficit, and they've suggested a range of areas to cut spending.

An analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Budget found balancing the budget would require some massive cuts.

That is, if tax increases, defense spending, Social Security, and Medicare remain off the table.

Right now, all eyes are on what Congress wants to spend on — or decide to chip away at.

Republicans want to pare down the deficit, and it's something that Democrats seem to be open to, as well. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said that the upcoming White House budget will have "substantial deficit reduction over the next decade," according to Reuters, and Democrats are willing to discuss cost-cutting measures with Republicans independent of the debt ceiling.


But if the government wants to get serious about its spending, it'll have to make some pretty big cuts, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB). According to a CRFB analysis, all government spending would have to be reduced by 27% to get budgets balanced in the next decade — and, if tax increases, defense spending, Social Security, and Medicare are all off the table, 78% of spending would have to be cut.

That "effectively means you're eliminating almost all of government other than the military and programs specifically for middle class seniors," Marc Goldwein, a senior policy director at CRFB, told Insider. "It's just not realistic."

As the New York Times notes in its visualization of CRFB's analysis, to close the gap between now and 2033 would require $16 trillion in spending cuts — the same size as all of Social Security, or all of Medicare plus every anti-poverty program.

"The thing is the government has basically three gigantic programs and it's the US military, Social Security, and Medicare," Goldwein said. As Nobel-Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman once wrote, the US government is "best thought of as a giant insurance company with an army."

With the military, Social Security, and Medicare off the table for cuts, it means other programs would have to be on the cutting block to balance the books. That means you would have to say goodbye to things like visiting national parks, and accessing food assistance programs, as the New York Times reports.

"The idea we're just going to eliminate all parts of government other than Social Security, Medicare, and defense — it's just not realistic, or desirable," Goldwein said.

Spending cuts are the name of the game in Congress right now. House Republicans have floated a number of areas in which they would support cutting spending in a potential debt ceiling deal to keep the US on top of paying its bills. Rather than agreeing to a clean debt ceiling increase, they are using the opportunity to negotiate with Democrats to achieve their own policy priorities.

For example, Republicans on the House Budget Committee said last month that they are on board with cutting spending for environmental programs and federal student-debt relief plans, and some GOP lawmakers have reportedly been chatting with former President Donald Trump's budget official, who has been pitching his 104-page plan with suggested budget cuts for every federal agency.

The Republican Study Committee also released a blueprint to balance the budget in seven years last year, which included making Trump's tax cuts permanent and ensuring Social Security's solvency by gradually raising the retirement age. An increase in the retirement age would translate into substantial lifetime benefit cuts for future retirees.

While it remains unclear what exactly Republicans are eyeing in a final deal, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has vowed that cuts to Social Security and Medicare are off the table. Still, that hasn't stopped some GOP lawmakers from discussing changes to the programs, like the previously mentioned increase in the retirement age to 70.

Trump, who has frequently urged his party to preserve the two programs, blasted the idea during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last week, saying that "we're not going back to people that want to destroy our great Social Security system, even some in our own party."

Goldwein thinks measures like putting caps on appropriations spending, reducing healthcare spending, restoring solvency to major funds, and tax reforms could help.

Biden is expected to unveil his federal budget plan on Thursday in Philadelphia, during which he will "deliver remarks on his plans to invest in America, continue to lower costs for families, protect and strengthen Social Security and Medicare, reduce the deficit, and more," the White House said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Democrats await Republicans' plan to move ahead with a deal to raise the debt ceiling before the US defaults.

"The GOP is divided and unable to unite around a plan to raise the debt ceiling. The hard right demands spending cuts," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on Twitter. "Will they cut Medicaid? Pell Grants? Food for kids? Speaker McCarthy: It's March 2nd, where is your plan?"

15-Year-Old NASA Probe Back in Action After Systems Reset

Passant Rabie
Tue, March 7, 2023

An artist’s depiction of the IBEX spacecraft.

Most computer glitches can be resolved with a simple question, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” It seems this simple instruction also applies to computers on board spacecraft orbiting thousands of miles away.

NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is finally up and running again after spending three weeks in contingency mode, also known as safe mode, the space agency announced in a blog post on Monday. The team behind the mission performed an external reset of IBEX on March 2 when the spacecraft was at its closest point to Earth.

On February 18, the spacecraft, which is about the size of a bus tire, stopped responding to commands following a flight computer reset. “While fight computer resets have happened before, this time the team lost the ability to command the spacecraft during the subsequent reset recovery,” NASA wrote at the time. “Uplink signals are reaching the spacecraft, commands are not processing.”

The team tried resetting the mission’s hardware and software from the ground, but IBEX remained unresponsive. The spacecraft, working in a high Earth orbit, was scheduled for an autonomous reset and power cycle on March 4, but the team went ahead with a firecode reset, another term for an external reset, two days prior to take advantage of “a favorable communications environment around IBEX’s perigee,” according to NASA.

Following the firecode reset, the spacecraft’s ability to receive commands was fully restored and IBEX now appears to be fully operational.

The mission launched in 2008 with a unique task to map the edge of the Solar System, observing the interaction between the solar wind emitted by the Sun and interplanetary space. Data collected by IBEX has helped scientists measure changes in the heliosphere, the bubble generated by the Sun’s magnetic field, over the star’s 11-year-cycle. Now that IBEX has been reset and all is back to normal, we can keep learning about our host star and how it influences its surrounding environment.

Women take star role in African movies on jihadist bloodshed

Marietou BÂ
Mon, March 6, 2023


Few movies have been made about jihadism in Africa and even fewer have focused on the plight of women at the hands of extremists.

But a slew of films showcased in the continent's biggest movie festival could be a cinematic watershed.

"When people talk about terrorism, they don't talk much about women," said Apolline Traore, a director from the festival's host country, Burkina Faso, which has suffered grievously from jihadism.

Traore's feature-length "Sira," which won the Silver Stallion of Yennenga award in the FESPACO festival that ended on Saturday, describes a 25-year-old woman who is abducted by jihadists and has to draw on courage and smartness to survive.

Traore said she wanted to haul women out of the typical image of victimhood and place them in the "major role... (they play) in the fight against terrorism".

The director said she was inspired by meeting women whose lives had been turned upside-down by jihadists.

One example, she said, was a woman who with a bullet lodged in her shoulder had spent five days looking for shelter for herself and her two children.

Nafissatou Cisse, a Burkinabe actress who plays the lead role of Sira, said she had drawn on "the rage" of women caught in the jihadist nightmare.

More than 10,000 people have lost their lives in Burkina Faso since jihadists swept in from neighbouring Mali in 2015 and more than two million people have fled their homes.

Around 40 percent of the country is controlled by the insurgents.

Making "Sira" was in itself a gruelling challenge.

After a massacre at Solhan in June 2021 that left 132 dead -- the bloodiest single attack in the long-running jihadist campaign -- the authorities declined to renew authorisation for filming "Sira" in Burkina's deeply troubled north.

- 'Terrorists use women' -

Another director whose home country is struggling with jihadism is Amina Mamani.

Her native Nigeria is the cradle of the Boko Haram movement, whose attacks began in 2009 and metastasised to Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

It leapt to global notoriety in 2014, when hundreds of schoolgirls were kidnapped in Chibok, in Borno state.

Mamani's short film, "The Envoy of God," tells the story of a girl aged about 10, who is kidnapped one night by jihadists to use her to carry out a suicide attack on a market -- but she decides otherwise.

"Terrorists use women. Men get killed, but women are kidnapped, forced into marriage and raped, and young girls selected to blow themselves up," said Mamani.

In another feature-length film, "Thorns of the Sahel," Burkinabe director Boubakar Diallo describes a nurse who is sent to a displaced persons' camp.

She said that during the film shoot, some of the displaced people "panicked when they saw armed men" -- actors playing the part of jihadists.

"We had to build up trust with them," she said.

- 'Sensitive' -

Traore said that in all her 20 years in film-making, she had never experienced such fear in showing a film.

She fretted especially about how the public would react to her work.

"(Jihadism) is very sensitive and fresh in the heart of Burkinabe people and people living in the Sahel," she said.

Launched in 1969, the biennial Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) draws thousands of movie fans and professionals from across the continent.

It is also closely followed by the US and European movie industries, which scout the event for new films, talent and ideas.

A total of 170 films competed in this year's event, whose theme was "African cinema and culture of peace".

Tunisian director Youssef Chebbi won the top prize, the coveted Golden Stallion, for murder mystery "Ashkal".

Under festival rules, films chosen for competition have to be made by Africans and predominantly produced in Africa.

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The coming EV batteries will sweep away fossil fuel transport, with or without net zero

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

THE TELEGRAPH
Tue, March 7, 2023

New electric car batteries could lengthen ranges to a thousand miles or more - Michaela Handrek-Rehle/Bloomberg

The Argonne National Laboratory in the US has essentially cracked the battery technology for electric vehicles, discovering a way to raise the future driving range of standard EVs to a thousand miles or more. It promises to do so cheaply without exhausting the global supply of critical minerals in the process.

The joint project with the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) has achieved a radical jump in the energy density of battery cells. The typical lithium-ion battery used in the car industry today stores about 200 watt-hours per kilo (Wh/kg). Their lab experiment has already reached 675 Wh/kg with a lithium-air variant.

This is a high enough density to power trucks, trains, and arguably mid-haul aircraft, long thought to be beyond the reach of electrification. The team believes it can reach 1,200 Wh/kg. If so, almost all global transport can be decarbonised more easily than we thought, and probably at a negative net cost compared to continuation of the hydrocarbon status quo.

The Argonne Laboratory in Chicago is not alone in pushing the boundaries of energy storage and EV technology. The specialist press reports eye-watering breakthroughs almost every month. America, Europe, China and Japan are all in a feverish global race for battery dominance – or survival – and hedge funds are swarming over the field.

I highlight this paper because US national labs have AAA credibility. The study is peer-reviewed and has just appeared in the research journal Science. Their solid-state battery has achieved the highest energy density yet seen anywhere in the world. And sometimes you have to pick on one to tell a larger story.

The science paper says the process can “theoretically deliver an energy density that is comparable to that of gasoline”, a remarkable thought that slays some stubborn shibboleths. It is not for today, but it is not for the remote future either. It typically takes five or so breakthroughs of this kind in battery technology to reach manufacturing.

Professor Larry Curtiss, the project leader, told me that his battery needs no cobalt. That eliminates reliance on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which accounts for 74pc of the world’s production and has become a Chinese economic colony for the extraction of raw materials.

Beijing has already gained a lockhold on the supply chain through ownership or control over three quarters of the DRC’s major cobalt mines. Russia is the world’s third. It is planning to raise that share by tearing up the marine bed off the Pacific coast.

Reports by the United Nations and activist groups leave no doubt that cobalt mining in the DRC is an ecological and human disaster, with some 40,000 children working for a pittance in toxic conditions for small ‘artisanal’ mines. It has become a byword for North-South exploitation.

Needless to say, the horrors of the cobalt supply chain have been seized on by fossil “realists” (i.e. vested interests) and Putin’s cyber-bots to impugn the moral claims of the green energy transition. The Argonne-IIF technology should make it harder to sustain that line of attack.

Prof Curtiss said the current prototype is based on lithium but does not have to be. “The same type of battery could be developed with sodium. It will take more time, but can be done,” he said. Switching to sodium would halve the driving range but it would still be double today’s generation of batteries.

Sodium is ubiquitous. There are deposits in Dorset, Cheshire, or Ulster. The US and Canada have vast salt lakes. Sodium can be produced cheaply from seawater in hot regions via evaporation. There is no supply constraint.

This knocks out another myth: that the EV revolution is impossible on a planetary scale because there either is not enough lithium, or not enough at viable cost under free market conditions in states aligned with the Western democracies. (The copper shortage is more serious, but there may be solutions for that as well using graphene with aluminium).

The International Energy Agency estimates that demand for lithium will rise 20-fold by 2040 if we rely on existing battery technology. The Australians are the world’s biggest producers today. But the greatest long-term deposits are in the Lithium Triangle of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, which are in talks to create an OPEC-style lithium cartel. China’s Tianqui owns 22pc of the Chilean group SQM, the world’s second-biggest lithium miner.

A lithium recycling industry will mitigate the problem. In the end, lithium can be extracted from seawater. It is highly diluted at 180 parts per billion but research suggests that it could be isolated for as little as $5 a kilo. If so, the lithium scare is just another of a long list of seemingly insurmountable barriers that fall away with time. The march of clean-tech is littered with such false scares.

For readers with a better grip on chemistry than me, the Argonne-IIF uses a solid electrolyte made from a ceramic polymer based on nanoparticles. This does require expensive materials.

It achieves a reaction of four molecules at room temperature instead of the usual one or two. It is able to extract oxygen from the surrounding air to run the reaction, solving a problem that has held back development for a decade. It can operate over a thousand cycles of charging and discharging. It is safer and less likely to catch fire than today's batteries.

What the Argonne-IIF battery and other global breakthroughs show collectively is that energy science is moving so fast that what seemed impossible five years ago is already a discernible reality, and that we will be looking at a very different technological landscape before the end of this decade.

Germany and Italy last week succeeded in blocking EU’s plans for ban on petrol and diesel sales by 2035. They might just as well bark at the moon or command the waves to recede. Moore’s Law and the learning curve of new technology has already sealed the fate of the combustion engine – with or without net zero.

The legacy companies cannot save their sunk investment in fossil motors – unless the EU retreats into fortress protectionism, which would be economic suicide. To try would be to guarantee the total destruction of Europe’s car industry. The only hope of saving it is to go for broke on electrification before global rivals run away with the prize.

The coming battery technology kills the case for hydrogen in cars, vans, buses, or trucks, and perhaps also for trains and aircraft, whether it is “green” from wind and solar via electrolysis or “blue” from natural gas with carbon capture. The energy loss involved makes no sense. It is much cheaper and more efficient to electrify wherever possible.

Clean hydrogen is too valuable to squander. We need it to replace dirty hydrogen used in industry. We need it for fertilisers, green steel, container shipping, and long-term storage in saline aquifers to back up renewables during a windless Dunkelflaute. We do not need it for road transport.

My advice to corporate bosses and ministers: keep up with the world’s scientific literature, or you will be massacred.

Scientists named a fungicide after Keanu Reeves because it's extremely effective at killing — just like his characters


Hannah Getahun
Sat, March 4, 2023


Scientists discovered a compound in pseudomonas bacteria that can effectively kill certain fungi.

The fungus killer was named after actor Keanu Reeves by German researchers.

The study authors say that the fungus could be used to effectively treat both crops and humans.

Like John Wick, new compounds discovered by scientists are effective killers. But instead of killing bad guys, they kill fungi.

Researchers at the Leibniz Institute in Germany found certain bacteria naturally contained compounds effective at killing fungi that affect plants and humans. The scientists named them keanumycins A, B, and C — after actor Keanu Reeves.

The three keanumycins — lipopeptides in bacteria of the Pseudomonas genus, commonly found in soil and water — were isolated by scientists, who tested their deadly properties. They found that the compounds got rid of amoebas and fungi.

"The lipopeptides kill so efficiently that we named them after Keanu Reeves because he, too, is extremely deadly in his roles," the study's main author Sebastian Götze said in a press release. The scientists released their findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society in January.

The keanumycins were most effective at killing Botrytis cinerea — a fungus that produces gray mold rot. The fungus ruins crops like strawberries and wine grapes, and farmers usually use chemical fungicides to prevent it from growing.

The study authors are currently testing the theory that a fungicide containing keanumycins could kill fungus on crops, and provide a biodegradable option that won't leave chemicals in the soil or on fruit.

The scientists also say it can help with another crisis — human fungal infections that are becoming less resistant to anti-fungal treatments. Keanumycins are effective at treating the human-pathogenic fungus responsible for yeast infections and are not toxic to humans, the study authors note.

"We have a crisis in anti-infectives," Götze said in the release. "Many human-pathogenic fungi are now resistant to antimycotics — partly because they are used in large quantities in agricultural fields."

So far, 2023 has seen multiple significant scientific discoveries named after celebrities.

Recently, biologists in Ecuador found a mystical stream frog and named it after fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien.

Another pair of biologists discovered five new species of snakes in Central and South America. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio named one of them — an orange-eyed, snail-eating snake that produces a "musky and distasteful odor"— after his mother, Irmelin Indenbirken.