Mexico City youth grapple with growing housing crisis

By AFP
November 14, 2024


Mexican student Saul Lara's journey to university takes him two hours by motorcycle taxi and metro - Copyright AFP ZINA DESMAZES

Eliott Nail

Political science student Saul Lara awakes around 4:00 am to begin his long journey — over two hours by motorcycle taxi and crowded metro — from the outskirts of Mexico City to school.

The tiring commute illustrates the hardships brought by a crippling housing crisis in the Mexican capital, which has particularly impacted young people.

As well as studying, 20-year-old Lara works 30 hours a week in a pharmacy for a monthly salary of just 7,600 pesos, equivalent to around $370.

“Due to poor sleep, waking up early, and not getting enough rest, I started noticing my hair falling out in the shower,” he said.

Lara tried to find somewhere to live closer to his school, the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

“But the cost of rent would be my entire salary,” he says.

It is far from being an isolated case in Mexico City and its sprawling metropolitan area, home to 20 million people.

The capital’s new mayor Clara Brugada has vowed to address the housing crisis, and promised to open up rental housing to young people with the option to buy.

But the challenge is enormous.

The capital faces a “serious situation” that “forces 100,000 people to leave each year because they cannot afford housing,” says Federico Taboada, head of the city’s urban planning institute.

“Mexico City has a shortage of 800,000 homes,” says Leopoldo Hirschhorn of the National Chamber of the Housing Development and Promotion Industry.

In addition, house prices in the Mexico City metropolitan area rose 6.6 percent in the first half of the year, according to official figures.



– Rising rents –



In recent decades, officials have considered housing “only as an economic good,” leading to an “excessive increase in rents,” says Daniela Sanchez, a lawyer specialized in housing.

The average rent for an apartment in the hip central neighborhoods of Roma and Condesa exceeds $1,000 a month, according to the website propiedades.com — four times more than the average salary in the capital.

“The pandemic, gentrification and touristification” have played a role in the rise in rents, Sanchez says.

Mexico City recently capped rent increases at the level of inflation, and put a limit of 182 days a year on renting accommodation on the Airbnb platform.

Whether it will be enough is an open question.

“We need a subsidized housing market for the less fortunate in addition to the traditional market,” says Marcela Heredia of the Mexican Chamber of Construction Industry.

Hirschhorn thinks the problem is also caused by the lower density of the earthquake-prone city compared with some other world capitals.

“Forty percent of Mexico City buildings have one or two floors. We need to build taller buildings to increase the housing supply,” he says.

The capital’s City Hall wants to be inspired by cities like Paris or New York, building rental properties for people “that the market will never serve,” according to Taboada.

This year, authorities began construction of the first 270 social housing units for students, in two central districts that are usually too expensive for people on low incomes.

“In this case, rents will not exceed 30 percent of students’ income,” Taboada says.

“There will be others in which housing is fully subsidized,” he adds.

Given the level of rents, “I’m starting to understand why so many young people resort to shared accommodation,” says graphic designer Ale Razo.

A small room in the city center can cost 10,000 pesos (nearly $500), “as if it were Harry Potter’s attic,” the 28-year-old adds.

For young Mexicans, according to Raxo, the plan for more affordable housing at least offers a “ray of hope.”

Cracks deepen in Canada’s pro-immigration ‘consensus’

By AFP
November 14, 2024

A class teaching new immigrants workplace related skills at the South Asian Women and Immigrants' Services, in Toronto - Copyright AFP ZINA DESMAZES

Ben Simon

From the ground floor of a low-income apartment building in Toronto, Sultana Jahangir runs an organization that helps South Asian woman get established in Canada — a challenge she said is getting harder.

Polling and migration experts tell a consistent story: broad support for immigration that prevailed for decades in Canada has cracked following a three-year immigrant-fueled population surge.

Jahangir’s South Asian Women’s Rights Organization, which operates out of two apartments packed with desk chairs and tables, equips women with vocabulary for job interviews, basic computer training and other skills.

A social worker born in Bangladesh who came to Toronto in 2005 via the United States, Jahangir said settling in Canada was never easy — but things have “definitely” gotten worse.

“You’re seeing more fierce and negative competition between immigrants and more negative feelings towards people who may be new versus people who have been here for a long time,” she said.

Daniel Bernhard, chief executive of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, said while Canadians are turning against immigration, many still view immigrants who are already here positively.

It’s an important distinction, he argued, but one he fears is fragile.

“The consensus for the last 30 years was rock solid,” Bernhard told AFP.



– ‘Too much immigration’ –



In a 2019 Gallup poll that assessed support for immigration in 145 countries, Canada ranked first, with 94 percent of respondents describing migrants moving to the country as a good thing.

Five years later, a September survey from the Environics Institute found that “for the first time in a quarter century, a clear majority of Canadians say there is too much immigration.”

“We’re not at Brexit and ‘Stop the boats’ and ‘Build the wall’ but we’re 10 years behind that,” Bernhard said, referring to Britain and the United States.

Canada may have so far avoided the inflammatory rhetoric and baseless claims about immigrants that partly drove Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, but Bernhard argued “that tends to be the next step.”

Canada is “waking up to the fact that, actually, we are just like everybody else,” he added, referring to global anti-migrant sentiment.

Immigration declined in 2020 as the Covid pandemic froze most international travel, but from 2021 to 2024 an unprecedented influx of some three million people brought Canada’s population to 41 million.

From 2023 to 2024, the population rose 3.2 percent, the largest annual increase since 1957.

Last month, while announcing cuts to immigration targets for the coming three years, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau conceded the influx had strained resources.

“We didn’t get the balance quite right,” he said, explaining Canada needed to slow population growth in order to boost key infrastructure and services.

Berhard said he sympathized with Trudeau’s attempt to respond to changing public opinion but suggested that if the prime minister believed reducing immigration would help address challenges like hospital wait times and housing shortages “he should seek a second opinion.”

Arguing “there’s just too many people,” is an easy way to distract from governance failures, he said.



– Competition for jobs, housing –



Jahangir told AFP she was not opposed to the target cuts, citing ferocious competition for jobs and accommodation in Toronto, noting that she knows some women who rent beds by the half day.

“Those who are working night shift, they are taking the bed in the day shift. Those who are working day shift, they are taking the bed in the night shift,” she explained.

But, like Bernhard, she said the government “should not blame the immigrant” for its own struggles in managing Canada’s growth.

Victoria Esses, a psychology professor at Ontario’s Western University who specializes in public attitudes toward immigration and cultural diversity, also supports Trudeau’s immigration cuts.

She voiced concern that persistent media coverage linking housing shortages and service gaps to overpopulation would further poison the environment for new immigrants, arguing that letting in less people, for now, might ease anxieties.

“Citizens like to feel they have control over immigration,” she said.

The cuts may be empowering to some in Canada by indicating the government is responding to their concerns, signaling that “we’re scaling back a bit because we feel that people are worried,” Esses said.

Legal migration to OECD reaches new record in 2023


By AFP
November 14, 2024


Pour la deuxième année consécutive, les flux migratoires atteignent "des niveaux record, mais ne sont pas hors de contrôle", selon l'OCDE

 - Copyright AFP/File ERIC PIERMONT

Estelle EMONET

Migration to richer countries reached a record level for the second year running in 2023, the OECD said on Thursday, reflecting demand for foreign labour and gaps in the workforce left by ageing populations.

A total 6.5 million permanent migrants settled last year in the 38 countries making up the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, up 10 percent on 2022, the organisation said in its International Migration Outlook 2024.

There was also a boom in temporary migrants and people seeking asylum –- many from conflict, persecution or poverty.

“These high flows have fuelled widespread concern about migrants’ impact on receiving countries’ economies and societies… But they also point to major opportunities,” the OECD’s employment director Stefano Scarpetta said.

“In many OECD countries facing widespread labour shortages and looming demographic changes, growing numbers of labour migrants have contributed to sustained economic growth.”

He pointed out that host countries had “virtually full control” over who they allowed to enter legally, so by increasing possibilities for “regular, orderly, and safe migration”, they could be able to better manage irregular flows of people.

The United States — whose president-elect Donald Trump has vowed to deport migrants en masse — remains the top destination for foreign workers.

It recorded 1.2 million new legal permanent incomers in 2023, the highest figure since 2006.

About a third of OECD countries witnessed record legal migration last year, including Britain (747,000 arrivals), Canada (472,000), France (298,000), Japan (155,000) and Switzerland (144,500).

Migrant numbers dropped in another third — namely in Denmark, Estonia, Israel, Italy, Lithuania and New Zealand.



– Gig economy jobs –



Much of the increase was due to people arriving to join families already legally established in OECD countries (43 percent) — possibly an aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic which delayed family reunifications, closed borders and led to stricter entrance requirements.

There was also a 20-percent increase in 2023 in foreigners afforded rights of residence for legitimate humanitarian reasons, the report said.

Of the 650,000 refugees officially given protection in OECD states, many were fleeing the war in Ukraine.

Migration for work remained stable last year.

The OECD said migrants were increasingly finding salaried jobs.

But this was not the case for all of them and many migrants set up their own businesses in order to earn a stable income.

In 2022, for example, 17 percent of all self-employed workers in the OECD were legal migrants, up from 11 percent in 2006.

That said, business enterprises created by migrants –- particularly via digital platforms that are relatively cheap to set up and make it relatively easy to access customers — led to nearly four million new jobs between 2011 and 2021, it said.

However, it added, migrant workers were more likely than locally born people to be in insecure jobs, such as in the gig economy, or to be classed as “self-employed” by the companies for whom they work.

That meant that in many cases they did jobs similar to those of salaried employees but enjoyed none of the benefits afforded to the latter.

Musk met Iran UN ambassador on defusing tension under Trump: NYT


By AFP
November 14, 2024

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk endorsing Donald Trump and helping propel him to victory capped off a stunning political shift for the world's wealthiest man 

- Copyright AFP Hector RETAMAL

Elon Musk, the tech billionaire closely allied with US President-elect Donald Trump, met Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in a bid to defuse tensions between Iran and the United States, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The newspaper quoted anonymous Iranian sources as describing the meeting between the world’s richest person and Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani as “positive.”

The two met for more than an hour at a secret location on Monday, the newspaper said.

Neither the Trump transitional team nor Iran’s mission to the United Nations immediately confirmed the encounter.

The meeting, if confirmed, could offer an early indication that Trump is serious about diplomacy with Iran and not choosing the more hawkish approach favored by many conservatives in his Republican Party as well as Israel.

It would also show again the extraordinary influence of Musk, the owner of Tesla and X who has been a near constant presence at Trump’s side, reportedly joining him on telephone calls with world leaders.

Trump in his last term in office tore up a deal on Iran’s nuclear program negotiated under his predecessor Barack Obama and instead pursued a policy of “maximum pressure” that included working to force other nations not to buy Iran’s oil.

But Trump has cast himself as a great deal-maker and during his latest campaign has voiced an openness to diplomacy, despite his avowed support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has ordered military strikes on Iran in tandem with Israel’s war on Hamas.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, considered a moderate within the clerical state, on Thursday told the visiting head of the UN nuclear watchdog that Tehran wanted to clear up doubts about the country’s “peaceful” nuclear program.

End of a love affair: news media quit X over ‘disinformation’


By AFP
November 15, 2024

Some news media say they don't like X's direction under Musk

 - Copyright AFP SAUL LOEB

Paul RICARD

News outlets have begun quitting X, formerly Twitter, once a favourite of global media but now accused of enabling the spread of disinformation under its owner, president-elect Donald Trump ally Elon Musk.

Citing a “harsh and extreme” climate, Sweden’s newspaper of reference, the left-liberal Dagens Nyheter (DN), on Friday became third major media outlet to stop publishing its articles on the social media platform.

“Since Elon Musk took over, the platform has increasingly merged with his and Donald Trump’s political ambitions,” said editor-in-chief Peter Wolodarski.

Already on Wednesday, Britain’s centre-left daily The Guardian had announced it would no longer post content from its official accounts on X, which it called “toxic”.

A day later, Spain’s Vanguardia did the same, saying it would rather lose subscribers than remain on a “disinformation network”.

Several users had already wondered back in 2022 whether they should remain on Twitter when Musk — a businessman best known for running car company Tesla and space company SpaceX — bought the platform and drastically reduced content moderation in the name of free speech.

The question has flared up again since Trump won this month’s presidential election, actively supported by Musk.



– ‘Disturbing content’ –



“I would expect more publishers to part ways with X,” said Stephen Barnard, a specialist on media manipulation at Butler University in the US.

“How many do so will likely depend on what actions X, Musk, and the Trump administration take with regard to media and journalism,” he said.

Musk, who is the world’s richest man, has been tapped by Trump’s team to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency.

The Guardian has nearly 11 million followers on the platform, but it said “the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives”.

It said “often disturbing content” was promoted or found on the platform, singling out “far-right conspiracy theories and racism”.

This falling-out stands in stark contrast to the enthusiasm sparked by Twitter in 2008 and 2009.

Back then, media felt they had to be present there to establish direct contact with their audiences as well as with experts and decision-makers.

They found grew “audiences, built brands, developed new reporting practices, formed community, strengthened public engagement”, said Barnard.

At the same time, they boosted Twitter’s influence.



– ‘Reaping what they sowed’ –



This increasingly symbiotic relationship may have become detrimental to the media, suggested Mathew Ingram, former chief digital writer for the Columbia Journalism Review.

“Many publishers gave up on reader comments and other forms of interaction and essentially outsourced all of that to social media like Twitter,” he said.

“To that extent they are reaping what they sowed.”

Criticism of Twitter predates its takeover by Musk and was centred on the network’s architecture that was seen favouring polemical debate and instantaneous indignation.

It was also said to give an unbalanced reflection of society, tilting mostly towards higher-income people, and activist users.

The precise impact of the decision by newspapers, already in economic crisis, to leave X is not yet clear, but they already expect readerships to dwindle.

“We will probably lose subscriptions because some readers subscribe after seeing a news story on the social network,” Jordi Juan, director of La Vanguardia, told AFP.

But Barnard said any such loss would be limited because, said, “X generates relatively little traffic to news sites compared to other platforms”.

In October 2023, six months after American public radio NPR left Twitter, a report from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism deemed the effects of this departure “negligible” in terms of traffic.

One beneficiary of disenchantment with X appears to be Bluesky, a decentralised social media service offering many of the same functions as X.

On Friday, it said it had added one million subscribers within 24 hours. But its 16 million subscribers are still dwarfed by those of X, estimated at several hundreds of millions.

“Strictly speaking, there are no alternatives to what X offers today,” Vincent Berthier, head of the technology department at RSF (Reporters Without Borders) told AFP.

“But we may need to invent them.”

Berthier called departures from X “a symptom of the failure of democracies to regulate platforms” across the board.

Musk may represent “the radical face of this informational nightmare”, said Berthier. “But the problem goes much deeper.”

Gay, trans people voicing — and sometimes screaming — Trump concerns


By AFP
November 14, 2024

Drag show host Lisa Frankenstein and audience members scream between shows at the Oasis nightclub in San Francisco on November 9, 2024

 - Copyright AFP/File Tauseef MUSTAFA

Julie JAMMOT

At a popular LGBTQ cabaret in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, Lisa Frankenstein wasn’t about to let the topic of Donald Trump go without mention.

“I don’t know about all of you, but I’ve found it really hard to find a place to get my feelings out in a way that makes me feel better,” the drag show host told a crowd at the Oasis nightclub last weekend, just days after the Republican’s presidential reelection.

“So at the count of three, we are all going to scream together!” Frankenstein said.

Then the audience let out a collective shriek, as a community in which many are still in shock after Trump’s victory.

“It is a response to feeling overwhelmed and terrified of what could happen with this new administration,” explained D’Arcy Drollinger, an iconic San Francisco drag queen and owner of Oasis.

“We can scream as loud as we can and get some of the fear and anger out. But more than anything, it’s about coming together and feeling the community.”

A New York club was the first to organize a post-election “cathartic communal scream” and San Franciscans were quickly inspired.

“It was incredible, super liberating,” said Cindy Sigler, who participated in the yell. “It feels much better than screaming into a pillow.”

Many gay, transgender and non-binary people are experiencing the Republican candidate’s second election as a punch to the gut.

The LGBT National Help Center has been receiving about 2,000 calls per day since the election results, instead of the usual 300, said Aaron Almanza, its director.

“They’re angry that people in their community voted for this. They’re angry that a large portion of our country doesn’t want us to exist.”



– ‘Evil’ –



The election campaign was marked by numerous anti-trans advertisements and slogans.

Clips showing trans women in women’s sports, or vilifying the use of public funds for surgeries and medications necessary for gender transitions, were particularly effective, according to political analysts.

Only about one percent of the American population identifies as transgender, but Republicans use “LGBT people and trans people in particular as a way to divide people and to stir up fear in the broader communities,” said Rebecca Rolfe, director of San Francisco’s LGBT Center, calling it a “cynical and evil strategy.”

Civil rights organizations expect Trump’s arch-conservative government to dismantle rules that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity as was the case during Trump’s first term.

He has promised to ban gender-affirming care for minors, and to take legal action against any doctors and educators who carry out or enable the practice.

Trump plans to “ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the US government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth,” his political program stated.

“People’s lives are at stake,” said Rolfe of the LGBT Center. “We see people being targeted with transphobia and homophobia everywhere in the country, including right here in San Francisco.”

She added that an increase in suicides and hate crimes is expected.

“More than half the country actively wants me dead,” said Joey The Tiger, a trans aerial artist. “The whole campaign has been traumatic.”

He said many of his friends are considering leaving the country for Canada or Europe.

He will again organize “Spectrum,” an aerial arts show to raise funds for NGOs supporting trans people, like he did after Trump’s first election.

“I hoped I would never have to do it again,” he said.

Responding to hate with a bit of glam and community support is an approach chosen by many other LGBTQ artists, including Drollinger, the bar owner.

“I spend a lot of time encouraging everyone to be fabulous and sparkling,” said D’Arcy. “It is time to sparkle harder.”

Rebel attacks keep Indian-run Kashmir on the boil  

KASHMIR IS INDIA'S GAZA



By AFP
November 14, 2024


Relatives and mourners carry the body of a doctor killed in an October terror attack in Kashmir - Copyright AFP/File Tauseef MUSTAFA

Parvaiz BUKHARI

Ambushes, firefights and a market grenade blast: headline-grabbing attacks in Indian-run Kashmir are designed to challenge New Delhi’s bid to portray normality in the disputed territory, Indian security officials say.

Kashmir has been divided between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan since their partition at the chaotic end of British rule in 1947, and both countries claim the territory in full.

“The attacks are not merely about killing, but also to set a narrative to counter the Indian narrative — that everything is fine,” said the former head of India’s Northern Command forces, retired general Deependra Singh Hooda.

Half a million Indian troops are deployed in the far northern region, battling a 35-year insurgency in which tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels have been killed, including at least 120 this year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government cancelled the Muslim-majority region’s partial autonomy in 2019, a decision accompanied by mass arrests and a months-long communications blackout.

The territory of around 12 million people has since been ruled by a governor appointed by New Delhi — overseeing the local government that voters elected in October in opposition to Modi.



– ‘Larger message’ –



New Delhi insists it helped bring “peace, development and prosperity” to the region.

But military experts say that small bands of rebels — demanding either independence or Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan — use attacks to contradict the claims.

“The larger message being sent out is that the problem in Kashmir is alive,” Hooda said.

India blames Pakistan for arming militants and helping them “infiltrate” across the militarised dividing line to launch attacks, an allegation Islamabad denies.

A “spurt in infiltration” this year by insurgents was “not possible without Pakistan’s army actively allowing it”, Hooda charged.

Many clashes take place in forested mountains far from larger settlements.

But the huge military presence visible in sprawling camps and roadblocks — roughly one in every 25 people in Kashmir is an Indian soldier — serves as a constant reminder.

Many are frustrated by traffic jams caused by military orders that civilian cars stay at least 500 metres (1,640 feet) away from army vehicles.

Yet those who have long lived under the shadow of the grinding insurgency seemingly shrug off the threat.

When an attacker this month hurled a grenade at security forces in a busy market — killing a woman and wounding 11 civilians — shoppers returned within a couple of hours.

This month, thousands attended an army recruitment drive, even as soldiers battled gunmen in a nearby district.



– ‘Low boil’ –



Attacks appear dramatic, including a gun battle in downtown Srinagar in early November that police said killed a commander of the Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group.

Earlier this year, attacks in the Jammu area — a Hindu-majority region — prompted the army to supply thousands of militia forces, dubbed village defence guards, with rifles.

But the death toll of 120 civilians, soldiers and rebels killed this year is, so far, similar in intensity to 2023, when 130 people died, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a New Delhi-based monitoring group.

“It will remain like this on low boil, as long as Kashmir is divided (between India and Pakistan),” a security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to journalists.

“We control it here; they (Pakistan) will activate it from there.”

The Indian army says around 720 rebels have been killed in the past five years.

Regional army commander MV Suchindra Kumar said in October he believed fewer than 130 remained in the fight.

Another security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said those include “highly trained and well-armed” fighters who had crossed from Pakistan.

“They are causing some damage by surprise attacks,” the official said. “But the situation is under control”.

Hooda, drawing on his long experience as a general, predicts little change as long as violence serves the agenda of India’s rival Islamabad.

“I don’t see this coming down immediately,” he said, referring to the number of attacks.

“Pakistan has always felt that ratcheting up attacks will bring the spotlight on Kashmir”.

NICHE MARKET

Stiff business: Berlin startup will freeze your corpse for monthly fee


By AFP
November 15, 2024

A container to store frozen bodies at Tomorrow Biostasis's facility in Rafz, Switzerland - Copyright AFP Richard A. Brooks

Femke COLBORNE

Becca Ziegler is only 24, but she already has her death planned out: her corpse will be deep-frozen to minus 200 degrees Celsius (minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit) with liquid nitrogen.

Ziegler, a US tech firm worker based in Berlin, has signed up with Tomorrow Biostasis, a startup in the German capital that offers to cryogenically freeze a person’s body after they die.

When the time comes, a team of medics will pump her full of a chemical solution to stop ice crystals from forming in her body and then transport her mortal remains to a storage facility in Switzerland.

The hope is that one day, medical technology might be advanced enough to bring her back to life. Many experts dismiss this gamble on the future as far-fetched, but Ziegler has decided to give it a shot.

“I’m kind of curious to see what the future would be like and, in general, I like life,” said the Californian, who works in educational technology.

“So if I could buy myself more time, that sounds really appealing.”

Once a fringe pursuit reserved for eccentric billionaires, cryogenic freezing — also known as cryonics — has become more accessible in recent years.

Several companies offering cryopreservation have sprung up in the United States and elsewhere, with around 500 people worldwide thought to have been frozen so far.

A persistent myth has it that Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse, is one of them, but this has been debunked, with BBC reporting in 2019 there is “zero evidence” for this.

Tomorrow Biostasis, founded in 2020, is thought to be the first such company offering the service in Europe. It offers to freeze your body after you die and store it for a membership fee of 50 euros a month.

A lump-sum payment of 200,000 euros ($216,000) — or 75,000 euros if you opt to have just your brain frozen — is also due at the time of death, a cost that can be covered by a life insurance payout.



– Liquid nitrogen –



“One of the main goals of this company is to bring the cost down… so that cryopreservation becomes available to whoever chooses to do it,” said Emil Kendziorra, one of the co-founders of Tomorrow Biostasis.

Kendziorra, 38, from the western German city of Darmstadt, studied medicine and originally worked in cancer research but said he became frustrated with the slow pace of developments in the field.

“The one big advantage of cryopreservation is that it is something that you can do right now,” he said.

When a client dies, Tomorrow Biostasis promises to dispatch a specially equipped ambulance and a medical team that starts cooling the body using ice and water as soon as possible.

The body is then infused with a “cryoprotectant” and transported to the facility in Switzerland where it is stored in a pod surrounded by liquid nitrogen and cooled to around minus 200 degrees Celsius.

Tomorrow Biostasis says it currently has around 700 paying members, and by the end of last year had cryopreserved four people.

The typical customer is aged 30 to 40, healthy, works in technology and is more likely to be male than female, said Kendziorra.



– No guarantees –



No one has ever been brought back to life after being cryopreserved, but proponents say recent advances in technology have made the prospect more plausible.

In an experiment almost a decade ago, scientists said they were able to cryopreserve the brain of a rabbit and recover it in near-perfect condition.

And this year, researchers at China’s Fudan University reported using a new technique to freeze human brain tissue so that it regained normal function after thawing.

Nonetheless, some scientists voice deep scepticism about the bet on a future return to life.

Holger Reinsch, head of the Cryo Competence Center at the ILK Dresden research institute for refrigeration technologies, said bringing a person back to life is still a remote prospect.

“We are rather critical of the concept of cryonics… I personally would advise you against such an endeavour,” he said.

“The magic limit for the life-sustaining cryopreservation of tissue structures is a frog’s heart the size of a fingernail, and this has not changed since the 1970s.”

Even Kendziorra admitted that there are no guarantees.

“I think there’s a good chance for it, but do I know for sure? Absolutely not.”

But whatever happens in the future, Ziegler is confident she will not regret her decision.

“In some ways it’s weird,” she conceded. “But on the other hand the alternative is to be put in a box in the ground and get eaten by worms.”

SPACE/COSMOS

China tests building Moon base with lunar soil bricks


By AFP
November 15, 2024

Beijing, which has poured huge resources into its space programme to catch up with the United States and Russia, is aiming to put humans on the Moon by 2030

 - Copyright AFP KARIM JAAFAR

Ludovic EHRET and Luna LIN

China is expected to push forward in its quest to build the first lunar base on Friday, launching an in-space experiment to test whether the station’s bricks could be made from the Moon’s own soil.

Brick samples will blast off aboard a cargo rocket heading for China’s Tiangong space station, part of Beijing’s mission to put humans on the Moon by 2030 and build a permanent base there by 2035.

It is a daunting task: any structure has to withstand huge amounts of cosmic radiation, extreme temperature variations and moonquakes, and getting building materials there in the first place is a costly procedure.

Constructing the base out of the Moon itself could be a solution to those problems, scientists from a university in central Wuhan province hope.

They have created a series of prototype bricks made of various compositions of materials found on earth, such as basalt, which mimic the properties of lunar soil.

Slivers of those test bricks will be subjected to a series of stringent tests once they reach the Tiangong space station.

“It’s mainly exposure,” said Zhou Cheng, a professor at Wuhan’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

“To put it simply, we put (the material) in space and let it sit there… to see whether its durability, its performance will degrade under the extreme environment.”

The temperature on the Moon can vary drastically between 180 and -190 degrees Celsius (356 to -310 degrees Fahrenheit).

Its lack of an atmosphere means it is subjected to large quantities of cosmic radiation as well as micrometeorites, while moonquakes can weaken any structure on its surface.

The exposure experiment will last three years, with samples sent back for testing every year.



– ‘Good chance of success’ –



Zhou’s team developed their prototype bricks after analysing soil brought back by China’s Chang’e-5 probe, the world’s first mission in four decades to collect Moon samples.

The resulting black bricks are three times stronger than standard bricks, he said, and interlock together without a binding agent.

The team has also worked on the “Lunar Spider”, a 3D printing robot to build structures in space, some of which are conical in shape.

“In the future, our plan is definitely to use resources on-site, that is, make bricks directly from the lunar soil, and then do various construction scenarios, so we won’t be bringing the materials from Earth,” said Zhou.

It’s “an obvious thing to try” because using materials already on the Moon would be much cheaper, said Jacco van Loon, an astrophysicist at Keele University in Britain.

“The experiments have a good chance of success, and the results will pave the way to building moonbases,” he told AFP.

– Lego bricks –

Beijing is far from alone in looking to build the first lunar base.

China’s planned outpost on the Moon, known as the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), is a joint project with Russia.

A dozen countries — including Thailand, Pakistan, Venezuela and Senegal — are partners in the initiative, as well as around 40 foreign organisations, according to Chinese state media.

The United States is aiming to put humans back on the Moon in 2026 and subsequently set up a station there, though its Artemis programme has already seen various delays.

As part of the US preparations, researchers at the University of Central Florida are testing potential building bricks of their own, made using 3D printers.

The European Space Agency, meanwhile, has carried out studies on how to assemble bricks based on the structure of Lego.

POLTICAL PRISONERS

French court orders release of Lebanese militant held since 1984

By AFP
November 15, 2024

Abdallah had been sentenced to life in prison 

- Copyright AFP Alexander NEMENOV

A French court on Friday ordered the release of pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed for 40 years for the killing of two foreign diplomats, prosecutors said.

The court said Abdallah, first detained in 1984 and convicted in 1987 over the 1982 murders, would be released on December 6 provided he leaves France, French anti-terror prosecutors said in a statement to AFP, adding that they would appeal.

“In (a) decision dated today, the court granted Georges Ibrahim Abdallah conditional release from December 6, subject to the condition that he leaves French territory and not appear there again,” the prosecutors said.

Abdallah, a former guerrilla in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in the murders of US military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov.

Washington has consistently opposed his release but Lebanese authorities have repeatedly said he should be freed from jail.

Abdallah, now 73, has always insisted he is a “fighter” who battled for the rights of Palestinians and not a “criminal”. This was his 11th bid for release.

He had been eligible to apply for parole since 1999 but all his previous applications had been turned down, except in 2013 when he was granted release on the condition he was expelled from France.

However the then interior minister Manuel Valls refused to go through with the order and Abdallah remained in jail.

The court’s decision on Friday is not conditional on the government issuing such an order, Abdallah’s lawyer, Jean-Louis Chalanset, told AFP, hailing “a legal and a political victory”.

– Veteran inmate –

One of France’s longest serving inmates, Abdallah has never expressed regret for his actions.

Wounded in 1978 during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, he joined the Marxist-Leninist PFLP, which carried out a string of plane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s and is banned as a terror group by the US and EU.

Abdallah, a Christian, then in the late 1970s founded his own militant group the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF) which had contact with other extreme-left militant outfits including Italy’s Red Brigades and the German Red Army Faction (RAF).

A pro-Syrian and anti-Israeli Marxist group, the LARF claimed four deady attacks in France in the 1980s. Abdallah was arrested in 1984 after entering a police station in Lyon and claiming Mossad assassins were on his trail.

At his trial over the killing of the diplomats, Abdallah was sentenced to life in prison, a much more severe punishment than the 10 years demanded by prosecutors.

His lawyer Jacques Verges, who defended clients including Venezuelan militant Carlos the Jackal, described the verdict as a “declaration of war”.

There remains a broad swell of support for his cause among the far left and communists in France. Last month, 2022 Nobel literature prize winner Annie Ernaux, said in a piece in communist daily L’Humanite that his detention “shamed France”.

Jailed Russian poet could be ‘killed’ in prison, warns wife


By AFP
November 15, 2024

Russian poet Artyom Kamardin, 34, was jailed for seven years for reciting anti-war poetry. Fellow poet Yegor Shtovba, 23, was sentenced to five a half year for attending the public reading - Copyright AFP Alexander NEMENOV
Anna SMOLCHENKO

The wife of a Russian poet jailed for seven years for reciting anti-war verses said she was afraid he could be killed in prison after he was sexually assaulted with a dumbbell during his arrest.

Artyom Kamardin was arrested in September 2022 after reciting — on a Moscow square where dissidents have been gathering since the late 1950s — a poem that fiercely criticised Russia’s war against Ukraine.

In December 2023, Kamardin was convicted of inciting hatred and undermining national security. Fellow poet Yegor Shtovba, 23, was sentenced to five and a half years for attending the public reading.

Kamardin, 34, lost his appeal last month and is soon expected to be sent to a penal colony to serve his term.

“I am afraid they will kill him,” his wife Alexandra Popova, 30, who is still based in Russia, told AFP during a visit to Paris. “He is being treated a bit like a Ukrainian. Like a Ukrainian captive.”

In a widely-publicised case, both Kamardin and Popova were beaten and humiliated when security forces stormed their apartment the day after he read his poem, entitled “Kill me, militiaman!”, according to them and rights activists.

The reading took place days after President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilisation, the first such call-up since World War II.

Kamardin’s poem from 2015 is peppered with swear words and takes aim at pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

“Kill me, militiaman! You’ve already tasted blood! You’ve seen how brothers-in-arms dig mass graves for the brotherly people,” Kamardin declaimed near the statue of Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.

– ‘Fascist dictatorship’ –

In a statement from jail, Kamardin said poetry helped him reflect on “my homeland’s transformation into a fascist dictatorship”.

“I was born in a free Russia,” he wrote. “Now this country no longer exists, it was killed and devoured by the monster that calls itself Russia now.”

During the raid Kamardin was sexually abused with a dumbbell handle, according to Popova.

Security force members used their phones to record the assault, she said. “There was a lot of blood,” Popova added. Kamardin was then told to go on his knees to record an apology video.

The men also threatened to gang-rape Popova. “At one point they locked themselves in a room with me and pretended to start taking off their trousers,” she said. The couple were also called Nazis.

Amnesty International has said that the details of “his arrest and torture are horrific even against the abysmal human rights standards of today’s Russia.”

Russian propaganda has mounted a campaign of harassment against the couple. “Sit tight, or they will kill you,” Kamardin was already told in jail, according to his wife.

Putin has used the war, now in its third year, to radically transform Russian society.

Independent media outlets have been shut, top rights groups dismantled, criticism of the war outlawed, and dissidents jailed, muzzled or pushed out of the country. Putin’s top opponent Alexei Navalny, 47, died suddenly in an Arctic colony in February.

Popova, who is part of a six-member collective supporting Russian political prisoners, said the country had changed since the start of the war.

Many people now justify “the killing of other people”.

Even if Moscow’s war against Ukraine comes to an end, repression in Russia might not stop, she said.

“Society has become cruel,” Popova added. “People inform on each other.”

The head of the Kremlin’s Human Rights Council, Valery Fadeyev, said last month there was no repression in Russia, with just “minimal restrictions” against those who he said “are essentially siding” with the West.


– ‘Only chance to save people’ –


Popova urged Western governments to do everything to help free Russian political prisoners.

She praised the release of 16 Russian dissidents and foreign nationals in a prisoner swap on August 1 and said more such exchanges were needed.

“People die in Russian prisons,” she said, calling them “victims of war”.

“These are the people who oppose what is happening now and they pay for their position with their health and lives.”

In July, Pavel Kushnir, a 39-year-old pianist and anti-war activist, died in detention in the city of Birobidzhan near the China–Russia border.

In April, Alexander Demidenko, a 61-year-old volunteer who helped Ukrainian refugees, died in jail in the southern city of Belgorod.

“Artyom has a chance to get out earlier if there are any exchanges of political prisoners,” Popova said.

“The only chance now to save people from Russian prisons is through exchanges.”

While many Kremlin critics have left Russia, Popova said she had no plans to go. She wanted to keep supporting political prisoners, above all her husband.

“My heart is bleeding,” she said. “I have to be near him.”

Russia shuts Moscow’s famed gulag museum


By AFP
November 14, 2024

The gulag was a vast network of prison labour camps set up in the Soviet Union - Copyright AFP/File VASILY MAXIMOV

Russian authorities ordered the closure from Thursday of Moscow’s award-winning Gulag History Museum, dedicated to the victims of Soviet-era repression.

The closure was officially put down to alleged violations of fire safety regulations, but comes amid an intense campaign being waged by the Kremlin against independent civil society and those who question the state’s interpretation of history.

“The decision to temporarily suspend the activities of the State Gulag Museum was taken for safety reasons,” the Moscow city culture department told AFP on Thursday.

The museum removed content from its website, replacing it with an announcement of the “temporary” closure.

They declined to comment further when contacted by AFP on Thursday.

Established in 2001, the central Moscow museum brings together official state documents with family photographs and objects from gulag victims.

Moscow authorities said 46,000 people visited in the first nine months of the year.

The gulag was a vast network of prison labour camps set up in the Soviet Union.

Millions of alleged traitors and enemies of the state were sent there, many to their deaths, in what historians recognise as a period of massive political repression.

The Council of Europe awarded the site its Museum Prize in 2021, saying it worked to “expose history and activate memory, with the goal of strengthening the resilience of civil society and its resistance to political repression and violation of human rights today and in the future.”



– ‘Great loss’ –



Outside the museum on Thursday, worker Mikhail, who declined to give his last name, lamented its possible closure.

“It’s a strong museum, very impressive. It’s disappointing that this happened. It’s a loss, a great loss if, God forbid, it’s permanent,” he told AFP.

“We need people to see it, to understand, to know that it must not be repeated.”

But Moscovite Yulia, a musician in her 50s who also declined to give her last name, welcomed the closure.

“I’m against such establishments, I’m not sad,” she told AFP while walking her dog in a nearby park.

“I’m a Stalinist… people die in every era, right now as well. We can’t make monuments for every era.”

Through his 24 years in power, President Vladimir Putin has sought to revise Russia’s historical narrative and its relationship with the Soviet Union.

While occasionally condemning the vast repression under Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, Putin more often hails him as a great wartime leader.

School textbooks pay little attention to the millions of victims of the Great Terror, seen as inconvenient in the promotion of the Soviet Union as a great power that defeated Nazi Germany.

Authorities have increasingly targeted individuals and groups who push back against this approach — a campaign that has stepped up amid the Ukraine offensive.

In 2021, authorities ordered the liquidation of Memorial, the Nobel Prize-winning NGO that records victims of both Soviet repression and allegations of human rights violations by the current regime.

Last month the Gulag History Museum staged a “Return of the Names” event — when individuals read out the names of people killed during Soviet terror.

Iran activist kills himself after demanding release of prisoners


By AFP
November 14, 2024

ctress Bridget Moynahan (L) and activist Kianoosh Sanjari at an Amnesty International Concert in New York - Copyright AFP/File VASILY MAXIMOV

Human rights campaigners on Thursday paid tribute to an Iranian activist who killed himself hours after warning he would do so if four inmates seen to be political prisoners were not freed.

Kianoosh Sanjari, an opponent of the Islamic republic’s clerical authorities, warned in a message on X late Wednesday that he would commit suicide if the release of the two men and two women did not take place.

He then took his own life, according to multiple rights campaigners and organisations.

The formal announcement of his death, which is swiftly published by families in Iran when a relative dies, was also widely shared on social media.

Sanjari had demanded the release of veteran campaigner Fatemeh Sepehri, Nasreen Shakarami, the mother of a teenager killed during 2022 protests, rapper Tomaj Salehi and civil rights activist Arsham Rezaei.

“If they are not released from prison by 7:00 pm today, Wednesday, and the news of their release is not published on the judiciary news site, I will end my life in protest against the dictatorship of (supreme leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei and his accomplices,” he said.

He later added: “No one should be imprisoned for expressing their opinions. Protest is the right of every Iranian citizen.

“My life will end after this tweet but let’s not forget that we die and die for the love of life, not death,” he added.

It was not immediately clear how he killed himself. Sanjari had late Wednesday posted an image that appeared to have been taken looking down on the street from the upper floor of a Tehran tower block.

– ‘Islamic Republic killed him’ –

Figures from across the opposition spectrum expressed grief, saying the suicide was indicative of the climate in the Islamic republic due to the crackdown that followed the 2022-2023 nationwide protests which shook the authorities.

Activists said Senjari had been repeatedly arrested and summoned in Iran since returning to take care of his elderly mother in 2015 after a stint working in the US for Voice of America.

“His death is a warning to all of us of how heavy the price of silence and indifference can be,” said campaigner Arash Sadeghi, who endured a lengthy spell in jail during the protests.

Atena Daemi, a labour activist released from jail in 2022, wrote on X that the “Islamic Republic had killed him bit by bit…. the Islamic republic is responsible for his death.”

The US-based son of the ousted shah, Reza Pahlavi, said: “our fight is for life against the regime of death and execution.”

British actor of Iranian origin Nazanin Boniadi said the chorus of tributes was in stark contrast to the arguments that often mark exchanges in Iranian opposition circles.

“A unity that should exist in life, not just in death. We have one common enemy: the Islamic republic regime. Let’s behave accordingly,” she said.

COMMODITY FETISH

Jeff Beck guitar collection to go under the hammer in January

By AFP
November 15, 2024

Jeff Beck's guitars are to be auctioned at Christie's in London in January 

- Copyright AFP Richard A. Brooks

A collection of guitars and other musical equipment owned by influential rock guitarist Jeff Beck will go on sale in London in January, Christie’s auctioneers announced on Friday.

Some of the 130 guitars, amps and “tools of the trade” used by Beck during his decades-spanning career are expected to fetch hundreds of thousands of pounds (dollars) when they go under the hammer on January 22, it said.

They include the rock legend’s 1954 “Oxblood” Gibson Les Paul, famously depicted on the cover of his seminal 1975 solo instrumental album “Blow By Blow” and used on several tracks.

It is estimated to fetch up to £500,000 ($634,000).

Beck, who rose to stardom with 1960s supergroup The Yardbirds and later enjoyed a prolific solo career, died in January last year aged 78.

His widow, Sandra Beck, said it was “a massive wrench” to part with the instruments but that they needed to be “shared, played and loved again”.

“These guitars were his great love and after almost two years of his passing, it’s time to part with them as Jeff wished,” she said in a statement.

“I hope the future guitarists who acquire these items are able to move closer to the genius who played them.”

The collection includes another Gibson Les Paul from 1958, dubbed the original “Yardburst” as it was bought in 1966 while Beck was in the seminal British rock group. It is valued at up to £60,000.

Meanwhile, a Fender Telecaster and Gibson hybrid crafted by world-renowned guitar designer Seymour Duncan specifically for Beck in 1973 is predicted to sell for as much as £150,000.

Highlights from the guitar haul will be on public view in Los Angeles on December 4-6.

The full collection will go on show for a week at Christie’s London headquarters before the January 22 sale.

Christie’s Amelia Walker said the auctioneers were “honoured to have been entrusted” with the sale of instruments belonging to a “rock pioneer whose influence on his peers was unmatched”.

She added Beck’s guitars had “shared his emotion and voice” with the world and the auction would “pay tribute to his enduring legacy”.

Dinosaur skeleton fetches 6 million euros in Paris sale


By AFP
November 16, 2024

The buyer has pledged to donate the apatosaurus nicknamed Vulcan to a museum - Copyright AFP/File Alexander NEMENOV, Ting Shen

The skeleton of a 22-metre-long dinosaur (70 feet) fetched six million euros ($6.4 million) Saturday, AFP learned from auction houses Collin du Bocage and Barbarossa.

An anonymous collector snapped up the vegetarian apatosaurus, which was dug up in the United States, for 4.7 million euros rising to 6 million including costs. It is the largest dinosaur ever to be auctioned in France.

The buyer pledged to allow it to be displayed in a museum.

“We are happy that the buyer intends to lend it to an institution,” said Olivier Collin du Bocage. They skeleton of the giant herbivore is made up of 75 to 80 percent of the original bones and is roughly 150 million years old.

The giant creature’s skeleton, which weighed around twenty tonnes during its lifetime, spent the summer in the orangerie of Dampierre-en-Yvelines, a chateau some 50 kilometres (30 miles) southwest of Paris, where the sale took place.

The remains of the apatosaurus, nicknamed Vulcan, were discovered in 2018 in Wyoming, in the United States, where the law allows individuals to acquire concessions in the hope of excavating prehistoric bones. Excavations took place between 2019 and 2021, financed by a French investor.

The fossil, which includes 300 bones, was then shipped to France to be restored.

Its presale value at auction had been estimated at between three and five million euros.

Under the contract of sale the future owner undertakes to give paleontologists access to the dinosaur to study it.