Megalodon body temperature ‘was about 7C warmer than surrounding water’

Megalodons are believed to have grown to lengths of 50 feet 

(Alex Boersma/PNAS/PA)

MON, 26 JUN, 2023 - 20:12
NINA MASSEY, PA SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT

The megalodon could maintain a body temperature that was about 7C warmer than the surrounding water, new research suggests.

Based on analysis of tooth enamel from the ancient shark, the findings might help explain why it went extinct 3.6 million years ago.


The temperature difference is greater than those determined for other sharks that lived alongside the megalodon, and is large enough to categorise megalodons as warm-blooded, experts say.

According to the study, the amount of energy the megalodon used to stay warm contributed to its extinction.

Lead researcher Robert Eagle, a UCLA assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, said: “Studying the driving factors behind the extinction of a highly successful predatory shark like megalodon can provide insight into the vulnerability of large marine predators in modern ocean ecosystems experiencing the effects of ongoing climate change.”Maintaining an energy level that would allow for megalodon’s elevated body temperature would require a voracious appetite that may not have been sustainable in a time of changing marine ecosystem balances

Megalodons, which are thought to have reached lengths up to 50 feet, belonged to a group of sharks called mackerel sharks.

Today members of that group include the great white and thresher shark.

While most fish are cold-blooded, with body temperatures that are the same as the surrounding water, mackerel sharks keep the temperature of all or parts of their bodies somewhat warmer than the water around them.

The heat generated by their muscles is stored by sharks, making them different from fully warm-blooded or endothermic animals like mammals.

In mammals, a region of the brain called the hypothalamus regulates body temperature.

In the new study, the scientists looked for answers in the megalodon’s most abundant fossil remains: its teeth.

A megalodon tooth (right) dwarfs one from a white shark (Harry Maisch/Florida Gulf Coast University/PA)

A main component of teeth is a mineral called apatite, which contains atoms of carbon and oxygen.

The composition of fossil teeth can reveal insights about where an animal lived and the types of food it ate, and — for marine vertebrates — information like the chemistry of the seawater where it lived and its body temperature.

Randy Flores, a UCLA doctoral student and fellow of the Centre for Diverse Leadership in Science, who worked on the study, said: “Because teeth form in the tissue of an animal when it’s alive, we can measure the isotopic composition of fossil teeth in order to estimate the temperature at which they formed and that tells us the approximate body temperature of the animal in life.”

The megalodon’s warmer body allowed it to move faster, tolerate colder water and spread out around the world.

However, this ability may also have been its downfall.

Mr Flores said: “Maintaining an energy level that would allow for megalodon’s elevated body temperature would require a voracious appetite that may not have been sustainable in a time of changing marine ecosystem balances when it may have even had to compete against newcomers such as the great white shark.”

The findings are published in the Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences journal.

YOUR EDITOR
IN MEGLADON MOUTH

Preserving the LGBTQ Legacy of One of America’s Most Historic Homes

Boston’s Longfellow House was a 19th-century refuge.

BY ANYA GRUBER

JUNE 26, 2023

Longfellow House is a stately manor on Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, owned by the literary family for nearly 130 years. It was also used as a headquarters by George Washington during the Revolutionary War.

 AP CORTIZASJR/GETTY IMAGES

In This Story
Longfellow House

THINK OF HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW—what comes to mind? High school English class? If you’re a fan, maybe “Paul Revere’s Ride” or “A Psalm of Life”? Beyond being one of America’s most famous poets, the twice-married Longfellow, who died in 1882, also holds an iconic and unlikely place in queer history.

Steps away from Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is Longfellow House, a stately Georgian home owned by his family (and eventually a trust they established) from 1843 to 1972. It was a home, but also a gathering place for artists and thinkers, and something more. Its archives contain a trove of documents about LGBTQ+ history. Several members of the Longfellow family, including the poet’s brother, daughter, and grandson, were, as park ranger Kate Potter puts it, “not straight.” Luckily for historians, they all left behind records of their lives in the form of letters, diaries, journals, articles, and photographs.

In more than 150 boxes of historical documents, modern scholars are uncovering the queer stories of 19th-century Boston’s intellectual and artistic high society.

The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his study. 

THE STORIES OF LGBTQ+ PEOPLE are not always easy to find. Modern historians usually learn about past lives through material they leave behind, such as letters and diaries. That’s only for people in certain places and times, of a certain education and social class, and within them, language about sexuality was often coded for safety. “We never know what conversations people had across the breakfast table or going for a stroll around the garden,” Potter says.

The butter-yellow Longfellow House, which also served as George Washington’s Boston headquarters during the American Revolution, is surrounded by formal plantings of roses and a neatly manicured lawn for those strolls. Inside, the house is filled with oil paintings, brocade and velvet textiles, dark wood bookshelves with piles of old books. A visit—in 1972 the house was donated by the Longfellow House Trust to the National Park Service, which offers a variety of tours—is a feast of sumptuous artifacts that immediately recall the upper-class history of the home.

Arguably some of the most valuable objects in the Longfellow House are decidedly less lavish: the hundreds of journals of meticulously preserved sheets of paper and journals in the archives. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s well-educated and politically active grandson, Henry “Harry” Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, served as his family’s de facto archivist (when he wasn’t busy being a socialist or losing his teaching job at Columbia due to his pacifist political views). Thanks to Dana’s work preserving his family’s letters and journals, archivist Kate Hanson Plass has uncovered glimpses into the LGBTQ+ culture of historic Boston.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, who went by Harry, in a sitting room in the house around 1904.

Take the poet’s youngest brother, Samuel, for example, a Unitarian pastor who died in 1892. “There are a few journals that contain pretty clear descriptions of same-gender attraction in Samuel Longfellow’s papers,” says Plass. “In his college-age journals, he writes very clearly about being attracted to and loving fellow students … of course, the all-male Harvard students.”

Alice Longfellow, the poet’s daughter, is known to have had a decades-long intimate relationship with a woman named Fanny Stone. An 1884 letter from Stone to Longfellow describes the emotional loss of a beloved piece of jewelry. “Fanny writes to Alice, ‘I have been wearing this bracelet that you gave me, and it never left my wrist. But I was on a bridge over the Potomac, and I took my glove off, and the bracelet went flying into the river,’” says Plass. Stone wrote that she felt like a widow when she lost the bracelet. “It’s really hard to argue that that is a platonic relationship,” Plass says.

In addition to his tireless work to preserve his family’s history, Dana’s own journals describe his attraction to other men. “In his lifetime, 1881 to 1950, [Dana] was relatively open about being gay,” says Plass. “There is clear evidence in the papers that he had intimate encounters with men.” Plass notes that there is active research on Dana’s papers, with a focus on his time in New York City. “The men that he’s interacting with in New York are not from this elite Boston Brahmin society,” says Plass. “He’s going to New York and he’s picking up mainly younger men, men with immigrant backgrounds.… We have an opportunity to dive into a little bit of that story and learn more about who they were as individuals.”

Fanny Stone and Alice Longfellow, who shared a long-term intimate relationship, at Squam Lake in Maine, about 1900.

IN THEIR TOURS, THE PARK rangers describe scenes of lively social gatherings in Longfellow’s living room, no doubt characterized by political and literary conversations. In addition to members of their own family, the Longfellows hosted and befriended prominent figures from Cambridge and beyond, including some known members of the LGBTQ+ community. For example, in January 1882, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had Oscar Wilde over for breakfast. According to Potter, the two men had their disagreements when it came to literature, but “from what I understand at that meeting, they both left it thinking, ‘Gosh, that was much more pleasant than I was expecting it to be.’”

Novelist and friend of Alice Longfellow Sarah Orne Jewett was another regular visitor to the home and lived in a “Boston Marriage” to poet Annie Fields. A Boston Marriage refers to two wealthy women cohabitating without men. Some, such as Jewett and Fields’s, are thought to have been romantic. Jewett’s South Berwick, Maine, home is a Historic New England property, maintained by historians dedicated to illuminating the love between the two women. “Annie is mentioned in every room in the house. They talk about Sarah and her sexuality quite a bit,” says Potter. “They talk about Sarah’s journal, and how from a very young age she did not write about any crushes on young men. She wrote a lot about her feelings for other young women.”

American author Sarah Orne Jewett, a friend of Alice Longfellow who was likely also in a long-term relationship with another woman, poet Anne Fields, in front of her home in South Berwick, Maine. 

SARAH ORNE JEWETT COMPOSITIONS AND OTHER PAPERS, 1847-1909 (MS AM 1743.26 (16), HOUGHTON LIBRARY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

WHEN TALKING ABOUT THE LIVED experiences of historical figures, Plass and Potter note that it can be tricky to apply modern labels to people in the past. “We don’t know how these people would have labeled themselves,” says Potter. “It might have been, ‘I have these feelings, but I don’t know where they come from or what that means about me.’”

Potter points out, however, that modern language helps us better understand the past. “Language is always evolving. It’s very much about looking back, but it is also about looking forward and seeing where we are right now in 2023,” says Potter. “I mean, who knows what it’s going to be like doing this in 2024 or 2033?”
“We cannot tell the queer history of the 19th century.”

The ranger and archivist also recognize the uniqueness of these archives and are quick to point out that the experiences of individuals associated with the Longfellow family do not necessarily reflect the experience of queer people broadly in the 19th and 20th centuries. “We have this very specific story at our site,” says Potter. “All the people associated with our site are white, and so far as we can tell, cis, and very privileged.

“We cannot tell the queer history of the 19th century.”

Though the subjects are a privileged few, there is still power in the stories. “There have always been queer people and certainly there have always been activists and there have always been people just quietly living their lives and existing in social units with their special someone,” says Potter. “Whoever that someone was.

“Queer people, or non-straight people, have always existed. There are certainly painful stories of people feeling isolated, but there are also these moments of connection where people found common ground.”

PHOTO'S

COURTESY NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, LONGFELLOW HOUSE-WASHINGTON’S HEADQUARTERS NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE; ARCHIVES NUMBER 3008/002.009-#006

Shell oil pipeline spill fouls farms, river in Niger Delta

It is "one of the worst in the last 16 years in Ogoniland"


Associated Press In this grab taken from video, oil from a spill pollutes the Okuku river, in Ogoniland, Nigeria, June 16, 2023.

PUBLISHED: June 26, 2023 
By Taiwo Adebayo | Associated Press

ABUJA, Nigeria — A new oil spill at a Shell facility in Nigeria has contaminated farmland and a river, upending livelihoods in the fishing and farming communities in part of the Niger Delta, which has long endured environmental pollution caused by the oil industry.

The National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, or NOSDRA, told The Associated Press that the spill came from the Trans-Niger Pipeline operated by Shell that crosses through communities in the Eleme area of Ogoniland, a region where the London-based energy giant has faced decadeslong local pushback to its oil exploration.

The volume of oil spilled has not been determined, but activists have published images of polluted farmland, water surfaces blighted by oil sheens and dead fish mired in sticky crude.

While spills are frequent in the region due to vandalism from oil thieves and a lack of maintenance to pipelines, according to the U.N. Environmental Program, activists call this a “major one.”

It is “one of the worst in the last 16 years in Ogoniland,” said Fyneface Dumnamene, an environmental activist whose nonproft monitors spills in the Delta region. It began June 11.

“It lasted for over a week, bursts into Okulu River — which adjoins other rivers and ultimately empties into the Atlantic Ocean — and affects several communities and displaces more than 300 fishers,” said Dumnamene of the Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre.

He said tides have sent oil sheens about 10 kilometers (6 miles) further to creeks near the nation’s oil business capital, Port Harcourt.

Shell stopped production in Ogoniland more than 20 years ago amid deadly unrest from residents protesting environmental damage, but the Trans-Niger Pipeline still sends crude from oil fields in other areas through the region’s communities to export terminals.

The leak has been contained, but treating the fallout from the spill at farms and the Okulu River, which runs through communities, has stalled, NOSDRA Director General Idris Musa said.

“Response has been delayed,” Musa said, blaming protesting residents. “But engagement is going on.”

The apparent deadlock stems from mistrust and past grievances in the riverine and oil-abundant Niger Delta region, which is mostly home to minority ethnic groups who accuse the Nigerian government of marginalization.

Africa’s largest economy overwhelmingly depends on the Niger Delta’s oil resources for its earnings, but pollution from that production has denied residents access to clean water, hurt farming and fishing, and heightened the risk of violence, activists say.

The communities “are very angry because of the destruction of their livelihoods resulting from the obsoleteness of Shell’s equipment and are concerned the regulator and Shell will blame sabotage by the residents,” Dumnamene said.

Often oil companies blame pipeline vandalism by oil thieves or aggrieved young people in affected communities for spills, which could allow the companies to avoid liability.

London-based Shell said it is working with a joint investigatory team, consisting of regulators, Ogoniland residents and local authorities, to identify the cause and impact of the spill.

Shell’s response team “has been activated, subject to safety requirements, to mobilize to the site to take actions that may be necessary for the safety of environment, people and equipment,” a company statement said.

NOSDRA confirmed the joint investigation, but a cause of the spill — whether sabotage or equipment failure — has not yet been revealed.

Hundreds of farmers and fishermen who have been cut off from their livelihoods would insist on restoration of the environment and then compensation, Dumnamene said.

At the request of the Nigerian government, the U.N. Environment Program conducted an independent environmental assessment of Ogoniland, releasing a report in 2011 that criticized Shell and the Nigerian government for 50 years of pollution and recommended a comprehensive, billion-dollar cleanup.

While, the government announced the cleanup in 2016, there is little evidence of restoration on the ground. The government says community protests and lawsuits by local activists have hampered progress.

“A credible cleanup would have been a beacon of hope for the Niger Delta and other areas in Africa that have suffered oil pollution, but no credible cleanup is ongoing,” said Ledum Mitee, a veteran Ogoni environmental activist and former president of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People. “It is a cover-up, and we do not see the impact.”


Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

California's law aimed at fast food wages is on hold. Lawmakers may have found a way around it

By ADAM BEAM

 Associated Press
JUNE 26, 2023 

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A new California law aimed in part at boosting salaries for fast food workers has been delayed for nearly two years following industry resistance. Now the Democrats who control the state Legislature might have figured out how to raise worker pay anyway.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law last year. It created a 10-member council with the authority, among other things, to increase the state's $15.50 minimum wage to a maximum of $22 per hour for some fast food workers. Some experts quickly hailed the law as one of the ''most significant pieces of employment legislation passed in a generation.''

But unlike in most states, California voters have the power to overturn some laws passed by the Legislature. Business groups who opposed the law gathered enough signatures to qualify a referendum in 2024. In the meantime, the law does not take effect.

Business groups were confident the law would ultimately be blocked at the ballot box. But tucked inside California's more than $300-billion operating budget is a provision to resurrect a long-dormant regulatory commission that would have powers similar to that of the fast food council.

The Industrial Welfare Commission regulates wages, hours and working conditions in California. It has been dormant for most of this century. The Democratic-controlled Legislature stripped its funding in 2004 when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor, making it more difficult for the Republican to influence the state's wage regulations. The commission has not issued any orders since.

California's budget, scheduled to be voted on this week, includes $3 million to bring that commission back to life. The commission has the power to investigate wages paid across various employment sectors. If it finds wages are ''inadequate to supply the cost of proper living,'' it can convene industry-specific wage boards to gather findings and make recommendations. The commission can then issue orders specific to wages, hours and working conditions.

The funding would come with conditions. It would require the commission to prioritize industries in which more than 10% of workers are at or below the federal poverty level, a definition that includes California's fast food workers, according to the University of California-Berkeley Center for labor Research and Education.

It also ordered the commission to complete its work by the end of October 2024, days before voters are scheduled to vote on whether to uphold the fast food law. And because that funding is part of a budget bill, it could not be blocked by voters.

Matt Haller, president of the International Franchise Association, said he sees that as a clear attempt by the Legislature to bypass the industry's efforts to block the law creating the fast food council.

''We're concerned about any attempt to create some Frankenstein version'' of that law, Haller said, noting that more than a million California voters signed a petition to block it. ''It speaks to (labor unions') desire to create political control over our business model.''

State Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, a Democrat from Los Angeles and chair of the budget subcommittee responsible for labor issues, said lawmakers were not targeting the fast food industry by restoring the commission's funding. She said lawmakers were seeking to improve conditions for all California workers. More than a third of California's residents don't make enough money to meet their basic needs, according to a report from the United Ways of California.

''The fast food industry is one of the industries with the problem, but it's not the only industry,'' Durazo said, adding that the commission ''should always be looking at what the wages (are) of workers."

''There comes a time when they should step up and do something about it and we're just giving them the funding to address it because it's a much bigger problem,'' she said.

The Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, had sponsored the fast food law last year. David Huerta, president of SEIU California and SEIU-United Service Workers West, did not comment on whether the union has pursued the funding as a way to accomplish the goals of the fast food law. But he said the funding is part of ''workers in low-wage industries ... rising up to demand the wages they need to provide for their families.''

''SEIU members thank Governor Newsom and legislators for listening to workers and taking the bold action needed to make progress against a growing tide of inequality and poverty experienced by low-wage workers and people of color,'' Huerta said.

California's new fiscal year begins Saturday. Newsom and legislative leaders on Tuesday were still negotiating a new operating budget. But both sides had tentatively agreed on restoring funding for the Industrial Welfare Commission, language that was inserted into a budget bill over the weekend. Newsom's office declined to comment Monday on restoring funding for the commission.

The Industrial Welfare Commission has continued to exist despite not having any money to operate. It has 17 wage orders that are still in effect, including setting a minimum wage and other factors for the manufacturing, agricultural and housekeeping sectors, according to a legislative analysis.

If signed into law, the Industrial Welfare Commission could have impacts beyond the fast food industry. Several business groups have come out against it, including the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Retailers' Association, the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, the California Restaurant Association and the California Building Industry Association.

Those groups particularly don't like that the the Legislature would limit the Industrial Welfare Commission from issuing ''any standards that are less protective than existing state law.''

''This limitation will only create unnecessary confusion,'' the business groups said in a statement.

What lies ahead for OceanGate? Company closes headquarters indefinitely as officials determine if criminal probe needed

BySumanti Sen

Jun 27, 2023 

Officials investigating the Titan will reportedly examine voice recordings and 

other data from its mothership Polar Prince to determine what happened

An underwater robot is now combing the floor for debris from the catastrophic implosion of the submersible that resulted in the deaths of five passengers. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is launching an investigation into the implosion. The National Transportation Safety Board has also said that the US Coast Guard will lead the investigation into the incident.This comes as the company that operated the Titan, OceanGate, has closed its headquarters in Everett, Washington State. The leasing agent said the company would be closing indefinitely, according to The Seattle Times. OceanGate’s CEO Stockton Rush was killed in the latest tragedy along with British billionaire Hamish Harding, French diver Paul Henry Nargeolet, and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman.

Meanwhile, it was revealed that officials investigating the Titan will reportedly examine voice recordings and other data from its mothership Polar Prince to determine what happened during the voyage. They will also try to determine if the incident occurred criminally.

The submersible began its journey on Sunday morning, June 18. About one hour and 45 minutes into its descent, the vessel lost contact with the Polar Prince, the support ship that transported it to the site.

Investigators with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada visited the Polar Prince on Saturday, June 24, “to collect information from the vessel’s voyage data recorder and other vessel systems that contain useful information,” TSB Chairwoman Kathy Fox told CNN. She stressed that the aim of the investigation was not to blame anyone but that voice recordings “could be useful in our investigation.”

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Superintendent Kent Osmond has announced that authorities are trying to determine if the case deserves a criminal investigation. “Such an investigation will proceed only if our examination of the circumstances indicate criminal, federal or provincial laws may possibly have been broken,” he said, according to New York Post.

White House condemns harassment of reporter who questioned Modi

• Axios

Wall Street Journal reporter Sabrina Siddiqui asks a question to during a joint press conference with President Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House on June 22. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Biden administration officials on Monday denounced online harassment against a Wall Street Journal reporter who asked Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about his government's human rights record at the White House last week.

Driving the news: Sabrina Siddiqui has been subject to "intense online harassment from people inside India," some of them politicians associated with Modi's government, and is being targeted because of her Muslim faith, another reporter said during a White House press briefing Monday.

What they're saying: National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in response that the White House is aware of the reports of harassment and called it "unacceptable."

• "We absolutely condemn any harassment of journalists anywhere under any circumstances," Kirby said. "It's antithetical to the very principles of democracy that ... were on display last week during the state visit."
• White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre added: "Here, at the White House, under this administration, we're committed to the freedom of the press, which is why we had the press conference last week."
• She added that White House officials "certainly condemn any efforts of intimidation or harassment of a journalist or any journalist that is just trying to do their job."

Context: Siddiqui said to Modi during a press conference on Thursday alongside President Biden that "there are many human rights groups who say your government has discriminated against religious minorities and sought to silence its critics."

• She then asked: "What steps are you and your government willing to take to improve the rights of Muslims and other minorities in your country and uphold free speech?"

• Modi responded through a translator, saying: "In India’s democratic values, there is absolutely no discrimination, neither on basis of caste, creed, or age or any kind of geographic location," per NBC News.
• "Indeed, India is a democracy. And as President Biden also mentioned, India and America both countries, democracy is in our DNA. The democracy is our spirit. Democracy runs in our veins. We live democracy,” he added," Modi added.

Go deeper: Modi touts democracy, denies discrimination in rare press conference

Why Iraqis are turning to natural remedies

Reuters

 1 hour ago  #Iraq #Medicine #Health

Iraq once had one of the best healthcare systems in the Middle East, but now some Iraqis are now turning to alternative treatments as they can't afford the cost of conventional medicine.

BUSH CHENEY WAR

Analysis-Emergence of Guatemalan anti-graft champion shakes up election
2023/06/27


By Sofia Menchu

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) -Guatemalans fed up with persistent graft scandals on Sunday catapulted an unheralded anti-corruption candidate into a run-off for the presidency, raising hopes of a renewed drive to clean up the government after years of frustration.

Bernardo Arevalo, an ex-diplomat and son of former president Juan Jose Arevalo, defied poll forecasts to finish as runner-up in the first round of voting in Guatemala's presidential election, throwing a major surprise into what had been written off as a stale election between establishment politicians.

Arevalo, 64, is the standard-bearer of the center-left Semilla, a party founded in 2017 whose previous contender, Thelma Aldana, was a crusading attorney general instrumental in the arrest and prosecution for corruption of now-jailed former president Otto Perez.

"The vote for Semilla and Bernardo was an act of resistance against a corrupt and conservative state we've been living with for years, and shows hope from his father's story," said Nicol Estrada, a 19-year-old student.

Underlining voter frustration with the status-quo, nearly a quarter of ballots counted were either spoiled or left blank. Businessman Carlos Pineda, the early front-runner, urged supporters to spoil their vote after he was barred from standing.

Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, argued that Arevalo's success was partly due to Guatemala's "elite" helping to unite the opposition by barring several challengers.

"This is a guy who was polling at 0.7% just a few weeks ago," he said.

The number of spoiled ballots and voters unhappy with the system could benefit Arevalo in the Aug. 20 second round, said Hugo Novales, an independent political analyst in Guatemala.

Arevalo, who has called corruption a "cancer eating away" at Guatemala, will face former first lady Sandra Torres in the run-off. Torres, running in her third presidential contest, won 15.8% of the first-round vote to Arevalo's 11.8%.

The run-off could put the spotlight on cleaning up politics.

Arevalo has vowed to "purge institutions co-opted by the corrupt" and to get people committed to what he called the fight for justice to return to Guatemala.

"One of our objectives is to bring back all the prosecutors, judges and journalists who have been persecuted unjustly by this regime and who find themselves in exile," he told reporters.

Arevalo has also promised to spur competition in the economy, which is dominated by a tight-knit elite.

Torres, who leads the center-left National Unity of Hope (UNE), fell foul in 2019 of the now defunct U.N.-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), which accused her of breaking campaign finance rules and illicit association.

In the end, the case against Torres, who spent four months under arrest, was dropped for lack of evidence. She denies all wrongdoing.

Opinion polls have suggested the 67-year-old Torres will struggle to win the run-off given her unpopularity in the capital, Guatemala City, home to much of the electorate.

"I think that as long as Torres' anti-vote stays high, around 41%, my money is on Arevalo," said Freeman, of the Council on Foreign Relations.

TACKLING ELITES

A renewed drive to tackle corruption would likely face stiff resistance from powerful interests.

Semilla's previous presidential contender, attorney Aldana, was ultimately prevented from running in 2019 by Guatemala's top court due to allegations of financial wrongdoing which she said were politically motivated because of her work with the CICIG.

Aldana later sought asylum in the U.S., while current President Alejandro Giammattei himself became embroiled in corruption allegations, which he denies.

The potent legacy of the corruption-busting group continues to inspire anti-graft campaigners in Guatemala.

Arevalo says he sees himself as continuing the work of his leftist father, Juan Jose, who ushered in a decade of democratic and economic reforms that angered the ruling elite and saw his successor ousted in a U.S.-backed military coup in 1954.

Under outgoing President Giammattei, tensions with the U.S. have flared up over resistance by the administration to tackling corruption inside government.

Guatemala has slumped to an all-time low on watchdog Transparency International's corruption perceptions index.

The election has inspired hope for change.

The former head of CICIG, Ivan Velasquez, now Colombia's defense minister, congratulated Guatemala on Twitter after the vote and quoted words from the late Guatemalan poet and human rights activist Julia Esquivel.

"You can cut all the flowers, but spring will always return. You will blossom, Guatemala."

(Reporting by Sofia Menchu, Dave Graham and Stephen Eisenhammer; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Leslie Adler)







© Reuters

UK estimates cost of deporting each asylum seeker to Rwanda will be £169,000

Britain’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda will cost £169,000 p) per person, according to the first detailed government assessment of a high-stakes promise to tackle record numbers of people arriving in small boats. — 

£170,000 GBP

is equal to

$284,103.36 CAD

Tuesday, 27 Jun 2023

LONDON, June 27 — Britain’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda will cost £169,000 pounds (RM1 million) per person, according to the first detailed government assessment of a high-stakes promise to tackle record numbers of people arriving in small boats.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government wants to send thousands of migrants more than 6,400km away to Rwanda as part of a deal with the central African country agreed last year.

The government sees the plan as central to deterring asylum seekers arriving in small boats from France. Sunak has made this one of his five priorities amid pressure from some of his own Conservative lawmakers and the public to resolve the issue, with his party well behind the main opposition Labour Party in opinion polls ahead of a national election due next year.

In an economic impact assessment published yesterday, the government said the cost of deporting each individual to Rwanda would include an average £105,000 payment to Rwanda for hosting each asylum seeker, £22,000 for the flight and escorting, and £18,000 for processing and legal costs.

Home Secretary (interior minister) Suella Braverman said these costs must be considered alongside the impact of deterring others trying to reach Britain and the rising cost of housing asylum seekers.

Unless action is taken, Braverman said that the cost of housing asylum seekers will rise to £11 billion a year, up from about £3.6 billion currently.

“The economic impact assessment clearly shows that doing nothing is not an option,” she said.

The government said the potential savings were “highly uncertain”, but estimated that to break even the plan would need to have the effect of deterring almost two in five people arriving on small boats.

Labour said the economic assessment was a “complete joke” and it failed to accurately say what the overall cost of the plan would be.

The Scottish National Party accused the government of spending an “astronomical” amount of money deporting desperate people while failing to help people in Britain with the rising costs of mortgages and food bills.

On Thursday, the Court of Appeal will hand down its judgment on whether the Rwanda flights are lawful.

The first planned flight last June was blocked by a last-minute ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which imposed an injunction preventing any deportations until the conclusion of legal action in Britain.

In December, the High Court in London ruled the policy was lawful, but that decision is being challenged by asylum seekers from countries including Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Iran and Vietnam along with some human rights organisations.

Last year, a record 45,000 people came to Britain in small boats across the Channel, mainly from France. Over 11,000 have arrived so far this year. —