Tuesday, October 08, 2024

How 2020's trauma created Trump's death cult
ALTERNET
October 8, 2024 

New York public workers opposed to the city's vaccine mandate protest on October 25, 2021(AFP)

Could the Covid disaster of 2020 — which Trump botched so badly that America has had more Covid deaths than any other nation in the world except Peru (whose president denied Covid was dangerous) — be what’s fueling the Trump MAGA cult? Are we, in other words, as a nation suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and that’s driving a national mental illness crisis that opened the door for Trump’s cult to grow?

— Colorado elections worker Tina Peters, for example, was just sent to prison for nine years for her role in trying to subvert the 2020 election; she’d completely bought into Trump’s lie that Democrats had stolen that election and is paying for it with the rest of her life.

— My barber was telling me this past weekend about how one of his regulars is stocking up on guns, ammunition, and dried food in anticipation of a second Civil War. This guy is now fully in the Trump cult and is thus perfectly willing to kill his neighbors for politics, once somebody declares the war is now underway (as many of these guys expect Trump to do in the next few weeks).


— All across America, families are being torn apart by the Trump cult, and sometimes the conflicts even lead to violence.


The rest of the world has figured this out. Over at the British newspaper The Independent, the headline says it all:

“She Escaped the Religious Sect She Grew Up In. Now She Says Trump’s MAGA Movement is Eerily Similar”

Although the economy right now is doing better than at any time since the 1960s, polls show a majority of Americans would rather believe Trump’s lies that inflation is still with us (it’s down to 1.7 percent now) and the historically low 4.1 percent unemployment rate is “fake news.” And tens of millions of Americans believe him.






So, what’s going on here in America? How did we get here and why?

Many otherwise normal and sane Americans seem to have gone nuts, leaping down the Qanon or Fox “News” rabbit holes in search of meaning, safety, and explanations for the feelings of doom that they just can’t shake. It’s as if some major event in their lives has created such a trauma that they’ve been knocked off balance, psychologically.


And that may be a big part of the answer, particularly given how neither our insurance industry nor our government-funded health insurance programs typically pay for mental health services that might otherwise help out people suffering from trauma-induced shock.

I still remember when I was on a flight out of New York in the late 1970s. Back then, planes took off in the middle of thunderstorms (and occasionally crashed as a result), and this 727 did exactly that. As we were climbing out through what was probably around 4,000 feet the plane was hit by a lightning strike, lighting up the cabin and killing at least one of the engines.

We started to fall out of the sky as the pilots struggled to stabilize the aircraft and restart the engine: the woman sitting next to me grabbed my arm and started sobbing; we all thought we were going to die. I was then (and still am) a licensed pilot and it scared me more than her, I’m guessing, because I knew full well everything that could go wrong to a plane in a thunderstorm, from the lightning strike taking out the jet’s electronics and engines to wind shear ripping us out of the sky. (It’s why they no longer fly through thunderstorms.)


It was at least a decade before I could get on a commercial plane without getting drunk first: That’s what untreated PTSD can do to you. (I finally did EMDR on it and am now fine on airplanes; this was a mild case, and didn’t lead me into a cult.)

Consider some of the cardinal symptoms of PTSD, something that’s often brought on by a near-death-experience, severe abuse, or surviving a once-in-a-century pandemic.

Each symptom would make a person more vulnerable to the siren song of Trump’s cult:


-— Hypervigilance and threat sensitivity, causing people to experience heightened alertness to potential and often imagined (like Trump’s lies about Haitian immigrants) threats.
— Difficulty with trust, which may lead to skepticism of official sources and greater reliance on alternative information channels; vulnerability, in other words, to Trump’s lies and his claims of “fake news” when he’s fact-checked.
— Emotional dysregulation, making individuals like Tina Peters, the hundreds of January 6th rioters now in jail, and other Trump followers more vulnerable to emotionally-charged misinformation and MAGA cult membership.
Cognitive changes impacting critical thinking skills needed to evaluate information that might contradict the lies Trump and his co-conspirators promulgate.
— Social isolation which may limit exposure to different perspectives and fact-checking from others who try to tell MAGA members how deluded and exploited they really are.
— Seeking explanations causing people to have a heightened need to understand and make sense of their experiences, making them more open to MAGA’s anti-science and politically charged explanatory narratives, even when they’re lies.
Avoidance behaviors leading people to avoid exposure to diverse information sources, keeping them trapped in Trump cult bubbles like rightwing hate radio and Fox “News.”

Multiple studies have been done on the psychological impact of the Covid pandemic, finding anywhere from 5 to 55 percent of Americans suffering in a way that could be diagnosed as PTSD. The average across the studies find 26 percent of Americans having diagnosable PTSD from Covid.

Prior to the pandemic, the national rate of diagnosable PTSD was generally considered to be around 3.5 percent: Clearly, the pandemic had an impact on our psyches that Trump has been exploiting every day since.


Remember, for almost an entire year, we were afraid that just going to the grocery store could kill us. Over a million of us — one out of every 272 Americans — died because of Trump’s incompetence and malice.

Most of us knew people who died; my best friend, Jerry Schneiderman, succumbed to the disease as did several other people close to our family. This is trauma writ large, setting millions up to believe any random BS a cult leader like Trump decides to dish out.

As the lead author of a new study on the impact of Covid, Dr. Jeff Ashby, noted:

“While many people are insulated from deaths and economic hardships related to the pandemic, there is a universal experience of fear, concern for others, and social isolation. Among our findings is that the experience of COVID-19 is a traumatic stress. It isn’t just triggering earlier trauma, it’s a traumatic experience in and of itself.”

Literally millions of people have joined Trump’s cult — it is a cult, as its members are so impervious to factual information and it’s based on the personality of a single man — and the evidence suggests that many of them may have been made vulnerable to joining MAGA because of the trauma they experienced during the worst of the pandemic.

As Dr. Stephen Schwartz wrote for the National Library of Medicine:
“[T]his [million-plus Covid] death rate is directly correlated to the politicization and weaponization of anti-science throughout the MAGA world created by Donald Trump and the Republican Party. … Anti-vaxxers, and anti-maskers, usually the same people, have made fidelity to a fact-free but emotionally satisfying reality more important than life itself, and created the first American death cult. …

“There was a deliberate plan from the very outbreak of the Covid pandemic to take what should have been a fringe movement — there were the equivalent of anti-vaxxers in the Middle Ages with the Plague; there were anti-vaxxers with the 1918 Spanish Flu — and transform it into a mainstream political movement. What had been fringe became a death culture involving millions. Believers willingly subject themselves to a vastly higher risk of contracting and dying of Covid. And they do this in the face of a million dead, and 2000 people, or more, dying each day.”

The good news is that the way most cult members leave their cult is not through deprogramming or a sudden awakening (although those do happen) but, rather, because the cult leader dies or is discredited.


Trump decisively losing the 2024 election may well be that discrediting and thus liberating event in the lives of many of his followers.

The challenge for the next year or so will be — for those of us who recognize the cult-like slavish devotion to Trump of his followers — to provide support to those followers we know to make the transition from the Trump cult back into the normal world. Therapy for the PTSD that made them vulnerable in the first place will also be helpful.

America can recover from this trauma, but it’ll take time and effort.


This all assumes, of course, that Trump loses this election. And making that happen is up to us: vote!


U$A

Protesters clash with police during demonstration on anniversary of Oct. 7 Hamas attack


Jon King, Michigan Advance
October 8, 2024 

Police van (Shutterstock)

Pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with University of Michigan campus police Monday and at least one arrest was made during a demonstration march that marked the one year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.

“I don’t understand how there can be a celebration like this on the one year anniversary of [the attack],” Sean Peleg, a senior who is also Jewish told Michigan Advance. “Because one year ago today, Hamas invaded Israel. One year ago tomorrow, Israel responded. So for them to be saying this is a resistance celebration, no. This is a celebration of the terrorist attack that happened a year ago today, in my opinion.”

The protesters, members of the TAHRIR Coalition of student groups demanding the university divest itself from all financial and academic connections with Israel, began the protest in front of Rackham Auditorium before marching toward The Diag, where campus Jewish groups had set up a memorial to honor the more than 1,200 mostly civilian Israelis murdered by Hamas and those still being held hostage out of the approximately 250 taken captive that day.

The ensuing Israeli military response has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry.

As police kept the protesters at a distance from the memorial, a scuffle broke out and officers were seen escorting a handcuffed individual to a police vehicle while other protesters followed, and then surrounded the vehicle, while yelling, “Let him go! Let him go!” It is not clear what the protector was taken into custody for. A message was left with U of M officials for details.

As officers tried to escort the vehicle off the The Diag, they had to form a cordon to keep protesters at bay, while the vehicle inched along toward the street. At one point pepper spray was deployed, although it is not clear by who, with protesters seen coughing and using water to irrigate their eyes. They also crowded the driver side window, yelling obscenities at the officers inside.

“The struggle is connected everywhere we are,” said student protester Eaman Ali before the march began. “The fight for self-governance, for the people of this university to not just be listened to, but to have a say is not disconnected from the Palestinian fight for freedom, liberation, and self determination. When power is struggling to maintain its choke hold on our collective consciousness, on our ignorance, across the world, its tactics are the same. It turns to police and military violence, to the carceral state, to the weaponization of laws and regulations. We currently see this desperation from the Zionist entity itself as it is now bombing four countries all at once in a flailing attempt to save itself.”

The protests and police confrontation marked a day of discord, anger and recriminations across Michigan. Earlier in the day, vandals spray-painted graffiti at the Jewish Federation of Detroit building in Bloomfield Township, while the West Bloomfield home of University President Santa Ono and the home of Erik Lundberg, U of M’s chief investment officer, were also vandalized with spray paint.

“Antisemitic flyers in West Bloomfield on Saturday; antisemitic vandalism at the Jewish Federation on Monday. How many who have called for a ceasefire in Gaza have also called for a ceasefire against Jewish students on campus, our synagogues and institutions?,” asked state Rep. Noah Arbit (D-West Bloomfield), who is Jewish.

Meanwhile, state Sen. Jeremy Moss (D-Southfield), who is also Jewish, expressed his exhaustion on the anniversary.

“Today does not feel like a solemn annual remembrance of the horrific events on October 7, 2023 — the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust — but rather the 366th day of fresh and ongoing pain,” said Moss.

Another Jewish lawmaker, U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly), called it a bitter anniversary that highlights a cycle of violence.

“It is hard to overstate how this crisis has roiled the state of Michigan for 365 days. And one of the saddest things about what’s happened is that, in talking to both Jewish Americans and Arab and Muslim Americans nearly each day since, both communities experienced mirror-image pain this year,” she said. “Both are pained by the sharp rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia. Both sides fear for their kids, and their experience at college. And both sides are struggling to find a path forward to feel hopeful about.”

Also speaking out was U.S. Tim Walberg (R-Tipton).

“On the anniversary of the barbaric terror attack carried out by Hamas, our hearts go out to the victims and the 97 hostages still held, including American citizens. The United States continues to stand firmly with Israel as they defend themselves and deter future aggression,” he posted.

Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt also issued a statement via social media.

“Today, we remember the innocent men, women, and children who were victims of the barbaric attack launched by cowardly, terrorist thugs (Hamas) on the people of Israel. Let’s honor the victims by standing against terrorism and striving for justice. #BringThemHome,” he posted.

Prior to the confrontation with protesters, Jack Landstein, vice president of engagement at University of Michigan Hillel, told the Advance that the memorial, which included pictures of those killed in the Oct. 7 attack, milk carton silhouettes of those still missing, and small Israeli flags arranged in a Star of David pattern, was something they had been planning for months and while it was open to all, it had a specific purpose.

“The focus is on the Jewish community, and because the community is predominantly students, we want to make sure this event, while open to the entire community, resonates with Jewish students,” he said. “The Jewish community is about love, hope, peace, and our goal with this event, in addition to just commemorating everybody who was murdered, is also to highlight humanity and recognize everybody as a life, and there’s value in every person. And it is important as a Jewish community. We’re working to better everybody.”

But for Ali, the day marked a recognition that there was not just a single narrative. It also made plain that the divide was as deep as ever.

“We see the courage and bravery of the people of Gaza, of Lebanon, and of the people around the world as they resist the colonial violence that attempts to swallow them. So how can we be afraid? We are so many. We are the people. A global movement of masses moved and called upon by the spirit and steadfastness of the Palestinian resistance,” she said.


Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and X.
CLIMATE CRISIS
The world’s rivers faced the driest year in three decades in 2023, the UN weather agency says

 Barges float in the Mississippi River as a portion of the riverbed is exposed, on Sept. 15, 2023, in St. Louis. The U.N. weather agency is reporting that 2023 was the driest year in more than three decades for the world’s rivers, as the record-hot year underpinned a drying up of water flows and contributed to prolonged droughts in some places. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)Read More

A part of the Negro River is dry at the port in Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil, Friday, Oct. 4, 2024, amid severe drought. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros)



BY JAMEY KEATEN
October 7, 2024

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. weather agency is reporting that 2023 was the driest year in more than three decades for the world’s rivers, as the record-hot year underpinned a drying up of water flows and contributed to prolonged droughts in some places.

The World Meteorological Organization also says glaciers that feed rivers in many countries suffered the largest loss of mass in the last five decades, warning that ice melt can threaten long-term water security for millions of people globally.

“Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change. We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems and economies,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo, releasing the report on Monday.

She said rising temperatures had in part led the hydrological cycle to become “more erratic and unpredictable” in ways that can produce “either too much or too little water” through both droughts and floods.

The “State of Global Water Resources 2023” report covers rivers and also lakes, reservoirs, groundwater, soil moisture, terrestrial water storage, snow cover and glaciers, and the evaporation of water from land and plants.


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The weather agency, citing figures from UN Water, says some 3.6 billion people face inadequate access to water for at least one month a year — and that figure is expected to rise to 5 billion by 2050. WMO says 70% of all the water that humans draw from the hydrological systems goes into agriculture.

The world faced the hottest year on record in 2023, and the summer of this year was also the hottest summer ever — raising warning signs for a possible new annual record in 2024.

“In the (last) 33 years of data, we had never such a large area around the world which was under such dry conditions,” said Stefan Uhlenbrook, director of hydrology, water and cryosphere at WMO.

The report said the southern United States, Central America and South American countries Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay faced widespread drought conditions and “the lowest water levels ever observed in Amazon and in Lake Titicaca,” on the border between Peru and Bolivia.

The Mississippi River basin also experienced record-low water levels, the report said. WMO said half of the world faced dry river flow conditions last year.

The data for 2024 isn’t in yet, but Uhlenbrook said the extremely hot summer is “very likely” to translate into low river flows this year, and “in many parts of the world, we expect more water scarcity.”

Low-water conditions have had an impact on river navigation in places like Brazil and a food crisis in Zimbabwe and other parts of southern Africa this year.


WMO called for improvements in data collection and sharing to help clear up the real picture for water resources and help countries and communities take action in response.

JAMEY KEATEN
Keaten is the chief AP reporter in Geneva. He previously was posted in Paris and has reported from Afghanistan, the Middle East, North Africa and across Europe.
WEATHER CONTROL

Control the path and power of hurricanes like Milton? Forget it, scientists say



Dustin Holmes, second from right, holds hands with his girlfriend, Hailey Morgan, while returning to their flooded home with her children Aria Skye Hall, 7, right, and Kyle Ross, 4, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Sept. 27, 2024, in Crystal River, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)


BY MELINA WALLING AND SETH BORENSTEIN
 October 7, 2024

Hurricanes are humanity’s reminder of the uncontrollable, chaotic power of Earth’s weather.

Milton’s powerful push toward Florida just days after Helene devastated large parts of the Southeast likely has some in the region wondering if they are being targeted. In some corners of the internet, Helene has already sparked conspiracy theories and disinformation suggesting the government somehow aimed the hurricane at Republican voters.

Besides discounting common sense, such theories disregard weather history that shows the hurricanes are hitting many of the same areas they have for centuries. They also presume an ability for humans to quickly reshape the weather far beyond relatively puny efforts such as cloud seeding.

- Carver Cammans installs cloud seeding equipment, Dec. 3, 2022, in Lyons, Colo. (AP Photo/Brittany Peterson, File)

“If meteorologists could stop hurricanes, we would stop hurricanes,” Kristen Corbosiero, a professor of atmospheric and environmental sciences at the University at Albany. “If we could control the weather, we would not want the kind of death and destruction that’s happened.”

Here’s a look at what humans can and can’t do when it comes to weather:
The power of hurricanes, heightened by climate change

A fully developed hurricane releases heat energy that is the equivalent of a 10-megaton nuclear bomb every 20 minutes — more than all the energy used at a given time by humanity, according to National Hurricane Center tropical analysis chief Chris Landsea.


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And scientists are now finding many ways climate change is making hurricanes worse, with warmer oceans that add energy and more water in the warming atmosphere to fall as rain, said Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

“The amount of energy a hurricane generates is insane,” said Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach. It’s the height of human arrogance to think people have the power to change them, he said.

But that hasn’t stopped people from trying, or at least thinking about trying.


 A damaged 100-year-old home is seen after an Oak tree landed on it after Hurricane Helene moved through the area, Sept. 27, 2024, in Valdosta, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)

Historical efforts to control hurricanes have failed

Jim Fleming of Colby College has studied historical efforts to control the weather and thinks humans have nowhere near the practical technology to get there. He described an attempt in 1947 in which General Electric partnered with the U.S. military to drop dry ice from Air Force jets into the path of a hurricane in an attempt to weaken it. It didn’t work.

“The typical science goes like understanding, prediction and then possibly control,” Fleming said, noting that the atmosphere is far more powerful and complex than most proposals to control it. “It goes back into Greek mythology to think you can control the powers of the heavens, but also it’s a failed idea.”

In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the federal government briefly tried Project STORMFURY. The idea was to seed a hurricane to replace its eyewall with a larger one that would make the storm bigger in size but weaker in intensity. Tests were inconclusive and researchers realized if they made the storm larger, people who wouldn’t have been hurt by the storm would now be in danger, which is an ethical and liability problem, the project director once said.

For decades, the National Hurricane Center and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have been asked about nuclear-bombing a hurricane. But the bombs aren’t powerful enough, and it would add the problem of radioactive fallout, Corbosiero said.

Bringing cooling icebergs or seeding or adding water-absorbing substances also are ideas that just don’t work, NOAA scientists said.


 A partially submerged vehicle sits in floodwater from after Hurricane Helene passed the area, Sept 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Jason Allen, File)


Climate change begets engineering — and lots of questions


Failed historical attempts to control hurricanes differ somewhat from some scientists’ futuristic ideas to combat climate change and extreme weather. That’s because instead of targeting individual weather events, modern geoengineers would operate on a larger scale — thinking about how to reverse the broad-scale damage humans have already done to the global climate by emitting greenhouse gases.

Scientists in the field say one of the most promising ideas they see based on computer models is solar geoengineering. The method would involve lofting aerosol particles into the upper atmosphere to bounce a tiny bit of sunlight back into space, cooling the planet slightly.

Supporters acknowledge the risks and challenges. But it also “might have quite large benefits, especially for the world’s poorest,” said David Keith, a professor at the University of Chicago and founding faculty director of the Climate Systems Engineering initiative.

Two years ago, the largest society of scientists who work on climate issues, the American Geophysical Union, announced it was forming an ethics framework for “climate intervention.”


 Residents are rescued from floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Sept. 27, 2024 in Crystal River, Fla. (Luis Santana/Tampa Bay Times via AP, File)

Some scientists warn that tinkering with Earth’s atmosphere to fix climate change is likely to create cascading new problems. Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann expressed worries on the ethics framework that just talking about guidelines will make the tinkering more likely to occur in the real world, something that could have harmful side effects

Field, of Stanford, agreed that the modeling strongly encourages that geoengineering could be effective, including at mitigating the worst threats of hurricanes, even if that’s decades away. But he emphasized that it’s just one piece of the best solution, which is to stop climate change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

“Whatever else we do, that needs to be the core set of activities,” he said.
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Follow Melina Walling on X: @MelinaWalling.
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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.



MELINA WALLING
Walling covers the intersections of climate change and agriculture in the Midwest and beyond for The Associated Press. She is based in Chicago.
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SETH BORENSTEIN
Borenstein is an Associated Press science writer, covering climate change, disasters, physics and other science topics. He is based in Washington, D.C.
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How farmers in Burundi banded together to get fair prices for avocados



A farmer harvests avocados at a plantation in Kayanza province, Burundi, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

A man carries crates to pack avocados in Kayanza province, Burundi, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

Farmers carry crates with avocados from a plantation in Ngozi, Burundi, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

BY RODNEY MUHUMUZA AND GASPARD MAHEBURWA
October 6, 2024

KAYANZA, Burundi (AP) — Farmers in a remote part of Burundi know to look for a truck parked by a highway when it is time to sell their avocados. They materialize from villages and form a crowd around the vehicle, watching closely as crews weigh and load the crated fruits.

Such roadside exchanges, repeated regularly during peak harvest season, long provided a ready market for smallholder avocado growers in a country that’s sometimes ranked as the world’s poorest. But the transactions now promise real earnings thanks in part to the intervention of the national government and farmers’ cooperatives that worked to set terms for foreign avocado dealers.

Just a year ago, farmers selling their avocados to the transporters earned 10 cents per kilogram (2.2 pounds), far less than the price for a small bottle of water. These days, they get roughly 70 cents for the same quantity, a meaningful increase for people who mainly farm to feed their families.

A major change in the trade is that payments in U.S. currency now go into the bank accounts of cooperatives that pay their members directly almost as soon as the avocado haulers leave. Acting as intermediaries, groups such as Green Gold Burundi, which has its headquarters in the northern province of Kayanza and represents 200,000 farmers nationwide, say they are better positioned than individual growers to stem exploitation.


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The participation of the cooperatives is an important step toward regulating the country’s avocado exports, said Ferdinand Habimana, vice president of Green Gold Burundi’s administrative board. Although the government is promoting avocado farming to diversify exports, avocados grown in Burundi are yet to be trademarked as coming from there, he said.

“So it is legally done now, but what we are developing now is that the (avocados) can reach the final destination as avocados taken from Burundi,” said Habimana, speaking of his group’s dealings with exporters in Tanzania and elsewhere in East Africa.

Zacharie Munezero, who oversees quality management for Green Gold Burundi, acknowledged that the 70 cents farmers earn for a kilogram of avocados is still insufficient when exporters can fetch between $3 and $5 for the same quantity in international markets.

Avocados are cheap in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where they can be purchased from farmers in bulk for almost nothing. In Burundi, avocados became more widely cultivated after the country’s former leader, Pierre Nkurunziza, started extolling the fruit in 2007 as a source of nutrition and income.

Many households that don’t produce the varieties favored by exporters usually look after at least one avocado plant of the local variety known to Burundians as “amapeter,” in remembrance of Nkurunziza, who died in 2020.

But while coffee and tea exports – Burundi’s traditional sources of much-needed foreign currency – have long been coordinated, the trade in Burundian avocados has remained unregulated, according to farmer representatives and a trade official. They said that avocado exports could be as profitable for the country as coffee if the government asserted its rule-making authority.

Desirable measures include guaranteeing a minimum price for farmers, stopping foreign traders from dealing directly with farmers, and encouraging widespread cultivation of the Hass avocados favored by European consumers, they said.

Burundi “cannot rely only on coffee and tea,” Onesime Niyukuri, an adviser in the foreign trade department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said of the country’s limited exports.

If avocado dealers from elsewhere in East Africa “can come and buy at a price that is already set by the government, there is no problem,” he said.

The government ramped up its efforts to organize avocado exports earlier this year as dollar shortages fueled sporadic shortages of sugar and other goods.

Under new regulations, which require foreign dealers to register with local authorities, exporters must submit copies of their supply contracts and specify market destinations for Burundian avocados, according to the Ministry of Trade, Transport, Industry and Tourism.

Burundi aims to export more than 10 million tonnes (11 million tons) of avocados each year by 2030, said Niyukuri, citing the government’s strategic plan. Recent figures on Burundi’s foreign exchange earnings from the avocado crop were not readily available.

The government’s target is to plant 50,000 avocado trees in each of Burundi’s 17 provinces. Local authorities in provinces such as Kayanza want each household to own at least 10 trees producing exportable avocados.

That includes the Mexican variety Fuerte and especially Hass avocado, the most commercially successful variety globally. The fruit, which has dark bumpy skin and bright yellow-green flesh, takes more than two weeks to ripen and can survive several days in transit.

Burundi, a small mountainous country about the size of Maryland, is home to 13 million people. Annual income per capita was $199 in 2023, among the lowest globally, and nearly 65% of the population lives below the poverty line, according to World Bank figures.

Agriculture is the main economic activity, and many people in rural provinces such as Kayanza mostly grow the potatoes and vegetables they will consume through the year. For some, including those with a few avocado trees in their compounds, the pear-shaped green fruit has proven a surprisingly reliable source of income.

Eric Nsabimana, a farmer in Kayanza, recalled starting as an avocado grower in response to the campaign of former leader Nkurunziza. Some farmers, feeling forced into planting avocados, uprooted the seedlings the government gave them and now rue the missed opportunity, Nsabimana said.

“The people who didn’t plant, they regret,” he said.

Nsabimana, who anticipates making more than $6,000 a year selling avocados now that the price is higher, said he used his earnings to acquire five more hectares (12.4 acres) of land now planted with 500 avocado trees.

Habimana, the senior official with Green Gold Burundi, said his group moved to mobilize avocado farmers for better rewards after it realized at the beginning of the year they were being exploited by foreign traders.

One day in January, he followed a truck transporting Burundian avocados to neighboring Tanzania, believing the cargo was destined for consumption in the region. When he saw the avocados getting washed, weighed and packed in the town of Njombe, he realized the goods were bound for another export market abroad.

“There was another destination somewhere else, not in Njombe,” Nsabimana said.

When he returned to Kayanza, Green Gold Burundi prioritized plans to register avocado farmers in a way that eliminated middlemen and guaranteed a reasonable price for farmers. The cooperative pays taxes and keeps a cut of avocado proceeds to sustain operations that include providing members with seedlings and organic manure.

Munezero, the cooperative’s quality management official, said that while the price of avocados “is still a problem,” his group is “focusing on capacity building” and encouraging residents to plant more avocado trees.

Green Gold Burundi has distributed millions of seedlings in the past year, finding enthusiasm among farmers eager to join the avocado bandwagon. Even growers with only a few backyard Hass plants said they increasingly see avocado as a cash crop.

“Avocados mean dollars to us,” one such grower, Samuel Niyinyibutsa, said, adding that he knows some Kayanza residents who feel “left behind” when they see others collect payments for their produce.

“But they still have time,” Niyinyibutsa said. “They can be awakened and start planting avocados because avocado can do well to them as it is doing well to us.”


































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The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Mozambique headed for crucial elections amid jihadist insurgency and drought-induced hunger


A pedestrian passes a wall of election posters in Maputo, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024, ahead of elections to be held in Mozambique. (AP Photo/Carlos Uqueio)


BY CHARLES MANGWIRO AND MOGOMOTSI MAGOME
October 7, 2024Share

MAPUTO, Mozambique (AP) — Mozambicans will vote this week for a new president who many hope will bring peace to an oil- and gas-rich northern province that has been ravaged by a jihadist insurgency for nearly seven years.

Close to 17 million voters will vote for the next president, alongside 250 members of parliament and provincial assemblies, on Wednesday. The current president, Filipe Nyusi, is ineligible to stand again after two terms of office.

During the six week campaign period, which ended Sunday, the frontrunners promised that violence in the north of the country will be their main priority, although none has laid out a plan to end it.

Mozambique has been fighting an Islamic State-affiliated group that has launched attacks on communities in the province of Cabo Delgado since 2017, including beheadings and other killings.

Some 1.3 million people were forced to flee their homes. Around 600,000 people have since returned home, many to shattered communities where houses, markets, churches, schools and health facilities have been destroyed, the United Nations refugee agency said earlier this year.

The candidates rounded off their campaigns on Sunday in the northern and central provinces, which are regarded as the highest-voting constituencies. They promised to address development issues exacerbated by the insurgency.


Palestinian, Filipino and Mozambican activists and a London research agency given human rights award

Daniel Chapo, the presidential candidate of Nyusi’s ruling Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), has been telling rallies that peace will allow Cabo Delgado to rebuild infrastructure.

“The first objective of governance is to work to end terrorism using all available means to return peace. Peace is the condition for development,” said Chapo at a rally last week in Pemba, the provincial capital of Cabo Delgado.

Frelimo, which has ruled the country since independence in 1975, is widely expected to win again.

Lutero Simango, the candidate of the Democratic Movement of Mozambique, spent most of his time campaigning in the central and northern regions, and made promises to remedy a lack of medicines in public hospitals, high unemployment and abject poverty.

Venacio Mondlane, who is running for president as an independent, has also promised to deal with the violence in the region.

“From the moment my government is in place, I can assure you that kidnappings happening in the country, including terrorism in Cabo Delgado, will be wiped out in one year,” Mondlane said drawing wild cheers from his supporters.

Corruption and poverty have also been major campaign issues as the country grapples with high levels of unemployment and hunger that has been exacerbated by El Nino-induced severe drought.

According to the United Nations World Food Program, 1.3 million people in Mozambique are facing severe food shortages as a result of the drought.

The ruling Frelimo party has also been tainted by corruption scandals, including the so-called “tuna bond” scandal, which saw politicians jailed for taking payoffs to arrange secret loan guarantees for government-controlled fishing companies.

The loans were plundered, and Mozambique ended up with $2 billion in “hidden debt,” spurring a financial crisis as the International Monetary Fund halted financial support to the country.

The Southern African Development Community, a regional bloc of southern African nations, has sent a delegation of 52 election observers to the country. The observer mission on Friday called for the impartiality of the country’s electoral bodies during the polls.

Local elections held in Mozambique last year were marred by wide-ranging allegations of vote-rigging and electoral fraud, sparking violent protests, after Frelimo won 64 of 65 municipalities. A consortium of election observers reported widespread ballot stuffing, voter intimidation and falsification of results in favor of Frelimo.

“The political parties already have their bases in the electorate and during the campaign we did not see anything different in relation to the previous elections. We would need something drastic to happen for Frelimo to lose these elections,” said political analyst Dercia Alfazema

Borges Nhamire, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, said the eventual winner will inherit a country facing many problems.


“The president to be elected will find a very difficult situation because he is in transition during a period of war, and every transition that takes place during a period of war is very difficult,” said Nhamire.


A building displays ruling party posters in support of presidential candidate Daniel Chapo ahead of elections in Maputo, Mozambique, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Carlos Uqueio)

Supporters take part in a ruling party rally for presidential candidate Daniel Chapo, centre, ahead of elections, in Maputo, Mozambique, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Carlos Uqueio)

Supporters take part in a ruling party rally to support presidential candidate Daniel Chapo ahead of elections, in Maputo, Mozambique, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Carlos Uqueio)

A woman sits between bread rolls in Maputo, Mozambique, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024 ahead of elections to be held in the country. (AP Photo/Carlos Uqueio)

A poster of independent candidate Venacio Mondlane is held at an election rally on Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024 in Maputo ahead of elections in Mozambique. (AP Photo/Carlos Uqueio)

Independent candidate Venacio Mondlane, atop truck, attends an election rally in Maputo, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024 ahead of elections to be held in Mozambique. (AP Photo/Carlos Uqueio)

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Magome reported from Johannesburg.
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Follow AP’s Africa coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/africa



Fresh faces in Mozambique's poll as independence era leaders bow out

Jose Tembe in Maputo & Angela Henshall in London
BBC News
6/10/24
AFP


Mozambique is set for a watershed election that will see a change of the presidential guard, with the era of leaders who forged their careers in the trenches of the independence war against Portuguese rule coming to an end.

For the first time, the once all-powerful Frelimo party is fielding a presidential candidate who was born after independence - the charismatic 47-year-old Daniel Chapo, who it hopes will rally voters fed up with its 49-year rule.

“In some places Frelimo campaign members have been booed and openly rejected,” political commentator Charles Mangwiro tells the BBC.

Mozambique - strategically located along the southern African coast and rich in natural resources, but hit by an insurgency in the remote north - will hold presidential elections on Wednesday, along with parliamentary and gubernatorial elections.

President Filipe Nyusi is stepping down at the end of his two terms and hopes to hand the reigns of power to Chapo. His government had to deal with the fallout of the "tuna bond" corruption scandal - which triggered the country's worst economic crisis.

In comparison, Chapo is a breath of fresh air - and draws big crowds at rallies across the country as he distances himself from the corruption that has plagued Frelimo for much of its rule since independence in 1975.

"Brother Dan is honesty in person... He is the voice of hope we want to embrace... It's time for change," say the lyrics of one of his campaign songs.

But human rights activist and journalist Mirna Chitsungo says she doubts whether Chapo can convince all voters that he can change Frelimo.

"If we have a degraded country, it is because of corruption. He faces the challenge of promising to fight this evil while belonging to a party that, on a large scale, has perpetuated corruption," she told the BBC.

Counting in Chapo's favour is the fact that he is a relative newcomer in the political arena, having joined government only in 2011 as a district administrator, rising by 2019 to become governor of the southern Inhambane province until taking over as general secretary of Frelimo in May.

EPA
Daniel Chapo has promised that Mozambique will enter a period of "renewal" if he wins


But his critics say that to ensure victory, Frelimo has a back-up plan: fraud.

A leading non-governmental organisation in Mozambique, Centro de Integridade Pública, says its research showed that around 5% of the names on the voters' roll are fake, or so-called "ghost voters" - that is a figure of nearly 900,000.

“The simple fact is that data published by the CNE [Central National Elections Commission] itself shows that 878,868 more voters were registered than there are voting age adults in some provinces, and thus these are ghost voters on the voters roll,” Mozambique analyst Joe Hanlon told the BBC.

Miguel de Brito, from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, notes that the "ghost voters" are not evenly distributed across the country - only seven key provinces out of 10 have registered more voters than people.

For instance, one-third of all the people registered in Gaza Province, which usually votes overwhelmingly for Frelimo, are thought to be "ghost voters".

It is also the area where large numbers of people leave every year for work in South Africa.

“It’s gotten worse, this year we managed to register nationally almost 105% of the voting age population,” Mr De Brito told the BBC.

Both the election commission and Frelimo deny any foul play, insisting that the elections will be free and fair.

Chapo is facing a challenge from three other candidates:Venâncio Mondlane, an independent
Ossufo Momade of the main opposition Renamo party, and
Lutero Simango, who is spearheading the campaign of the third-biggest party, the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM), with a promise to build more factories and lower the cost of living.

Of the three, Mondlane is the fresh face, vying for the presidency for the first time after breaking away from Renamo.

With the slogan "Save Mozambique - this country is ours", the 50-year-old is proving to be a big hit, especially in the campaign to win the youth vote.

"He [Mondlane] uses this slogan everywhere and he tries to explain to young voters that they should take pride in being Mozambican because conditions are there for them not to be poor or unemployed," Mangwiro explains.

"He draws large numbers at his campaign rallies and people are not frog-marched to attend - come rain, cold or sun.”

EPA
Venâncio Mondlane has emerged as the wildcard in the election


A former banker, Mondlane first made his mark when he ran for mayor of the capital, Maputo, in local elections last year.

Many people believed that he won - alleging the result was then rigged in favour of Frelimo's candidate.

Mondlane fought that election under the banner of Renamo, but quit the party after Momade, 60, refused to make way for him to take over.

Momade became Renamo's leader following the death of its long-time leader Afonso Dhlakama in 2018.

He is widely credited for signing a peace deal with Nyusi to end a civil war that had raged between Renamo fighters and government forces.

Momade ran for the presidency in elections in 2019, and claimed that he was robbed of victory by Nyusi, but remained committed to the peace deal.

Though he is confident of winning this time, his chances have been hampered by Mondlane's entry into the race - a point that Chitsungo, the human rights activist, made when she said that Mondlane is seen by many Renamo voters as a "young man with the spirit of Dhlakama".

"It is as if we are having elections with a resurrected Dhlakama, a rejuvenated Dhlakama. So, we have this novelty," she pointed out.

Getty Images
Renamo leader Ossufo Momade alleges that the ruling party stole the 2019 election from him


Chapo is hoping that the Renamo vote will be split between the two men, improving his chances of clinching victory.

In a sign of his determination to win, Chapo has travelled to next-door neighbour South Africa to raise funds for his campaign, hosting a banquet in an upmarket suburb of Johannesburg.

He also addressed ordinary Mozambicans in the city, urging them to cast their ballots for him at the embassy where they were able to register to vote earlier in the year.

"This is a candidacy for renewal," he told the crowd. "This is a unique opportunity I have to make a difference, almost 50 years after independence.”

Mondlane also took his campaign to Johannesburg, visiting a fresh-produce market that Mozambicans run in the city.

“I’ll sort out the problems that led you to abandon Mozambique,” he said.

The violence in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, which has witnessed jihadist attacks since 2017 that have halted the lucrative liquefied natural gas projects there, has not been a major election issue.

Rwandan and South Africans troops, deployed several years ago to deal with the insurgents, are still on the ground for now - though Ziyanda Stuurman, from political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, says there has been an “uptick in the frequency and severity of insurgent attacks since January”.

Most analysts agree the biggest challenge for any new president will be creating economic opportunities and jobs in a country where 62% of the population live in extreme poverty, on less than $1.90 (£1.45) a day.

But the election race is still wide open, with candidates and parties holding their final campaign rallies on Sunday.

Refusing to bet on who will win on Wednesday, Mangwiro, the political analyst, says: "It's too close to call."




BUSINESS AS USUAL

New leader takes over Haiti’s transitional presidential council marred by corruption allegations


 Ex-senator Louis Gerald Gilles, from left to right, pastor Frinel Joseph, barrister Emmanuel Vertilaire, businessman Laurent Saint-Cyr, interim Prime Minister Michel Patrick Boisvert, Judge Jean Joseph Lebrun, who is not a member of the council, former senate president Edgard Leblanc, Regine Abraham, former central bank governor Fritz Alphonse Jean, former diplomat Leslie Voltaire and former ambassador to the Dominican Republic Smith Augustin, pose for a group photo during an installation ceremony, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa, File)




















BY EVENS SANON
October 7, 2024


PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A new leader was sworn in for Haiti’s transitional presidential council on Monday as it grapples with the fallout of serious corruption allegations against three of its members.

Leslie Voltaire replaces Edgard Leblanc Fils in the rotating presidency of the council, which was created this year after targeted gang attacks forced Haiti’s former prime minister to resign, leaving the country without a leader.

In a brief speech, Voltaire pledged transparency and noted that much work remains to be done in a country in the grip of rampant gang violence.

“We are not satisfied with the security situation,” he said. “We are working to reestablish security throughout the whole country.”

He asked for a minute of silence for the more than 70 people killed Thursday by gang members in Pont-Sondé, a small town in central Haiti. It is that region’s biggest massacre in recent history

The transitional presidential council works alongside new Prime Minister Garry Conille and is responsible for helping run the country and organizing general elections by February 2026.

Voltaire takes over the council less than a week after an anti-corruption agency accused three of its members of demanding more than $750,000 from the director of the government-owned National Bank of Credit to secure his job.


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Smith Augustin, Emmanuel Vertilaire and Louis Gérald Gilles have denied the allegations. All three were present during Monday’s swearing-in and declined to comment afterward.

Voltaire did not take questions after his speech.

In a brief statement Friday, the council acknowledged the report accusing the three members of corruption and said it would immediately take all measures to guarantee the stability of the state. It also signed a resolution modifying the rotating presidency, which Leblanc, the council’s former president, rejected, saying the corruption allegations had not been resolved.

Le Nouvelliste newspaper reported that Augustin was supposed to succeed Leblanc but was removed from the rotating presidency, as was Gilles.

Gilles and Vertilaire have said they would not step down from the council, according to the newspaper.
A woman goes on trial in Sweden for war crimes over allegedly abusing Yazidis in Syria


Prosecutor Reena Devgun speaks during a press conference regarding the indictment of a 52-year-old woman, associated with the Islamic State group, with genocide, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes against Yazidi women and children in Syria, in Stockholm, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Anders Wiklund/TT News Agency via AP)

BY JAN M. OLSEN
,October 7, 2024

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A 52-year-old woman associated with the Islamic State group went on trial on Monday in Sweden on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against Yazidi women and children in Syria.

Lina Laina Ishaq, who is a Swedish citizen, is accused of committing the crimes during the period from August 2014 to December 2016 in the Syrian city of Raqqa, which at the time was the seat of the militant group’s self-proclaimed caliphate and home to about 300,000 people.

The trial marks the first time that IS attacks against the Yazidis, one of Iraq’s oldest religious minorities, have been tried in Sweden. The hearings are expected to last about two months, most of them behind closed doors.

The crimes took place under IS rule in Raqqa, where Ishaq was living at the time.

Under IS rule, Yazidi women and children were “regarded as property and subjected to being traded as slaves, sexual slavery, forced labor, deprivation of liberty and extrajudicial executions,” prosecutor Reena Devgun said when the charges were made public last month.

The prosecution says that at her home in Raqqa, Ishaq abused Yazidis with the aim to ”completely or partially annihilate the Yazidi ethnic group,” Devgun said as the trial opened at the Stockholm District Court, the Swedish TT news agency said.


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The charge sheet, obtained by The Associated Press, says Ishaq is suspected of holding nine people, including children, for up to seven months, treated them as slaves and also abused several of those she held captive.

Ishaq, who denies wrongdoing, is also accused of having molested a baby, said to have been 1 month old at the time, by holding a hand over the child’s mouth when he screamed to silence him. She is also suspected of having sold people to IS, knowing they risked being killed or subjected to serious sexual abuse.

The Islamic State group abducted Yazidi women and children and brought them to Syria in 2014, when IS militants stormed Yazidi towns and villages in Iraq’s Sinjar region. Women were forced into sexual slavery, and boys were taken to be indoctrinated in jihadi ideology.

Three years later, when the Islamic State’s reign began to collapse, Ishaq fled from Raqqa and was captured by Syrian Kurdish troops.

She managed to escape to Turkey where she was arrested with her son and two other children she had given birth to in the meantime with an IS foreign fighter from Tunisia. She was later extradited to Sweden.

Ishaq was earlier convicted in Sweden and sentenced to three years in prison for taking her 2-year-old son to Syria in 2014, to an area then controlled by IS. She had claimed that at the time, she had told the child’s father that she and the boy were only going on a holiday to Turkey. However, once in Turkey, the two crossed into Syria and into IS-run territory.

Ishaq who already is in prison, was identified through information from a U.N. team investigating atrocities in Iraq, known as UNITAD.
No evidence of major fuel spill on Samoan reef where New Zealand navy ship sank



In this image released by New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF), HMNZS Manawanui arrives in Funafuti Lagoon, Tuvalu, on Sept. 7, 2022. (PO Christopher Weissenborn/NZDF via AP)


This image released by New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF), shows HMNZS Manawanui at the Three Kings islands off the coast New Zealand, on Dec. 1, 2023. (Petty Officer Chris Weissenborn/NZDF via AP)

Smoke rises from the sinking HMNZS Manawanui in Upolu, Samoa, Sunday, Sept. 6, 2022. (Dave Poole via AP)


BY CHARLOTTE GRAHAM-MCLAY
 October 7, 2024Share


WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Divers and marine experts found no evidence of a major fuel spill on a Samoan reef Tuesday after a New Zealand navy ship ran aground and sank, Samoa’s deputy prime minister said.

All 75 people on board the HMNZS Manawanui evacuated safely as the boat foundered about a mile off the coast of Upolu, Samoa, early Sunday. The ship was one of only nine in New Zealand’s navy and was the first the country lost at sea since World War II.

Samoan Deputy Prime Minister Tuala Tevaga Iosefo Ponifasio had earlier said a fuel spill was “highly probable.” But he said Tuesday there was no evidence of oil spilling onto the reefs, ashore and nearby area, except for “small leakages of oil coming from the vessel.” That had been contained using specialized equipment, Ponifasio said in a statement.

The vessel’s passengers — including civilian scientists and foreign military personnel — left the vessel on life boats in “challenging conditions” and darkness, New Zealand’s Chief of Navy Rear Admiral Garin Golding told reporters. It took five hours for the first survivors to reach land, he said.

One person was treated in a hospital for minor injuries and has been discharged, the military said. Up to 17 others sustained cuts, bruises or suspected concussions. An Air Force plane carrying 72 people from the ship landed at an air base in Auckland on Monday night.


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New Zealand will hold a court of inquiry into the loss of the ship. The cause of the accident is not known, but Defense Minister Judith Collins told 1News on Monday that she had been told a loss of power to the vessel had led to its grounding.


The specialist dive and hydrographic vessel had been in service for New Zealand since 2019, but was 20 years old and had previously belonged to Norway, Collins said. It was surveying a reef off the coast of Upolu, Samoa’s most populous island, when it ran aground on the reef and began taking on water.

Photos and videos taken from the shore appeared to show the ship listing before disappearing completely below the waves, with a large plume of smoke rising where it sank.

Manu Percival, a surfing tour guide who works in the area where the ship sank, told The Associated Press by phone that oil was not visible from the ship but debris had littered the water and shoreline, and locals were not gathering shellfish as they normally did. It was too soon to know if the “fragile” reef ecosystem had been damaged, he said.

Ponifasio said marine scientists were testing water samples from nearby beaches for any traces of oil.

The military said the ship, purchased for $100 million NZ dollars ($61 million) in 2018, was not covered by replacement insurance.

The state of New Zealand’s aging military hardware has prompted warnings from the defense agency, which in a March report described the navy as “extremely fragile,” with ships idle due to problems retaining the staff needed to service and maintain them. Of the navy’s eight remaining ships, five are currently operational.


Golding said the HMNZS Manawanui underwent a maintenance period before the deployment. The ship’s captain was an experienced commander who had worked on the vessel for two years, he said.
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