Fears for river pollution as UK ditches EU farming rules after Brexit

Farmers will no longer have to follow EU regulations in areas such as reducing agricultural runoff into rivers

Archie Mitchell
3 days ago

Farage blames UK pollution levels on Germany

BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DOES

A post-Brexit rule change will worsen the state of Britain’s rivers from the start of next year, according to reports.

As of 1 January 2024, British farmers will no longer have to follow EU regulations on reducing agricultural runoff into rivers, as well as a series of other measures designed to promote good environmental practice.

UK farmers have had to follow so-called cross-compliance rules under the EU’s common agricultural policy, and while many of the regulations exist in British law, there are three key gaps.


When the EU rules come to an end at the start of 2024, a rule that forces farmers to create buffer strips to separate agricultural land from water bodies, thus reducing the risk of runoff, will no longer apply, the i reported.

Rules to prevent soil erosion will also be watered down while hedgerows will come under threat, it added.

Campaigners say that without the rules in place, farmers could operate in a way that is more damaging to the environment.

“Given that we’re already in a very bad situation, why are we losing things… we’ve got this massive problem with water quality, but we’re regressing from the position that we’re in, which is terrible,” Lydia Collas, senior policy analyst at the Green Alliance, told the i.

The three main sources of river pollution are agriculture, sewage and urban diffuse pollution.

The Salmon and Trout Conservation charity said last year agriculture “remains the greatest threat to the future health of riverine ecology throughout England”.

Hannah Blitzer, senior policy officer at environmental group Wildlife and Countryside Link, told the i: “Farmers want to do the right thing generally, but if the government isn’t incentivising this, then it does mean the system’s stacked against having these protections.”

And Philip Carson, UK policy lead at the Nature Friendly Farming Network, said: “Cross-compliance as a mechanism wasn’t perfect, but it upheld quite an important principle in that to receive public money from agriculture and land management there was a basic baseline that had to be met and, with its removal, that’s not as strong any more.”

The government’s website states that cross-compliance rules end on 31 December and environment minister Lord Benyon said this month that it “does not mean an end of protections for the environment, animals and plants”.

He added: “Existing regulations will continue to protect the environment, animals and plants, and we have consulted on new hedgerow protections.”

Wildlife and Countryside Link has warned that from January hedgerows will be left unprotected from inappropriate management. The obligation to leave a buffer between hedgerows and cultivated areas and to only cut outside bird nesting will be removed.

This could endanger already threatened species such as turtle doves, it said.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said it has recently consulted on continuing hedgerow protections after the end of cross-compliance and promised to publish a summary of the responses it had received along with its next steps “shortly”.

A spokesperson said: “We are committed to protecting watercourses as set out in the Farming Rules for Water.

“We are working with regulators to implement a more preventative, advice-led approach to monitoring and enforcement, and since 2021 the Environment Agency has undertaken more than 7,000 farm inspections resulting in over 11,400 improvement actions.”

Sickle cell patient's journey leads to landmark approval of gene-editing treatment

Rob Stein, NPR
December 25, 2023 

"The therapy has really transformed my life more than I could have ever imagined," Victoria Gray, the first person to receive the CRISPR gene-editing treatment tellls NPR. "It gave me a new lease on life."
Orlando Gili for NPR

Four years ago, Victoria Gray was lying in a hospital bed, exhausted by a lifetime with sickle cell disease and recovering from a grueling experimental treatment she hoped would save her.

Today, the Forest, Miss., mother of four is brimming with energy and hope. She's working full time, keeping up with her teenage children and traveling the world with her husband.

Gray's transformation is the result of the landmark medical experiment that she launched and which culminated in December with a milestone: The Food and Drug Administration's approved the first treatment that uses gene-editing to alleviate a human illness. It's the first genetic therapy for the brutal blood disorder, which had long been neglected by medicine.

For the past four years, NPR has been chronicling Gray's story. NPR broke the news when Gray became the first patient to get the treatment and had exclusive access to report on her ensuing experience.

"I'm ecstatic," Gray told NPR about the Dec. 8 approval. "It's a blessing that they approved this therapy. It's a new beginning for people with sickle cell disease."
A medical marvel that may be out of reach

While the treatment has turned Gray and other patients' lives around, many hurdles remain. The therapy is expensive — $2.2 million per patient — and is complicated and arduous, raising questions about whether it will be accessible to the patients who need it most. Sickle cell disproportionately affects people of African descent and is most common in less affluent countries.

Other questions remain as well: Will the treatment keep working? Will it extend patients' lifespans? Will it cause unforeseen complications in the future?

"This is something that we've been waiting for more than 70 years," said Dr. Lewis Hsu at the University of Illinois Chicago, who serves as the chief medical officer of the Sickle Cell Association of American. "But there are many issues ahead of us."

At the same time, the approval is generating excitement because other treatments that use the gene-editing technique CRISPR are showing promise for other diseases, ranging from rare but devastating genetic disorders, such as muscular dystrophy, to common ailments, including cancer and heart disease.

"It's only the beginning," said Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, who shared a Nobel Prize for helping discover CRISPR. CRISPR allows scientists to make very precise changes in DNA much more easily than ever before. "It's an amazing time," she told NPR.

A grueling treatment for a brutal disease

When NPR introduced Gray to listeners and readers in July 2019, she was 34 and had just undergone the gene-editing procedure at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville, Tenn. It was uncharted territory, spurring high hopes but also fraught with uncertainty and risk. It was the first time cells that had been edited with CRISPR had been infused into a patient with sickle cell.

Victoria Gray volunteered for one of the most anticipated medical experiments in decades: the first attempt to use the gene-editing technique CRISPR to treat a genetic disorder in the U.S.
Meredith Rizzo/NPR/Meredith Rizzo/NPR

Sickle cell affects millions of people around the world, including about 100,000 in the U.S. A genetic defect causes bone marrow to produce a defective version of the protein called hemoglobin. That creates deformed, sickle-shaped red blood cells that jam blood vessels and don't carry oxygen normally, causing debilitating and eventually life-shortening complications.

"It's horrible. When you can't walk or, you know, lift up spoon to feed yourself, it gets real hard," Gray said at the time.

One of the worst effects of sickle cell are unpredictable attacks of excruciating pain. These crises force patients to rush to the hospital for emergency blood transfusions and powerful narcotics to alleviate the pain.

For the gene-editing treatment, doctors remove cells from patients' bone marrow so scientists can use CRISPR to edit a gene, enabling the cells to make a healthy form of hemoglobin known as fetal hemoglobin. Patients then undergo chemotherapy to make room in their bone marrow for the edited cells. Finally, doctors infuse billions of the modified cells back into patients' bodies.

NPR produced a series of exclusive reports that documented Gray's progress. That included when she had recovered enough from the July 2, 2019, procedure to leave Nashville months later to make a surprise return home to her family in Mississippi.

"I know it's going to be emotional for me. I miss the hugs and the kisses and just everything," she said then.

NPR was also there when Gray traveled back to Nashville regularly over the following months so doctors could see if the treatment was working.
Early signs of success

During her November 2019 evaluation in Nashville, Gray's doctor revealed the thrilling news that he had found the first signs that the treatment may be successful — her genetically modified "supercells" — as Gray called them — were producing fetal hemoglobin.

"It's a miracle," Gray said at the time. "When you pray for something for so long, all you can have is hope. It's amazing."

Getting that news just before holidays made it particularly special "because sometimes I would be in the hospital on Christmas" instead of with her family, she said. "I'm looking forward to a whole new life for all of us."

Over the next four years, it became clear that the treatment was, in fact, working. Gray never experienced another pain crises or the debilitating fatigue that had plagued her all her life.

"It's wonderful. It's the change I've been waiting on my whole life," Gray told NPR a year after getting treated.

The change enabled Gray to care for herself and her children for the first time, even through the pandemic.

"This is major for me and my family," Gray said two years after her treatment. "Two years without me being in the hospital? Wow. We just can't believe it. But we're just so grateful."

Gray even started working full time selling cosmetics at a Walmart, and began traveling with her husband, Earl.
A victory tour in London

NPR spent a day with Gray sightseeing in London earlier this year during her first overseas trip. She had been invited to be the keynote speaker at a genetics conference celebrating the success of the treatment and exploring the remaining hurdles of gene-editing.

"The life that I once felt like I was only existing in, I am now thriving in," Gray, who is deeply religious, told the audience of scientists, doctors, ethicists and others, bringing many to tears. "I stand here before you today as proof that miracles still happen and that God and science can coexist."

Gray, who's now 38, is especially thrilled that she no longer has to worry about dying prematurely from a stroke or other complications of sickle cell, leaving her children without a mother.

"The therapy has really transformed my life more than I could have ever imagined," Gray said. "It gave me a new lease on life."

But she too worried that many sickle cell patients won't be able to get the treatment, including some of her own relatives who have the disorder. The treatment, which was developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics, both in Boston, will be marketed as Casgevy.

"That's a horrific feeling for me to have opened the door for sickle cell patients and then sickle cell patients don't receive it," Gray said. "Something has to be done to ensure that the patients who need it the most actually get it."

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org

Q&A: Is gene-editing treatment out of reach for many?


By Dr. Tim Sandle
December 23, 2023

An analysis published Monday in the journal iScience found that while animals are well represented by the current emoji catalog, plants, fungi, and microorganisms get short shrift 

- Copyright AFP Photo Nicholas KAMM

U.S. approval of a breakthrough gene-editing technology that treats the pain and debilitating effects of sickle cell disease is an important milestone. The FDA’s approval of CRISPR-based Exa-cel means patients with the inherited disease—more than 100,000 people in the U.S.—now have a treatment option other than a bone marrow transplant.

The news comes with concerns, however, that too few people can afford to pay for the therapy. There is also the issue of limited access and demands that come with the high-tech, intense 3- to 6-month treatment, which will, at least initially, be offered by only a handful of health care providers.

Melissa Creary, an assistant professor in health management policy and global public health in U-M’s School of Public Health, is a social scientist who has worked with the sickle cell community. She explains here concerns to Digital Journal.

What are your concerns around access to this treatment, which is estimated to cost $1 million to $2 million?

Melissa Creary: In theory, this is going to be available to anyone with sickle cell who satisfies the eligibility criteria, but in reality the various levels of social and financial support required are likely to be challenging. Your doctor may not alert you to the availability of the treatment. If they do, you may not be able to afford it. If you can, you and your family might have to travel to receive the care. There are a number of barriers in place for the people who stand to benefit.

How can that be addressed?

Creary: Hopefully, different stakeholders throughout the sickle cell community will make sure that information about this technology is widespread. Then it’s about knowing all your options. There is information from the NIH and the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America available to those who are thinking about accessing this technology. This information can help you understand the kind of support you might need before, during and after. There’s a lot to consider not just for the affected patient but for those who need to take care of you. Can they take off work? Can they afford to go with you? In practice it’s going to be life-changing for some and not attainable to others, and this unfortunately is not unusual when it comes to high-tech medically advanced health care.

What is known about insurance coverage or Medicaid and Medicare benefits to pay for the treatment?

Creary: We know that the federal government and places like CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) are working to figure out what payment models could look like. I don’t think any of us know what that is as of now. What we do know is that a very large percentage of people living with sickle cell are on Medicaid, so extending Medicaid benefits to cover the treatment will be extremely important in guaranteeing access.

Why is cost and accessibility not an integral part of the drug, medical development process?

Creary: I understand why cost and accessibility aren’t part of the process, but I would love for that paradigm to shift. I would love for scientists to understand it’s one thing to develop a transformative advancement, and it’s another to make it accessible.

CRISPR stands to transform the lives of those who are able to receive the technology. Many stakeholders have understood that by choosing sickle cell. It signals a recognition of the long history of inequities associated with the disease and the people living with the disease. As the technology comes to market and out of the trial phase, it will be interesting to see how the tensions between social justice and profits work themselves out. The technology as a tool for addressing the genetic mutation and providing life opportunities is promising, but it cannot fully address the deep inequities embodied in the experiences of the majority Black and brown people even once cured.

Dr. Tim Sandle is Digital Journal's Editor-at-Large for science news. Tim specializes in science, technology, environmental, business, and health journalism. He is additionally a practising microbiologist; and an author. He is also interested in history, politics and current affairs.

Serbian opposition marches in support of arrested protesters

By AFP
December 25, 2023

Serbian opposition supporters protest what they say was electoral fraud in Serbia's recent parliamentary and local elections - 

Copyright AFP Mahmud HAMS

Miodrag SOVILJ

Thousands gathered in front of a Belgrade police station on Monday evening in support of those arrested the previous day during protests against what they say was electoral fraud in Serbia’s recent parliamentary and local elections.

It marked the eighth consecutive day of protests, which unlike Sunday’s demonstrations were peaceful despite having started with roadblocks in the capital and later a gathering in front of the state electoral commission building.

“See you tomorrow at 6 pm,” Srdjan Milivojevic, a deputy from the opposition “Serbia against violence” coalition said late Monday, signalling protesters would reconvene.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic had denounced violence in the capital the previous evening, when opposition demonstrators had tried to storm Belgrade city hall and clashed with police.

Vucic said there was evidence the violence had been planned in advance.

Moscow on Monday also accused the West of interfering, suggesting that foreign actors were trying to stir up the unrest.

Earlier Monday, Vucic met the Russian ambassador in Belgrade Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko and briefed him on the Sunday’s incidents.

Vucic is walking a difficult line balancing between East and West, vowing to keep Serbia on a course for European Union membership while also remaining friendly with Russia and courting Beijing and Washington.

– Voter roll questioned –

A few hundred demonstrators meanwhile had blocked the street in central Belgrade where the public administration and local self-government ministry is located.

Other roadblocks — some taking the form of street soccer and volleyball — quickly followed.

The protesters, mainly students organised under the “Borba” (Fight) movement, were supporting the opposition claims of fraud that started on December 18, a day after the elections.

They are calling for a revision of the voter roll, claiming that it was the source of the alleged electoral fraud.

But a statement from the ministry insisted the registry was “one of the most up-to-date records”.

“I am born 2002, and I thought that there would be no need, as my parents did, to fight for democracy through the street,” 21-year-old politics student Emilija Milenkovic told AFP at one protest Monday.

“But I have to,” Milenkovic added, wearing the badge of “Otpor”, the students’ movement that organised protests against former president Slobodan Milosevic.

A day after the elections, Vucic’s party said it had won more than half of parliament’s 250 seats.

The main opposition coalition “Serbia against violence” denounced what it said was electoral fraud, alleging that voters from neighbouring Bosnia had been allowed to cast ballots illegally in the capital.

International observers — including representatives from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) — reported “irregularities”, including “vote buying” and “ballot box stuffing”.

Several Western countries also expressed concern.

Germany, for one, labelled the reported allegations “unacceptable” for a country hoping to join the European Union, while a statement from Brussels said Serbia’s “electoral process requires tangible improvement and further reform”.

– Russian support –

On Saturday, Serbian prosecutors asked the police to probe allegations of fraud.

Vucic was not himself on the ballot for these elections, and the only support for him after his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) declared victory came from Moscow.

“The attempts of the collective West to destabilise the situation in the country are obvious,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told state-run news agency RIA Novosti.

She compared the unrest to the 2014 Maidan protests in Ukraine, when protesters forced a Russian-backed leader from power in what Moscow insists was a Western-backed action.

On Monday, one of several demonstrations emerged in front of the offices of the state electoral commission in central Belgrade — the site of several such protests in recent days.

Seven members of the main opposition camp, united under the banner “Serbia Against Violence”, have also been on a hunger strike aimed at getting the results annulled and elections re-run.

A deputy from the opposition “Serbia against Violence” coalition, Radomir Lazovic told AFP it was still possible for the crisis to end “if they admit the fraud and cancel the elections”.

Lazovic said he had been beaten by police during Sunday night’s clashes.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for SERBIAN

CRIMINAL AUTO CAPITALI$M

Toyota’s Daihatsu suspends all domestic production

By AFP
December 26, 2023

Transport ministry officials arrived at Daihatsu's headquarters for an on-site inspection, which an official said will last until at least early next year

 - Copyright JIJI Press/AFP STR

Japanese car maker Daihatsu has suspended all its domestic production as the Toyota-owned company faces a massive safety testing scandal.

The firm, which has about 9,000 factory workers in Japan, closed the last of its four domestic plants, a Daihatsu spokesman told AFP on Tuesday.

“Production will be suspended through January. We have not been able to assess as to exactly when our domestic production can resume,” the spokesman said.

The move could affect more than 8,000 companies across the country, according to a private research firm.

Last week, the company said it had been manipulating safety tests since at least 1989, affecting 64 models, including some sold under the Toyota brand which also are being suspended.

In April it said it had been falsifying crash test results for four of its models, involving a total of 88,000 vehicles made in Thailand and Malaysia in 2022 and 2023.

In May, it announced it was halting production in Japan of two hybrid vehicle models because of similar “irregularities”, including the Toyota Raize SUV, manufactured on behalf of its parent company.

Founded in 1907 to manufacture internal combustion engines, Osaka-based Daihatsu launched its first three-wheeled vehicle in 1931, before being taken over by Toyota in 1967.

Homelessness soars in rural England as living costs hit poor

By AFP
December 26, 2023

Copyright AFP/File Patrick T. Fallon

Homelessness in rural England has risen by 40 percent in five years with many sleeping in the open air, tents or makeshift shelters, a British rural charity said on Tuesday.

A cost-of-living crisis in the G7 nation and the world’s sixth-biggest economy, fuelled by high inflation, has left many Britons struggling to make ends meet, as bills for food, energy, rent and mortgages increase.

Inflation is coming down from a 41-year peak of 11.1 percent in October 2022 to 3.9 percent in November, but charities believe a range of factors, notably cuts to welfare payments in the last decade and a housing shortage, has exacerbated food poverty and homelessness.

The CPRE charity, which campaigns for affordable housing in rural England, said homelessness in the countryside had increased from 17,212 in 2018 to 24,143 in 2023, with wages stagnating and housing costs rising in many areas.

“The sharp rise in rural homelessness shows the real-life impact of record house prices, huge waiting lists for social-rent housing and the boom in second homes and short-term lets,” it said.

The charity said 12 local authorities across England –- designated as predominantly rural –- had levels of rough sleeping higher than the national average of 15 people per 100,000.

The town of Boston, northeast of London, was England’s worst-affected rural local authority for rough sleeping, the charity said.

It said 48 people per 100,000 were sleeping rough in town in September 2023 -– the latest month for which data is available.

Boston was followed by Bedford, north of London with 38 per 100,000, and North Devon in southwest England with 29.

“Unlike those in urban areas, people sleeping rough in the countryside are often hidden out of sight, camping in fields or sheltering in farm buildings,” the charity said.

“They are also less likely to have access to support services. This means the analysis, which uses the government’s own data, almost certainly underestimates the scale of the crisis.”

The charity said 300,000 people are waiting for social housing in rural England –- where the average house sells for around £420,000.

Navalny jokes about becoming Santa Claus in Arctic penal colony

By AFP
December 26, 2023

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny appeared in court by video link from prison last year - Copyright AFP Alexander NEMENOV

Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said he was “fine” Tuesday after a “pretty exhausting” 20-day transfer to a penal colony beyond the Arctic Circle.

The Kremlin critic’s whereabouts had been unknown for more than two weeks, but he is now in a penal colony in Russia’s far north and has been visited by his lawyer, his supporters said.

“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I’m totally relieved that I’ve finally made it,” Navalny wrote on X after arriving at the colony nicknamed “Polar Wolf”.

“I’m still in a good mood, as befits a Santa Claus,” he said, referring to his winter clothing of sheepskin coat and fur hat and the beard he grew out during his transportation.

The US State Department said it remained “deeply concerned for Mr. Navalny’s wellbeing and the conditions of his unjust detention.”

Navalny mobilised huge anti-government protests before being jailed in 2021 after surviving an assassination attempt by poisoning.

He has spent most of his detention at the IK-6 penal colony in the Vladimir region, some 250 kilometres (155 miles) east of Moscow.

A court in August extended his sentence to 19 years on extremism charges, and ruled he be moved to a harsher “special regime” prison for particularly dangerous prisoners.

Allies said his transfer could be linked to the upcoming presidential election in March, ahead of which many Kremlin critics have been jailed or fled.

“Right from the start it was clear that the authorities want to isolate Alexei, especially ahead of the elections,” said Ivan Zhdanov, who manages Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Navalny has been sent to “one of the furthest north and most remote colonies of all,” Zhdanov added.

– Ex-Gulag camp –

According to the regional prison service website, the colony was built in the 1960s on the site of a camp that was part of the Stalin-era labour camp network, known as the Gulag. It can house up to 1,020 prisoners.

Inmates are put to work treating reindeer skins.

One major difference from his previous prison camp is that any letters will take much longer to reach Navalny.

Navalny posted on X that he arrived at the Arctic penal colony in the village of Kharp on Saturday and was visited by his lawyer on Monday.

Kharp is located above the Arctic Circle, over 1,900 kilometres (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow. Its name means Northern Lights in the local Nenets language, and it is locked in the dark of the polar night in midwinter.

Navalny wrote that from his window “I can see the night, then the evening, and then the night again.”

Prisoner transfers in Russia can take weeks as inmates are moved by train to far-flung facilities.

“I didn’t expect anyone to find me here before mid-January,” Navalny wrote, adding that he had seen little of his surroundings except for a snow-covered adjoining cell used as a yard and a fence outside his window.

“Unfortunately, there are no reindeer, but there are huge fluffy and very beautiful shepherd dogs,” he said.

Temperatures in Kharp are expected to go down to minus 26 degrees Celsius (minus 14.8 Fahrenheit) in the coming days.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is in a penal colony near the Arctic Circle, associates say

By —  Associated Press

Dec 25, 2023 

MOSCOW (AP) — Associates of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Monday that he has been located at a prison colony above the Arctic Circle nearly three weeks after contact with him was lost.

Navalny, the most prominent foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism. He had been imprisoned in the Vladimir region of central Russia, about 230 kilometers (140 miles) east of Moscow, but his lawyers said they had not been able to reach him since Dec. 6.

READ MORE: Kremlin further isolates Navalny as key ally raises alarm over missing opposition leader

His spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said he was located in a prison colony in the town of Kharp, in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1,900 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.

Navalny is “fine — at least as much as possible after such a long stage” and a lawyer visited him, Yarmysh told The Associated Press.

The region is notorious for long and severe winters. The town is about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Vorkuta, whose coal mines were among the harshest of the Soviet Gulag prison-camp system.

“It is almost impossible to get to this colony; it is almost impossible to even send letters there. This is the highest possible level of isolation from the world,” Navalny’s chief strategist, Leonid Volkov, said on X.

Transfers within Russia’s prison system are shrouded in secrecy and inmates can disappear from contact for several weeks. Navalny’s team was particularly alarmed when he could not be found because he had been ill and reportedly was being denied food and kept in an unventilated cell.

Yarmysh said the transfer was connected with the campaign for the Russian presidential election in March. While Putin’s reelection is all but certain, given his overwhelming control over the country’s political scene and a widening crackdown on dissent, Navalny’s supporters and other critics hope to use the campaign to erode public support for the Kremlin leader and his military action in Ukraine.

“They deliberately sent him to this particular colony precisely in order to isolate Alexei as much as possible, so as not to give him any opportunity to communicate with the outside world,” she said. “This is all happening precisely because Alexei, despite the fact that he is in prison, is still the main opponent of Vladimir Putin … It is not surprising that they began to transfer him to another colony right now, so that he could not interfere with Putin’s campaign.”

Navalny has been behind bars in Russia since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. Before his arrest, he campaigned against official corruption and organized major anti-Kremlin protests.

Putin nemesis Navalny in 10 dates

By AFP
December 25, 2023

Alexei Navalny at a Moscow court hearing in February 2021

 - Copyright AFP/File GERARD JULIEN

Russia’s top opposition politician Alexei Navalny survived a poisoning attack in 2020 only to be sentenced to 19 years in a penal colony.

After his allies said he had been transferred to an Arctic prison after more than two weeks in which his whereabouts were unknown, here are 10 key dates in his campaign against Russian President Vladimir Putin.


– 2007: anti-corruption campaigner –



Navalny begins buying shares in state-owned oil giants to access company reports and scour them for evidence of corruption, which he documents on his blog.

The same year he is excluded from the liberal opposition party Yabloko for taking part in “nationalist activities”.



– December 2011: leads election protests –



In 2011, Navalny sets up the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which gains a huge following with exposes about the vast riches amassed by Kremlin elites.

In the winter of 2011-2012, he leads huge protests after parliamentary elections won by Putin’s United Russia party, a vote marred by allegations of fraud.



– July 2013: embezzlement conviction –



In 2013, Navalny is convicted of defrauding the government in the Kirov region of 16 million rubles ($500,000) in a timber deal while acting as an advisor to the governor.

He denies the charges, claiming they are an attempt to silence him.



– September 2013: Moscow mayoral bid –



Navalny finishes a strong second behind Kremlin-backed incumbent Sergei Sobyanin in the race for mayor of Moscow.

Navalny says Sobyanin rigged the vote at several polling stations, but his calls for a recount are dismissed.



– March 2017: Medvedev ‘duck’ expose –



Navalny publishes a high-profile video about the lavish lifestyle of then prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, which includes a claim that one of his estates has a duck house in the middle of a pond, sparking rallies.



– December 2018: barred from presidential election –



Navalny is barred from running for president against Putin because of his embezzlement conviction.

He urges Russians to boycott the vote, which nonetheless sees Putin secure a fourth term.



– August 2020: poisoning –



Navalny is hospitalised on August 20, 2020, in Siberia and placed in a medically induced coma after losing consciousness during a flight.

He is transferred to a hospital in Berlin, where tests show he was poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent.

He accuses Putin of being behind his poisoning, which the Kremlin denies.



– January-February 2021: arrested and jailed –



Navalny returns to Moscow, where he is detained shortly after landing at the airport.

Tens of thousands of people demonstrate across Russia for his release.

In February, he is handed a two-and-a-half-year sentence for breaching the conditions of a suspended sentence while recuperating in Germany, and sent to a penal colony.



– March 2022: nine-year sentence –



Navalny’s sentence is increased to nine years after a conviction on new charges of embezzlement and contempt of court.

He is transferred to a maximum-security prison around 250 kilometres (155 miles) east of Moscow, from where he regularly denounces the Russian invasion of Ukraine.



– August 2023: 19 years –



A gaunt Navalny, who has experienced major weight loss in prison, is sentenced to an additional 19 years at a harsher “special regime” facility on charges of “extremism”.

Navalny goes missing for over two weeks in December in what his allies say is an effort to silence him ahead of a presidential election in March 2024.

On December 25, his allies say he has finally been located in a remote penal colony north of the Arctic Circle and his lawyer has been able to visit him.

Eight civilians killed in Turkish strikes on Syria: monitor, media

TURKIYE IMPERIALIST INVASION 

OF SYRIAN KURDISTAN

By AFP
December 25, 2023

Smokes billows in Qamishli in northeastern Syria close to the Turkish border amid Turkish strikes - Copyright AFP Delil SOULEIMAN

Turkish air strikes killed eight civilians in Syria’s Kurdish-held northeast Monday, a war monitor and local media said, as Ankara launched operations in Iraq and Syria following deadly attacks on its soldiers.

On Saturday, Turkey announced a new wave of air strikes in retaliation for two separate attacks on its bases in northern Iraq that killed 12 soldiers, which Ankara blamed on Kurdish militants.

Eight civilians were killed in strikes on Monday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, revising an earlier toll of six deaths.

The Britain-based monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria, said five of the victims were employees of a printing works in the northern city of Qamishli, near the Turkish border.

Syrian Kurdish news agency ANHA also reported eight deaths.

The strikes hit more than 20 targets, primarily in the Qamishli area of the semi-autonomous Kurdish administration, the monitor and AFP correspondents in the region said.

Farhad Shani, spokesman for the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said on X, formerly Twitter, that the strikes destroyed “more than 25” civilian facilities and confirmed the death toll of eight civilians.

The SDF spearheaded the battle to dislodge Islamic State group fighters from their last scraps of territory in Syria in 2019.

On Saturday evening, an AFP correspondent as well as the Observatory reported strikes against oil sites near the Turkish border, without reporting any victims.

In October, Turkey intensified air strikes on Syria’s northeast after an attack in Ankara that wounded two security personnel earlier that month.

A branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies — claimed responsibility for the attack, the first bombing to hit the Turkish capital since 2016.

Turkey views the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) that dominate the SDF as an offshoot of the PKK.

Since 2016, Turkey has carried out successive ground operations to expel Kurdish forces from border areas of northern Syria.

The conflict in Syria has killed more than half a million people since it began in 2011 with the authorities’ brutal crackdown on anti-government protests, spiralling into a devastating war involving foreign armies and jihadists.

Op-Ed: Bonds predict biggest recession in 50 years — this could get nasty with no Off switch


By Paul Wallis
December 26, 2023

Yields on bonds issued by the US Treasury have hit multiyear peaks in recent days, unnerving investors

 - Copyright AFP/File VALERIE MACON

People living in the real economy, that is, the one you pay bills and eat in, will no doubt be delighted to hear there’s more bliss to come. According to analysts, the bond market, which has accurately predicted the last six recessions, is showing all the signs.

Bonds are debts. When you buy a bond, the issuer owes you money. The bond market is the biggest financial market in the world. The trouble with that is everything. If the bond market goes weird, so does the world.

There are many types of bonds. The best known are US Treasury bonds, a sort of gold standard indicator that directly influences government bonds worldwide. There are also corporate bonds and derivatives, securities issued on the basis of bonds. Other organizations like cities and counties also issue “municipal bonds”.

That’s the problem.

The grim-looking indicators are steep falls in bonds to extreme lows, followed by recession. The bond market was in a steep dive, and it’s now rising. Hence the expectation of a recession.

The bond ETF market apparently believes this. It’s been shuffling itself around, and the money has been piling in. That’s “collateral evidence” to the extent that someone obviously sees new value in bonds. Corporate bonds are also getting “fashionable”, another somewhat disturbing hint. “Fashionable” usually means the product is being pushed by the markets.

This comes at a time when the stock markets are getting a bit of confidence back. These markets usually fall when interest rates rise. They’ve been rising on the not-particularly committed assurance of the Fed of no more rate hikes. A press statement is not a rate decision.

It’s wishful thinking at best. Demand for money is high across the board. It’s a lender’s market. Lenders also feel the effects of rate rises on their own borrowing. It’s as vicious a circle as you could wish to see.

The bonds went lower than 2008 off a lower peak. Low-interest rates were supporting the high property prices and credit. That situation is now reversed. The various bond markets are very noisily positioning for their next moves.

What goes around has come around. This repositioning is a dynamic that moves a lot of money around the world, and it likes making money. The downside is a quite real risk of losing that big money.

This isn’t theoretical money. It’s real money. If it gets lost, it usually stays lost. The degree of paranoia in the markets about interest rates has been a great cow prod. Never mind the fact that interest rate rises were inevitable. Never mind the huge debts people took on at low rates. The fan was hit, and the world got sprayed.

The real economy is where the fallout lands. Price hikes are for coverage of costs, debts, losses on markets, and excuses for gouging. These hikes are also similar to trying to mop up the Pacific Ocean with a Kleenex in liquidity terms. Prices are raised, other people are affected, and the price hikes can’t match the losses.

The finance sector has caused some of the worst social and economic disasters in recent history. The sub-primes indicated a degree of criminality as well as market manipulation. Those worthless securities did more damage to the US and global economies than major wars in dollar terms.

The bond market is famous for being almost incomprehensibly boring. Not a lot happens; when it does, it’s usually at 0.25%. However – this market handles trillions of dollars. The sheer mass of debt has to have an effect if it starts moving.

Given the almost hysterical response to rate rises in the past, any big move by bonds could trigger a cascade effect. People will sell stocks and buy bonds. The bond prices are likely to get overinflated, etc.

The actual component debts are another matter. Debtors don’t like interest rate rises. You’d think they’d ditch the debts, but that’s expensive, too. You’re probably a lot better off debt-free in this environment, but these are major debts, like mortgages for businesses.

Add to this the question of solvency. If it weren’t for these debts, some people, companies, and businesses would be insolvent. Listed “zombie companies” are good examples. These debts pay their bills, or they’re broke.

Complex enough? A truism – Liquidity, like water, always finds the bottom line. The risk is drowning or dying of thirst. Or both.

__________________________________________________

Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.

WRITTEN BYPaul Wallis
Editor-at-Large based in Sydney, Australia

Japan moon lander enters lunar orbit


By AFP
December 25, 2023

If the 'SLIM' lander touches down successfully next month, it would make Japan only the fifth country to have landed a functioning probe on the Moon, after the United States, Russia, China and India 

- Copyright JAPAN AEROSPACE EXPLORATION AGENCY (JAXA)/AFP Handout

Japan’s SLIM space probe entered the Moon’s orbit on Monday in a major step towards the country’s first successful lunar landing, expected next month.

The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) is nicknamed the “Moon Sniper” because it is designed to land within 100 metres (328 feet) of a specific target on the lunar surface.

If successful, the touchdown would make Japan only the fifth country to have successfully landed a probe on the Moon, after the United States, Russia, China and India.

On Monday, SLIM “successfully entered the moon’s orbit at 04:51 pm Japan time” (0751 GMT), the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said in a statement released Monday evening.

“Its trajectory shift was achieved as originally planned, and there is nothing out of the ordinary about the probe’s conditions,” the agency said.

The lander’s descent towards the moon is expected to start around 12:00 am Japan time on January 20, with its landing on the surface scheduled for 20 minutes later, JAXA said.

The H-IIA rocket lifted off in September from the southern island of Tanegashima carrying the lander, after three postponements linked to bad weather.

JAXA said this month that the mission would be an “unprecedentedly high precision landing” on the Moon.

The lander is equipped with a spherical probe that was developed with a toy company.

Slightly bigger than a tennis ball, it can change its shape to move on the lunar surface.

Compared to previous probes that landed “a few or 10-plus kilometres” away from targets, SLIM’s purported margin of error of under 100 metres suggests a level of accuracy once thought impossible, thanks to the culmination of a 20-year effort by researchers, according to JAXA.

With the advance of technology, demand is growing to pinpoint targets like craters and rocks on the lunar surface, Shinichiro Sakai, JAXA’s SLIM project manager, told reporters this month.

“Gone are the days when merely exploring ‘somewhere on the moon’ was desired,” he said.

Hopes are also high that SLIM’s exactitude will make sampling of lunar permafrost easier, bringing scientists a step closer to uncovering the mystery around water resources on the moon, Sakai added.

Japanese missions have failed twice — one public and one private.

Last year, the country unsuccessfully sent a lunar probe named Omotenashi as part of the United States’ Artemis 1 mission.

In April, Japanese startup ispace tried in vain to become the first private company to land on the Moon, losing communication with its craft after what it described as a “hard landing”.

GLOBALIZATION REDUX
‘Beyond our borders’: Vietnam tech firm VNG takes on world best

By AFP
December 23, 2023

Headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City, VNG is one of Vietnam's leading game publishers and also runs a digital wallet and the country's most popular messaging platform

\ - Copyright AFP Nhac NGUYEN

Alice PHILIPSON

VNG co-founder Le Hong Minh’s first taste of international competition was as a gamer for Vietnam at an early e-sport tournament in South Korea.

Two decades later, he says he’s ready to face the world’s best again as he takes his tech company public.

The firm — headquartered in buzzing business hub Ho Chi Minh City — is one of Vietnam’s leading game publishers, but it also runs a digital wallet, cloud services and Vietnam’s most popular messaging platform.

Months after Vietnamese electric vehicle maker VinFast made its debut on the Nasdaq, hitting the headlines around the world as its valuation skyrocketed and then crashed, VNG is also planning a listing in New York.

“I challenge the game team by saying that in the next three to five years we need to become a global game company,” Minh, 46, told AFP from his office on the banks of the Saigon river.

To do that, “we need to be on a global stage, with access to global capital and talent”.

In Vietnam, VNG’s products are already deeply embedded in people’s lives.

Its Zalo app has 75 million active users in a country of 100 million people, outperforming Facebook to make it Vietnam’s most popular messaging platform.

The communist nation has a young and tech-savvy population, but it’s not just them who use Zalo, whose default language is Vietnamese and which is tailored to the domestic market.

“Zalo is very convenient to use for us,” Ha Thi Minh Hoan, 74, told AFP. “As we are old, we stay at home more and we use Zalo for communication. We share photos, chat, have fun with each other.

“If there is no Zalo, life may be a bit boring and monotonous I think.”

– Small beginnings –

VNG was born in 2004 as Vinagame, a start-up with just five people, who prepared the launch of their — and Vietnam’s — first online game by travelling the country on motorcycles.

They plastered posters for the game across 5,000 internet cafes, the founders say.

They have now moved on to fintech and AI, with a mission to show the world what Vietnam — one of the world’s fastest growing economies — and its engineers are capable of.

But games remain a big part of the business plan, with 80 percent of revenue still earned in that division.

Publishing around 10 games a year in Vietnam and in various parts of Southeast Asia including Thailand and Indonesia, they are trying to expand further afield, into Latin America and the Middle East, where they also want to push games they make in-house.

“It is a natural progression,” said Lisa Hanson, CEO of Niko Partners, an Asian games market intelligence firm, noting that Singapore’s Sea, a gaming and e-commerce company, had found success in South Asia and the Middle East with mobile game Free Fire.

Two years before Minh co-founded Vinagame, he travelled from what was then still a poor and underdeveloped Vietnam to play e-sports at one of the first World Cyber Games, held in Daejeon, South Korea in 2002.

“I still remember the emotion. I said to myself this is the pinnacle of my career as a gamer,” he said.

“The ultimate goal of anyone any good is to… play with the best people in the world, right?”

He has that same aim for VNG, he says, which as Vietnam’s first billion-dollar start-up is pitching its “homegrown digital ecosystem” to investors across the globe.

– Challenges ahead –

It’s the right time to do it, said Huy Pham, senior lecturer in finance at RMIT University in Ho Chi Minh City.

“When VinFast made its debut, they really attracted the attention of international investors,” he said.

“So there is growing momentum (with Vietnamese companies) — it’s the best time to get money.”

The firm counts Chinese internet giant Tencent and Singapore state investor Temasek among its shareholders.

But it will need access to serious cash as it makes plans to build a large language model tailored to Vietnam, he added, as well as expand the reach of its games.

The company suffered total losses of $86.7 million in 2022 and $27.4 million in the first six months of 2023, the company said in its filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in August.

“If they expand to another market that will increase the costs… increase the losses,” Huy said.

And while its messaging platform is doing well, its payment app ZaloPay faces fierce competition from other providers such as Momo and ShopeePay, “some of which have greater financial resources than we do”, VNG’s founders admitted in the SEC filing.

For Minh, after seeing the internet transform the Vietnam of his childhood, it’s time for a new challenge.

“Vietnamese companies have become a lot more capable, and confident,” he said. “We need to look beyond our borders”.