Canada's Trudeau and Alberta Premier Smith look for agreement on climate policies

By Nia Williams

July 7, 2023

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meet as the annual Calgary Stampede rodeo, exhibition and festival kicks off in Calgary, Alberta, Canada July 7, 2023. REUTERS/Todd Korol

July 7 (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith on Friday said they hoped to find agreement on climate and energy policies that have been a sore point between the federal government and the largest oil-producing province.

Trudeau was visiting Canada's oil capital Calgary at the start of the city's annual Stampede event, a 10-day celebration of rodeo and western cowboy culture.

The Liberal Prime Minister and United Conservative Party leader Smith have clashed over federal climate policies including a proposed oil and gas emissions cap and clean electricity regulations.

"We'd like to bring our emissions reduction and energy development plan with the target of carbon neutrality by 2050 in alignment with some of the objectives of the federal government," Smith said, speaking alongside Trudeau ahead of their bilateral meeting.

She said they would discuss establishing a working group to achieve a net-zero power grid, which Ottawa wants to achieve by 2035, a date Alberta says is unrealistic.

The meeting would also cover the oil and gas emissions cap, and Article 6 of the Paris Climate Accord, which would allow Canadian provinces to obtain credits for reducing emissions abroad by displacing coal with liquefied natural gas exports, Smith said.

Trudeau's government has pledged to cut Canada's emissions 40-45% below 2005 by 2030, but will struggle to do so without significant decarbonization in Alberta, home to the oil sands and the bulk of Canada's fossil fuel industry, and the highest-emitting province.

"There's lots of things to work through. But I can say there's been a really positive and constructive working relationship between our ministers and our folks from the very beginning," Trudeau said.

Reporting by Nia Williams; Editing by David Gregorio

 

Nasser’s Ideology vs Practice: Postcolonial Critique of Egypt’s Yemen Intervention

Amadeus Marzai

Jul 7 2023 •

This content was originally written for an undergraduate or Master's program. It is published as part of our mission to showcase peer-leading papers written by students during their studies. This work can be used for background reading and research, but should not be cited as an expert source or used in place of scholarly articles/books.

esfera/Shutterstock

For too long, the states of the postcolony have been neglected as objects of academic inquiry. As of late, however, the postcolonial state has received increased scholarly attention, which is not least the case since Western political and economic ideas and theorems “seem increasingly febrile and dangerously unsuitable in large parts of the world.”[1] Against this backdrop, it is crucial to understand better what has happened to the ambitious but ultimately corrupted Third World project and its protagonists, who aimed at a socioeconomic, political, and cultural transformation of the postcolony

This paper attempts to do just that by examining one of the Third World’s most scintillating figures, the postcolonial state he governed and one of his most fateful foreign policy decisions, thereby exploring a little-studied phenomenon of international politics. What is meant here is the Egyptian nation-state under President Gamal Abdel Nasser and its military intervention in Yemen starting in 1962, which fuelled the North Yemen Civil War (1962-1970) between insurgents of the deposed Mutawakkilite Kingdom and the newly installed Yemen Arab Republic (YAR). Egypt,[2] at that time, the “cultural, economic and political envy of the Arab world,”[3] not only brought soldiers to the southwest of the Arabian Peninsula but also administrators, doctors, technicians, and teachers as its military intervention was accompanied by an enormous state-building effort, reminiscent of later American and Soviet undertakings in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Egypt’s adventure in Yemen also resembles Vietnam and Afghanistan in the sense that the intervention force could not translate its superiority in equipment and technology into decisive victories as the Royalists successfully relied on guerrilla tactics. The deployment of up to 70,000 Egyptian soldiers quickly developed into a quagmire that swallowed up humans, material, and economic resources. It is not without reason that Nasser referred to the war as “my Vietnam.”[4] This involvement in Yemen is commonly held to have contributed significantly to Egypt’s devastating defeat at the hands of Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Like the American or Soviet interventions in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq, the Egyptian intervention must be understood as imperial and was widely perceived as such in Yemen as the foreign troops came to be regarded as occupiers. Just as in comparable cases, civilians in Yemen suffered greatly. Aerial bombardments of the countryside inhabited by uncommitted or hostile tribes were a recurrent feature of Egyptian warfare.[5] In the process, the Egyptians did not shy away from using a variety of chemical weapons. The civil war between the Republicans trying to safeguard their newly founded republic, their Egyptian patrons and the tribal forces desiring to restore the kingdom ultimately is believed to have claimed more than 200,000 lives.[6]

Apart from the parallels to other conflicts, there are further reasons that make Egypt’s military intervention an intriguing case worthy of academic attention. In contrast to the wars in the Third World led by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US), the 1960s war in Yemen remains largely underexamined and overshadowed by the Arab-Israeli wars. Moreover, it is noteworthy that while his soldiers were waging a brutal imperial war, Nasser, from 1964 to 1970, held the presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). He used this prominent platform to pledge for anti-imperialist struggle everywhere and self-determination, condemning “all attempts of old and new colonialism, all the plots of military or psychological terrorism, and all the crimes of attrition that are practiced against the daily struggle of peoples and against their wealth.”[7]

It is precisely this contradiction between anti-imperialism and progressive internationalism proclaimed by Nasser on the one hand and the ground reality of Egypt’s imperial expedition in Yemen on the other — in short, the difference between ideology and practice — that marks the starting point of this academic undertaking. It seeks to explain the Janus-facedness of Nasser’s intervention through postcolonial theory and examination of its public justifications. It endeavours to answer the question: how can we explain why Nasserist Egypt conducted a brutal and imperial intervention despite being painfully aware of its past as a subject to imperialism? An awareness due to which Cairo gravitated towards pan-Arabism, Third Worldism, and the NAM, displaying itself as anti-imperial. We will adopt the notion that, particularly in the postcolony, foreign policy is a process of nation-making and projecting its meaning into the global sphere.[8] We also stress the importance of political performativity and rhetoric as they narrate “our origin myths and desired futures.”[9]

To find an answer to this puzzle, we will draw on Nasser’s speeches from 1963, which constitute the primary source material for this study. These speeches from the first full year of the intervention — given to returning troops, Yemeni delegations, and the general Egyptian public — help us to approach the research question insofar as Nasser had to explain the intervention to a population that believed Yemen to be a distant land that held no value to Egypt. “In an age of uncertain legitimacy,” spirited and often excessive speeches to mass audiences were the “bread and butter of Arab political discourse.”[10] This was especially the case in a populist regime such as the one architected by Nasser on the banks of the Nile. The symbiosis between the state and its charismatic leader and their reciprocal identification, which made his sensitivities those of Egypt’s, allows us to focus on Nasser’s dialectic. Examining the Nasserist discourse and postcolonial Egypt’s self-fashioning regarding one of its most crucial foreign policy decisions is relevant because Nasserism’s ideological density is still disputed today.

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Meet the Ghanaian Canadian Lego sculptor building a Black universe

Story by Amarachi Orie • CNN

For 42-year-old Ghanaian Canadian artist Ekow Nimako, Lego is more than just a kids’ toy. A trickster deity in the form of a spider, a flower girl holding a giant bee and a Ghanaian kingdom in the year 3020 are all sculptures that he has built using only black Legos.

“I’m making art,” said Nimako. “This is fine art. It’s not a hobby, it’s not a toy, it’s not part of the Lego fandom, it’s not goofy. It doesn’t fall into a lot of categories that Lego creations fall into.”

He started making Lego sculptures in 2012 and his career took off two years later when he received a grant to exhibit his work in Canada during Black History Month. “I started realizing that not only did I enjoy making art with Lego, but it was important that I made Black art very specifically,” he said.

Nimako uses black Lego bricks specifically for three main reasons. The first is technical; black is one of the most common Lego colors, so there are many different pieces available for him to use.

The second is that he simply likes the color. “I think there’s something that is so sophisticated, something that is just expansive about black, and then there’s also something that is dark and sometimes foreboding or haunting about black. It has so much spectrum to it,” he explained.



Nimako, pictured here next to his "Warrior Owl" sculpture, only uses black-colored Lego pieces. -

However, the most important reason is that the beings that he creates are “unequivocally Black. Despite their features or what I may do with them, they’ll always be regarded as Black,” he said.

The building blocks of life

In 2014, Nimako made his first human sculpture, “Flower Girl,” which “spoke to the innocence lost of young Black girls that didn’t get a chance to be like traditional flower girls in the West – speaking to the girls that came here as a result of the transatlantic slave trade,” he said.



"Flower Girl" was the first human sculpture that Nimako made

The sculpture was initially the size of a six-year-old girl but as his technique developed and more Lego pieces were released, he aged her and enhanced her aesthetic. She is now the size of an average 10-year-old.

“There’s an intrinsic essence of life in my work,” said Nimako. “The sculptures are inanimate objects made of plastic. There’s something that’s quite synthetic about them. But it’s that synthetic quality that I strive to transcend with life, (such as by) spending a lot of time developing the eyes of each sculpture.”


It takes between 50 to 800 hours to make each sculpture, according to the Lego artist, who is “never in a rush.” For a sculpture that he is currently working on, he spent two hours building one section of a jaw, trying to find the right angles and the right parts, and “still didn’t finish.”



Named "Kadeesa" by his wife, this cat sculpture draws on the griffin, a mythological creature that is both lion and eagle, creating what Nimako calls a "griffyx."

He expects that the building process could become longer with each artwork as he discovers more Lego pieces and tries new techniques to make his artworks more dynamic.

“It’s a constant process of evolution,” he said.

‘Resistance is rooted in imagination’

Nimako considers himself to be a “futurist” who blends Africanfuturism, Afrofuturism and Afrofantasy. While Africanfuturism focuses on the experience of those on the African continent, Afrofuturism is more focused on the African American experience of looking into the future, drawing from the past and connecting to the continent, according to the artist.



Nimako is a futurist who used approximately 100,000 Lego pieces to construct a reimagining of the medieval kingdom of Ghana, titled "Kumbi Saleh 3020 CE." -

In his “Building Black: Civilizations” series, Nimako reimagines medieval sub-Saharan African narratives. His “Kumbi Saleh 3020 CE” piece, which is made up of around 100,000 Lego bricks and can be found in the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, is named after the capital city of a medieval Ghanaian kingdom. The artist explores medieval West Africa and reimagines what it would look like 1,000 years in the future.

Nimako hopes for an “inclusive future” that acknowledges the history of anti-Black racism and how “utterly disruptive” it is, and recognizes the role of Afrofuturism in allowing people to “envision a better world.”

“My wife always says, ‘all movements of resistance are rooted in that imagination.’ You have to imagine the freedom, the emancipation. You have to imagine this struggle being over. You have to project that in order to rise up, in order to resist. What else are you resisting for, if not for that Promised Land?” he said. “Even art is a form of resistance and it’s been used as a form of resistance for a very long time.”



Each sculpture takes between 50 to 800 hours to create, and Nimako expects the building process to become longer as he tries new techniques to make his artworks more dynamic. 

He recently released online kits for his “Building Beyond” workshop, which helps people to imagine and build representations of their own descendants from Lego using facial templates called “legacies.” He thinks that “it can help to foster sensitivity and understanding of complex cultures and ethnic groups.”

A Lego documentary

His work is being recognized beyond the art world – including by Lego itself. A Lego documentary based on his work was released in February 2022, and Nimako added that “the Lego Group has been really supportive of my work. After realizing what I do, there’s so much more that we’re going to be doing together.”

Nimako is currently building a sculpture called “The Great Turtle Race,” which depicts Black children racing on the backs of two mythological turtles to “capture the essence of childhood.”

“We’re Black artists when we’re making art,” he said. “You don’t get to just exist as an artist. There’s so much complexity and so much nuance and so much culture to explore. It fills me with so much joy … knowing that Black children are going to be able to engage with my work and see themselves reflected.”

PHOTOS: Sam Engelking© Provided by CNN

IT WILL STAY AT 3%

As inflation inches closer to 3%, economists warn progress will stall this year

Story by The Canadian Press • Yesterday 





OTTAWA — As inflation inches closer to three per cent, economists are warning the steady monthly declines in annual price growth will stall and even potentially reverse in the second half of the year.

Statistics Canada is set to release its consumer price index report for June next week, and forecasters are anticipating the annual inflation rate fell from 3.4 per cent in May.

"We're expecting a deceleration to three per cent year-over-year. And that's really mainly because the gasoline prices we're paying today are being compared with the very peaks of what we saw last year," said Andrew Grantham, an executive director of economics at CIBC.

But inflation isn't expected to fall much further this year, making the journey back to the two per cent target a long and tumultuous one.

Desjardins chief economist Jimmy Jean says the upcoming CPI report marks a turning point in the fight against inflation.

"June is going to be really the peak disinflationary force coming from gasoline, in our view. So I think once we're past that, we're going to see that it is going to take quite a long time before we get inflation to a place that we're happy with," Jean said.

The rapid deceleration in inflation since last summer has been largely due to base-year effects, which refer to the impact of price movements from a year ago on the calculation of the year-over-year inflation rate.

Simply put, it means prices weren't rising as fast this year because they were being compared to already elevated prices a year prior.

On Wednesday, the Bank of Canada raised its key interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point in part because it expects inflation to remain high for longer.

It released new projections that suggest inflation will return to target in mid-2025. That's six months longer than the central bank previously forecast.

The central bank said its upward revision to its inflation forecast is due to “excess demand” in the economy, higher-than-expected housing prices and higher than expected goods prices.

The Bank of Canada's key interest rate now sits at five per cent and it hasn't ruled out further rate hikes if needed.

Grantham says CIBC's forecast for inflation in the coming months is in line with the Bank of Canada and warns inflation may even tick up in some months.

Economists tracking changes to price growth note that core measures of inflation, which strip out volatility, have not fallen by much in recent months.

That's led the central bank to raise rates, even as inflation appears on the surface to be easing.

"Where our forecasts differ more from the Bank of Canada's, is what happens after that," he said.

"We actually think that inflation will return to two per cent by the second half of next year."

That's because there are signs of softening in the economy, he said, as well as more improvements in supply chains.

Canada's labour market has begun to ease as the unemployment rate rises and wage growth slows. And data from Statistics Canada shows the rate at which households are saving is on the decline.

Part of the Bank of Canada's hawkishness, though, appears to be driven by the housing market, which rebounded this year despite high interest rates.

"The housing market has seen some pickup. New construction and real estate listings are lagging demand, which is adding pressure to prices," the Bank of Canada said in its press release announcing the latest rate hike.

Jean said the last two rate increases are shifting sentiment in many housing markets, though rapid population growth is blunting the effect interest rate increases have on housing demands.

The rapid rise in interest rates has eroded housing affordability, as mortgage interest costs skyrocket for new homebuyers and existing homeowners with variable rate mortgages.

In May, Statistics Canada's mortgage interest cost index jumped 29.9 per cent, the fastest rise on record.

Mortgage interest costs are also ironically driving up inflation.

Excluding mortgage interest costs, prices actually rose by only 2.5 per cent year-over-year in May, well within the Bank of Canada's targeting range.

Grantham says some of the core measures of inflation that the Bank of Canada tracks exclude these costs, which he says make sense.

"Every time you hike interest rates, if everything else stayed equal, inflation would actually accelerate," Grantham said.

"So it doesn't necessarily make a ton of sense from an inflation-targeting central Bank's point of view, to include those costs."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 16, 2023.

Nojoud Al Mallees, The Canadian Press

Online, 'unalive' means death or suicide. Experts say it might help kids discuss those things

Story by The Canadian Press • Yesterday 8:26 a.m.

Online, 'unalive' means death or suicide. Experts say it might help kids discuss those things© Provided by The Canadian Press

When Emily Litman was in middle school, kids whose parents grounded them would blithely lament: “I just want to die." Now she's a middle school teacher in New Jersey, and when her students' phones and TikTok access are taken away, their out-loud whining has a 21st-century digital twist: “I feel so unalive.”

Litman, 46, teaches English as a second language to students in Jersey City. Her students don’t use — and perhaps have never even heard — English words like “suicide.” But they know “unalive.”

“These are kids who’ve had to learn English and are now learning TikToklish,” Litman says.

“Unalive” refers to death by suicide or homicide. It can function as adjective or verb and joins similar phrasing — like “mascara,” to mean sexual assault — coined by social media users as a workaround to fool algorithms on sites and apps that censor posts containing discussion of explicit or violent content.

Language has always evolved. New words have always popped up. Teenagers have often led the way. But the internet and online life pave the way for it to happen more quickly.

In this case, words created within a digital setting to evade rules are now jumping the fences from virtual spaces into real ones and permeating spoken language, especially among young people. Beyond being interesting linguistic footnotes, the terms suggest ways that kids can safely discuss and understand serious matters while using a vocabulary that science — and the adults in their lives — might see as too casual or dangerously naive.

___

EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255.

___

But don't get too worried, experts say. Such a shift is known as a “lexical innovation,” says Andrea Beltrama, a linguistics researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. He and others say that while it might be jarring for non-TikTokkers to hear suicide and sexual assault discussed so euphemistically, it doesn't necessarily remove the seriousness from the conversation.

“Whoever says ‘unalive’ intends to communicate something about suicide, and knows that, and assumes that whoever is on the other end will be able to retrieve that intention,” Beltrama says.

Related video: Rising Rates of Suicides: What You Need to Know to Save a Life (Ivanhoe)

Every 11 minutes someone dies by suicide   Duration 1:23   View on Watch

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among people ages 10-24, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and suicide rates for that age group increased more than 50% from 2000-2021.

Using “unalive” could actually make for more meaningful discussions among youths — giving them a sense of community and trust they couldn't have with adults who use the words “suicide” or “kill.” Beltrama draws a parallel between “unalive” and how a saying like “Let's go Brandon” has become a way to express disdain for President Joe Biden without using the profane phrase that it's code for.

Like “Let's go Brandon” — which arose from a sports broadcaster's on-air mistranslation of a vulgar crowd chant about Biden at a NASCAR race — “unalive” took on, well, a life of its own. Political conservatives chummily co-opted “Let's go Brandon,” and TikTokkers did the same with “unalive.”

“'Unalive' is not only successful, but also seems to be creating almost this kind of solidarity or affiliation between groups of people who share this ability of decoding what 'Let's go Brandon' means," he says.

Dr. Steven Adelsheim, a Stanford University psychiatry professor and the director of the Stanford Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing, also advises against overreaction.

“Young people are pretty savvy,” Adelsheim says. “I think people understand what they’re doing when they’re using ‘unalive’ as a flip descriptor.”

Amber Samuels, a 30-year-old therapist in Washington, D.C., who has used “unalive” in her own social accounts, says that she has heard clients use it and similar euphemisms in speech. To her, “it doesn't feel abnormal or unusual."

“I think when we avoid using specific language to talk about suicide and sexual assault, we risk contributing to a culture of silence and shame surrounding these topics,” Samuels says. “In the case of social media, though, it’s the avoidance of using the actual, uncensored word that allows awareness and conversations to even be possible.”

Lily Haeberle, 18, a senior at Indiana's New Palestine High School, says she recently heard a classmate jokingly refer to “re-aliving” oneself after dying. It could be helpful, she says, to reserve words like “unalive” for such flippant references.

“I think they have sort of developed these alternative words as a means of still being able to joke about those types of things without it coming across in such a harsh way," Haeberle says.

It follows that a vanguard of youth culture — video gaming, in which characters are killed right and left and defeated players often cry, “I’m dead!” — has incorporated the term. Gamer forums and chat rooms are rife with references to “unaliving” characters only to have them “respawned,” or resurrected.

Dictionary.com — the hipper alternative to major English-language dictionaries that so far do not appear to address “unalive” in this sense — uses this example in its definition: “The point of the game is to unalive all enemies before losing your last life token.”

Kids have always had their own slang, but today's adolescents are digital natives constantly barraged with information. Litman has mixed feelings about whether referring to suicide with “unalive” might help or hurt, but she's encouraged that kids are at least talking about it. Particularly, she says, if perceiving suicide as “unaliving” might make a struggling youth more likely to ask for help.

“They’re much more comfortable with these topics," she says, "than I would have been at their age.”

___

Jeff McMillan, a longtime editor at The Associated Press, is also a member of the AP Stylebook editing team. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/JeffMcMillanPA

Jeff Mcmillan, The Associated Press

WAR IS RAPE
International Criminal Court investigates Darfur killings, rapes as violence surges

Story by By Anthony Deutsch • Thursday

The International Criminal Court building is seen in The Hague© Thomson Reuters

THE HAGUE/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -The International Criminal Court is investigating a surge in hostilities in Sudan's Darfur region since mid-April, including reports of killings, rapes and crimes affecting children, the top prosecutor told the United Nations on Thursday.

The regular army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been battling in the capital Khartoum and other areas of Sudan in a power struggle that exploded in mid-April.

More than 3 million people have been uprooted, including more than 700,000 who have fled into neighbouring countries.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week that Sudan, Africa's third largest country by land area, was on the brink of full-scale civil war that could destabilise the wider region.

"The office can confirm that it has commenced investigations in relation to incidents occurring in the context of the present hostilities," the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan's office said in a report to the U.N. Security Council.

ICC prosecutors are "closely tracking reports of extrajudicial killings, burning of homes and markets, and looting, in Al Geneina, West Darfur, as well as the killing and displacement of civilians in North Darfur and other locations across Darfur," the report said.

It is also examining "allegations of sexual and gender-based crimes, including mass rapes and alleged reports of violence against and affecting children," it said.

In El Geneina, witnesses have reported waves of attacks by Arab militias and the RSF against the non-Arab Masalit people, the largest community in the city, that have sent tens of thousands of people fleeing to nearby Chad.

While the ICC cannot currently work in Sudan due to the security situation, it intends to do so as soon as possible, the report said. Under a 2005 U.N. Security Council resolution, its jurisdiction is limited to the Darfur region.

The ICC has four outstanding arrest warrants related to the earlier fighting in Darfur between 2003 and 2008, including one against former Sudanese President Omar al Bashir on charges of genocide.

Al Bashir and two of his former ministers who are also wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes in Darfur had been in custody in Sudan. The army said Bashir and one of the former ministers, Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein, had been moved to a military hospital before the outbreak of the fighting. The other former minister, Ahmed Haroun, said he had broken out of prison with others 10 days after the start of the conflict.

The International Criminal Court has launched an investigation into violence in Sudan's Darfur   Duration 1:36   View on Watch

Khan said he had sent a request to Sudan's government, which has a long history of not cooperating with the ICC, to find out the current location of the suspects.

In April, the ICC opened its first trial dealing with Darfur crimes in the case of alleged Janjaweed leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman.

While applauding the ICC's investigation, the U.S. State Department on Thursday condemned continued "atrocities and ethnically targeted killings" committed in West Darfur.

"The atrocities and violence in Darfur demand accountability, meaningful justice for victims and the affected communities, and an end to impunity," department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch and Stephanie van den Berg; Additional reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Michael Perry)

Guatemala top court reverses ban on anti-graft presidential candidate

Story by By Sofia Menchu • Thursday

Raid of the building of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), in Guatemala City© Thomson Reuters

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Guatemala's top court on Thursday suspended an order barring the party of anti-graft candidate Bernardo Arevalo from running for the presidency, after a flood of international criticism that the country's democracy was in jeopardy.

The Constitutional Court said it had granted a provisional injunction filed by the Semilla party against a judge's order to suspend the party and seemingly kick Arevalo out of the race.


Raid of the building of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), in Guatemala City© Thomson Reuters

Arevalo enjoyed a surge in support in June's first round voting to surprisingly qualify for a run-off against former First Lady Sandra Torres on Aug. 20. He has threatened to take on the political establishment which he accuses of being corrupt.


Raid of the building of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), in Guatemala City© Thomson Reuters

Many analysts believe he could win if allowed to run.

But the election was thrown into chaos on Wednesday evening when the lower court granted a prosecutor's request to exclude Semilla over allegations the party had more than 5,000 illegally affiliated members, including 12 deceased people.



Supporters of anti-graft presidential candidate Bernardo Arevalo protest in Guatemala City© Thomson Reuters

The contest had already sparked international criticism after other opposition candidates were disqualified earlier in the process, and the move to shut out Semilla has aggravated fears for democracy and justice in Guatemala.



Supporters of anti-graft presidential candidate Bernardo Arevalo protest in Guatemala City© Thomson Reuters

The U.S., the European Union and other countries warned suspending Semilla was a threat to democracy.

Related video: Guatemala court suspends anti-graft candidate's party (Reuters)

Duration 2:04   View on Watch

The Canadian PressChaos follows Guatemala election

1:26

NBC NewsGuatemala's presidential election in turmoil as top political party suspended

3:52

ReutersGuatemala's Arevalo says govt wants to push him out

2:35

A group of international donors to Guatemala known as the G13, which include the U.S., Canada and Britain, said it was deeply concerned about actions threatening the authority of the electoral tribunal. Chile and Norway echoed concerns.

On Thursday morning, prosecutors raided the electoral tribunal's citizen registry office as part of the Semilla probe.

Neighboring Mexico backed the tribunal's ratification of the first round results, which had been delayed by allegations of irregularities brought by Semilla's adversaries.

Prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche, whose anti-impunity office requested Semilla's suspension, has previously targeted anti-graft campaigners and has been placed on the U.S. State Department's Engel List for "corrupt and undemocratic actors."

Asked about the potential for U.S. sanctions on those behind the Semilla suspension, a U.S. State Department spokesperson cited sanctions already imposed on Curruchiche and Attorney General Maria Consuelo Porras but declined to say more. "We do not preview future actions," the spokesperson said.

SURPRISE RISE

Polls had shown Arevalo - an ex-diplomat and son of former President Juan Jose Arevalo - as a distant outsider ahead of the first round.

His second-place finish shocked Guatemala's political establishment.

Arevalo told reporters earlier on Thursday he believed the lower court's move against Semilla violated a Guatemalan law preventing political party suspensions during an election.

"We are in the electoral race, we are moving forward and we will not be stopped by this corrupt group," he said.

The administration of outgoing conservative President Alejandro Giammattei said in a statement it would "maintain distance" from the judicial process and respect the election winner declared by the electoral tribunal.

Under Guatemalan law Giammattei cannot run again.

Arevalo's presidential rival Torres urged the popular vote be respected and said she was suspending her campaign in solidarity with Semilla voters.

Corruption allegations have dogged successive administrations, and the U.S. - Guatemala's top trade partner and a key source of remittances - has repeatedly criticized what it views as efforts to impede a clean-up of government.

Semilla's contender in the 2019 presidential election, former attorney general Thelma Aldana, was barred then too.

Aldana by then had a reputation as an anti-graft crusader and helped oust, prosecute and imprison conservative former President Otto Perez.

Arevalo said after the suspension his party was aware of a falsified signature and that Semilla itself in March reported the person responsible. However, the party was never allowed access to the case file, he said.

(Reporting by Sofia Menchu; additional reporting by Dave Graham and Valentine Hilaire in Mexico City and Matt Spetalnick in Washington D.C.; Writing by Kylie Madry and Cassandra Garrison; Editing by Sarah Morland, Stephen Eisenhammer, Josie Kao and Lincoln Feast.)

BLOW UP #3 AND STILL TRYING

Rocket being developed by Japan's space agency explodes during testing but no injuries reported

 Yesterday 


TOKYO (AP) — A rocket being developed by the Japanese space agency exploded during testing on Friday, but there were no reports of injuries, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.

The cause of the accident at the facility in Akita Prefecture, northeastern Japan, was still being investigated, the agency, JAXA, said. It was unclear and when testing for the Epsilon S rocket could resume.

Japanese TV news footage from the site shows the test starting normally, with white smoke shooting out at the side. About a minute later, flames and gray smoke burst upward in an explosion, and the roof is seen blowing off a building.

The failure is a setback for JAXA’s ambitions to enter fully into the launch market for small satellites, a market that is expected to grow.

An Epsilon S demonstration launch had been scheduled for this fiscal year, but a launch attempt failed in May. JAXA’s launch of another kind of rocket called H3 failed in March.

But an earlier Epsilon has worked and managed to send several satellites into orbit.

The Associated Press

Senators to offer amendment to require government to make UFO records public

Story by Alexander Bolton • Yesterday 




Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is part of a bipartisan group of senators who have offered an amendment to the annual Defense authorization bill requiring the federal government to collect and make public records related to unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

The proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act would direct the National Archives and Records Administration to create a collection of records on UAPs and UFOs to be disclosed to the public immediately unless a review board provides reasons to keep them classified.

“For decades, many Americans have been fascinated by objects mysterious and unexplained and it’s long past time they get some answers,” Schumer said in a statement. “The American public has a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, non-human intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena.

“We are not only working to declassify what the government has previously learned about these phenomena but to create a pipeline for future research to be made public,” he added.

Schumer said he is carrying out the legacy of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who more than a decade ago pushed funding for the Pentagon’s secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program.

Lawmakers’ interest in learning more about UFO sightings soared after that project became public and media outlets began publishing video clips of unexplained aerial phenomena captured by the cameras and sensors on military jets.

After that project became public, Senators, congressmen, committees, and staff began to pursue this issue and uncovered a vast web of individuals and groups with ideas and stories to share.

The amendment has the support of Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee — Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.).

The lawmakers say “the sheer number and variety” of stories about UFOs have led some of them and their colleagues to believe the executive branch may be concealing information about possible visits from extra-planetary civilizations.

Related video: Congressman says gov't has known of UFOs since 1897, warns of cover-up (Straight Arrow News)  Duration 2:53   View on Watch

News NationRep. Burchett: US government is hiding UFO evidence | Banfield

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NewsweekChuck Schumer Moves to Declassify UFO Secrets Like JFK Records

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Straight Arrow News  Congress wants to declassify even more UFO, extraterrestrial documents

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“Our goal is to assure credibility with regard to any investigation or record keeping of materials associated with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena,” said Rounds. “Relevant documents related to this issue should be preserved. Providing a central collection location and reputable review board to maintain the records adds to the credibility of any future investigations.”

“There is a lot we still don’t know about these UAPs, and that is a big problem,” Rubio said.

“We’ve taken some important steps over the last few years to increase transparency and reduce stigmas, but more needs to be done. This is yet another step in that direction and one that I hope will spur further cooperation from the executive branch,” he added.

“Understanding UAPs is critical to our national security and to maintaining all-domain awareness,” Gillibrand said.

The push to declassify more information about UAPs and UFOs comes after Air Force veteran David Grusch, a former member of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, told NewsNation that the U.S. government has recovered non-human craft for decades

Grusch implied in the interview that the government has recovered more than spacecraft materials.

“Well, naturally, when you recover something that’s either landed or crashed, sometimes you encounter dead pilots and believe it or not, as fantastical as that sounds, it’s true,” he said in the NewsNation interview. NewsNation and The Hill are both owned by Nexstar.

NewsNation confirmed Grusch’s credentials but did not view or verify evidence that the whistleblower said he provided to Congress or the Department of Defense Inspector General.

The House Oversight Committee is planning to hold a hearing later this month on UFOs that will be led by Reps. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.).

The amendment is modeled on the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 which required the public disclosure of documents related to former President Kennedy’s assassination 25 years after its enactment.

The Schumer-Rounds amendment would give the federal government eminent domain over any recovered technologies of unknown origin or biological evidence of nonhuman intelligence now held by private individuals or organizations.

SPACE RACE 2.0

India launches historic Chandrayaan-3 mission to land spacecraft on the moon

Story by Rhea Mogul • Yesterday

'3, 2, 1...': See India launch its mission to the moon | Watch (msn.com)

India is bidding to become only the fourth country to execute a controlled landing on the moon with the successful launch Friday of its Chandrayaan-3 mission.

Chandrayaan, which means “moon vehicle” in Sanskrit, blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center at Sriharikota in southern Andhra Pradesh state at just after 2:30 p.m. local time (5 a.m. ET).

Crowds gathered at the space center to watch the history-making launch and more than 1 million people tuned in to watch on YouTube.

The Indian Space Research Organization confirmed on Twitter later Friday that Chandrayaan-3 is in “precise orbit” and has “begun its journey to the moon.”

It added that the health of the spacecraft is “normal.”

In response, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted: “Chandrayaan-3 scripts a new chapter in India’s space odyssey. It soars high, elevating the dreams and ambitions of a every Indian. This momentous achievement is a testament to our scientists’ relentless dedication. I salute their spirit and ingenuity!”

The craft is expected to land on the moon on August 23.

It’s India’s second attempt at a soft landing, after its previous effort with the Chandrayaan-2 in 2019 failed. Its first lunar probe, the Chandrayaan-1, orbited the moon and was then deliberately crash-landed onto the lunar surface in 2008.


Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-3, the word for "moon craft" in Sanskrit, blasts off. - Aijaz Rahi/AP© Provided by CNN


The Indian spacecraft blazed its way to the far side of the moon Friday in a follow-up mission to its failed effort nearly four years ago to land a rover softly on the lunar surface. - Aijaz Rahi/AP© Provided by CNN

Developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Chandrayaan-3 is comprised of a lander, propulsion module and rover. Its aim is to safely land on the lunar surface, collect data and conduct a series of scientific experiments to learn more about the moon’s composition.

Only three other countries have achieved the complicated feat of soft-landing a spacecraft on the moon’s surface – the United States, Russia and China.

Indian engineers have been working on the launch for years. They are aiming to land Chandrayaan-3 near the challenging terrain of the moon’s unexplored South Pole.

India’s maiden lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, discovered water molecules on the moon’s surface. Eleven years later, the Chandrayaan-2 successfully entered lunar orbit but its rover crash-landed on the moon’s surface. It too was supposed to explore the moon’s South Pole.

At the time, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the engineers behind the mission despite the failure, promising to keep working on India’s space program and ambitions.

Just before Friday’s launch, Modi said the day “will always be etched in golden letters as far as India’s space sector is concerned.”

“This remarkable mission will carry the hopes and dreams of our nation,” he said in a Twitter post.

India has since spent about $75 million on its Chandrayaan-3 mission.

Modi said the rocket will cover more than 300,000 kilometers (186,411 miles) and reach the moon in the “coming weeks.”

Decades in the making

India’s space program dates back more than six decades, to when it was a newly independent republic and a deeply poor country reeling from a bloody partition.

When it launched its first rocket into space in 1963, the country was no match for the ambitions of the US and the former Soviet Union, which were way ahead in the space race.

Now, India is the world’s most populous nation and its fifth largest economy. It boasts a burgeoning young population and is home to a growing hub of innovation and technology.

And India’s space ambitions have been playing catch up under Modi.

For the leader, who swept to power in 2014 on a ticket of nationalism and future greatness, India’s space program is a symbol of the country’s rising prominence on the global stage.


People listen to a live broadcast of scientists speaking after the launch of spacecraft Chandrayaan-3. - Aijaz Rahi/AP© Provided by CNN

In 2014, India became the first Asian nation to reach Mars, when it put the Mangalyaan probe into orbit around the Red Planet, for $74 million – less than the $100 million Hollywood spent making space thriller “Gravity.”

Three years later, India launched a record 104 satellites in one mission.

In 2019, Modi announced in a rare televised address that India had shot down one of its own satellites, in what it claimed was an anti-satellite test, making it one of only four countries to do so.

That same year ISRO’s former chairman Kailasavadivoo Sivan said India was planning to set up an independent space station by 2030. Currently, the only space stations available for expedition crews are the International Space Station (a joint project between several countries) and China’s Tiangong Space Station.

The rapid development and innovation has made space tech one of India’s hottest sectors for investors – and world leaders appear to have taken notice.

Last month, when Modi met US President Joe Biden in Washington on a state visit, the White House said both leaders sought more collaboration in the space economy.

And India’s space ambitions do not stop at the moon or Mars. ISRO has also proposed sending an orbiter to Venus.