Why are so many black women still dying in childbirth?

As the RCOG launches a taskforce to look at racism in maternity care, sexual and reproductive health registrar, Dr Annabel Sowemimo, asks why black British women are five times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth


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In 2018, Serena Williams gave birth to her first child via caesarean section. The day after the birth, the world-number-one tennis player became breathless and told doctors she believed she had developed a pulmonary embolism (a blood clot on her lungs), which she has a history of. She later described how she had to plead with her medical team for a CT scan, which showed she was correct. The blood clots could have been fatal if not treated.

Nine months later, Beyoncé opened up about her experience of pre-eclampsia when she was pregnant with her twins, Rumi and Sir. Her babies were delivered via emergency c-section, and had to stay in intensive care for weeks. Despite being two of the most successful women in the world, their stories resonate with black mothers everywhere.

Rachael Buabeng, founder of Mummy’s Day Out, a community for black women to network and share experiences, had a pregnancy plagued by hyperemesis gravidarum (nausea and vomiting which can lead to reduced fetal growth) and a difficult childbirth. She describes how her husband had to advocate for her when she was not offered alternative pain relief after declining an epidural; she went on to deliver her baby without the midwife in the room.

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“The midwife said the baby wouldn’t come for another nine hours. So she left the room and the baby came, with the midwife nowhere to be seen,” she tells The Independent. “Luckily, my husband screamed and people came to help but they were asking my name as my baby was coming. They hadn’t met me before. I didn’t really realise how bad it was until after.”

In November 2019, a report into maternal morbidity in the UK from researchers at Oxford University, found black women are five times more likely to die in pregnancy, childbirth or in the postpartum period, compared to their white counterparts. Asian women were also twice as likely to die compared to white women. This data was up from previous years, which still staggeringly showed black women were three times more likely to die than white women.

In the United States there are similar racial disparities in its maternal deaths with black and indigenous Americans being two to three times as likely to die of pregnancy related causes. The data confirms what black women have known for decades; pregnancy is at best challenging and at worst may be fatal.

The 2019 statistics were so appalling that they could no longer be ignored; BBC Woman’s Hour featured a special episode on the issue and a parliamentary petition was launched in March 2020, in the hope that there would be greater government support in tackling the root causes.

Despite the petition reaching 180,000 signatures, it is still awaiting debate, and the deaths of black mothers continue. Pregnant nurse Mary Agyeiwaa Agyapong died on 12 April shortly after delivering her baby son. The coroner ruled that the 28-year-old nurse died as a result of Covid-19, and giving birth.

Medical professionals have long assumed the death rate can be explained by pre-existing conditions amongst black women such as high blood pressure, or the higher prevalence of complications such as pre-eclampsia. Rather, research from the US points to a more complex picture. The likeliness of an adverse outcome for someone like myself – a black, healthy, middle-class professional – increases, rather than decreases. So what is really happening?

For years black motherhood has been presented in an unfavourable light, both in popular culture and academic circles. Studies have shown the media uses “concern for children as a rhetorical tool to define poor and minority women as bad mothers,” and statistics show black children are overrepresented in the care system, making up 16 per cent of all looked-after children and young people. This is despite society being built on the care services of black women; 20 per cent of black African women work in the health and social care sector often in lower paid jobs that require longer shift patterns.



US academic, Dorthy Roberts in her book Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty describes how stereotypes of black motherhood persist, from “welfare queens”, who are presented as “immoral, neglectful, and domineering” to “hypersexual” women that are accused of “overbreeding”. In the UK, the media has routinely linked households with single black mothers to increasing youth violence and London’s knife crime epidemic; with little regard for the other structural factors at play.

Black women are categorised according to a white perspective; they are not believed, this notion of them having a higher threshold for pain..."

In March, the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (RCOG) hosted an event entitled ‘We need to talk about race’ for International Women’s Day, following an article of the same name written by obstetrician Dr Christine Ekechi. The RCOG event was well attended, yet there was a noticeable absence of white healthcare professionals.

At the event, Dr Ekechi shared her own powerful experiences of navigating the health system as a black woman whilst sharing those of other women who had felt “dismissed” by healthcare professionals or reduced to “complainers”. A phenomenon also written about by Candice Braithwaite, author of bestseller, I am Not Your Baby Mother.

Janet Fyle, a senior midwife and professional policy advisory, is adamant that underlying prejudice among midwives is a crucial factor in the deaths of black mothers: “Black women are categorised according to a white perspective; they are not believed, this notion of them having a higher threshold for pain and these biases mean that we miss serious conditions or the opportunity to escalate serious changes in the woman’s condition in a timely way.”


Fyle says this goes back as far as when people are studying medicine. “They practice as students on white women and with no opportunity to understand differences,” she says. “People are getting things wrong because they are not culturally competent, for example, doctors, nurses and midwives have the standard patient profile in their heads as being a woman who is blonde, blue eyes and size 12. It’s everything about the concept of medicine.”
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The problem isn’t exclusive to women’s experience of childbirth either: the RCOG has highlighted racial disparities within gynaecology services, including the late diagnosis of gynecological cancers and lower uptake of cervical screening amongst black women.

In the age of social media, younger midwives are seizing the opportunity to educate their peers on the gap that exists in the midwifery curriculum. Georgia and Sheridan, both 26, are both registered independent midwives who co-founded the My Midwife Initiative which encourages reflective practice amongst midwives and challenges their own prejudice.


Georgia is passionate that a new approach to midwifery is required: “We feel it is important as a new midwife to acknowledge, and have an awareness, that racial inequalities in healthcare exist and we all have the responsibility to examine our own personal practice and our beliefs to tackle the disparities; the evidence shows black and brown women face when they access maternity care. ” They self-fund and deliver this intervention to universities in their own time.

Rather than wait for an improvement black women have also started to set up their own safe spaces to discuss black motherhood including Buabeng’s Mummy’s Day Out; she continues to advocate for greater cultural competence amongst the medical workforce; she continues to hear poor birth stories from others on a regular basis.
Believe women when they say that they are concerned about something and don’t brush it off..."

On 15 July the RCOG launched a race equality taskforce to better understand how to tackle racial disparities amongst patients as well as understand the effects on racism on staff working within the sector. The taskforce plans to collaborate with groups across healthcare, government and individuals to ensure new ways are developed to tackle racism and racial disparity.

Dr Ekechi, co-chair and the RCOG’s spokesperson on racial equality says: “[It] sends a clear and brave message to our members and the women that we serve, of our strong commitment to equality in outcomes for all obstetricians and gynaecologists in the UK and for the health of each and every woman.” Ekechi says she is “confident” it will “ultimately save lives”.

Whilst these changes suggest that those in authority are finally hearing black women’s voices, the frustration from mothers remains. Buabeng says: “What maternity services need is very, very straightforward. Treat every woman as an individual. Believe women when they say that they will feel pain, believe women when they say that something is not right. Believe women when they say that they are concerned about something and don’t brush it off.”

INTERVIEW
Clemency director Chinonye Chukwu: ‘Society doesn’t care about black women’s humanity’

As her award-winning and chilling prison drama comes to UK screens, the writer and director tells Kuba Shand-Baptiste about creating complex female leads and why it’s time to smash the system

'We're not used to seeing black women as fully realised human beings who are not solely defined by their race and gender' ( Photo by Michael Buckner/Deadline/REX )

They say dying by lethal injection feels like being burnt alive. The deadly, usually three-drug cocktail has the highest botch rate of all the methods used to kill prisoners in the United States.

It is also the most commonly used. That’s the ugly truth we’re confronted with mere minutes into Chinonye Chukwu’s gut-punching film Clemency. We watch a prisoner die slowly and painfully, his howls at the various attempts to jab him haunting the rest of the film. As tough a watch as it is, there’s no looking away, no matter how much you, the viewer, or Bernadine, the prison warden protagonist played by Alfre Woodard, wants to.

It’s no wonder that Clemency took the Grand Jury Prize Award at Sundance last year, making Chukwu the first black woman to do so. The cast is heavyweight, with Aldis Hodge, The West Wing’s Richard Schiff, The Wire’s Wendell Pierce and Danielle Brooks of Orange Is The New Black appearing alongside Woodard. And Chukwu’s thoughtful storytelling pulls you into the punitive, unforgiving hellscape of the US prison system in a way that few film-makers have done in the past. On the phone from LA, she calls her Sundance win “bittersweet”, adding, “I wish I was the 10th black woman, you know?”

Chukwu isn’t yet a household name but she is a part of some of the most anticipated projects this year. She’s directing the first two episodes of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s long-awaited TV adaptation of Americanah, starring Lupita Nyong’o, and the biopic of Elaine Brown, the first and only woman to chair the Black Panther Party. She speaks animatedly about this all from the off, and if she’s weary about sitting through yet another interview of several that day, her cheery demeanour masks it entirely. “I feel great!” she exclaims. “It’s been an incredibly exciting time since winning but it’s also been incredibly growthful”.

For Chukwu, it’s important to stay as true to herself as the characters in her films. The 35-year-old film-maker was born in Nigeria, and moved to Alaska when she was a baby. There, she grew up navigating her experience as a black girl in a city with a tiny black population, and an even smaller Nigerian-American population. She oscillated between the two experiences of Americanness and Nigerianness, feeling ill-matched for either one at various points of her life, which she says “has really made me live in a lot of grey areas when it comes to identity”.
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Those grey areas have come to inform her work, too. Her characters have a rich complexity that is no doubt partly inspired by unique experiences she had growing up – her 2012 film Alaska-Land depicted two estranged Nigerian-American siblings who reunite in their hometown of Fairbanks. “What makes some of the most compelling storytelling,” says Chukwu, “is when we’re not so binary but show the paradoxes that make up our human existence. [Those are the] areas that I tend to live in, in my filmmaking and in my storytelling. And so, my background has forced me to really live in that when I create characters.”

The story of Americanah particularly resonated with her, she says. The book follows a Nigerian woman who goes to university in the US and wakes up to an entirely new world, not just in terms of culture, but how she sees herself. Chukwu says the story in many ways parallels her childhood experiences of being othered. “I have a deep connection and passion for Americanah, for obvious reasons,” she says. “I’m so excited to bring it to the screen because [Hollywood] tends to essentialise or stereotype ‘Africa and Africans’. But Americanah explores a lot of layers and identities of self within a very specific cultural context that I think a lot of people will be able to see themselves in.”

She’s enthusiastic too about bringing the first female Black Panther leader’s story to a wider audience. “Elaine Brown’s is another story that we haven’t seen on screen,” she says, particularly “this powerful journey of self that this black woman character goes on”.
The powerful journey of self is also central to Clemency, which follows Bernadine Williams, a prison warden who carries out executions in a maximum security prison. She is tortured by her death row duty and how it infiltrates and contrasts with every aspect of her life outside her work. Her profession requires unflinching stoicism, while her humanity and personal life is every bit as gentle and fragile as the lives she’s in charge of ending. That sense of duality could easily work as an analogy for the experiences of black women in the US and beyond. Not only does society view us as unbreakable or incapable of vulnerability, it requires us to fit into those moulds, betraying the full, delicate and complicated lives we’ve always led.

Chukwu says that casting Bernadine as a black woman “inherently complicates” Clemency’s narrative “because we’re not used to seeing black women as fully realised human beings who are not solely defined by their race and gender”, or by male characters. She says that these are “stereotypical and archetypical expectations” that audiences have developed about black female characters and Bernadine “subverts” them all. She is dutiful and professional to almost infuriating degrees. She is loved. She is loathed. She is also terrified.

Despite some recent, marginal improvement in the film industry when it comes to representation, Chukwu says that black female characters are largely still not given the space to be complex. When I ask why, she tells me, matter-of-factly, “I mean, society doesn’t regard black women. Society doesn’t care about black women’s humanity and so we see the extension of that on screen. We’re disregarded and dehumanised and discredited in real life every single day. That doesn’t stop in cinema.”

The dehumanisation of black women and people more broadly is something Chukwu has pushed back against throughout her career. After graduating from studying film at university, she made 2012 short film Bottom, about the push and pull of power between a lesbian couple. A Long Walk in 2013 followed, based on an excerpt from her former professor’s memoir about a boy who wishes to dress in feminine clothing but is punished by his father.

Clemency, however, is considered her most hard-hitting film yet. Chukwu was inspired to write the story after the execution of Troy Davis in 2011, one of many cases now thought of as a precursor to the establishment of the Black Lives Matter movement. Though it was released in the US in December 2019, she says that looking back at it now, against the backdrop of ongoing protests following numerous incidents of racist police brutality in the US and around the world, makes her film all the more urgent.

“One of my intentions with making Clemency was to inspire audiences to question the prison industrial complex and specifically capital punishment,” she says. “What we’re [seeing] now is that same thing. We’re interrogating criminal legal practices and wondering: are they really forms of justice, or are they an extension of white supremacist capitalist systems that are connected to enslavement?”

The answer to the latter, at least in Chukwu’s opinion, is yes. It’s the same when it comes to police abolition. “Part of what the call for defunding the police is rooted in,” she continues, emphatically, “is also this larger abolitionist framework where we need to rethink what the function and the necessity of policing is and realise that the historical roots of policing came from enslavement.”

Alfre Woodard as prison officer Bernadine in ‘Clemency’ (Neon)

She says she opened Clemency with a scene that questions the ethics of the death penalty because she “wanted to set up the stakes from the beginning” and it’s a chilling reminder of another practice that she says is in desperate need of dismantling.

Are people coming around to that possibility these days?

“Slowly but surely,” she says. “I think that some states are questioning it more on economic grounds because it’s incredibly expensive to maintain. But I also think morally, more and more people are starting to go against it, or at least question if it really does help provide any form of justice in our society.”

Chukwu’s films certainly make you question everything about society: the systems we unreservedly accept as gospel; the atrocities we ignore; the identities and communities we fail time and time again. But the film has more poetic moments, too. The part of the film that particularly stayed with me was a passage from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, read by Wendell Pierce as Bernadine’s school teacher husband Jonathan:

“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fibre and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, because people refuse to see me…”

Those words encapsulate the film’s themes, says Chukwu, because “we invisibilise people who are incarcerated. We invisibilise black people, poor people, marginalised groups of people.” For now, at least, Chukwu is making the task of being invisible in cinema that much harder.

BREAKING NEWS 

SOMEONE LIKES THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE

‘I can’t wait to travel to Toronto, where my race is less of an issue and I feel at home’

LIFE AFTER LOCKDOWN
Lots of people miss the opportunity to travel during the pandemic, but for Ellie Abraham the chance to go back to her beloved Toronto isn't just about a holiday

Friday 3 July 2020 

Credit: Jacek Zmarz ( Jacek Zmarz )

Ever since the UK government imposed a coronavirus lockdown, many of us have been surprised to discover that it’s the little things – not the extravagant or the particularly earth-shattering – that we’ve missed the most. The Independent lifestyle desk’s new essay series, Life After Lockdown, is an ode to everything we took for granted in the pre-Covid world – and the things we can’t wait to do once again when normality eventually resumes.

***
“Ellie, you know I’ve been waiting for you to come back to Toronto since you left, but I’m wondering if you should reschedule your trip,” the message dropped into the group chat. It’s three days before I’m due to fly out from Gatwick and, in Covid-19’s new world where nothing makes sense, reading those words is actually a relief.

“I’ve been thinking the same,” I admit, sensing long before this exchange that I’d be staying on terra firma, due to the spread of the pandemic. On a video call, the three of us are in agreement: we’re disappointed, but it’s the right thing to postpone.

As we say our goodbyes, I get that same pang of sadness every time I’m reminded of the physical distance. Ceremoniously, I begin putting away the pile of Easter chocolate I was planning to take as a gift. For months I’d clung to the anticipation of seeing some of my best friends and my favourite city again after 15 months apart. And now, because of a microscopic virus wreaking havoc on the world, it could be another 15.

Michelle, Bianca and I met at a tech start-up in Toronto, a few months after I’d moved there on a two-year work visa, in 2017. Bianca hired me and the three of us quickly bonded over our love of music. During one of our Friday night drinking sessions, which helped solidify our friendship, I was told it was a Frank Ocean article I’d written that clinched me the job.

Soon enough we were hanging out all the time, playing Catan or listening to music and cooking. They introduced me to their friends who then became mine. It was revolutionary to be surrounded by peers who were also people of colour, and to be seen. As cliché as it sounds, for the first time in my adult life, I’d found my tribe.

Growing up, I felt in a perpetual state of ‘otherness’. Being mixed-race in a very white area meant never quite fitting in with any community, resulting in some very awkward teen years. But as I settled into my new home with wonderful roommates in Toronto’s vibrant Kensington Market, I felt less and less out of sorts. With the atmosphere of Brighton Lanes, this neighbourhood of the city is hands down the quirkiest.
It’s clear that unlike here in the UK, forms of ‘otherness’ and self-expression aren’t looked down upon or judged in Toronto...

Encapsulated in a few streets you’ll find Salvadoran, Hungarian, First Nations and Chilean cuisine, to name just a few, alongside vintage shops and greengrocers. In the warmer months, the pleasant smell of cooking emanates from jerk chicken grilled on barrel barbecues outside Rasta Pasta – the market’s Jamaican Italian fusion spot.

You might even see the guy dressed as Spider-Man on a longboard, a market regular who the residents don’t bat an eyelid at. Through our small living room window, I witnessed hundreds of naked cyclists go by on the street below (for a climate change demonstration), a man unironically wearing a T-Rex costume, more brawls than a Wetherspoons pub at closing and insanely talented musicians playing for the joy of it.

It’s clear that unlike here in the UK, forms of ‘otherness’ and self-expression aren’t looked down upon or judged in Toronto. Broadly speaking, the British way is to blend in, stick to the status quo and make as little fuss as humanly possible. It can make us quite prudish and at times self-conscious.

But in Toronto differences are embraced and celebrated as part of the city’s identity; because of this, it’s where I feel most like myself – where I’m not an outsider in my brown skin. There’s a ubiquitous aura of kindness, confirmed by the many protests and spontaneous gestures of love.

From protesting for marginalised communities at Women’s Marches and rallies against Islamophobia, to the small but touching gestures honouring victims of the Westminster and Manchester arena terrorist attacks– I’ve never experienced such an inclusive city.

The freedom of expression the city affords gave my friends and me permission to dream big. One week, we’d try to pen a TV show like Toronto’s answer to "Broad City". The next we’d want to start a podcast. We’d plot our futures over plates of dim sum in our favourite Chinatown restaurant and be those annoying people who buy one pastel de nata between three and use the Wi-Fi for hours in a café in Little Portugal.

Despite all the praise, the city is not without its faults: what they call “cheddar” is an orange abomination, you’re lucky if your house hasn’t seen at least one kind of pest, the summers are suffocating and the winters make you want to hibernate like a bear.

But when it comes to Toronto, it’s not simply about going on a holiday, it’s about going home..."

But even with the many imperfections, I’d often walk the residential streets with headphones on, at that hour just before curtains close, looking at the beautiful Victorian houses and dreaming up a world in which I could stay beyond my limited visa.

Now lockdown here is easing slightly, it’s frustrating to know it may still be a while before long-haul travel is possible (or desirable). Until then, I look forward to the day I can see my friends again and slip into the same rhythm as when I lived there, making the most of the city on a budget with free movies in the park, panel talks, beach evenings and DJing our own parties, singing Carly Rae Jepsen into the night.

After over 100 days in lockdown, I understand the widespread appetite for foreign travel because I’m one of them. I certainly wouldn’t turn down two weeks in the Italian countryside but when it comes to Toronto, it’s not simply about going on a holiday, it’s about going home.

It's all over. America has lost its battle with coronavirus

Neither Trump's delusions nor Fauci's ridiculous ego will save us

John T Bennett Washington DC
THE INDEPENDENT 

It’s over. America has lost its half-hearted struggle with coronavirus.

The virus showed up to the fight. But, as a country, we never really did.

The federal government never took the kinds of steps other countries were prepared to take. President Trump rarely talks about the virus, in fact, other than to essentially declare victory despite a laundry list of evidence to the contrary.

“Things are coming back, and they’re coming back very rapidly — a lot sooner than people thought,” Trump said during a press conference that quickly morphed into a campaign event Tuesday evening in the Rose Garden. “People are feeling good about our country. People are feeling good about therapeutics and possible vaccines.”

He has never talked about contact tracing, which the leaders of other Western countries used to help pare their confirmed Covid-19 cases. He has vowed the United States will not shut down again, even though that’s up to governors and not him.

His always-loyal vice president, Mike Pence, was sure to rhetorically bathe him in the kind of praise he so craves on Wednesday during a coronavirus-themed visit to hard-hit Louisiana.

“This is a serious time with rising cases across Louisiana and all across the Sun Belt. But as all of you know, because of your efforts, because of the unprecedented national response marshalled by our president, because of the seamless partnership with your governor, and because of the extraordinary support that we've received from members of Congress, we have more resources today to deal with this pandemic than ever before,” Pence said at Louisiana State University.

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But the ever-in-line VP is not suggesting states or cities should re-institute stay-at-home orders or mandate that bars or gyms shut down as coronavirus cases surge in some states. He’s out there parroting Trump that schools should reopen in a few weeks and America has done a stellar job battling the virus, despite the fact that Covid-19 has infected at least 3.5 million in the United States and killed at least 137,000 people.

While Trump prefers to mostly press for steps that might fuel a partial economic recovery before Election Day, Pence has the unenviable chore of leading a counter-virus task force that his boss has never been that into. But when Pence speaks, he reveals where the administration is – and, by extension, where we as a country are headed.

“PPE has been made available in the hundreds of millions of supplies,” he said on Wednesday. “Therapeutics, like remdesivir, continue to be distributed to states, including Louisiana. And I'm proud to report that we're moving forward aggressively, at warp speed, on the development of a vaccine.”

Make no mistake, within those handful of sentences is a clear signal that America’s only hope is getting that vaccine. Until it is deployed to high school gymnasiums, superstore parking lots and doctors’ offices, expect nothing more than the same mediocre – or worse – response at just about every level of government.

California, Texas, Oregon, Arizona and 16 other states have rolled back measures intended to get their staggered economy rolling again amid skyrocketing cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the virus. But folks are bored and cooped up, while others feel masks represent tyranny, so there’s just too much public pressure from all sides of any governor’s electorate to completely shut down again.

Over 30 million people have filed for unemployment benefits since the pandemic forced Trump and governors to, in the president’s words, “close it down.” The economy, predictably, showed signs of bouncing back after states opened, with the unemployment rate shrinking from nearly 15 percent to around 11 percent.

But as states shutter at least some of their businesses, workers again will be let go. Trump has focused on the economy since the virus started to spread from sea to shining sea, but he continues to fail to ignore the fact that it always was going to be the things that just about every other developed country did early in their outbreaks that was going to produce an economic recovery ASAP.

Now, without a roaring economy as the backbone of his floundering re-election campaign, polls of his job performance and handling of the pandemic suggest he will be SOL come Election Day. The rest of us likely are, too, until someone in a HAZMAT suit can inject us with a vaccine.

So enjoy sporting events in empty stadiums – until players and coaches get sick in numbers too large to field teams – and enjoy the strangest presidential election, probably ever. Don’t get too attached to your favorite restaurant or bar. And don’t book too many personal training sessions if you have to pre-pay. It’s all probably closing down again.

After all, our chief executive seems to have no idea how people actually get sick from the virus or much empathy for those who do – and any empathy he displays for those who die from it is directed at his own bleak political plight. “We test more than anybody, by far. And when you test, you create cases. So we’ve created cases,” he said this week, his latest logic-free statement about Covid-19.

There is no white knight about to walk through any door that will flatten the curve of US cases. Not until someone walks through it with the first shipment of a vaccine, anyway.

And don’t look to federal officials like Anthony Fauci to put this surreal and disappointing moment of American failure behind us. He’s too busy posing by his pool for magazine interviews in his shades, and waging an utterly sickening and unproductive war of words with the White House.

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The Brooklyn-born Fauci is willing to throw rhetorical bombs at others, including the president and his team. To be sure, some of his criticisms are spot-on. But he has been wrong plenty of times, as well. Yet, somehow he has become such a national darling that not even Trump allies like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham will offer anything but glowing reviews.

Asked by an interviewer for that InStyle magazine piece – the same interviewer who let us know she’s been pals with Fauci and his wife for years, the kind of inside-the-Beltway chumminess most Americans loathe – what he and other officials did wrong, the top US infectious disease official didn’t dare criticize himself.

“You know, that’s almost an unanswerable question. There are so many possibilities. I don’t like to phrase it in the context of what we’ve done wrong, as opposed to let’s take a look at what happened and maybe we can have lessons learned,” he said, in a rambling answer that absolved himself of any responsibility. “I can’t say we did anything wrong, you know, but certainly we’ve got to do better.”

Spoiler alert: We won’t do better. Not until we all have a get-out-of-jail-free card coursing through our veins. The VP promises that at “warp speed,” which no doubt gives little solace to the 855 people who died here from coronavirus on Wednesday.

UK 

The trans campaigners fighting for their right to be legally recognised

Yas Necati and Angela Christofilou explore how trans activists are trying to reform the gender recognition act

Yas Necati Angela Christofilou

Trans rights: London protestsShow all 20  

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/photography/trans-rights-campaigners-photos-gender-recognition-act-a9621191.html

Over the past few weeks, there have been marches across the country for transgender rights. The protests follow government proposals to scrap changes that would improve the legal rights and recognition of trans people. Campaigners are concerned about rollback on changes to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) 2004. The GRA is essentially the bit of legislation that allows trans people to legally change their gender.

“The protest was created in order to make a strong, visible stand against the government's proposals that make it clear they pose a serious threat to the health and well-being of trans people,” says Thaniel Dorian, who started one of the London protests. “For a lot of people it was the first time that they had ever felt safe and proud to be transgender in the UK, and the government should feel obligated to ensure that people feel that way every day.”

Despite 92 per cent of trans people being interested in a gender recognition certificate, currently only 12 per cent have one. Under the current act, it is a lengthy and difficult process for someone to change their legal gender. Trans people must have a medical diagnosis of “gender dysphoria”. The government website states that “this is also called gender identity disorder, gender incongruence or transsexualism”. The current legislation makes very explicit that being trans is considered a medical disorder. “This is the section 28 for our generation,” says one trans man, Charlie. “I’m scared for trans youth. A lot of us are old and used to this level of hatred, but there are young people who are desperate to be themselves and all they see is their government trying to remove their rights.”

Trans people must also prove to a panel of medical professionals that they have lived in their gender for at least two years. Reforms to the GRA would make the process of changing gender on legal documents much easier, with no need to be diagnosed by doctors or go through lengthy consultations.


Campaigners are also asking for non-binary people to be recognised under law. Pip Gardner, a non-binary person who works with LGBTQ+ young people, says “I need GRA reform which recognises me legally as not male and not female. When I apply for ID documents, when I renew my car insurance, and so many other things, I have to lie about my gender.”
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Boris Johnson ‘betraying’ trans people by scrapping gender law plan

The Outside Project, the UK’s first homeless shelter for LGBTQ+ people, is one of the groups campaigning for GRA reform. Its founder, Carla Ecola, feels the delay on approving changes is one of many examples of the government ignoring the needs of LGBTQ+ people: “Ultimately this needs to be resolved so that we can focus on our community’s crisis needs of housing and healthcare,” she says.

Government announcements about the GRA reform have been delayed a number of times, and are now due next week. Tom, a trans protester, says: “Like those who marched against Section 28 in the late 1980s, we must resist this attack on the dignity of trans people, or risk our current moment becoming a stain in the history of LGBT liberation.”

Amazon photos show ‘illegal’ burning of rainforest amid record deforestation levels

Greenpeace blames huge surge in deforestation on Brazilian government’s ‘anti-environmental agenda’Greenpeace activists in Brazil have captured shocking images of fires burning in the Amazon rainforest.

There is currently a government ban on fires in states including Mato Grosso — a large state in western central Brazil — where the photographs were taken between 7 and 10 July.

Despite the ban, there are 4,437 hotspots in Mato Grosso and the state has had the highest number of fires this year — representing almost half (49.5 per cent) of all the fires in the Brazilian Amazon in 2020.

Greenpeace said the “illegal” destruction has been needlessly exacerbated by right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro’s “anti-environmental agenda”.

“These images, along with the record deforestation rates this year, are the intended outcome of Bolsonaro’s long term strategy for the Amazon,” claimed Romulo Batista, Greenpeace Brazil Amazon campaigner.

 

images reveal spread of Amazon fires ahead of dry season

“His government has been dismantling environmental protection laws and kneecapping the power of the environmental protection agencies since Bolsonaro took office, going as far as using the Covid-19 pandemic as a smokescreen to further enable deforestation, logging and mining in the Amazon.”

He added: “This administration is doing nothing but putting the climate and more lives at risk, especially those of indigenous peoples.”

Fires in the Brazilian Amazon increased by 20 per cent in June, reaching a 13-year-high for the month according to government data, and scientists have warned the region is on track for a repeat of last year’s devastating blazes.

A fire burns in the rainforest next to a freshly deforested area in Alta Floresta, Mato Grosso state, Brazil (Christian Braga / Greenpeace)

Meanwhile health experts also fear smoke from fires during the dry season is worsening respiratory problems due to air pollution and complicating tackling vast numbers of coronavirus cases. More than 76,000 people have died of Covid-19 in Brazil and the country has seen more than 2 million cases overall.

In June, Brazil’s government space research agency, INPE, detected 2,248 fires in the Amazon rainforest, up from 1,880 in June 2019.

Greenpeace said large fires in the Amazon rainforest “do not occur naturally, but are deliberately set by farmers or land grabbers to expand the land used for cattle ranching and industrial agriculture production”.

Mr Bolsonaro has been criticised for dismantling forest protections that had helped a record reduction in deforestation between 2004 and 2012. Deforestation in the Amazon has soared in recent years, reaching an 11-year high in 2019.

Indigenous peoples, already dealing with the risks of Covid-19, are believed to be at considerably higher risk due to the fires, which, as they intensify, mean greater quantities of air pollution are affecting the region.
Read more

UK consumption ‘fuelling Amazon fires’

Mr Bolsonaro’s response to the fires “has been performative and ineffective”, Greenpeace said and cited moves such as deploying the army in costly and unsuccessful operations to fight deforestation, as well as the announcement of his “insufficient” 120-day-long “fires moratorium”.

Mr Batista said: “As Bolsonaro’s 2019 fire moratorium already showed, banning fires alone doesn’t work. Protecting the capacity to monitor and stop environmental destruction and to enforce the law — which Bolsonaro continues to systematically dismantle — is essential. Those calling for action of the Brazilian government cannot fool themselves and think that Bolsonaro’s sloppy PR moves will have any meaningful impacts.”
Hotspot next to a deforested area in Nova Maringá, Mato Grosso state (Christian Braga / Greenpeace)

International demand for goods including soy, timber, paper, beef and leather are among the key drivers of land clearances in the Amazon.

Last week, data from the WWF and the RSPB revealed the extent of the UK’s demand for goods linked to the destruction.

Brazil represents 13.9 per cent of the total UK overseas land footprint, meaning we currently rely on an average of more than 800,000 hectares of land — much of which was once rainforest — to supply our demand for agricultural products. This is equivalent to five times the size of Greater London.

Satellite images reveal spread of Amazon fires amid fears over deforestation in looming dry season

'This is just the beginning. Over the next few months, unless we see strong intervention, fires will be likely to increase... worsening the climate crisis globally' said Greenpeace

Louise Boyle New York @Friday 3 July 2020

Aerial images of fires in Amazon rainforest with the red dots representing fire hotspots in June 2020 ( INPE/Brazilian National Institute for Space Research )

Satellite images of Brazil's Amazon rainforest in June show thousands of fires raging as dry season approaches, with conservationists warning that the region could be on track for a repeat of last year’s devastating blazes.

Brazil’s government space research agency, INPE, detected 2,248 fires in the Amazon rainforest last month, a 20 per cent increase from the 1,880 fires in June 2019. It was the worst June for fires in more than a decade, according to government data.

Health experts also expressed concern that smoke from the fires could lead to respiratory problems in the population and complicate tackling Brazil's vast number of coronavirus cases. More than 60,000 people have died of Covid-19 in Brazil and 1.4million have been infected, the World Health Organisation reported.

Chief of indigenous Amazon tribe dies with coronavirus

Anna Jones, Greenpeace UK Head of Forests, said: “These fires are no accident. Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, has done nothing to discourage ranchers and land grabbers to stop deforesting the Amazon. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, deforestation has soared and now we are seeing fires deliberately lit to clear that land for industrial agriculture.

“This is just the beginning. Over the next few months, unless we see strong intervention, fires will be likely to increase and engulf vast areas of forest, endangering the lives of Indigenous Peoples, wildlife and worsening the climate crisis globally."

June 2020 averaged around 75 fires per day in the Amazon, compared with an average of nearly 1,000 blazes a day when fires peaked in August 2019.

“It’s a bad sign, but what really is going to count is what happens from now on,” Philip Fearnside, an ecologist at Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research, told Reuters.

Deforestation is up 34 per cent in the first five months of the year from a year ago, preliminary INPE data shows.

A fire burning in Porto Velho, Brazil, one of the world's oldest and most diverse tropical ecosystems and one of the most endangered on the planet (Michael Dantas/WWF/PA Wire)

Each year the Amazon absorbs around 2bn tonnes of carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels, playing a crucial role in mitigating the growing climate crisis. Carlos Nobre, a University of Sao Paulo climate scientist, told AP that the Amazon acts as a “sink” - draining heat-trapping CO2 from the atmosphere.

Some 40bn tonnes of CO2 are emitted globally each year. Fires in the Amazon pose a double threat: not only do they destroy the forests needed to absorb carbon but the blazes spew millions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Wildfires are sparked in the Amazon by land-grabbers who slash and burn through the forest to make way for cattle and crops. Mr Bolsonaro has been criticised for dismantling forest protections that had helped a record reduction in deforestation between 2004 and 2012. Deforestation in the Amazon has soared in recent years, reaching an 11-year high in 2019.

Watch more

Brazil becomes second country to pass 1 million Covid-19 cases

Mr Bolsonaro has called for more farming and mining in protected areas of the Amazon. He deployed the armed forces to protect the Amazon in May as he did in August last year. Despite that initiative, deforestation rose 12 per cent in May from a year earlier and increased in June.

“When the dry season arrives in the Amazon, these felled trees will become fuel for burning. This was the main ingredient of the 2019 fire season, a story that can repeat itself in 2020 if nothing is done to prevent it," said Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), a non-governmental organisation.

Communities in the Amazon are bracing for the smoke that blankets the region during the fire season, typically at a peak from August to November.

Guilherme Pivoto, an infectologist in Amazonas state, told Reuters that worsening air quality could impact coronavirus patients. The state, in the northern region of the Amazon rainforest, has been one of Brazil's hardest-hit by the pandemic.

“Those that contract Covid have a higher chance of an interaction between the pollution and Covid-19, causing drawn-out cases with more symptoms,” Mr Pivoto said.

The number of coronavirus cases in Brazil is second only to the US. However, health experts believe the actual number of cases in Brazil could be up to seven times higher than the official statistics. Johns Hopkins University said the country is performing an average of 14 tests per 100,000 people per day, as much as 20 times less than what is needed to track the virus.

Additional reporting by Reuters

Nelson Mandela Day: The books to read about the inspirational figure
'Education is the most powerful weapon', so learn about his life and legacy from these tomes

SAME DAY AS AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER AND CONGRESSMAN JOHN LEWIS PASSES ON

( The Independent )

Nelson Mandela is a Nobel Peace Prize winner and one of the great moral and political leaders of our time.

Dedicating his life to fighting against racial oppression in South Africa, and across our global community, Mandela’s courage and compassion continues to inspire those around the world today.

For this very reason, his legacy is marked annually on his birthday (18 July) – a day coined Mandela Day.

Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2009, it marks and celebrates Mandela's lifelong dedication and service as a humanitarian, across conflict resolution, race relations, human rights, and gender equality, as well as his attempts to uplift poor and underdeveloped communities.

Following his call to “make the world a better place”, Mandela Day encourages us to pay tribute, take action and inspire change. And is a crucial reminder of the importance of social equality and justice for all. Issues that are as pertinent today, as they were when he was fighting for change.

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His early career was spent working as a lawyer in Johannesburg, and in 1944 he became a member of the African National Congress (ANC) party, where he organised peaceful and non-violent protests to end the Apartheid – a political and social system of institutionalised racial segregation in South Africa, which lasted from 1948 to 1991.

The government pre-empted further action and arrested Mandela along with 155 other activists, and in 1962 he was imprisoned for 27 years for his resistance to the regime.

He spent 18 years incarcerated on Robben Island where the conditions were unimaginable. He was verbally and physically harassed by prison wardens, faced deep isolation, and rarely allowed visits from his family, including his wife. He was also forced to carry out heavy labour in the island's lime quarry, which caused irreparable damage to his sight from the blinding glare of the sun.

Despite this, he remained unbroken, viewing the ordeal he experienced as the making of him. Something he writes poignantly about in the books you're about to discover.

During his imprisonment, he became a mystery man, the missing leader that many members of the South African community desperately wanted. And when he finally walked free, three decades later, the people needed to hear his voice louder than ever.

After he was released, Mandela did not stop freedom fighting. He was the president of the ANC party, and led the nation out of the apartheid, changing the country to its very core and serving as South Africa’s first black president from 1994 to 1999.

He was the first president to take power following a fully representative democratic election, and over the course of his five-year tenure, he and his government worked to transform a nation segregated by centuries of colonialism into a democracy.

In retirement, he continued to dedicate his life to championing justice on a global scale; asking and inspiring younger generations to continue his work by making the world a better place for all.

Mandela once said: “Education is the most powerful weapon”, so to honour Mandela Day, we’ve compiled a round-up of books that will help you learn about his life, legacy, and continued dedication to humanity. In the face of adversity, his life really is an incredible tale.

From children's novels to autobiographies, devour these and prepare to be inspired

REVIEWS HERE https://www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/books/nelson-mandela-book-long-walk-to-freedom-childrens-autobiography-biography-a9622346.html

Taking off? Icelandair says pilots will take over cabin crew roles( Getty Images )

Union says the airline’s ‘position and attitude in the matter is a disgrace’

Simon Calder Travel Correspondent

From Monday, every crew member on every Icelandair flight will be a pilot.

The Icelandic national airline been negotiating with the Icelandic Cabin Crew Association (Flugfreyjufelag Islands/FFI) for months over new contracts in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

In June, the two sides signed a five-year agreement that, according to Icelandair, involved “increasing productivity and flexibility”.

The carrier has made similar deals with the pilots’ and engineers’ unions. But 10 days ago, cabin crew voted against the proposals by a majority of 73:27.

Icelandair now says negotiations have broken down: “It has now become evident that a mutually agreed conclusion will not be reached.”

As a result, it has decided to “permanently terminate the employment of its current cabin crew members and permanently discontinue the employment relationship between the parties”.

The airline says it has been “exploring other options regarding safety and service onboard its aircraft”.

From 20 July pilots who are currently not required for flying duties will be assigned “responsibility for safety on board”.

Passengers are warned: “Services will continue to be at a minimum, as it has since the impact of Covid-19 started.”

Icelandair is now seeking new cabin crew, and is reported to be in talks with staff who lost their jobs when Wow Air collapsed in 2018.

The cabin crew union said a strike would begin at once.

The FFI chairperson, Guolaug Liney Johannsdottir, said: “Icelandair's position and attitude in the matter is a disgrace and I have faith that the public does not take such contempt for employees silently and silently,”

“Icelandair’s position puts FFI in the precarious position of having to start preparations for immediate and extensive strike action.”

Other airlines, including easyJet, have from time to time employed pilots as cabin crew, particularly during economic downturns when flights have been cut back.

Icelandair is currently flying from its hub at Keflavik airport near Reykjavik to Amsterdam, Boston, Copenhagen, Frankfurt and Hamburg, but not to the UK.

'Let's go!': Trump snaps when pushed on false claim about Biden and police

Donald Trump testily lashed out at Chris Wallace after the Fox News Sunday host, during an interview to air this weekend, called out the president's false statement that Joe Biden wants to defund all police departments, our Washington bureau chief John T Bennett reports.

"Let's go!" the president said forcefully, appearing to look at off-camera staff and give an order for someone to retrieve a Democratic document he had just misquoted.

"Get me the charter, please," a clearly agitated Mr Trump said. At the end of the brief-but-testy exchange, Mr Wallace looks bemused as he simply says, "Alright..."

At issue in a 46-second clip posted online by Fox is a policy pact the former vice president and Senator Bernie Sanders, the progressive Vermont senator who was his final primary foe, released recently. Mr Trump falsely claims in the brief snippet of the interview that Mr Biden and Mr Sanders said in that document they want to "defund" and "abolish" police departments.



Trump snaps when pushed on false claim about Biden and police

Donald Trump reacted angrily after Fox News host Chris Wallace called him out on false claims that his presidential rival Joe Biden is calling to defund the police in a policy pact with Bernie Sanders, shouting off-screen, presumably to an aide: “Let’s go! Get me the charter, please.”
The interview, which will be broadcast in full on Sunday, came as Portland’s mayor demanded that the president remove militarised federal agents from the city after reports of officers snatching residents in unmarked cars. Mayor Ted Wheeler accused Mr Trump of using the military presence to bolster his sagging poll numbers.


The president was also accused of “furthering racial entrenchment” by the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, which denounced his “abhorrent” threat to repeal an Obama-era initiative requiring local governments to address historic patterns of racial segregation. “Your home will go down in value and crime rates will rapidly rise,” Mr Trump said, claiming communities would “go to hell”.

Trump accused of 'furthering racial entrenchment'

Donald Trump's pledge to roll back an Obama-era regulation designed to eliminate racial disparities in the suburbs has drawn criticism from fair housing advocates, who label it a blatant attempt to play racist politics and appeal to white voters in the final weeks before the election.

Mr Trump has repeatedly threatened to repeal a 2015 initiative that requires local governments to address historic patterns of racial segregation. On Thursday, he said the regulation "will totally destroy the beautiful suburbs" and demolish property values by forcing low-income housing construction in suburban areas.

"Your home will go down in value and crime rates will rapidly rise," he said. "People have worked all their lives to get into a community, and now they're going to watch it go to hell. Not going to happen, not while I'm here."

Housing advocates have suggested such rhetoric is both historically familiar and particularly incendiary as America grapples with a national reckoning over entrenched racial iniquities.

"He's flatly saying that property values will go down and crime will increase if black people move into your neighbourhoods," said Diane Yentel, president of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition. "It's especially abhorrent for Trump to be furthering racial entrenchment of segregated communities at this moment in our history."

AP

#WW3.0  UPDATED 
Idle Threat? Azerbaijan's Hint At Missile Strike On Armenian Nuclear Plant Increases Tensions

July 17, 2020 By Andy Heil
RFE/RL's Armenian Service

The Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant outside Yerevan (file photo)

Azerbaijan dramatically escalated tensions amid its border battle with Armenia this week with an implicit threat to bomb the region's only nuclear power plant and unleash "great catastrophe" on Armenians.

The July 16 warning drew outrage from Yerevan and deepened concerns that the worst violence in four years between Azerbaijan and Armenia, who are technically still in a war begun in the late 1980s, could quickly spiral out of control.

At least 16 Azerbaijanis and Armenians have died in the fighting near a northern section of their internationally recognized border that has included heavy artillery, tank, and drone attacks since it began on July 12.

Yerevan and Baku routinely threaten and accuse the other of provocations that have killed dozens of people in recent years, many of them civilians, with neither side willing to back down publicly for fear of being viewed as weak in the more than 30-year-long standoff.

'It Was Horrible': Villagers Caught Up In Armenian-Azerbaijani Border Clashes
VIDEO AT THE END.

The strategic or tactical aim of either side in contributing to this week's violence is unclear.

But the reframing of the current flareup to include a missile attack on a Soviet-built nuclear plant -- a move that could massively increase the death toll and set off a Chernobyl-like fallout in the region and beyond -- took many people by surprise.

"The Armenian side must not forget that our army's state-of-the-art missile systems allow us to strike the Metsamor nuclear plant with precision, which could lead to a great catastrophe for Armenia," Vagif Dargahli, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry spokesman, said on July 16, hours after hostilities had resumed following a one-day lull.

There was speculation that the Armenian side had first hinted it might somehow strike a civilian target – such as the Mingachevir Dam -- but there was no evidence of any official making such a threat, according to RFE/RL's Armenian Service.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry quickly condemned Dargahli’s remarks as a "manifestation of state terrorism” that "reflects Azerbaijan’s genocidal intentions."

Photo Gallery:
Lives Upended: The Deadly Armenian-Azerbaijani Cross-Border Conflict In Images

Armenians are particularly attuned to the import of references to genocide in light of the mass killing of around 1.5 million ethnic Armenians in the World War I-era by Ottoman Turks.

“With such statements, Azerbaijan’s leadership acts as a menace to all the peoples of the region, including its own people,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

There are some 3 million people living in Armenia.

The Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant lies just a few kilometers from cities with tens of thousands of people and 35 kilometers from the Armenian capital, Yerevan, and its 1 million inhabitants.

The plant supplies more than one-third of the country's energy needs.

Memories are fresh in the minds of Armenians and other former Soviet citizens of the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 in what is now Ukraine.

When the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse in the late 1980s, Armenia and Azerbaijan erupted in conflict over a heavily ethnically Armenian region of the Azerbaijani Soviet republic called Nagorno-Karabakh.

The full-scale fighting that began in 1992 is estimated to have killed around 30,000 people – many in brutal ethnic cleansing -- and uprooted hundreds of thousands more.

The most intense fighting ended with a cease-fire in 1994 that left ethnic Armenians in control of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions and failed to bring a permanent settlement.



For more than a decade, occasional skirmishes have broken out near the Line Of Contact marking de facto borders.

But this week's fighting is the biggest outbreak of violence since 2016 and, unusually, has been centered far from a disputed border. It has thus far been limited to a small region.

"The mention of possible strikes on Metsamor is indeed alarming," Laurence Broers, Caucasus program director at Chatham House in London, told RFE/RL. "However, given that any such outcome would be a catastrophe for the whole region and beyond, I'm not sure that this should be taken literally."

Broers added: "Rather, it may be a way to attract attention to what is seen widely as a weak point in Armenia’s political economy: a nuclear plant that is aging and by some assessments obsolete to the point of danger."

The United States, the European Union, and Russia have all urged restraint and "de-escalation" from Yerevan and Baku.

The South Caucasus region is strategic for its hydrocarbon deposits and key oil and gas pipelines between the former Soviet Union and Southeastern Europe.

"Bringing Metsamor into the mediascape around this week's clashes...is a surefire way to attract global attention to an obscure conflict that is too often dismissed as 'frozen.'"
-- Laurence Broers, Chatham House


Azerbaijan is especially rich in oil and gas reserves that provide vital hard currency to its authoritarian president, Ilham Aliyev, and his government.

"There is a case for decommissioning the station [at Metsamor], but Armenia needs it as the country does not have many other energy options," said Broers. "Bringing Metsamor into the mediascape around this week's clashes reminds the world of these issues and fits an Azerbaijani narrative that Armenia is a source of threat and instability to the South Caucasus. It is also a surefire way to attract global attention to an obscure conflict that is too often dismissed as 'frozen.'"

Aliyev publicly warned a week ago that he was tiring of the stalled international efforts to help bring a permanent peace to the region.

Four days into the current burst of violence, Aliyev replaced his longtime foreign minister, Elmar Mammadyarov, after saying the previous day that Mammadyarov had been "passive" in handling the crisis.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry said in its statement that Baku's Metsamor threat "indicates the level of desperation and the crisis of mind of the political-military leadership of Azerbaijan."

Yerevan called it "a flagrant violation of the International Humanitarian Law in general and the First Additional Protocol to Geneva Conventions in particular."

Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovannisian told journalists that "our officials, politicians, and diplomats are raising this issue with relevant [international] bodies."

Energy-rich Azerbaijan has been devoting huge amounts of its budget to its military in the past decade, far outspending its economically smaller neighbor.

Emil Sanamyan, a blogger and fellow at the University of Southern California's Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies, said Baku's threat involved its possession of a missile system it purchased from Israel.

"Just to be clear: With this statement issued yesterday, [the] Azerbaijani Defense Ministry is threatening to use the LORA surface-to-surface missile it bought from Israel…to attack Armenia's nuclear power plant to cause a leak of radiation."

Just to be clear: with this statement issued yesterday, Azerbaijani Defense Ministry is threatening to use the LORA surface-to-surface missile it bought from Israel @ILAerospaceIAI to attack Armenia's nuclear power plant to cause a leak of radiation - LORA is the only system in.. pic.twitter.com/mZPv6nsyg8— Emil Sanamyan (@emil_sanamyan) July 25, 2018


He added that use of the specter of such an attack was not new.

Sanamyan said Azerbaijan made a similar threat when it "acquired the LORA missile system from Israel" in 2018.

Senior military officials from NATO member and staunch Baku ally Turkey met with their Azerbaijani counterparts on July 16.

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar emerged vowing that Armenia would "definitely pay" for what it described as Armenian attacks on Azerbaijan.

“The pain of the Azerbaijani Turk is our pain," an Azerbaijani news site quoted Akar as saying.

The same day, Yerevan called Turkey "a security threat for Armenia and the region," adding that "broad regional and international cooperation is needed to counter it."

The OSCE Minsk Group -- co-chaired by the United States, Russia, and France but also including Turkey -- has existed since 1992 to encourage a framework for lasting peace and security between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

But it has not convened a summit bringing together the Armenian and Azerbaijani heads of state in three years.

A Russian deputy foreign minister, Andrei Rudenko, reportedly called on all mediating countries to adhere to "balance" with respect to the current crisis.


Andy Heil is a senior correspondent in RFE/RL's Central Newsroom in Prague.