Indonesia starts reparations programme for victims of its bloody past


FILE PHOTO: Indonesia's President Joko Widodo speaks about the planned 

new capital Nusantara, at Ecosperity Week in Singapore


Tue, June 27, 2023 
By Ananda Teresia

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Tuesday launched an unprecedented reparation programme for victims of past human rights abuses by the state, a project critics fear will compensate only a small fraction of those who suffered.

Jokowi, as the president is known, in January expressed deep regret over 12 deadly events from 1965-2003 which include a purge by the military of suspected communists and their sympathisers, during which at least 500,000 people were killed and more than a million jailed, according to historians and activists.

It also included human rights violations by security forces during separatist conflicts in the Aceh and Papua regions, and the killing and abduction of students in 1998 after protests against the three-decade rule of autocratic former President Suharto. About 1,200 people were killed in subsequent riots, activists say.

The government has not disclosed the number of people who will be eligible for reparations, or any targets and it is unclear how victims can apply for compensation.

"Today we can start restoring the victims' rights," said Jokowi, who came to office in 2014 promising to take up the issue.

"This signals the government's commitment to prevent similar abuses in the future."

The compensation will range from educational and health incentives to house renovations, and visas for victims in exile.

However, Sri Winarso, a coordinator of a group of survivors of the 1965 crackdown, said only victims counted by government bodies had been included.

"They have to expand the coverage," he added.

Research by Indonesia's human rights commission, in cooperation with civil society groups, has estimated there are between 500,000 and 3 million victims and survivors of the 1965 bloodshed.

Commissioner Anis Hidayah said so far only 6,400 victims of the 12 bloody events had been verified, adding it was difficult to track those involved in incidents so long ago.

"We will try our best to reach more victims," Anis said.

Maria Catarina Sumarsih, the mother of a student killed in a 1998 protest, said compensation meant nothing if those responsible go unpunished.

"The president said the government will not negate legal resolution but there have been no concrete measures taken," she said.

(Reporting by Ananda Teresia; Editing by Martin Petty)

Colossal cave in Mexico that formed 15 million years ago is even more enormous than we thought


Lydia Smith
Updated Mon, June 26, 2023




three pictures showing different views of one of the descent into one of the deepest caves in the world

photo looking up at a caver descending into a dark cavern from a bright opening above

The deepest cave in the Western Hemisphere — the Sistema Huautla in Mexico — is even longer than originally thought, scientists and cavers have discovered.

Cave explorers expanded the map of Sistema Huautla, a cave system in the Sierra Mazateca mountains in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, by 728 feet (222 meters). This means the known length of the cave is just over 62.7 miles (100 kilometers) — but further exploration may reveal it is even longer.

Sistema Huautla, the 10th-deepest cave in the world, was first discovered in the 1960s by cavers from Austin, Texas. Since 2014, researchers have carried out annual expeditions as part of the Proyecto Espeleológico Sistema Huautla, or Sistema Huautla Speleological Project (PESH) to find out more about the enormous underground labyrinth.

The latest expedition took place in April, and PESH announced the revised length in a statement on June 6.

Related: Surprise discovery of world's 2nd deepest blue hole could provide window into Earth's history

Sistema Huautla is 5,118 feet (1,581 m) deep — equivalent to around four Empire State buildings stacked on top of each other. There are 26 connected entrances to the cave, which is estimated to be up to 15 million years old, according to the statement.


caver fills up a bottle of water from a waterfall inside a cave system

A caver descending into a lit cave with a forest in the opening above

A caver descending into a cave from a brightly lit entrance


A man stands in front of helictite bushes

A caver attached to a rope climbing across a pool

The cavers who led the most recent expedition — Tommy Shifflett and Bill Steele — said they carry out the expeditions every April because it is the driest month of the year in the region. Diving during the dry season minimizes the risk of being trapped underground by flooding.

"With teams camping deep underground with no way to contact the surface, we are always keeping an eye on water levels," Steele said in the statement. "This April it was wetter than normal — that hampered our exploration somewhat."

In addition to mapping out Sistema Huautla, the team also added 1.9 miles (3 km) to the known length of Cueva Elysium, a nearby cave system separate from Sistema Huautla.

The information and data collected during the expeditions is shared with cave scientists in Mexico. So far, the expeditions have helped scientists learn more about how life adapts to cave environments and have photographed the paleontological remains of extinct animals.

The work has also been used to identify ancient climate patterns through analysis of stalagmites, a type of rock formation that rises from the ground of a cave due to minerals that drip from the ceiling.

Research published in 2021 showed Sistema Huautla is a hotspot for biodiversity. Biologists have found spiders, millipedes, beetles and silverfish living in the cave system, as well as a colony of common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) in one of the entrances.

The 2024 expedition will focus on two other caves near Sistema Huautla for exploration and surveying, the team said in the statement.

Time Running Out for Surprise Winner Pita to Secure Thai PM Role

Pita Limjaroenrat 

Patpicha Tanakasempipat
Updated Tue, June 27, 2023 at 5:21 PM MDT·5 min read


(Bloomberg) -- Ever since Pita Limjaroenrat led his Move Forward Party to a surprise first-place finish in Thailand’s election last month, he’s faced a flurry of legal complaints and controversies challenging his bid to take power after more than a decade of military-backed rule.

Now with parliament scheduled to convene July 3 and lawmakers expected to vote on a new prime minister in the days or weeks afterward, time is running out for the 42-year-old leader to make sure his victory was anything other than symbolic.

Pita’s biggest challenge remains the 250-member Senate — a body appointed by the royalist military establishment following a 2014 coup, many of whose members oppose his proposal to ease penalties for criticizing the royal family. And they apparently don’t care that he won the most votes.

“It’s not our job to listen to the people,” Senator Prapanth Koonmee, a lawyer who said 90% of lawmakers in the upper chamber have already made up their mind, said in an interview. “Even if you got 100 million votes, I still wouldn’t pick you if I don’t like you or find you suitable.”

That hasn’t slowed down the Harvard-educated Pita. He’s built support from a range of pro-democracy parties since the vote and traversed the country seeking to sustain enthusiasm for the May 14 election results, which amounted to a shocking blow to the royalist establishment.

The stakes are high ahead of the parliamentary vote, expected soon after King Maha Vajiralongkorn opens parliament next week. A failure by Pita to get enough support could mean the unraveling of his coalition or even rule by a minority-led government.

The uncertainty has Thailand’s markets and global investors on edge. Thailand’s main stock index is the worst performer in Asia this year, having tumbled about 11%.

Read More: Here’s How Thailand’s PM Race Could Play Out as Talks Drag On

Pita has downplayed the uncertainty and sought to reassure supporters that he will lead the next government. That outreach has included meetings with various business groups, where he talks about the transition of power and the agenda for his first 100 days in office.

“We’re working hard to break the wall and forge an understanding between the two chambers,” Pita said at Parliament House on Tuesday. “There is constant progress.”

He added that he’s confident there will be enough support — he currently needs 64 senators — for him to be prime minister.

“Pita seems to be trying to create a sense of momentum and inevitability about him becoming prime minister, in the hope of putting pressure on senators to back him,” said Peter Mumford, the Southeast Asia practice head of consultancy Eurasia Group. “It is far from certain that the strategy will work, though.”

His performance as a prime minister-in-waiting has helped energize Move Forward’s supporters, who have pressured senators in online campaigns, public panels and street demonstrations to declare their support for Pita. But the voices run the risk of falling on deaf ears, as many senators have remained silent or publicly ruled out their support.

For many senators, resistance to Pita’s leadership is based largely on Move Forward’s platform to amend the lese majeste law, or Article 112 of the Thai criminal code, which penalizes criticisms against the king and other royals.

“Senators don’t like his disloyalty to the monarchy and his plans to reform and uproot Thai society,” said Senator Prapanth, 69. “It’s not acceptable.”

Pita has denied allegations that he is disloyal, saying he seeks to improve the relationship between the monarchy and the people.

Prapanth’s remarks underscore just how high the odds are stacked against Pita and his pro-democracy coalition. Yet with Move Forward previously ruling out alliances with conservative parties, there is little alternative but to win over as many senators as possible.

Behind the scenes, Move Forward has deployed top officials to approach individual senators — and even relied on a network of allies who are friends and families of lawmakers to make the party’s case.

“We’re trying whatever method is required to communicate with as many senators as possible,” said Parit Wacharasindhu, the party’s policy campaign manager, who is also one of the negotiators doing the outreach.

One of their strategies has been to argue that senators should vote for Pita not because they agree with him but for the same reason they cited in voting for incumbent Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha in 2019: because he had the support of the majority of the lower house.

Parit noted that hopes are higher for a group of 63 senators who previously voted for a failed measure to abolish the Senate’s power to vote for prime minister and limit it to the 500-member lower house. Parit said he’s confident he can win those senators over, then go for others.

“I still hope that senators will make decisions based on rational grounds, regardless of emotion and personal preferences,” Parit said.

One lawmaker in the Pita camp is Senator Zakee Phithakkumpol, a 45-year-old academic who considers himself a minority in the upper chamber. Zakee said he occasionally shares his views privately with those who oppose Pita in hopes of changing their minds. He also helped advise Move Forward negotiators who approached him on how best to address the senators’ concerns, he said.

“I tried to communicate with the elder senators that I’m not taking Pita’s side but the way we’re carrying on may not be good in the long term, especially if we want the monarchy to endure in Thai society,” Zakee said in an interview.

Zakee, who backed Prayuth in 2019, said he believes that abiding by democratic principles is the only way to prevent chaos.

“Thai society is at a crossroads between change and delaying it,” he said. “Your choice will upset some people either way, so what’s more important is to respect the rules. I believe that doing the right thing will protect you.”

--With assistance from Anuchit Nguyen and Margo Towie.

Will AI really destroy humanity?


Joseph BOYLE
Mon, 26 June 2023 

The Stop Killer Robots group has explicitly dismissed the Terminator scenario

 (JEWEL SAMAD)

The warnings are coming from all angles: artificial intelligence poses an existential risk to humanity and must be shackled before it is too late.

But what are these disaster scenarios and how are machines supposed to wipe out humanity?

- Paperclips of doom -


Most disaster scenarios start in the same place: machines will outstrip human capacities, escape human control and refuse to be switched off.

"Once we have machines that have a self-preservation goal, we are in trouble," AI academic Yoshua Bengio told an event this month.

But because these machines do not yet exist, imagining how they could doom humanity is often left to philosophy and science fiction.

Philosopher Nick Bostrom has written about an "intelligence explosion" he says will happen when superintelligent machines begin designing machines of their own.

He illustrated the idea with the story of a superintelligent AI at a paperclip factory.

The AI is given the ultimate goal of maximising paperclip output and so "proceeds by converting first the Earth and then increasingly large chunks of the observable universe into paperclips".

Bostrom's ideas have been dismissed by many as science fiction, not least because he has separately argued that humanity is a computer simulation and supported theories close to eugenics.

He also recently apologised after a racist message he sent in the 1990s was unearthed.

Yet his thoughts on AI have been hugely influential, inspiring both Elon Musk and Professor Stephen Hawking.

- The Terminator -

If superintelligent machines are to destroy humanity, they surely need a physical form.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's red-eyed cyborg, sent from the future to end human resistance by an AI in the movie "The Terminator", has proved a seductive image, particularly for the media.

But experts have rubbished the idea.

"This science fiction concept is unlikely to become a reality in the coming decades if ever at all," the Stop Killer Robots campaign group wrote in a 2021 report.

However, the group has warned that giving machines the power to make decisions on life and death is an existential risk.

Robot expert Kerstin Dautenhahn, from Waterloo University in Canada, played down those fears.

She told AFP that AI was unlikely to give machines higher reasoning capabilities or imbue them with a desire to kill all humans.

"Robots are not evil," she said, although she conceded programmers could make them do evil things.

- Deadlier chemicals -

A less overtly sci-fi scenario sees "bad actors" using AI to create toxins or new viruses and unleashing them on the world.

Large language models like GPT-3, which was used to create ChatGPT, it turns out are extremely good at inventing horrific new chemical agents.

A group of scientists who were using AI to help discover new drugs ran an experiment where they tweaked their AI to search for harmful molecules instead.

They managed to generate 40,000 potentially poisonous agents in less than six hours, as reported in the Nature Machine Intelligence journal.

AI expert Joanna Bryson from the Hertie School in Berlin said she could imagine someone working out a way of spreading a poison like anthrax more quickly.

"But it's not an existential threat," she told AFP. "It's just a horrible, awful weapon."

- Species overtaken -

The rules of Hollywood dictate that epochal disasters must be sudden, immense and dramatic -- but what if humanity's end was slow, quiet and not definitive?

"At the bleakest end our species might come to an end with no successor," philosopher Huw Price says in a promotional video for Cambridge University's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.

But he said there were "less bleak possibilities" where humans augmented by advanced technology could survive.

"The purely biological species eventually comes to an end, in that there are no humans around who don't have access to this enabling technology," he said.

The imagined apocalypse is often framed in evolutionary terms.

Stephen Hawking argued in 2014 that ultimately our species will no longer be able to compete with AI machines, telling the BBC it could "spell the end of the human race".

Geoffrey Hinton, who spent his career building machines that resemble the human brain, latterly for Google, talks in similar terms of "superintelligences" simply overtaking humans.

He told US broadcaster PBS recently that it was possible "humanity is just a passing phase in the evolution of intelligence".

jxb/rl

£3m to fix the UK’s housing crisis? Ha ha ha ha ha, your royal highness

Zoe Williams
Tue, 27 June 2023

The Guardian
Opinion

Photograph: James Marsh/Shutterstock

Prince William is going to solve homelessness with a new royal foundation, launching a project called Homewards that starts with £3m for six towns and cities across the UK. It’s such a short sentence to make so little sense. You can look at the housing crisis from a range of perspectives. Some people are obsessed with planning permission; some have a supply-side fetish. You don’t have to chalk it all up to the ever more feudal rentier economy. Nevertheless, we could agree, I think, that dropping half a mil into a city, even if it might put a roof over a handful of heads, would barely scratch the surface.

Furthermore, whatever your view on equality – and again, there’s a spectrum, with some people thinking great concentrations of unearned wealth are good for motivation or whatnot – it would still, I think, strike you as piquant that a man with housing plenty beyond anything he could ever use would style himself as ambassador for the business of getting people off the streets.

Elsewhere in Gaslit Nation, the website This Is Money has been giving advice on how to clean up your credit score if you’re applying for a mortgage: make sure you have separated your finances from those of your feckless ex; get a credit card, and if you have one, keep on top of the bills; register to vote. Because definitely, in the matter of affordability criteria, you are the problem. If you had only kept up the minimum payments on your Marks & Spencer charge card and been a bit more careful in the company you kept, you would be a much better bet for the housing indebtedness that soon nobody will be able to afford and only the luckiest will be able to evade.

It’s baffling, this commitment to a delusion, where nothing systemic has gone wrong, there is no crash round the corner, no spectre of homelessness stalking all the graphs. It’s such an intricate phantasm, collectively constructed, of an old world in which individuals can solve all their own problems, and if they can’t, Prince William can help. I almost admire it.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny thought people were joking about the Wagner revolt and that it was just an 'Internet meme'

Charles R. Davis
Tue, 27 June 2023 

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his wife Yulia walk with demonstrators during a 2020 march in memory of murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in downtown Moscow. He suffered a life-threatening poisoning months later, in August 2020.

KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said he first thought people were joking about the Wagner rebellion.


Navalny is currently in a Russian prison, accused of "terrorism" against the state.


"I thought it was some kind of new joke or Internet meme that hadn't reached me yet," he said.

The images out of Russia this past weekend were surreal. But for jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who faces the prospect of life in prison over what are widely seen as fabricated charges of "terrorism," the news that Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin had pulled out of Ukraine and was marching instead on the capital of Russia was literally a joke.

"I kept expecting someone to suddenly yell 'You got punk'd'!" Navalny wrote Tuesday in a series of posts on social media, recounting how he first heard the news from lawyers ahead of a recent court appearance. "So how did martial law go for you?" one attorney had asked him, according to Navalny, who gained notoriety in Russia by campaigning against official corruption. "I thought it was some kind of new joke or Internet meme that hadn't reached me yet."

The rebellion, led by a former ally of President Vladimir Putin, began just a day after Russia's highest court ruled that Navalny — convicted of "fraud" after returning to Russia following an apparently state-sponsored attempt on his life — could continue to be denied a pen and paper while behind bars. His social media missives are communicated to his legal team and posted by staff outside of Russia.

The irony of it all is not lost on Navalny, who on Tuesday noted that he stands "accused of forming an organization to overthrow President Putin by violent means," even as Prigozhin, whose mercenaries shot down more than a half-dozen Russian military aircraft on Saturday, killing service members, had the criminal case against him dropped within 48 hours of launching an armed insurrection, despite very publicly threatening the life of Russia's minister of defense, Sergei Shoigu.

"It was Putin personally who did this," Navalny said, noting that rebellion was led by an erstwhile ally and that Putin himself "pardoned all those convicts who were on their way to assassinate Shoigu and whoever else they wanted to kill."

The lesson, he continued, is that change in Russian cannot come through violent means — nor can stability be delivered by an autocrat — but rather through a commitment to free and fair elections. Russia's next presidential contest is scheduled for March 2024, even as Navalny faces the new charges that could extend his sentence by decades.

"It is not democracy, human rights and parliamentarism that make the regime weak and lead to turmoil. It is dictators and usurpation of power that lead to mess, weak government and chaos," Navalny said. "Always has been."

CONSIDERING HOW MANY INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES KNEW ABOUT IT WE CAN NOW CALL IT; A FALSE FLAG

British spies had ‘extremely detailed picture’ of Wagner’s mutiny plans

Joe Barnes
Tue, 27 June 2023

Yevgeny Prigozhin launched a shot-lived coup in Russia - AP

British officials had “an extremely detailed and accurate picture” of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny plans before his troops began to advance, according to reports.

The details were shared by US intelligence officials ahead of the short-lived insurrection, and contained information of where and how Wagner Group mercenaries planned to move.

Britain was one of the few allied countries to be handed the details, as Washington avoided circulating its reports to a wider group of Nato allies.

The intelligence, according to CNN, was kept so secret within the US that it was only briefed to the most senior officials and the so-called “Group of Eight” members of Congress, who have access to highly sensitive intelligence details.

“It was an extremely tight hold,” a source said.

The secrecy of the information was blamed for US and European officials being caught off guard when Prigozhin seized control of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia before marching toward Moscow, other sources said.

Some Nato officials have expressed frustration that the intelligence was not shared in advance of the attempted mutiny, which eventually fizzled out after an agreement to end it.

Ukraine was also kept in the dark amid fears the information could be leaked to adversaries listening into calls between Washington and Kyiv.

Separately, Kyiv was urged not to launch strikes within Russia during the rebellion amid fears it could trigger an escalation in the conflict by Moscow, a Western official told CNN.

“The message was don’t rock the boat here,” the official said.

“Ukrainians were being cautioned by allies not to provoke the situation. Make hay of opportunities on Ukrainian territory but don’t get drawn into internal matters or strike at offensive military assets inside of Russia.”

After the attempted mutiny was launched, Joe Biden, the US president, was keen to stress that the US or other Nato allies had played no role in trying to oust Vladimir Putin’s most senior military officials.

Washington had been tracking Prigozhin’s mounting feud with the Russian defence ministry for many months.

Intelligence officials picked up information that his Wagner mercenaries were stockpiling weapons and ammunition leading up to the rebellion.

Democratic Senator Mark Warner, a member of the Gang of Eight, said the mutiny “was almost hiding in plain sight”.

“Putin of 10 years ago would have never allowed this to play out the way it did,” he told CNN, adding that the Russian president is “clearly weakened” by the incident.

“The fact that you have a mercenary group, that I don’t think had a full 25,000 troops the way Prigozhin claimed, but was able to literally march into Rostov, a city of a million people which was the command and control for the whole Ukrainian war, and take it over with barely a shot fired – that is unprecedented, to say the least,” Mr Warner said.

Welsh mining towns had alternative currencies 200 years ago – here's what the crypto world could learn from them


Edward Thomas Jones, Senior Lecturer in Economics / Director of the Institute of European Finance, Bangor University

 Laurence Jones, Lecturer in Finance, Bangor University

The Conversation
Tue, 27 June 2023

A halfpenny token issued by the Parys Mining Company of Anglesey in 1788. The hooded druid design was used for many years and was the first of hundreds of token designs. BrandonBigheart/Wikimedia

You can also read this article in Welsh.

The global cryptocurrency market has seen a number of recent setbacks: from the collapse of the Terra/Luna system in May 2022 to the failure of FTX, one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world.

Because of these factors, and other concerns over cryptocurrencies’ carbon emissions, these assets lost US$2 trillion in value (£1.5 trillion) in 2022.

But while cryptocurrencies get a lot of attention today, in some ways they are not a revolutionary concept. Hundreds of years ago, workers in Wales were often paid with alternative currencies instead of money.

These currencies were physical tokens that represented and were linked to the value of real money. Many cryptocurrencies work in a similar way, acting as digital tokens that represent a ledger of financial assets (this is known as “tokenisation”).

Digital currencies are also not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain their network of exchange. Again, this is similar to how physical tokens were used by Welsh mining companies.
Currency crisis

Towards the end of the 18th century the coinage of Britain was in a deplorable state due to the severe shortages of silver and copper coins. During the Industrial Revolution people migrated from the countryside into mining and manufacturing centres. But living in towns required money, and the ability to pay wages was impossible for businesses without small change.

With an influx of new workers using money, new shops were opened to meet demand, creating more jobs that required payment in coins. Although the production of counterfeit coins was illegal and punishable by death, it was not illegal to produce tokens with other designs which could be used instead of coins.

The first great era of token production during the first Industrial Revolution began in 1787 with the issue of the Parys Mining Company token. This company mined at Parys Mountain on the Welsh island of Anglesey. It briefly produced more copper than any other mine in the world during the Industrial Revolution.

What Parys mountain on Anglesey looks like today. rhianjane/Pixabay

It also used the high-quality ore from its mine to produce tokens which could be exchanged for official coin at full value at any one of its shops or offices. This made the Parys Mining Company the first company in the world to issue tokens. These were described as the “premier tokens” of the 18th century by that era’s coin experts.

Soon, practically every town in Britain was producing its own tokens. This was driven in part by a shortage of government coinage and improvements in coin manufacturing by Matthew Boulton’s Soho Mint in Birmingham, who also turned his hand to tokens.

By the turn of the 19th century, the total supply and fast circulation of tokens, foreign coins and other substitutes probably exceeded those of the official coin of the country.

The process of tokenisation was subsequently seen in other countries, in particular the United States. Mining and logging camps in the 19th century US were typically owned and operated by a single company, often in remote locations with poor access to cash.

These companies would often pay their workers in “scrip”, or tokens. The workers, given the limited places they could spend scrips, had little choice but to purchase goods at company-owned stores. By placing large mark ups on goods, the company could increase their profits and enforce employee loyalty.

A Parys penny produced by the Parys Mining Company. 

Obscurasky/Wikimedia

While the production of tokens by the Parys Mining Company were spurred on by the first Industrial Revolution, the adoption and popularity of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has been hastened by the fourth Industrial Revolution.

Although they are more than 200 years apart, the history of these tokens have important lessons for today’s cryptocurrencies. First, for cryptocurrencies to succeed there needs to be various ways for individuals to accumulate the crypto/tokens, plus a demand and use for the crypto that means it holds its value, and trusted environments where exchange for goods and services can take place.

And second, for cryptocurrencies to be successful and sustainable in the long term they must uphold their original purpose of having an ecosystem that remains independent of a single company or government. Efforts to lock cryptocurrencies to a single organisation do not look positive, for example Facebook’s failed attempt to launch a cryptocurrency, announced in 2019.

The tokens of Welsh mining companies inherently failed when the closures of the mine or shops led to the removal of one or more of the three components of the ecosystem. And then people left with the tokens lost their money, a lesson for us today.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

LONDON'S MAYOR

Sadiq Khan awarded honorary fellowship for work on air quality

Noah Vickers
Tue, 27 June 2023 

Sadiq Khan has been made an honorary fellow of the Faculty of Public Health (PA)

Sadiq Khan has been awarded an honorary fellowship by the Faculty of Public Health “in recognition of his leadership in tackling poor air quality”.

The award is the highest category of the association’s membership and is awarded to those who have made “exceptional contributions towards improving the health of the public”.

Professor Kevin Fenton, the association’s president, said the mayor “has shown his willingness to take on major challenges for London to improve the health, wellbeing and economic productivity of all Londoners”.

Mr Khan said he was “honoured” to receive the recognition “on behalf of all those who have worked so hard in London to improve air quality, save lives and reduce health inequality”.

As well as introducing hopper fares on buses and trams, the mayor has increased the cost and area covered by the congestion charge, and is expanding the Ultra low emission zone (Ulez) to cover the whole of Greater London from August 29.

The Ulez expansion plan has been criticised by the Conservatives, who say the expansion will do little to improve air quality while hitting people’s pockets during a cost of living crisis.

Air pollution scientists, doctors and environmental groups have meanwhile said the scheme is a vital step towards cleaning the capital’s air and reducing pollution-related illnesses and deaths.

WHY THEY WENT EXTINCT
Scientists find cannibal human ancestor species that likely butchered and ate each othe

Vishwam Sankaran
Tue, 27 June 2023 


Scientists have identified the oldest evidence hinting at cannibalism in humans’ close relative species who likely butchered and ate each other.

The study published on Monday in the journal Scientific Reports, assessed nine cut marks on a 1.45 million-year-old left shin bone from a relative of modern humans found in northern Kenya.

Researchers, including those from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in the US, say the cut marks seem to have been caused due to damage inflicted by stone tools.

They say this could be the oldest instance of cannibalism in a human relative species known with a high degree of confidence and specificity.

“The information we have tells us that hominins were likely eating other hominins at least 1.45 million years ago,” study co-author Briana Pobiner said.

“There are numerous other examples of species from the human evolutionary tree consuming each other for nutrition, but this fossil suggests that our species’ relatives were eating each other to survive further into the past than we recognized,” Dr Pobiner said.

Researchers first came across the fossil shin bone in the collections of the National Museums of Kenya’s Nairobi National Museum while looking for clues about which prehistoric predators might have been hunting and eating humans’ ancient relatives.

When looking at the shin bone for bite marks from extinct beasts with a handheld magnifying glass, Dr Pobiner instead noticed what immediately looked to her like evidence of butchery.

She then sent molds of the cuts made with the same material dentists use to create impressions of teeth.

Researchers then created 3D scans of the molds and compared the shape of the marks to a database of 898 individual tooth, butchery, and trample marks created through controlled experiments.

Scientists could positively identify nine of the 11 marks as clear matches for the type of damage inflicted by stone tools and the other two as likely bite marks from a big cat.

While the cut marks by themselves do not prove that the human relative who inflicted them may have also made a meal out of the leg, Dr Pobiner suspects this was the most likely scenario.

She says the cuts are located on the shin where a calf muscle would have attached to the bone – a good place to cut if the goal is to remove a chunk of flesh.

The marks were also found to be all oriented in such a way that a hand wielding a stone tool could have made them all in succession without changing grip or adjusting the angle of attack.

“These cut marks look very similar to what I’ve seen on animal fossils that were being processed for consumption. It seems most likely that the meat from this leg was eaten and that it was eaten for nutrition as opposed to for a ritual,” Dr Pobiner said.

However, scientists say there is not enough evidence to conclusively infer this as a sign of cannibalism as that would require the eater and the eaten to hail from the same species.

While the fossil bone is known to be that of a human relative species, experts say there is not enough information to assign the specimen to a particular species of hominin.

They say the use of stone tools also does not narrow down which species might have been doing the cutting.

Some researchers have further called into question the once-common assumption that only one genus, Homo, made and used stone tools.

While this fossil evidence may be a trace of prehistoric cannibalism, it is also likely that this may have been a case of one human ancestor or relative species chowing down on a cousin species.

It is also hard to infer anything about the order of events that took place based on the bite marks, researchers say.

They say a lion may have scavenged the remains after hominins removed most of the meat from the leg bone or alternatively a big cat that killed an unlucky hominin was likely chased off before opportunistic hominins took over the kill.

However, the findings underscore the value of museum collections, researchers say.

KPMG WERE ENRON'S ACCOUNTANTS
KPMG Australia launches internal review after potential conflict-of-interest concerns raised

Henry Belot
Tue, 27 June 2023 

Photograph: Quentin Bargate/Alamy

The consultancy firm KPMG has launched an internal review to address concerns about potential conflicts of interest after sustained criticism from senators, unions and transparency advocates.

The federal government has paid KPMG to conduct safety and quality audits of aged care facilities, while a separate division within the firm simultaneously charges providers for advice on audits and accreditation.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

KPMG says all potential conflicts of interest are carefully managed but Greens senator Barbara Pocock has raised concerns during a parliamentary hearing into the government’s use of consultants.

“In aged care, you are both an auditor of aged care residential services and you are a consultant to those services,” Pocock said.

“The conflict of interest is very clear. It’s repetitive. Chinese walls will not protect against it. It is a real concern that this very important separation is not under way.”

KPMG chief executive Andrew Yates told the inquiry he was aware of public commentary and concern about the arrangements.

“I need to listen to what we are hearing and make sure that we are doing the right thing,” Yates said.

Related: PwC to publicly name all staff involved in tax scandal, inquiry told

“We feel we are doing the right thing. Our clients are telling us that we are doing the right thing. We are hearing the comments you have been making. I have asked our risk team to review this to make sure that we are actually doing the right thing.”

The scope of the review and its duration are not known. KPMG was contacted for comment but did not respond before deadline.

Government consultancy firms have faced intense scrutiny after the misuse of confidential tax policy information at PwC, which has damaged the firm’s revenue and reputation. It now plans to divest its government work – worth about 20% of revenue – for just $1 to save more than 1,000 jobs.

The Community and Public Sector Union has warned KPMG’s work as an auditor and an adviser could expose taxpayers and residents to potential conflicts of interest, as consultants could be asked to audit clients that are not disclosed to or detected by government.

“What we have here is a consultancy assisting the aged care regulator to audit aged care facilities, while at the same time, it seems that same consultancy is also advising aged care providers,” CPSU assistant national secretary, Michael Tull, told the inquiry. “At face value, that looks like a potential conflict of interest.”

“We’re talking about aged care regulation, an area of serious public concern, where many people think profit motives stand in the way of quality care. There cannot be even the slightest room for people to doubt the independence of the aged care regulator.”

The aged care safety and quality commission has previously told a parliamentary inquiry that it prompts KPMG to declare any conflicts of interest every month and that when conflicts are identified, work is not awarded.

KPMG executive Paul Low told the inquiry the firm would welcome additional transparency over the movement of staff from government to consultancy firms.

Related: PwC tax scandal: firm engaged in a ‘calculated’ breach of trust, Senate committee finds

“If there is ambiguity around the separation from government and there are opportunities to make that clearer for other employers, that is something that KPMG would support,” Low said.

“If we have a senior executive who is moving into our business formerly from government or from a political role in the last two years, we engage with our national managing risk partner and the client lead partner for that client in our business.”

Another parliamentary inquiry has been launched into ethics and professional accountability in the government consulting industry. Labor senator Deborah O’Neill said continued scrutiny was required to ensure accountability.

“I think we have opened the lid on a set of practices that this sector has tried to keep quiet and just considered business as usual for a very, very long period of time,” O’Neill said.