Review: The science of how bugs shape human culture

By Dr. Tim Sandle
September 27, 2024

DIGITAL JOURNAL

Butterfly on a leaf. — © Image by Tim Sandle

Insects are essential for the health of the planet and humans are more reliant upon the activities of insects than might appear. This is not only in relation to pollinators.

Insects are also embedded in cultural practices, manifest in art and form part of our societal relations. How deep does this go? The answer is very, as a fascinating new book points out.

Imagine this scene: you are sitting in an intricately carved chair, rocking back and forth to the rhythm of music from a bygone era. Your clothes are comfortable and colourful, your hair is perfectly in place, and there are oil paintings and textiles on the walls. Wood furniture, trim, and floors glimmer with a waxen sheen. Everything around you is composed of or inspired by bugs.

In a new popular science text, renowned entomologist Barrett Klein, PhD examines this phenomenon of how humans and insects relate on a cultural level in The Insect Epiphany: How Our Six-Legged Allies Shape Human Culture (Timber Press | Hachette; Oct 15, 2024).

The central theme is that our world would look very different if we did not have insects. This is not only because they are pollinators but because they inspire so many aspects of our culture.Bee on a flower. Image by Tim Sandle.

Across the pages Klein investigates mysteries of sleep in societies of insects, creates entomo-art, and is ever on the search for curious connections that bind our lives with our six-legged allies.

Klein is well-placed to write the book. He studied entomology at Cornell University and the University of Arizona, fabricated natural history exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History, worked with honeybees for his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, and spearheaded the Pupating Lab at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse.

For many years, Klein has celebrated biodiversity and the intersection of science and art and believes fully that embracing the beauty of insects can transform our lives and our world.

“The spellbinding diversity of insects is complemented by a diversity of humans and cultures,” Klein says, resulting in boundless inspiration and innovation.

The Insect Epiphany explores the ways we use insects’ bodies (for silk, pigments, food, medicine), how we try to recreate them (for flight technology, architecture, social structures), and how we mimic them (for fighting, yoga, music, fashion).

Throughout the book, the enormous impact insects have had on our civilization is highlighted by over 100 images: from ancient etchings to avant-garde art, from bug-based meals to haute couture fashion, and other interesting topics.

Butterly on a plant. Image by Tim Sandle.

“We can revel in knowing we are deeply connected to our multifarious and multifaceted neighbors. We can choose to celebrate insects, knowing that without them we would sacrifice significant aspects of our heritage, our humanity, and much of life as we know it.,” Klein says.

Celebrating the myriad ways insects have inspired many aspects of what makes us human, the book is a deeply insightful, utterly captivating, and surprisingly delightful love letter to bugs.

CLIMATE CRISIS

Why South America is burning


By AFP
September 27, 2024

A helicopter sprays water over a bushfire on a hill in Quito on September 25, 2024 - Copyright AFP Galo Paguay
Juan Sebastian Serrano with AFP offices in South America

A record wave of wildfires, fueled by severe drought linked to climate change and deforestation, is causing havoc across South America.

The blazes have killed at least 30 people, left cities shrouded in toxic smoke and caused millions of dollars in economic losses.

This fire season is “completely different” from the one that ravaged forests in Brazil, Peru and Bolivia in 2019, according to Brazilian environmentalist Erika Berenguer, a researcher at Oxford University.

At the time, rain helped douse the fires, which in Brazil were chiefly started by farmers taking advantage of lax legislation under then far-right president Jair Bolsonaro to clear land for crops and ranching.

This year, the continent is in the throes of a severe drought. The Amazon basin, usually one of the wettest places on Earth, is experiencing the worst fires in nearly two decades, according to the EU’s Copernicus observatory.

Berenguer blamed climate change for making the Amazon “highly flammable.”

– How bad are the fires? –

Between January 1 and September 26, more than 400,000 fires were recorded across South America, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE).

“In nine months we have already surpassed the number of outbreaks recorded in all of 2023,” Berenguer noted.

In Brazil, the flames have consumed 40.2 million hectares (99 million acres) of vegetation this year, far above the average of 31 million hectares in each of the last 10 years, according to Copernicus.

A dozen firefighters have died on duty, according to local media.

In Ecuador, the mayor of the capital Quito declared this week the Andean city was “under attack” from 27 fires which forced the evacuation of over 100 families before being brought under control.

Ecuador had declared an emergency in several provinces, as has Peru, where 21 people have been killed by fires since July. Most were small-scale farmers.

Several fires are also blazing in Argentina and in Colombia, at opposite ends of the continent.

– What’s causing the fires? –

Experts and national authorities point to a combination of combustible factors, chiefly droughts aggravated by climate change and slash-and-burn agriculture.

“It’s a clear example of climate change. If anyone thought it didn’t exist, well look, here it is,” said Ecuadoran Environment Minister Ines Manzano.

In Peru and Bolivia, some of the fires are believed to have been started by farmers burning land to make it more fertile for planting, a traditional practice in the Andean countries that is tolerated by the authorities.

In the Brazilian Amazon, fires lit by both subsistence farmers and the agribusiness industry to clear forest for cattle or crops were fanned by the worst drought in the country’s recent history.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has pledged to put a stop to illegal Amazon deforestation by 2030, considers most of the fires to be “criminal” in origin.

In some places, the fires are started by arsonists.

One person has been arrested in Quito and dozens in Argentina and Brazil on suspicion of maliciously starting fires.

– How are people affected? –

The fires have dramatically reduced air quality in several cities.

Sao Paulo, the largest city in Latin America, was ranked the most polluted city in the world in early September, according to Swiss company IQAir.

A large part of Brazil remains shrouded in acrid smoke that wafted as far south as Montevideo and Buenos Aires earlier this month, causing a phenomenon known as “black rain.”

Inhabitants of many of Brazilian cities are experiencing respiratory problems and other symptoms such as stinging eyes.

In Bolivia, health authorities have recommended people wear face masks because of the poor air quality.

The region’s economies are also feeling the burn. Losses in the Brazilian agricultural sector amounted to $2.7 billion between June and August, principally sugarcane harvests.

In Ecuador, nearly 45,000 farm animals have died after more than two months without rain.

– What are governments doing? –


Thousands of firefighters and soldiers have been deployed across the continent to tackle the blazes.

“Everyone wants to hire thousands of firefighters, buy aircraft, etc, etc. That’s fine but it’s too little, too late,” Berenguer said.

“We need to prevent fires, because once they become big they are very difficult to fight,” she said, advocating for tougher measures against deforestation and planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

burs-jss/cb/mlr/acb

Oxford Vaccine Group: 30 years battling ‘deadly six’ diseases with major art installation


By Dr. Tim Sandle
September 27, 2024

DIGITAL JOURNAL


The installation consists of six, three-dimensional sculptures woven in English willow. By Angela Palmer (with permission)

To promote scientific education, a major art installation featuring dramatically upscaled bacteria, viruses and a parasite will be unveiled on 26 September at Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History.

The aim is to celebrate 30 years of vaccine development at the Oxford Vaccine Group (OVG) tackling some of the world’s most deadly diseases.

The event is called The Deadly Six: Oxford’s Battle with the Microbial World and it has been designed by acclaimed Scottish artist Angela Palmer. The event will be opened by leading scientists like Prof. Sir Andrew Pollard and Prof. Teresa Lambe OBE together with the creative artist, Angela Palmer.

Read more: Promoting clean energy through art

The Oxford Vaccine Group which was established in 1994, and set out to provide scientific research into the development and implementation of vaccines, in particular diseases for which there were at the time no effective vaccines.

The installation consists of six, three-dimensional sculptures woven in English willow, representing different diseases for which OVG has developed a vaccine: pneumonia, meningitis, typhoid, COVID, malaria and Ebola. Five of these will be suspended in the central room of the Museum, within the How Evolution Works gallery, with the sixth – a 2.4m long representation of Ebola weighing 75kg – lying at floor level.

“For 30 years, OVG has been working at the forefront of vaccine research in the fight against these diseases and many others, saving millions of lives, and helping people of all ages live longer, happier and healthier lives,” Professor Pollard explains “and it is really exciting to see Angela bring this to life in her artwork.”

Palmer, whose sculptures are in museums worldwide, previously created a glass sculpture of the original Wuhan coronavirus particle sphere at 8 million times its size, which was unveiled at the Museum of Natural History and is now on display in London’s Science Museum.

“I had originally planned to use the same technique” explains Palmer, “However apart from the coronavirus, none of these have been modelled in 3D.”

“I was battling to find an alternative concept” she continues, “and came across a collection of strange, three-dimensional shapes woven in straw while on holiday. One particularly reminded me of the meningitis bacteria form, and it struck that I could explore creating the entire installation in willow.”

“Willow was immediately appealing to me” Palmer adds “It is a native British tree and is imbued with medical associations dating back some 3,500 years.”

Palmer then tracked down two of the foremost weavers in the UK, Jenny Crisp and Issy Wilkes to collaborate on the project. Supported by a further renowned willow weaver in Mel Bastier, the sculptures were then created, formed from the artist’s drawings and files of scientific illustrations, testing the potential capabilities of willow to its limits.

Sound will also feature within the installation, with a speaker inserted into the sculpture representing the malaria parasite. This plays the sinister but familiar high-pitched ‘whine’ of one of the most lethal mosquitoes in the world (the sound of Anopheles Funestus will be played on a loop, pausing 10 seconds every minute to symbolise the fact that today a child under the age of 5 dies of malaria every 60 seconds).

The installation has been partly funded by the University of Oxford’s Gardens, Libraries and Museums (GLAM) division and will be open to members of the public from 26 September 2024 to 5 January 2025.

Abortion rights worldwide: a snapshot


By AFP
September 28, 2024

A rally for abortion rights outside the US Supreme Court in June 2024

 - Copyright AFP Simon Wohlfahrt

Olivier THIBAULT

Despite being liberalised in scores of countries over recent decades, women’s access to abortion remains a precarious right globally with numerous countries restricting the procedure or outlawing it altogether.

Traditional Catholic bastions such as Ireland and Mexico have lifted bans in recent years, but the United States has abolished nationwide access and some states maintain total bans.

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) advocacy group, only 34 percent of women of reproductive age live in countries where abortion is available on demand. It says backstreet abortions lead to 39,000 deaths per year.

On International Safe Abortion Day, here is a summary of rules on the procedure in various countries:



– Easing access –



Over the past 30 years, more than 60 countries have changed their laws to facilitate access to abortion.

In March 2024, France became the first country to enshrine the right in its constitution.

In September 2023, Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled to decriminalise abortion, bringing it in line with Argentina, which legalised it in 2020, plus Colombia, Cuba and Uruguay.

Ireland, a longtime bastion of Catholicism, legalised abortion in 2018 following a resounding yes vote in a referendum that overturned a constitutional ban.

Northern Ireland decriminalised it in 2019 — the last part of the United Kingdom to do so — as did South Korea.

New Zealand, Thailand and the west African state of Benin have since followed suit. The leadership of Sierra Leone has also approved its decriminalisation.

– Clamping down –

Abortion remains banned in around 20 countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America, according to the CRR.

El Salvador adopted a total ban in 1998 — even applying to cases where the woman’s or foetus’s life is in danger — with prison sentences of up to eight years.

Honduras hardened its total ban in 2021 by writing it into its constitution.

In Argentina, President Javier Milei, while running for office in 2023, promised to hold a referendum on banning abortion.

In Europe, only Andorra and the Vatican have total bans. Malta allows abortion only in cases where the mother’s life is in danger or the foetus has no chance of survival.

Poland’s constitutional court sparked protests in 2020 after ruling against abortion in cases where the foetus is malformed.

Abortion in the staunchly Catholic country is only permitted in cases of rape, incest or if the mother’s life is in danger. Recent efforts to liberalise the law there have failed.

Hungary tightened its abortion law in 2022, obliging women contemplating the procedure to observe the foetus’s “vital functions” such as the heartbeat.

In Brazil and Chile, abortion is only allowed in case of rape, risk to the mother and serious malformation of the foetus.

Proposals have been made in Brazil to apply jail terms of up to 20 years for aborting after 22 weeks of pregnancy, even in cases of rape.

– US U-turn –

In 2022, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court of the United States overturned the landmark 1973 “Roe v Wade” decision that had enshrined a woman’s right to a termination for half a century.

The court ruled that individual states can permit or restrict the procedure themselves.

Some 20 states, mainly in the south and centre, have since decreed bans or heavy restrictions on abortion.

States on the eastern and west coast have, by contrast, expanded access to terminations.

 Nepal shuts schools as floods and landslides kill more than 120

The death toll from flooding and landslides caused by heavy rains in Nepal has reached at least 129, with dozens of people still missing, officials said Sunday, warning that the toll was expected to rise further as reports come in from villages across the mountainous country.


Issued on: 29/09/2024 - 

Bagmati River is seen flooded due to heavy rains in an aerial view of Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, on September 28, 2024. 

© Gopen Rai, AP

Nepal has shut schools for three days after landslides and floods triggered by two days of heavy rain across the Himalayan nation killed 129 people, with 62 missing, officials said on Sunday.

The floods brought traffic and normal activity to a standstill in the Kathmandu valley, where 37 deaths were recorded in a region home to 4 million people and the capital.

Authorities said students and their parents faced difficulties as university and school buildings damaged by the rains needed repair.

"We have urged the concerned authorities to close schools in the affected areas for three days," Lakshmi Bhattarai, a spokesperson for the education ministry, told Reuters.

Some parts of the capital reported rain of up to 322.2 mm (12.7 inches), pushing the level of its main Bagmati river up 2.2 m (7 ft) past the danger mark, experts said.

But there were some signs of respite on Sunday morning, with the rains easing in many places, said Govinda Jha, a weather forecaster in the capital.

"There may be some isolated showers, but heavy rains are unlikely," he said.

Television images showed police rescuers in knee-high rubber boots using picks and shovels to clear away mud and retrieve 16 bodies of passengers from two buses swept away by a massive landslide at a site on the key route into Kathmandu.

Weather officials in the capital blamed the rainstorms on a low-pressure system in the Bay of Bengal extending over parts of neighbouring India close to Nepal.

Haphazard development amplifies climate change risks in Nepal, say climate scientists at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

"I’ve never before seen flooding on this scale in Kathmandu," said Arun Bhakta Shrestha, an environmental risk official at the centre.

In a statement, it urged the government and city planners to "urgently" step up investment in, and plans for, infrastructure, such as underground stormwater and sewage systems, both of the "grey", or engineered kind, and "green", or nature-based type.

The impact of the rains was aggravated by poor drainage due to unplanned settlement and urbanisation efforts, construction on floodplains, lack of areas for water retention, and encroachment on the Bagmati river, it added.

The level in the Koshi river in Nepal's southeast has started to fall, however, said Ram Chandra Tiwari, the region's top bureaucrat.

The river, which brings deadly floods to India's eastern state of Bihar nearly every year, had been running above the danger mark at a level nearly three times normal, he said.

(Reuters)

Nepal dam-building spree powers electric vehicle boom


By AFP
September 29, 2024


Kathmandu is ground zero of an incipient transport revolution set to see the clapped out cars that clog its traffic-snarled streets make way for emissions-free alternatives - Copyright AFP Prakash MATHEMA
Anup OJHA

Taxi driver Surendra Parajuli’s decision to buy an electric cab would have been unthinkable a decade ago, when chronic power cuts left Nepalis unable to light their homes at night.

But a dam-building spree has led to dirt-cheap energy prices in a landlocked Himalayan republic otherwise entirely dependent on fossil fuel imports, meaning the switch has put more money in his pocket.

“It has meant huge savings for me,” Parajuli, the proud new owner of a battery-powered and Chinese-made BYD Atto 3, told AFP in the capital Kathmandu.

“It gives 300 kilometres (186 miles) in a single charge and costs me a tenth of what petrol does. And it’s environmentally friendly.”

Kathmandu is ground zero of an incipient transport revolution set to see the clapped out cars that clog its traffic-snarled streets make way for emissions-free alternatives.

More than 40,000 electric vehicles are on the roads around the mountainous country, according to official estimates — a small fraction of the 6.2 million motor vehicles currently in service.

But demand is insatiable: more than a quarter of those vehicles were imported in the 12 months to July, a near-threefold increase from the previous year.

Neighbouring China, now the dominant player in electric vehicles globally, is supplying nearly 70 percent of the market.

“EVs are genuinely suitable for Nepalis,” Yajya Raj Bhatt, a prospective buyer at an electric vehicle motor show, told AFP.

“Before, we had to rely on petrol cars, but now we can drive independently.”



– ‘Great potential’ –



More than four in five Nepalis did not have access to electricity at the turn of the century, according to the International Energy Agency.

But rapid investment in dams, which generate 99 percent of Nepal’s baseload power, has transformed the energy grid since.

Hydropower output has increased fourfold in the past eight years, according to government figures, while 95 percent of the population now has access to electricity.

The country has already signed deals to export surplus power to coal-dependent India and has its sights set on future revenues by raising its current 3,200 megawatts of installed power generation capacity to 30,000 megawatts over the next decade.

Making electricity universal, and universally cheap, has the potential to jumpstart an economy that has historically depended on remittances from Nepalis working abroad.

Kulman Ghising of the Nepal Electricity Authority told AFP that the benefits have already been felt by setting the favourable conditions for widespread electric vehicle adoption.

Nepal is entirely dependent on imports from India to meet its fossil fuel needs, imposing additional costs on motorists, but Ghising said curbs on demand had saved the country around $224 million.

“The EVs have great potential for us,” he added. “EVs in India and Bangladesh need to depend on coal, but in Nepal, it’s fully green energy,” he said.

Road transport accounts for just over five percent of greenhouse gas emissions and has fuelled a worsening air pollution crisis.

Kathmandu was this year listed as one of the world’s most polluted cities for several days in April.

Experts say that getting more petrol-powered vehicles off the road will be a major step towards alleviating that problem.

Electric vehicles are subject to much lower import duties, and the government expects them to help Nepal reach its ambitious aim of becoming a net-zero greenhouse gas emitter by 2045.

Its plan aims to have electric vehicles account for 90 percent of all private vehicle purchases by the end of the decade.

– ‘Immediate problems’ –

But not everyone is convinced that the advent of Nepal’s electric vehicle boom portends an environmentally friendly future.

Nepal’s ambitious hydropower plans are contentious, with campaigners warning that the construction of new dams risk damaging sensitive ecological areas.

The government this year approved a new policy allowing the construction of dams that could impact previously protected areas, including forests, nature reserves and tiger habitats

Hydropower projects also face the risk of damage from floods and landslides common in the country, both of which are increasing in frequency and severity because of climate change.

Campaigners also say the government, in its rush to embrace electric vehicles, has neglected to make proper plans for managing the sizeable electronic waste burden.

EV lithium-ion batteries contain materials that are hazardous to humans and the environment, and their disposal is costly.

“The government does not seem far-sighted on this issue, it is just concerned with solving only immediate problems,” Nabin Bikash Maharjan of recycling enterprise Blue Waste to Value told AFP.

“It is high time for the government to prioritise it. Otherwise it will create additional pollution.”

ICYMI

Study: Climate change made rains that led to deadly European floods more likely, heavier


The Elbe river in Dresden, Germany, pictured on 16 September at 19 feet above its normal level after four days of the heaviest rain ever recorded in central Europe that a report out Wednesday says was made much more likely by human-induced climate change. 

File photo by Filip Singer/EPA-EFE


Sept. 25 (UPI) -- Extreme rainfall that triggered deadly floods in Europe killing at least 24 people earlier this month was made both more likely and worse by orders of magnitude by man-made climate change, a new study published Wednesday said.

The heaviest rain over a four-day period Sept. 12 through Sept. 15 in Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Austria and the Czech Republic was made at least twice as likely and 7% more intense due to human-induced climate change, according to research by academics for World Weather Attribution.

"In today's climate, which is 1.3 degrees Celsius warmer than at the beginning of the industrial period, a rainfall event of this magnitude is a very rare event expected to occur about once every 100 to 300 years," the group said in a news release.

"As the event is by far the heaviest ever recorded, the exact return time is difficult to estimate based on only about 100 years of observed data."

However, using observational data to isolate trends the researchers found heavy four-day rainfall events had become about twice as likely and 20% more intense since the pre-industrial era.

They calculated the changes in frequency and intensity specifically linked to man-made climate change by using models simulating heavy rain in the affected areas combined with their observation-based evaluations.

"All models showed an increase in intensity and likelihood as well, as expected from physical processes in a warming climate. The combined change, attributable to human-induced climate change, is roughly a doubling in likelihood and a 7% increase in intensity.

"The models are, however, not explicitly modeling convection, and new convection-permitting studies have shown that increases in precipitation may have been underestimated in lower-resolution climate models. Therefore, these results are conservative," WWA said.

The scientists warned that in a future warming scenario where the global temperature rises to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, their models show even heavier 4-day rainfall events, with rainfall intensity rising a further 5% and the likelihood jumping half as much again, compared with today.

They cautioned that these calculations too were likely underestimates of the real picture because existing climate models underplay the frequency of very heavy rainfall.

The trend is clear. If humans keep filling the atmosphere with fossil fuel emissions, the situation will be more severe," said study co-author and Poznan University climatologist Bogdan Chojnicki.

Every 1 degree Celsius of heating of the atmosphere allows it to hold 7% more moisture providing water is readily available, physicists have calculated.

The record-breaking rains unleashed on central Europe were the result of cold air from the Arctic colliding with wet air from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea creating Storm Boris which remained static for turning rivers into torrents that tore through major urban centers along their banks.

The death toll from the recent floods was much lower than in previous events in 2021, 2002 and 1997 when hundreds of people were killed thanks only to upgraded emergency management systems across Europe largely working well despite the higher intensity and larger scale, WWA said.

But they stressed that any loss of life highlighted the need for additional measures to account for climate change including constructing flood defences at scale and improving risk communication and emergency response plans.

The WWA research was a so-called "attribution study" that uses recognized scientific practices but has not gone through the normal peer review process prior to publication.

Bike apprenticeship helps break UK reoffending cycle


By AFP
September 28, 2024


Ex-prisoner Cameron Moseley now works as a bike mechanic 

- Copyright AFP Justin TALLIS

Peter HUTCHISON

Cameron Moseley hopes never to return to jail thanks to a pioneering scheme in London that aims to cut reoffending by training former prisoners to become bicycle mechanics.

The XO Bikes project chimes with the intention of Britain’s new Labour government to ease overcrowding in prisons, partly by rehabilitating inmates so they can find employment.

“There’s not much work out there for people like me,” said 30-year-old Moseley, who has been in and out of jail three times.

He was most recently released in July after serving a two-year-term for actual bodily harm.

His probation officer referred him to XO Bikes, a charity-owned business formed two years ago that takes participants through a six-week course in how to build and fix bicycles.

Afterwards, they can either work as mechanics for XO Bikes, where they can earn around £26,000, ($34,000), or use the industry-standard qualification to apply for a job elsewhere.

“If I didn’t have this I’d probably turn to crime again,” Moseley told AFP at the XO Bikes repair shop in Lewisham, southeast London.

The initiative was started in March 2022 by Stef Jones, a 58-year-old former advertising executive.

He came up with the idea while volunteering at Brixton prison in south London, where he saw inmates return to jail because often they had been unable to find work after their release.

“If no one else is going to give you a job, I’ll give you a job,” Jones said he remembered thinking at the time.

The scheme sees vetted participants fix up bikes that have been donated by various groups, including London’s Metropolitan Police, railway companies, corporations and members of the public.

Every donated bike is stripped and cleaned and then every part, from the brakes and the gears to the tyres and the frame, is tested, rebuilt, then tested again.

The refurbished bikes are returned to their original finish or branded an XO Bike and stamped with a number unique to the ex-prisoner who repaired it.

The bikes are sold on XO’s website and in its two stores, with the profits then reinvested into the scheme.

“You’ve got a bike with a past and a bloke with a past, and you’re giving them both a crack at a decent future. That’s the idea,” said Jones.

Trainees also gain “a routine, fellowship, support, encouragement, affirmation that you do belong on this side of the street, that you’ve got options”, he added.

– Timpson –

Gary Oakley, 38, says the scheme has given him purpose and a sense of “pride” since he left prison in April after serving 18 months for assault.

“To have something that I was looking forward to kept me from being depressed, sitting indoors and going the other way and ending up back inside.”

UK government statistics estimate that about one in four prisoners reoffend, costing England and Wales about £18 billion a year.

It is contributing to jails being at near capacity. Earlier this month the government was forced to release 1,700 prisoners early to reduce overcrowding.

After sweeping into power this July, Prime Minister Keir Starmer — a former human rights lawyer and chief state prosecutor — appointed businessman and justice reform advocate James Timpson as prisons minister.

Timpson’s family-owned key-cutting business runs training academies in dozens of prisons, with former convicts making up 10 percent of its workforce.

He believes that prisons need to become “rehabilitative” and wants more companies to hire adults with criminal records.

The Ministry of Justice estimated in a 2013 study that 18 percent of ex-prisoners reoffended within a year, but the figure rose to 43 percent for those without employment.

Some 65 ex-convicts have completed the XO Bikes programme, Jones said, with a couple of graduates going on to work for major sports firms.

Only two participants have subsequently reoffended.

“It’s working,” said Jones, who now wants to replicate the scheme with a barbering course.

Progress on high seas treaty, but change still far off


By AFP
September 28, 2024

Campaign groups still hope the treaty will come into force in 2025, but the required number of ratifying countries remains a long way off - Copyright AFP ANWAR AMRO

A year after a historic treaty to protect the high seas was opened to signatures, it has now received 13 ratifications — leaving it still far from coming into force.

The treaty, which took 15 years of tough negotiating to be approved, aims to protect vital marine ecosystems that are threatened by pollution. It requires 60 ratifications before coming into force.

UN members finalized it in March 2023, then formally adopted it. The treaty received 70 signatures in last year’s United Nations flagship week — not ratifications, but indications of willingness to ratify it eventually.

That number has now reached 104.

Five new countries — East Timor, Singapore, the Maldives, Bangladesh and Barbados — ratified the treaty during this high-level week of the UN General Assembly, bringing total ratifications to 13.

Campaign groups still hope the treaty will come into force in 2025, but say ratifications are badly lagging.

“Whilst this week’s progress is welcome, there is a sense of complacency from some countries, and we would have expected more to have taken the opportunity of ratifying this week,” environmental campaigners Greenpeace said.

“It is important that political momentum is kept high and countries finalize their ratification processes as soon as possible.”

– ‘Incredible week for the ocean’ –

“What an incredible week for the ocean,” the conservation-minded High Seas Alliance said in a post on X.

But it was “time to step up the pace and sprint to the finish line,” Rebecca Hubbard, director of the NGO coalition, said this week.

The high seas begin where the exclusive economic zones of countries end — at a maximum of 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from shore — and therefore fall under the jurisdiction of no state.

Although the high seas account for almost half the planet’s surface area and over 60 percent of its oceans, they have long been ignored by environmental efforts.

The new treaty’s flagship tool is the creation of marine protected areas.

Conservation measures currently cover just 1 percent of the high seas.

But in December 2022 in Montreal, at the UN’s Conference of the Parties (COP15) on biodiversity, all of the world’s nations pledged to protect 30 percent of the planet’s landmass and oceans by a summit set for 2030.

Activists say the new treaty will be vital to meeting that goal, adding to the urgency of the quickest possible ratification.

‘Broken’ news industry faces uncertain future


ByAFP
September 26, 2024


Advertising revenue -- the lifeline of news publications -- has dried up in recent years - Copyright AFP Hassan FNEICH

Paul RICARD

From disinformation campaigns to soaring scepticism, plummeting trust and economic slumps, the global media landscape has been hit with blow after blow.

World News Day, taking place on Saturday with the support of hundreds of organisations including AFP, aims to raise awareness about the challenges endangering the hard-pressed industry.

– ‘Broken business model’ –

In 2022, UNESCO warned that “the business model of the news media is broken”.

Advertising revenue — the lifeline of news publications — has dried up in recent years, with Internet giants such as Google and Facebook owner Meta soaking up half of that spending, the report said.

Meta, Amazon and Google’s parent company Alphabet alone account for 44 percent of global ad spend, while only 25 percent goes to traditional media organisations, according to a study by the World Advertising Research Center.

Platforms like Facebook “are now explicitly deprioritising news and political content”, the Reuters Institute’s 2024 Digital News Report pointed out.

Traffic from social to news sites has sharply declined as a result, causing a drop in revenue.

Few are keen to pay for news. Only 17 percent of people polled across 20 wealthy countries said they had online news subscriptions in 2023.

Such trends, leading to rising costs, have resulted in “layoffs, closures, and other cuts” in media organisations around the world, the study found.

– Eroding trust –

Public trust in the media has increasingly eroded in recent years.

Only four in 10 respondents said they trusted news most of the time, the Reuters Institute reported.

Meanwhile, young people are relying more on influencers and content creators than newspapers to stay informed.

For them, video is king, with the study citing the influence of TikTok and YouTube stars such as American Vitus Spehar and Frenchman Hugo Travers, known for his channel HugoDecrypte.

– Growing disinformation –

The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) has renewed concerns about disinformation — rife on social platforms — as the tool can generate convincing text and images.

In the United States, partisan websites masquerading as media outlets now outnumber American newspaper sites, the research group NewsGuard, which tracks misinformation, said in June.

“Pink slime” outlets — politically motivated websites that present themselves as independent local news outlets — are largely powered by AI. This appears to be an effort to sway political beliefs ahead of the US election.

As part of a national crackdown on disinformation, Brazil’s Supreme Court suspended access to Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter.

The court accused the social media platform of refusing to remove accounts charged with spreading fake news, and flouting other judicial rulings.

“Eradicating disinformation seems impossible, but things can be implemented,” Reporters Without Borders (RSF) editorial director Anne Bocande told AFP.

Platforms can bolster regulation and create news reliability indicators, like RSF’s Journalism Trust Initiative, Bocande said.

– Alarming new player –

AI has pushed news media into unchartered territory.

US streaming platform Peacock introduced AI-generated custom match reports during the Paris Olympics this year, read with the voice of sports commentator Al Michaels — fuelling fears AI could replace journalists.

Despite these concerns, German media giant Axel Springer has decided to bet on AI while refocusing on its core news activities.

At its roster, which includes Politico, the Bild tabloid, Business Insider and Die Welt daily, AI will focus on menial production tasks so journalists can dedicate their time to reporting and securing scoops.

In a bid to profit from the technology’s rise, the German publisher as well as The Associated Press and The Financial Times signed content partnerships with start-up OpenAI.

But the Microsoft-backed firm is also caught in a major lawsuit with The New York Times over copyright violations.

– ‘Quiet repression’ –

With journalists frequently jailed, killed and attacked worldwide, “repression is a major issue,” said RSF’s Bocande.

A total of 584 journalists are languishing behind bars because of their work — with China, Belarus and Myanmar the world’s most prolific jailers of reporters.

The war in Gaza sparked by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel has already left a “terrible” mark on press freedom, Bocande added.

More than 130 journalists have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since October 7, 2023, including 32 while “in the exercise of their duties”.

She said a “quiet repression” campaign is underway in countries around the world, including in democracies — with investigative journalism hampered by fresh laws on national security.

Milei moves to privatize flag carrier in standoff with unions


By AFP
September 27, 2024

Argentina's President Javier Milei says Aerolineas Argentinas is costing the country too much - Copyright AFP Juan Mabromata

Argentina’s President Javier Milei announced steps Friday to privatize flag carrier Aerolineas Argentinas amid a standoff with unions over salaries and labor rights.

On Thursday, a labor court in Buenos Aires had suspended a decree by Milei to limit the right to strike in the aviation sector.

The court ruled the decree, which ordered that airlines maintain at least 50 percent of flights in the event of a work stoppage, was unconstitutional, according to the Airline Pilots’ Association.

The decision was the latest judicial setback for budget-slashing Milei, who came to power in December promising a dose of shock therapy for the ailing Argentine economy.

The self-declared “anarcho-capitalist leader” says state-owned Aerolineas Argentinas is costing the country too much but his efforts to cut costs have been met with fierce resistance from unions.

Pilots and crew have launched two one-day strikes for pay increases over the past month, affecting hundreds of flights.

They are demanding pay hikes of 30-35 percent to help them weather Argentina’s stubbornly high inflation rate, which reached 236.7 percent year-on-year in August.

After the court ruling, the presidency issued a statement Friday saying the government has decided to open the way for the carrier’s privatization.

The statement said Aerolineas Argentinas had not posted a profit since 2008.

It said the airline was being “harassed by a union caste whose only priority is to maintain privileges.”

In a country with a poverty levels exceeding 52 percent, “it is irresponsible and unacceptable that the state continues to finance the deficit and the privileges of a few with the taxes of those who do not make it to the end of the month,” said the presidency.