It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, March 25, 2024
Persian plateau unveiled as crucial hub for early human migration out of Africa
GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY
IMAGE:
PEBDEH CAVE LOCATED IN THE SOUTHERN ZAGROS MOUNTAINS. PEBDEH WAS OCCUPIED BY HUNTER-GATHERERS AS EARLY AS 42,000 YEARS AGO.
A new study combining genetic, palaeoecological, and archaeological evidence has unveiled the Persian Plateau as a pivotal geographic location serving as a hub for Homo sapiens during the early stages of their migration out of Africa.
This revelation sheds new light on the complex journey of human populations, challenging previous understandings of our species' expansion into Eurasia.
The study, published in Nature Communications, highlights a crucial period between approximately 70,000 to 45,000 years ago when human populations did not uniformly spread across Eurasia, leaving a gap in our understanding of their whereabouts during this time frame.
Key findings from the research include:
The Persian plateau as a hub for early human settlement: Using a novel genetic approach combined with palaeoecological modelling, the study revealed the Persian Plateau as the region where from population waves that settled all of Eurasia originated.
This region emerged as a suitable habitat capable of supporting a larger population compared with other areas in West Asia.
Genetic resemblance in ancient and modern populations: The genetic component identified in populations from the Persian Plateau underlines its long-lasting differentiation in the area, compatible with the hub nature of the region, and is ancestral to the genetic components already known to have inhabited the Plateau.
Such a genetic signature was detected thanks to a new approach that disentangles 40,000 years of admixture and other confounding events. This genetic connection underscores the Plateau's significance as a pivotal location for early human settlement and subsequent migrations.
Study co-author Professor Michael Petraglia, Director of Griffith University’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, provided a much clearer picture of these early human movements.
“Our multidisciplinary study provides a more coherent view of the ancient past, offering insights into the critical period between the Out of Africa expansion and the differentiation of Eurasian populations,” Professor Petraglia said.
“The Persian Plateau emerges as a key region, underlining the need for further archaeological explorations."
First author Leonardo Vallini of the University of Padova, Italy, said: “The discovery elucidates a 20,000 year long portion of the history of Homo sapiens outside of Africa, a timeframe during which we interacted with Neanderthal populations, and sheds light on the relationships between various Eurasian populations, providing crucial clues for understanding the demographic history of our species across Europe, East Asia, and Oceania.”
Senior author, Professor Luca Pagani added: “The revelation of the Persian Plateau as a hub for early human migration opens new doors for archaeological exploration, enriching our understanding of our species' journey across continents and highlighting this region's pivotal role in shaping human history.”
The study ‘The Persian Plateau served as Hub for Homo sapiens after the main Out of Africa dispersal’ has been published in Nature Communications.
PERSIAN PLATEAU, THE MOST LIKELY PLACE WHERE THE ANCESTORS OF ALL PRESENT DAY NON AFRICANS LIVED FOR THE 20.000 YEARS THAT FOLLOWED THEIR MIGRATION OUT OF AFRICA. A PERIOD DURING WHICH THEY ALSO MIXED THEIR GENES WITH THE ONES OF THE NEANDERTHALS.
CREDIT: CREDITS: THE AUTHORS OF THE ORIGINAL PUBLICATION
All present day non African human populations are the result of subdivisions that took place after their ancestors left Africa at least 60.000 years ago. How long did it take for these separations to take place? Almost 20.000 years, during which they were all part of a single population. Where did they live for all this time? We don’t know, yet.
This is a conversation that could have taken place one year ago, now it is possible to give clearer answers to these questions thanks to the study recently published in Nature Communications (1) led by the researchers from the University of Padova, in collaboration with the University of Bologna (Department of Cultural Heritage), the Griffith University of Brisbane, the Max Planck Institute of Jena and the University of Turin.
The ancestors of all present day Eurasians, Americans and Oceanians, moved Out of Africa between 70 and 60 thousand years ago. After reaching Eurasia these early settlers idled for some millennia as a homogeneous population, in a presumably localized area, before expanding their range across the whole continent and beyond. This event set the basis for the genetic divergence between present day Europeans and East Asians, and can be dated to around 45 thousand years ago. On the one hand, the dynamics that led to the broader colonization of Eurasia have been already reconstructed by some of the authors in a previous publication in 2022 (2), and occurred through a series of chronologically, genetically and culturally distinct expansions. On the other hand, the geographic area where the ancestors of all non Africans lived after the Out of Africa and that acted as a “Hub” for the subsequent movements of Homo sapiens has been the matter of a long standing debate, with most of West Asia, North Africa, South Asia or even South East Asia having been listed as potentially suitable locations.
In their latest work, the authors deployed a novel genetic approach and identified ancient and modern populations from the Persian Plateau as the ones carrying genetic traces that most closely resemble the features of the Hub population, pinpointing the area as the likely homeland of all early Eurasians. “The most difficult part” says Leonardo Vallini, first author of the study, “has been to disentangle the various confounding factors constituted by 45 thousand years of population movements and admixtures that took place after the Hub was settled”.
The multidisciplinary study also investigated the paleoecological characteristics of the area at the time, and confirmed it as suitable for human occupation, potentially capable of sustaining a larger population than other parts of West Asia. “Identifying the Persian Plateau as a Hub for early human migration opens new doors for archaeological and palaeoanthropological research” added co-author Professor Michael Petraglia of Griffith University in Brisbane.
In fact, the Persian plateau will be the focus of the ERC Synergy Project 'LAST NEANDERTHALS', recently awarded to co-author Stefano Benazzi, professor at the University of Bologna (Department of Cultural Heritage). "In line with the results of the study," says Benazzi, "this ERC project aims to explore and unravel the intricate biocultural events that occurred between 60,000 and 40,000 years ago, focusing also on the Persian Plateau".
“With our work we found a home to 20,000 years of shared history between Europeans, East Asians, Native Americans and Oceanians. This leg of the human journey out of Africa is fascinating, since it is the one where we also met and mixed our genes with the ones of Neanderthals” concluded Professor Luca Pagani, senior author of the study.
References
Leonardo Vallini, Carlo Zampieri, Mohamed Javad Shoaee, Eugenio Bortolini, Giulia Marciani, Serena Aneli, Telmo Pievani, Stefano Benazzi, Alberto Barausse, Massimo Mezzavilla, Michael D. Petraglia, Luca Pagani, The Persian Plateau served as Hub for Homo sapiens after the main Out of Africa dispersal, Nature Communications [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-46161-7]
Leonardo Vallini, Giulia Marciani, Serena Aneli, Eugenio Bortolini, Stefano Benazzi, Telmo Pievani, Luca Pagani. Genetics and Material Culture Support Repeated Expansions into Paleolithic Eurasia from a Population Hub Out of Africa, Genome Biology and Evolution, Volume 14, Issue 4, April 2022, evac045, https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evac045
The Persian Plateau served as Hub for Homo sapiens after the main Out of Africa dispersal
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
25-Mar-2024
Humans pass more viruses to other animals than we catch from them
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Humans pass on more viruses to domestic and wild animals than we catch from them, according to a major new analysis of viral genomes by UCL researchers.
For the new paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the team analysed all publicly available viral genome sequences, to reconstruct where viruses have jumped from one host to infect another vertebrate species.
Most emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases are caused by viruses circulating in animals. When these viruses cross over from animals into humans, a process known as zoonosis, they can cause disease outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics such as Ebola, flu or Covid-19. Given the enormous impact of zoonotic diseases on public health, humans have generally been considered as a sink for viruses rather than a source, with human-to-animal transmission of viruses receiving far less attention.
For the study, the research team developed and applied methodological tools to analyse the nearly 12 million viral genomes that have been deposited on public databases to date. Leveraging this data, they reconstructed the evolutionary histories and past host jumps of viruses across 32 viral families, and looked for which parts of the viral genomes acquired mutations during host jumps.
The scientists found that roughly twice as many host jumps were inferred to be from humans to other animals (known as anthroponosis) rather than the other way round. This pattern was consistent throughout most viral families considered. Additionally, they found even more animal-to-animal host jumps, that did not involve humans.
The team’s work highlights the high and largely underappreciated fact that human viruses frequently spread from humans into wild and domestic animals.
Co-author Professor Francois Balloux (UCL Genetics Institute) said: “We should consider humans just as one node in a vast network of hosts endlessly exchanging pathogens, rather than a sink for zoonotic bugs.
“By surveying and monitoring transmission of viruses between animals and humans, in either direction, we can better understand viral evolution and hopefully be more prepared for future outbreaks and epidemics of novel illnesses, while also aiding conservation efforts.”
The findings also show that, on average, viral host jumps are associated with an increase in genetic changes, or mutations in viruses, relative to their continued evolution alongside just one host animal, reflecting how viruses must adapt to better exploit their new hosts.
Further, viruses that already infect many different animals show weaker signals of this adaptive process, suggesting that viruses with broader host ranges may possess traits that make them inherently more capable of infecting a diverse range of hosts, whereas other viruses may require more extensive adaptations to infect a new host species.
Lead author, PhD student Cedric Tan (UCL Genetics Institute and Francis Crick Institute) said: “When animals catch viruses from humans, this can not only harm the animal and potentially pose a conservation threat to the species, but it may also cause new problems for humans by impacting food security if large numbers of livestock need to be culled to prevent an epidemic, as has been happening over recent years with the H5N1 bird flu strain.
“Additionally, if a virus carried by humans infects a new animal species, the virus might continue to thrive even if eradicated among humans, or even evolve new adaptations before it winds up infecting humans again.
“Understanding how and why viruses evolve to jump into different hosts across the wider tree of life may help us figure out how new viral diseases emerge in humans and animals.”
Cell entry is generally seen as the first step for a virus to infect a host. However, the team found that many of the adaptations associated with host jumps were not found in the viral proteins that enable them to attach to and enter host cells, which points to viral host adaptation being a complex process that remains to be fully understood.
Co-author Dr Lucy van Dorp (UCL Genetics Institute) said: “Our research was made possible only by the countless research teams that have openly shared their data via public databases. The key challenge, moving forward, is to integrate the knowledge and tools from diverse disciplines including genomics, epidemiology, and ecology to enhance our understanding of host jumps.”
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA PHOTO BY TOMMY MARTINO
MISSOULA – The escalation of extreme wildfires globally has prompted a critical examination of wildfire management strategies. A new study from the University of Montana reveals how fire suppression ensures that wildfires will burn under extreme conditions at high severity, exacerbating the impacts of climate change and fuel accumulation.
The study used computer simulations to show that attempting to suppress all wildfires results in fires burning with more severe ecological impacts, with accelerated increases in burned area beyond those expected from fuel accumulation or climate change.
“Fire suppression has unintended consequences,” said lead author Mark Kreider, a Ph.D. candidate in the forest and conservation sciences program at UM. “We’ve known for a long time that suppressing fires leads to fuel accumulation. Here, we show a separate counter-intuitive outcome.”
Though fire suppression reduces the overall area burned, it mainly eliminates low- and moderate-intensity fires. As a result, the remaining fires are biased to be more extreme, Kreider said. The new study published March 25 in Nature Communications, shows how this “suppression bias” causes average fire severity to increase substantially.
“Over a human lifespan, the modeled impacts of the suppression bias outweigh those from fuel accumulation or climate change alone,” he said. “This suggests that suppression may exert a significant and underappreciated influence on patterns of fire globally.”
Kreider led the research as part of his Ph.D. dissertation work with the support of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
Fire suppression exacerbated the trends already caused by climate change and fuel accumulation, the study found, causing areas burned to increase three to five times faster over time relative to a world with no suppression.
Suppression, through preferentially removing low- and moderate-severity fire, also raised average fire severity by an amount equivalent to a century of fuel accumulation or climate change.
“By attempting to suppress all fires, we are bringing a more severe future to the present,” said Kreider.
Andrew Larson, Kreider’s Ph.D. adviser and a professor of forest ecology at UM, said this has significant impacts on ecosystems.
“Traditional suppression removes the low-severity fires that help perpetuate healthy forests by consuming fuels and preferentially killing thin-barked tree species,” Larson said. “I wonder how much we are altering natural selection with fire suppression by exposing plants and animals to relatively less low-severity fire and relatively more high-severity fire.”
However, the new findings also show that allowing more low- and moderate-intensity fire can reduce or reverse the impacts of the suppression bias. Suppression strategies that allow fire to burn under moderate weather conditions – while still suppressing fires during more dangerous fire weather – reduced average fire severity and moderated the rate of burned area increase, the team found.
Developing and implementing technologies and strategies to safely manage wildfires during moderate burning conditions is essential, Kreider said. This approach may be just as effective as other necessary interventions, like mitigating climate change and decreasing unintentional human-related ignitions.
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — While Hollywood and Silicon Valley love the limelight, California is an agricultural powerhouse, too. Agricultural products sold in the Golden State totaled $59 billion in 2022. But rising temperatures, declining precipitation and decades of over pumping may require drastic changes to farming. Legislation to address the problem could even see fields taken out of cultivation.
Fortunately, a study out of UC Santa Barbara suggests less extreme measures could help address California’s water issues. Researchers combined remote sensing, big data and machine learning to estimate how much water crops use in the state’s Central Valley. The results, published in Nature Communications, suggest that variation in efficiency due to farming practices could save as much water as switching crops or fallowing fields.
“There’s an opportunity for less obtrusive methods of saving water to be more important than we originally thought,” said lead author Anna Boser, a doctoral student at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. “So we might not have to make as many changes in land use as we originally thought.”
California’s fertile soils and Mediterranean climate enable farmers to cultivate high-value crops that just aren’t viable in the rest of the country. Over a third of the country’s vegetables, and nearly three-quarters of fruits and nuts, are grown in California, according to the state’s Department of Food and Agriculture.
But many of these crops are quite thirsty. Agriculture accounts for around 80% of water used in California, explained co-author Kelly Caylor, a professor at the Bren School. “Declining groundwater levels and a changing climate put pressure on the availability of irrigation water, making it critical to determine how we can ‘do more with less.’”
In 2014, Sacramento passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) to secure California’s water resources. SGMA mandates that every groundwater basin in the state must be sustainable by 2040. Each basin created a local agency tasked with developing a plan to meet this goal. Mostly, that means ensuring that we don’t pump more water out of the ground than what seeps in. We will need to reduce total groundwater use by 20% to 50% by 2040, depending on the basin, Boser said. But to accomplish this, we need an idea of how much water farms use, and what fraction of that actually makes it to crops.
Modeling water use
Scientists have a variety of methods to estimate the amount of water ascending from the Earth’s surface to the atmosphere due to evaporation and transpiration through plant leaves. Notably, evaporation cools things down. “When we get hot, we sweat to cool off. The Earth does something similar,” Boser said. Scientists look at how warm the ground is and see how much energy it’s getting from sunlight and the atmosphere. If the ground is cooler than expected, it means some of that energy was used to turn water into vapor, which cools down that spot.
An evapotranspiration database called OpenET became publicly available in early 2023. It provides satellite-based evapotranspiration estimates for the western United States. But Boser was interested in the water being used specifically by crops. So, she compared transpiration in fallowed fields to active fields across the Central Valley. Subtracting evapotranspiration in fallow fields from total evapotranspiration yields the amount of water that crops are actually consuming.
Unfortunately for Boser, farmers don’t fallow fields randomly. Often they’ll take their lowest-yielding fields out of production. That creates systematic differences between fallowed and cultivated fields, which could skew Boser’s analysis. So, she created a machine-learning model to conduct a weighted comparison between active and fallowed land, accounting for factors like location, topography and soil quality.
She trained the model on 60% of the areas and tested its results on 30%, fine tuning the algorithm until its predictions matched the actual conditions in these fields within 10 milliliters per square meter per day, on average. Now confident in her model, she applied it to the rest of California’s Central Valley.
Encouraging results
Crop type only explained 34% of the variation in water consumption. “What that means is maybe we’re overlooking some other ways that we could save water,” Boser said. She continued to investigate the model, controlling for factors like location, topography, local climate, soil quality and orchard age (when applicable). Ultimately, a full 10% of crop transpiration could be saved if the top 50% of water users reduced their water consumption to match that of their median-consuming neighbors. Boser attributes these savings to differences in “farming practices.”
Now, 10% might not sound like a lot, but it’s comparable to a number of other interventions. The authors also estimated the effect of switching crops. If the same 50% of farmers switched to the median water-intensive crops for their area, agricultural evapotranspiration would drop by 10%.
Meanwhile, if the state took the top 5% most water-hungry fields out of production, the model says agricultural evapotranspiration would drop by, you guessed it: 10%. This suggests that addressing inefficiencies in farming practices could save as much water as switching crops or taking fields out of cultivation.
To be fair, the results from fallowing would affect only 5% of cultivated land, as opposed to 50% for crop changes and improved farming practices. “We’re probably going to have to fall back on fallowing at least a little bit,” Boser said, “but hopefully not as much as we were originally expecting.”
The authors want to figure out what practices farmers are using that account for the 10% differences in crop water usage. Some examples include mulching, no-till planting, using drought-tolerant varietals, and deficit irrigation — where you provide less water than the crop could theoretically consume. Deficit irrigation already yields good results in viticulture, where vintners find it can improve the quality of wine.
Changing irrigation practices could also help reduce water use. Irrigation efficiency accounts for the fraction of water a farm uses that actually gets consumed by crops. Inefficiencies include leakage, weed growth and evaporation in transport and in the field. These weren’t within the scope of Boser’s model, which only considers transpiration by the crops themselves. Inefficiencies happen before the water even gets to the plants.
According to Boser, up to 60% of the water a farm uses actually passes through the roots of its crops. Clearly there’s plenty of potential gains in this area, though it isn’t clear what efficiency is actually attainable, she said. “Irrigation efficiency is actually quite poorly understood.”
Better characterizing this is on the team’s to-do list. They hope to identify the causes of irrigation inefficiencies, quantify the efficiencies of different types of irrigation, and learn how climate and geography affects irrigation efficiency. All this will require collecting empirical data.
California is at a critical crossroads in water management. For the first time in its history, the state is putting in place regulations that require substantial reductions in groundwater extraction, including in regions where livelihoods depend on thirsty agricultural production.
“This paper uses novel, data-driven methods to show that, contrary to popular belief, there is large potential to cut water use in California agriculture without fallowing fields,” said co-author Tamma Carleton, an assistant professor at UCSB’s Bren School. “This raises the possibility that the state can continue its role as an agricultural powerhouse while also sustainably managing an essential natural resource.”
JOURNAL
Nature Communications
Better phosphorus use can ensure its stocks last more than 500 years and boost global food production - new evidence shows
More efficient use of phosphorus could see limited stocks of the important fertiliser last more than 500 years and boost global food production to feed growing populations.
LANCASTER UNIVERSITY
More efficient use of phosphorus could see limited stocks of the important fertiliser last more than 500 years and boost global food production to feed growing populations.
But these benefits will only happen if countries are less wasteful with how they use phosphorus, a study published today in Nature Food shows.
Around 30-40 per cent of farm soils have over-applications of phosphorus, with European and North American countries over-applying the most.
The global population is due to hit nearly 10 billion by 2050 and it is estimated that to feed this increased population a further 500 million hectares of arable land will be needed – unless phosphorus can be more efficiently used to boost and maintain crop yields.
Listed as a critical raw material by the European Union, and recently a topic of discussion by the United Nations Environment Assembly, globally 20,500 kilotons of phosphorus are applied to agricultural soils each year as fertiliser.
Concerns have been raised about its limited supply and loss to freshwater where it can degrade water quality. Phosphorus predominantly comes from mining phosphate rock sources, of which there are only a relatively small number of sources located in countries like Morocco and Russia.
Previous estimates of how much phosphorus we have left globally have varied greatly from between 30 to over 300 years. These prior estimates were based on current wasteful practices continuing and contained a lot of uncertainty.
This latest research, looking at global phosphorus use and soil concentrations, by scientists at Lancaster University in the UK as well as AgResearch and Lincoln University in New Zealand, examined concentrations of phosphorus in farm soils across the globe for optimum growth of 28 major food crops from wheat and maize to rice and apples. The research revealed soils that did not contain enough phosphorus, and soils that contain concentrations higher than plants need for optimal growth.
Their findings shed new light on the amounts of phosphorus available in soils and needed as fertilisers and reveal that phosphorus reserves could last for up to 531 years if we use it more efficiently and equitably – that’s 77 years longer than if we stick with current practices.
Professor Phil Haygarth of Lancaster University and co-author of the paper said: “Phosphorus is an essential fertiliser that drives food production on farms around the world. It’s the ‘energy’ of agriculture that drives our food systems, but we need to manage our supplies carefully.
“We need to seek ways to be more efficient and sustainable with its use and our study shows that there’s considerable potential to improve the efficiency of how we use phosphorus fertilisers. We show it’s possible to optimise global food production without accelerating the depletion of precious and finite global phosphorus fertiliser reserves.
“We are unlikely to run out of phosphorus in the next 500 years, but only if we apply as much as needed to produce optimal crop yields and stop wasteful over-applications.”
The research team calculated 10,556 kt of phosphorus is wasted each year through over-application with much of that dominated by wheat and grassland in Europe and maize and rice in Asia.
Professor Richard McDowell of Lincoln University and AgResearch New Zealand and lead author of the study said: “Many farmers over-apply phosphorus to bank it in the soil. However, only a fraction of soil phosphorus can be used by plants. Adjusting applications to sustain the levels that plans need to produce optimal yields negates the need for phosphorus being wasted. If there are excessive levels in soil that plants can’t use, phosphorus can potentially be lost to water, which risks causing water quality problems like eutrophication.”
But it is not all about reductions. The scientists, using data for farmland globally, also calculated that around the world nearly three quarters of farmed soils are in phosphorus deficit - with phosphorus deficits being most acute in Asian countries such as India. As a result, the researchers calculate that globally there needs to be an application of almost 57,000 kt of phosphorus to alleviate those soils in deficit to boost crop yields.
They then calculated that 17,500 kt of phosphorus is needed each year to maintain optimum soil phosphorus concentrations. This would result in a global reduction in the demand for phosphorus by around 3,000 kt annually.
Professor McDowell said: “The science is clear, but to use phosphorus efficiently and extend supplies, governments need to collaborate to make policy that promote phosphorus use only where needed. That will involve balancing distributions of phosphorus for optimal crop growth and reducing subsidies that sustain overuse of phosphorus and likely cause water quality problems.”
The findings are outlined in the paper ‘Phosphorus applications adjusted to optimal crop yields can help sustain global phosphorus reserves’ published by Nature Food.
The paper’s authors are Professor Richard McDowell and Peter Pletnyakov of Lincoln University and AgResearch, and Professor Phil Haygarth of Lancaster University. Professor McDowell was funded by New Zealand’s Our Land and Water National Science Challenge.
Phosphorus applications adjusted to optimal crop yields can help sustain global phosphorus reserves
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
25-Mar-2024
Sunday, March 24, 2024
END THE EMBARGO! Rationed food kept Cubans fed during the Cold War. Today an economic crisis has them hungry
Sat, March 23, 2024
HAVANA (AP) — Like millions of other Cubans, María de los Ángeles Pozo thinks back fondly to when a government ration book fed her family everything from hamburgers, fish and milk to chocolate and beer. People would even get cakes for birthdays and weddings.
The “libreta,” as Cubans know it, was launched in July 1963 and became one of the pillars of the island’s socialist system, helping people through crises including the cutbacks in Soviet aid that led to the 1990s deprivation known as the “Special Period.”
That system is undergoing a deep economic crisis that has prompted the exodus of almost half a million Cubans to the U.S. over the last two years, with thousands more heading to Europe. It also has led to a dramatic reduction in the availability of rationed food for those who do not leave.
Many Cubans feel ill-equipped to handle their new, more unequal country, a feeling that has worsened as small private markets have opened, charging prices similar to international ones in a country that hasn’t allowed non-state commerce in recent decades and where incomes remain between $16 and $23 monthly.
“Everything comes in small portions and delayed,” said Pozo, 57, a school worker who retired to care for her disabled sister and father in the apartment they share in Old Havana. They earn $10 a month between the three.
Basic goods like a kilo (2.2 pounds) of powdered milk can cost as much as $8.
“We don’t have the goods that we were used to anymore,” Pozo said. “We’re suffering a lot of deprivation.”
Protesters took to the streets in the eastern city of Santiago this month decrying power outages lasting up to eight hours and shortages of food. State media confirmed the protests in Santiago and videos showing people chanting “electricity and food” were quickly shared by Cubans on and off the island on platforms like X and Facebook. A nongovernmental human rights group that monitors Cuba said there had been at least three arrests.
Pozo pays only $2 at the subsidized state stores at current exchange rates. In February she got a few pounds of rice, beans, some sugar and salt, oil, processed meat and soap for her family of three.
Pozo said that she doesn’t receive money from relatives overseas, a major marker of class differences in 2024 Cuba, and one that about 70 percent of families do get.
While there are no official figures, many experts estimate that Cubans overseas sent $3 billion home in 2019.
Cuba has long struggled with a lack of production.
The lack of hard currency and needed equipment is making the situation even worse without agricultural supplies like insecticides and fertilizers, said Ricardo Torres, an economist at American University in Washington.
Without a functioning market economy, Cuban agriculture has long measured itself by socialist production goals that it has rarely been able to meet.
Camaguey, one of Cuba’s main ranching hubs, only produced 42.8 million liters (11.3 million gallons) of milk last year, out of 81.3 million liters (21.5 million gallons) that producers had agreed to sell.
Producers, for their part, complain that government prices don’t cover expenses.
The Cuban government blames the economic damage wrought by COVID-19, along with U.S. sanctions and macroeconomic changes dating to recent years that have led to severe inflation.
“You can see today private stores that have all the products that you want: milk, bread, sugar — whatever you want — at prices that are not accessible to the majority of the population,” Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío said in a interview with The Associated Press. “The government continues to be committed to provide an equal amount to all.”
Official figures show Cuba’s average annual inflation of nearly 50% a year over the last three years and a 2% contraction in the Gross Domestic Product.
Faced with that scenario, the government has been trying to reduce the number of people who receive subsidized food from an estimated four million libretas.
For most Cubans, the government is failing to take on the most serious issue: low take-home pay as a result of low productivity and inflation.
“Salaries must rise,” said maintenance main Hilmer Pagán, 53.
___
Andrea Rodríguez on X: www.twitter.com/ARodriguezAP
Russian President Vladimir Putin lights a candle in memory of the victims of the Crocus City Hall attack, on the day of national mourning in a church at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia March 24, 2024.
Sputnik/Mikhail Metzel/Pool via REUTERS
President Vladimir Putin declared Sunday a national day of mourning for the 137 people killed at the Crocus City Hall outside Moscow on Friday. Several gunmen opened fire at the popular music venue late Friday, injuring another 180 and leaving more than a third of the building on fire. Crews are still sifting through the debris for bodies.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, which came just weeks after Washington warned of possible terrorism at large venues in the Moscow area, which Putin notably ridiculed as fearmongering.
What motivated the militants? In a word: Syria. Russia has been helping the Assad regime ramp up its attacks on Islamic State strongholds in recent months, but the battles have been going on for years, with anger festering over Putin’s support for President Bashar al-Assad.
Still, Putin looks east. Despite the Islamic State’s admission, Putin tried to blame Ukraine. He also blamed “international terrorism” but said the perpetrators — 11 have been arrested, including four of the gunmen — were trying to flee to Ukraine after the attack.
Ukraine has repeatedly denied any role in Friday’s tragedy. Meanwhile, Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities intensified over the weekend, with drones hitting Kyiv and Lviv, along the Polish border. While no one was injured, Poland reported that Russian cruise missiles had entered its airspace.
"Pointing the finger at Ukraine and sidelining the ISIS-K angle — at least in official statements — serves the Kremlin’s purpose of rationalizing a potential escalation in its military operations against the adversary," says Eurasia Group analyst Tinatin Japaridze, possibly including a new round of conscription, though Putin did not mention mobilization specifically on Saturday.
Russian propaganda channels post photos and videos of Moscow terror attack suspects being tortured
A PHOTO RELEASED BY ISLAMIC STATE OF THE TERRORISTS WHO ATTACKED THE CROCUS CITY HALL. PHOTO: SITE
Russian Telegram channels close to the Russian security services have posted a photo that allegedly shows Shamsiddin Fariduni being interrogated and tortured by electrocution. Fariduni has been detained on suspicion of committing the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow Oblast.
Source: Latvia-based Russian media outlet Meduza with reference to Telegram channels
Details: The man in the photo is lying on the floor with his trousers down. A TA-57 field telephone, which the security forces use to apply electric current, is allegedly connected to his body. The clamp of the wire appears to be connected to his genitals (that part of the photo is blurred).
According to the description provided by the Telegram channel Grey Zone, the voltage is 80 volts, and water is being poured over the suspect to intensify the effect.
Earlier, a video of the interrogation of another suspect, Radzhab Alizade, was posted by propaganda channels. In this video, a man in camouflage holds Alizade on the ground, then cuts a piece off his right ear with a knife and attempts to force the alleged terrorist to eat it.
Ukrainska Pravda will not be publishing these photos and videos for ethical reasons.
Previously: ISIS called the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow Oblast their "most brutal attack in recent years" and posted photos of the terrorists wearing the same clothing as the detainees whose photos have been posted by the FSB.
Background:
The shooting incident occurred prior to a concert by the band Piknik at the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk, Moscow Oblast, on the evening of 22 March. Afterwards, a large fire broke out in the auditorium. The latest reports say 137 people have died, including three children, and 180 people were injured.
Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU) said the terrorist attack was a deliberate provocation by Putin’s regime that had been anticipated by the international community. Mykhailo Podoliak, adviser to the Head of the Ukrainian President’s Office, stated that Ukraine had nothing to do with the attack.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin claimed that a "back door" had been prepared for the suspects to cross the border into Ukraine. Ukraine's Defence Intelligence responded by saying that these claims are entirely devoid of truth.
The United States says it has no doubt that ISIS was involved in the terrorist attack and had warned Russia in advance of the threat of such an attack.
Moscow concert hall accused of locking
emergency exits before terror attack that
killed 137
James Kilner Sun, 24 March 2024 Smoke rises above Crocus City Hall after the attack on Friday - Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
Emergency exits at the Moscow concert hall where gunmen killed 137 people could not be opened, some of the survivors have claimed.
Russian media have reported that more people may have died from smoke inhalation than gunshot wounds during the attack on Friday.
Some 28 bodies are thought to have been found in a lavatory and another 14 in the stairwell of an emergency exit.
Trapped people hiding from the gunmen reportedly called emergency services pleading to be rescued as thick smoke filled the building.
People fleeing from the gunmen found some exits had been locked in what appeared to have been a well-planned attack
A video shot by a survivor on his mobile phone showed people desperately rattling the handles of closed emergency exits as they tried to flee.
“This is a locked door,” the survivor is heard telling his companion.
In what appears to be a well-planned attack, the gunmen set fire to the building.
Baza, a Telegram channel linked to the Russian security services, said that bodies piled up next to emergency exits which may have been blocked shut.
In an interview with the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, an unnamed survivor said that he had been forced to dash through the main entrance of the concert hall, where the gunmen had started their attack, because the fire exits would not open.
“We tried the fire escape ladder, but it was closed. People climbed the ladder, descended the ladder, all closed,” he said. Sensitive issue in Russia
The issue of blocked or locked fire exits is sensitive in Russia. In 2018, more than 60 people died in a shopping mall fire in Siberia because the alarms had been turned off and the escape exits had been locked.
Aras Agalarov, the owner of Crocus City Hall, has denied that any of the fire escape exits were locked and several survivors of the attack have said that they escaped through emergency exits.
Some families still don’t know whether relatives who went to the event attacked by gunmen on Friday are alive. Moscow’s department of health said on Sunday that it has begun identifying the bodies of those killed via DNA testing, which will take at least two weeks.
The Moscow region’s ministry of emergency situations posted a video on Sunday showing equipment dismantling the damaged music venue to give rescuers access
Russian TV shows questioning of Moscow
attack suspects
AFP Sat, March 23, 2024 Gunmen opened fire at Crocus City Hall concert venue near Moscow and set it ablaze (Handout)
Russian television on Saturday aired footage of the detention and questioning of four men suspected of carrying out the deadly attack on a Moscow concert hall.
Russia's Channel One television showed footage of four suspects and their damaged white Renault car.
It said they were captured by special forces in the village of Khatsun in the western Bryansk region, which is close to borders with Ukraine and Belarus.
In footage shot at night and in daylight, the detained men speak Russian with an accent.
The Islamic State (IS) group has claimed responsibility for Friday night's attack, when a group of gunmen opened fire at Crocus City Hall concert venue near Moscow and set it ablaze.
They killed at least 133 people.
The interior ministry said Saturday that all four suspected gunmen were foreign nationals.
A Russian MP has said some of those detained are from Tajikistan, an impoverished post-Soviet state that borders Afghanistan and whose nationals have participated in previous IS attacks.
"What were you doing at Crocus?" a young bearded man seated on the ground is asked.
"I shot people.. for money," he answers in broken Russian. He goes on to say he was offered "half a million rubles ($5,425)" and had received half of it on a bank card.
- Contacted on Telegram -
Those who had hired them had supplied them with the weapons, he added, corresponding with him on the Telegram secure messaging platform without giving their names.
The footage also shows one suspect being led along on a snowy track in a forest. The dark-haired man in a light brown T-shirt has blood pouring down his cheek from his ear.
He too is shown being questioned with a bandage wrapped around his head, his lips and nose bloodied and swollen.
Asked what the suspected attackers did with their weapons, he says they were left "somewhere on the road".
Earlier, a graphic video was posted online, apparently showing the detention of the same suspect.
It showed a man in camouflage cutting off part of the ear of a dark-haired man, trying to make him eat it and then hitting him on the face.
Russian television showed other suspects with cuts to their faces.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said that Chechen soldiers had helped the FSB security service capture the suspects.
Belarus said that it had assisted Russia in detaining the men "to prevent them from leaving through our common border".
None of those questioned mentioned either Islamic State or Ukraine in the footage broadcast.
Russian officials have not mentioned the Islamic State group in their public statements, but President Vladimir Putin said Saturday the suspects had been planning to cross the border into Ukraine.
Kyiv firmly denies any involvement and has dismissed any suggestion the gunmen could have been heading into Ukraine.
Russia has said it has detained 11 people including four suspected gunmen.
