Sunday, February 14, 2021

Dozens killed as Houthi rebels target last government stronghold in Yemen

Issued on: 14/02/2021 - 
  
Smoke billows during clashes between forces loyal to Yemen's Saudi-backed government and Houthi rebel fighters in al-Jadaan area 50 kilometres northwest of Marib in central Yemen on February 11, 2021. © AFP

Text by:NEWS WIRES

Dozens were killed in overnight clashes in Yemen as Iran-backed Houthi rebels intensified attacks to seize the government's last northern stronghold, officials said Sunday

Earlier this month, the Houthis resumed an offensive to seize oil-rich Marib, some 120 kilometres (75 miles) east of the capital Sanaa.

The city's loss would be disastrous for Yemen's beleaguered leadership.

Two government military officials said at least 16 pro-government forces were killed and 21 wounded in the past 24 hours, adding that "dozens were killed" among Houthi ranks.

The Houthis have cut off supply lines to a district about 50 kilometres south of the city, with "the goal to lay siege to Marib", one of the sources said.

Yemen has been embroiled in a bloody power struggle since 2014 between its government, supported by Saudi Arabia, and Houthi rebels, who control the capital Sanaa and most of the north.

The rebels have also escalated attacks against Saudi Arabia, drawing condemnation from the international community.

On Sunday, the kingdom intercepted two Houthi bomb-laden drones fired towards the southern garrison town of Khamis Mushait, the official Saudi Press Agency cited the Riyadh-led military coalition as saying.

But a Houthi military spokesman said two rebel drones struck the airport in the nearby city of Abha.

On Saturday, the kingdom said it had foiled another Houthi drone attack on Abha airport, just days after a rebel drone strike on the facility left a civilian plane ablaze.

The upsurge in violence comes shortly after the United States decided to remove the rebels from its list of terrorist groups in order to ensure humanitarian work in Yemen is unimpeded and to pave the way to restart peace talks.

Forces loyal to Yemen's Saudi-backed government clash 
with Huthi rebel fighters about 50 kilometres northwest 
of Marib this week - AFP

'Foreign enemy'


Observers say the Houthis are seeking to take control of Marib as leverage before entering into any negotiations with the internationally recognised government.

If the city falls into rebel hands, the Houthis will have full control of north Yemen, weakening the government's negotiating position, according to observers.

Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in Marib in recent years, and the Saudi-led coalition has intensified air strikes to stop the rebels from seizing the city.

Yemen's grinding conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced millions, according to international organisations, sparking what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Houthi spokesman Mohamed Abdelsalam tweeted on Saturday that the rebels were fighting "only those militarily involved with the foreign enemy", amid government calls for residents to defend the city.

"May the honourable people of Marib be reassured... and acknowledge that the aggressor coalition is fighting them, not for them," he said.

On Friday, UN agencies warned that about 400,000 Yemeni children aged under five are in danger of dying of acute malnutrition this year.

The UN agencies also warned that about 1.2 million pregnant or breastfeeding women are expected to suffer from extreme malnutrition in 2021.

(AFP)

Indian activist detained for farmer protest guide tweeted by Greta Thunberg

Issued on: 14/02/2021 

Since late November farmers have camped on roads leading into the capital calling for new agriculture laws to be repealed Narinder NANU AFP

New Delhi (AFP)

An Indian climate activist has been arrested after she allegedly helped create a guide to the anti-government farmer protests that was tweeted by environmentalist Greta Thunberg.

Social media platforms have become a major battleground in India with Delhi calling on Twitter to block hundreds of accounts that had commented on the recent farmers' rallies opposing new agriculture laws.

Disha Ravi, 22, was arrested on Saturday. Police alleged she edited an online "toolkit" containing information on the protests that was put out by Swedish activist Thunberg in early February on Twitter.

A police statement said Ravi, from southern Bangalore, was a "key conspirator in the document's formulation and dissemination".

The toolkit had basic information on the farmers' demonstrations, as well as how to join the rallies and support the movement online.


Delhi police said Ravi and her group had "shared" the toolkit with Thunberg.

Ravi was a founder of Fridays For Future India, part of an international protest network established by Thunberg to highlight climate change.


Jairam Ramesh, a former minister and lawmaker for the opposition Congress party, called her arrest and detention "completely atrocious" and "unwarranted harassment and intimidation".

A coalition of activist groups demanded Ravi's release and said it was "extremely worried for her safety and wellbeing".


Since late November farmers have camped on roads leading into the capital calling for new agriculture laws to be repealed, in one of the biggest challenges to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government since it came to power in 2014.

Delhi has reacted with fury to tweets about the protests by celebrities -- among them Rihanna and US Vice President Kamala Harris' niece Meena Harris -- calling them "sensationalist".

Following those posts, on February 5 police launched an investigation into those stirring "disaffection and ill will" against the government.

Delhi police said on Twitter that Ravi's group had collaborated with those wanting to create a separate country in the northern state of Punjab.

Many of the protesting farmers come from Punjab.

© 2021 AFP

Squeezed by sanctions, pandemic, Cuba finally opens up economy

Agence France-Presse
February 12, 2021

Private enterprise, including taxi services, boomed in Cuba boomed after the historic warming of ties with Cold War rival the United States in 2014 under then-president Barack Obama(AFP)


Cuba is undergoing a paradigm shift: after decades of tight, centralized control, the communist government is opening up the bulk of its economy to the private sector.

While economic decline and spiralling unemployment are the main drivers, analysts say the liberalization measures can also be seen as an overture to a new US president.

"It is definitely a strong signal at a crucial moment when the US administration has said it is revising the policies of (Donald) Trump towards Cuba," said Ricardo Torres, an economist at the University of Havana.

Six decades of US sanctions, toughened during Trump's term in office, have claimed a heavy toll on Cuba's economy, worsened by the coronavirus crisis and a steep drop in tourism, a critical sector.

Last month, Havana said Trump's sanctions cost the country some $20 billion, adding that "the damage to the bilateral relationship during this time has been considerable."

The Cuban economy shrank 11 percent in 2020, and exports declined by 40 percent
.

At the weekend, the government in Havana announced it would authorize private enterprise in a bid to boost its economy and create jobs, though limited to individual entrepreneurs for now, not businesses.

The number of authorized private activities would grow from 127 to over 2,000, but excludes 124 sectors including the press, health and education, which remain in government hands.

The reform represents a major ideological shift in a country where the government and its affiliate companies have monopolized most of the economy since 1961.

- 'Long overdue' -


Cuba began timidly opening up to private capital in the 1990s before fuller authorization in 2010, followed by a boom after the historic warming of ties with Cold War rival the United States in 2014 under then-president Barack Obama.

Today, about 600,000 Cubans -- some 13 percent of the workforce -- are employed in the private sector.

Most work in hotels, restaurants, transportation and tourist accommodation.


Millions of people work for the government, but the exact number is not known.

Trump reversed many of Obama's moves to ease tensions with Cuba.

He banned American cruise ships stopping over on the island, blacklisted a range of Cuban companies and bosses, prosecuted foreign companies doing business there, and made it difficult for Cubans working abroad to send money home.

The new US President, Joe Biden, has promised to bring back some of Obama's policies to normalize ties, while also paying attention to human rights concerns in the country of some 11.2 million people.

Some in the United States have welcomed Cuba's policy shift, which will for the first time see private salary earners in sectors such as agriculture, construction and IT.

"This is long overdue, it's welcome news. And the United States should affirm that the embargo was never intended, and will not be used, to penalize private enterprise in #Cuba," US Senator Patrick Leahy said on Twitter.

Former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes tweeted the announcement was "a big step forward for Cubans and a welcome signal. The Biden Administration can make this more beneficial for the Cuban people by resuming the opening to Cuba as soon as possible."
Skepticism

For many of Cuba's leaders, the change may be difficult to swallow.

"There is still a lot of skepticism regarding the word 'private'," which many see "as people who can conspire against power," said Cuban economist Omar Everleny Perez.

But politicians appear to have read the writing on the wall just like in Vietnam in the 1980s, where the Communist Party managed to stay in power by heavily liberalizing the economy.

"We are still a little far from that, but (the Cuban leaders) have it in mind," said Perez of the Vietnam example.

The southeast Asian country, too, was under US sanctions, lifted in 1994 after rapprochement with Washington.

"So from a geopolitical point of view, there is a lesson that is important to recognize," said Perez.

For his part, Torres said Vietnam's economy was smaller and the country more rural, making change easier.

But there is a lesson to be learnt from the fellow Communist country's experience: "if you want to create jobs, you have no choice but to create a framework for the private sector to grow".

John Kavulich, president of the US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, said the Cuban government must now convince the Biden administration that it is serious about restructuring the economy.

"If the Biden administration believes the (President Miguel) Diaz-Canel administration is prepared to do what is difficult, maintain the processes despite challenges, then far easier for Washington to create opportunities for engagement," he said.
THE BAMBOO WALL
Concern over proposed Hong Kong law that could bar anyone from leaving

Agence France-Presse

February 12, 2021

Hong Kong (AFP)

A Hong Kong government proposal that could give "apparently unfettered power" to the immigration director to stop anyone from leaving the city is deeply concerning, barristers said Friday.
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Hong Kong's influential Bar Association (HKBA) submitted a paper to the city's legislative council expressing alarm over the law, which could bar any individual -- Hong Kong resident or not -- from boarding a carrier out of the financial hub.

Since the imposition of a new national security law last June, an increasing number of democracy activists and politicians have fled the financial hub and gone into exile, as China tightens its grip on the semi-autonomous city.
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The political situation has also prompted an exodus of Hong Kongers in general, many of whom are taking up immigration plans offered by places including the UK, Canada and nearby Taiwan.

In late January, the city's government proposed amending an existing law to empower the director of immigration to bar an individual from leaving without first going through a court.

"It is particularly troubling that the grounds on which such an intrusive power may be exercised are not stated in the proposed legislation, and no explanation for why such a power is necessary, or even how it is intended to be used, is set out", HKBA said in the submission on Friday.

"If a new power to prevent Hong Kong residents and others from leaving the region is to be conferred... It should be for the courts, not the director, to decide when it is necessary and proportionate to impose a travel ban", it added.

It also pointed out that there are existing powers to prevent a person from leaving Hong Kong, including the newly implemented security law which can demand the surrender of travel documents in certain circumstances.

The need for further legislation is "difficult to understand", it concluded.

Since Beijing's imposition of the national security law to snuff out huge and often violent democracy protests, nearly 100 people, including democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai and prominent activist Joshua Wong have been arrested.
Bangladesh to move more Rohingya Muslims to remote island, despite outcry

By Ruma Paul

© Reuters/MOHAMMAD PONIR HOSSAIN FILE PHOTO:
 Bangladesh Navy personnel help a disabled Rohingya refugee child to get off from a navy vessel as they arrive at the Bhasan Char island in Noakhali district

DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh is moving 3,000-4,000 more Rohingya Muslim refugees to a remote Bay of Bengal island over the next two days, two officials said on Sunday, despite concerns about the risk of storms and floods lashing the site.

Dhaka has relocated around 7,000 to Bhasan Char island since early December from border camps in neighbouring Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where more than a million refugees live in ramshackle huts perched on razed hillsides.

The Rohingya refugees will be moved to Bhasan Char by ships on Monday and Tuesday, Navy Commodore Rashed Sattar said from the island.

Bangladesh says the relocation is voluntary, but some of a first group to be moved spoke of being coerced.

The government has dismissed safety concerns over the island, citing the building of flood defences as well as housing for 100,000 people, hospitals and cyclone centres.

Gallery: Photo of the Day (AFP)


It also says overcrowding in refugee camps fuels crime.

Once they arrive on Bhasan Char, the Rohingya, a minority group who fled violence, are not allowed to leave the island, which is several hours' journey from the southern port of Chittagong.

Bangladesh has drawn criticism for a reluctance to consult with the United Nations refugee agency and other aid bodies over the transfers.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says the agency has not been allowed to evaluate the safety and sustainability of life on the island.

"The process of moving the Rohingya will continue... they are going there happily for better life," Mohammad Shamsud Douza, the deputy Bangladesh government official in charge of refugees, said by phone from Cox's Bazar in southeastern Bangladesh.

"Our main priority is repatriating them to their homeland in a dignified and sustainable way," he said.

Bangladesh has called on Myanmar to move forward the stalled process of voluntary repatriation of Rohingya refugees, as international pressure mounts on the military leaders following a coup, which reduces the refugees' hopes of returning home.

"I don't see any future for us," said 42-year-old refugee, who chose to move the island. "The little hope we had of going back to our homeland was broken after the coup."

(Reporting by Ruma Paul; editing by Barbara Lewis)
PROFIT KILLS
1 in 5 premature deaths globally in 2018 caused by fossil fuel pollution: study














By Matthew Green 
 Reuters
Posted February 13, 2021

VIDEO Global National: Report: 8M deaths annually linked to fossil fuel emissions


Pollution from fossil fuels causes one in five premature deaths globally, suggesting the health impacts of burning coal, oil and natural gas may be far higher than previously thought, according to a study published on Tuesday.

Parts of China, India, Europe and the northeastern United States are among the hardest-hit areas, suffering a disproportionately high share of 8.7 million annual deaths attributed to fossil fuels, the study published in the journal Environmental Research found.


READ MORE: UN-backed report suggests fossil fuel production must drop 6% a year to meet climate goals

The new research gives the most detailed assessment of premature deaths due to fossil-fuel air pollution to date. Another study in 2017 had put the annual number of deaths from all outdoor airborne particulate matter — including dust and smoke from agricultural burns and wildfires — at 4.2 million.

“Our study certainly isn’t in isolation in finding a large impact on health due to exposure to air pollution, but we were blown away by just how large the estimate was that we obtained,” said Eloise Marais, an expert in atmospheric chemistry at University College London, and a co-author of the study.


Previous research based on satellite data and ground observations had struggled to distinguish pollution caused by burning fossil fuels from other sources of harmful particulates, such as wildfires or dust.

The team from three British universities and Harvard University sought to overcome this problem by using a high-resolution model to give a clearer indication of which kinds of pollutants people were breathing in a particular area.

READ MORE: Canadian banks financing fossil fuel industry at larger rate than other nations, studies show


With concern growing over the role that burning fossil fuels plays in causing climate change, the authors said they hoped the study, based on data from 2018, would provide further impetus for governments to accelerate a shift to cleaner energy.

“We hope that by quantifying the health consequences of fossil fuel combustion, we can send a clear message to policymakers and stakeholders of the benefits of a transition to alternative energy sources,” said co-author Joel Schwartz, an environmental epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Black History Month: The untold story of ‘Auntie’ Annie Saunders in southern Alberta

By Emily Olsen Global News
Posted February 1, 2021

VIDEO 
Black History Month: The untold story of ‘Auntie’ Annie Saunders in southern Alberta | Globalnews.ca
This Black History Month feature showcases the story of Black pioneer “Auntie” Annie Saunders who wore many hats at the time of Fort Macleod's creation and helped shape the Lethbridge region as we know it today. As Emily Olsen reports, Saunders’ story is one of many that are slowly being uncovered after years of erasure – Feb 1, 2021


The story of “Auntie” Annie Saunders is one of true grit and independence in the history of southern Alberta.

Saunders’ life prior to moving to Alberta is still largely a mystery, but Belinda Crowson — president of the Lethbridge Historical Society — says it’s the journey she took alone as a Black woman into the Canadian West that indicates her independent spirit and determination to create a better life.

READ MORE: Calgary filmmaker explores what could be Alberta’s first civil rights case

“She called herself ‘Auntie’ and that’s what she always told people is, ‘Call me Auntie,’ so she’s often referred to as ‘Auntie Saunders’ or ‘Annie Saunders,'” Crowson said.

“She was an American, born in the States, and she met Mary Macleod — Colonel Macleod’s wife — on a Missouri riverboat as Mary Macleod was heading west.”

In 1877, Saunders decided to join Mary Macleod and arrived in Fort Macleod to begin work as a nanny or nurse to the Macleod children.

Crowson says this is how she was most often documented, but recent research — through letters and correspondence — suggests that Saunders was a pioneer in her own right, running multiple businesses in Fort Macleod and later in Pincher Creek.


READ MORE: John Ware legacy carries on as Calgary celebrates Black History Month

“She’s associated with a boarding house and being a laundress and running a restaurant,” Crowson said.
“And [with] the boarding house in Pincher Creek, one of the [interesting] things is that when kids from surrounding ranches had to come into Pincher Creek for school, hers was the boarding house many of them stayed at. So she took care of the kids from the neighbourhood as well.”

Crowson says letters from Colonel Macleod show the high regard she was held in with their family and with the community as a result.

With such an essential role in her community, the lack of publicly recorded information about Saunders and her entrepreneurial spirit shows a small snapshot of the pushback she faced as a woman of colour in the late 1800s.

“When you look at a lot of the early records, she is just mentioned as the nurse of the Macleod family. It took a long time and a lot of research for her to get an identity and to get a name attached to her,” Crowson said.

“She certainly reflects an attempt to push aside part of history.”

READ MORE: New documentary showcases Black history in the Prairies

Saunders died in July 1898 at the age of 62 and was buried in Pincher Creek.

Her buried legacy is finally being uncovered.

“We’re encouraged that her story has been found and that researchers have found hers,” Crowson said. “But who else is still out there to be found?”
YOU HAVE A TEACHING TOOL IN YOUR WALLET

BLACK HISTORY MONTH
Viola Desmond on the $10 note is a history lesson — but not everyone is learning

Kathy Hogarth remembers the day her then-10-year-old came home from school talking about Viola Desmond.
© Darren Calabrese/CP Wanda Robson, sister of Viola Desmond, holds the new $10 bank note featuring Desmond during a press conference in Halifax on Thursday, March 8, 2018.

"That, for me, represents the significance of highlighting Black figures," says Hogarth, a professor at the University of Waterloo's School of Social Work.

The year was 2018 and Desmond, the Black Nova Scotian who fought racial segregation in her province, had just become the new face of Canada's $10 bill.

READ MORE: Forgotten story of Toronto neighbourhood illustrates lack of Black history education

Hogarth's daughter relished seeing a Black woman on a banknote. Whenever Hogarth spent a $10 bill, her little girl would ask whether she had another one to hold on to.


Nova Scotia reimburses court fees, fine paid by civil rights icon Viola Desmond



Celebrating Black icons on a nation's currency "is a beautiful use of money," Hogarth says. "It goes far and wide, it touches every corner of our society."

For Nova Scotia Sen. Wanda Thomas Bernard, the $10 bill is an opportunity to talk about Desmond's legacy, which goes beyond refusing to leave her seat in the "whites only" section of New Glasgow's Roseland Theatre in 1946.

Video: $10 bill featuring Canadian civil rights icon Viola Desmond unveiled

Desmond's fight for social justice started long before then, Thomas Bernard says. When she found she couldn't train as a beautician in Nova Scotia, she went to Montreal and then continued her schooling in Atlantic City and New York. When she couldn't find beauty products to service her clients of African descent, she made her own.

Seeing her on the $10 bill is a reminder that many African Nova Scotian families trace their histories back to the 18th century, Bernard says.

"It represents the significance of our very early presence here, and it recognizes the contributions that people of African descent have made to the country, to the province and to the world," she says.

Bernard hopes Canada will use its currency again to highlight parts of its Black and Indigenous history.

When asked about who she'd like to see on a banknote or coin, the first name that comes to mind, says Thomas Bernard, is Rita Joe, the Mi’kmaq poet.

"That we don't have anyone from the Indigenous communities on a banknote to me signals the fact that that needs to change," Thomas Bernard says.

Joe isn't among the eight iconic Canadians that have so far been shortlisted for the next $5 banknote. But the group does include Inuit artist Pitseolak Ashoona; Indigenous rights advocate and war hero Binaaswi (Francis Pegahmagabow); Siksika chief and diplomat Isapo-muxika, also known as Crowfoot; and Mohawk chief, war veteran and activist Onondeyoh (Frederick Ogilvie Loft).

The selection process followed a script similar to the one the Bank of Canada used for the $10 note, with a call for public input that resulted in submissions from nearly 45,000 people and more than 600 eligible nominees, the Bank told Global News. An independent Advisory Council then narrowed that list to eight candidates. It will be up to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland to make a final decision, which is expected to come in early 2021. The new $5 note, however, won't be in circulation for another few years, the Bank of Canada said.

The Bank said it cannot yet speak to what will appear on future notes

Viola Desmond tribute among murals being added to Mulgrave Park in Halifax


There are many names that immediately come to mind as possible candidates for the next Black Canadian to appear on the country's currency, Thomas Bernard says. Her list includes Rosemary Brown, the B.C. politician who became the first Black female member of a provincial legislature. Brown also became the first woman to attempt to reach the helm of a federal party when she ran for the leadership of the NDP in 1975 with the slogan "Brown is Beautiful."

But, Thomas Bernard notes, "this country wasn't quite ready for a Black woman leader of a major political party."

Rev. Donald E. Fairfax, a long-time Nova Scotian pastor of two congregations and recipient of the Order of Canada, would also be an inspirational choice for a banknote or coin, Thomas Bernard says.

READ MORE: Saskatchewan’s Mattie Mayes leaves impact decades after her life

"Through his ministry, he was on the front lines for fighting for social justice," Thomas Bernard says. But not many Canadians know about his advocacy, because it happened behind the scenes, she says.

"He's a person that I would like to see elevated more."

Hogarth's list of possible candidates for the next note or coin includes Lincoln Alexander, the first Black Canadian Member of Parliament, cabinet minister and lieutenant-governor of Ontario; Elijah McCoy, a mechanical engineer and inventor; and Josiah Henson, who fled slavery to Canada in 1830 and founded the Dawn Settlement.

Henson was "integrally involved in the slave movement, (something) that we have divorced ourselves from as a nation ... without an acknowledgment of about 200 years of active slave engagement," Hogarth says.


‘The Queen is in good company’: Viola Desmond’s sister expresses gratitude for new $10 bill


The Royal Canadian Mint has no plans to re-design our current Canadian circulation coins, but has featured Black Canadians on its collector coins, including Desmond in 2019 and Willie O’Ree in 2020. Both were issued in conjunction with the start of Black History Month. For 2021, the Mint's third coin commemorating Black history in Canada commemorates the Black Loyalists.

But collectibles don't hold the potential for learning opportunities that currency — coins and banknotes in everybody's hands — has, Hogarth says.

"Probably the Bank of Canada doesn't necessarily see itself in a teaching role through currency," Hogarth says. "But inadvertently, they are."

But Canada is still failing to teach parts of its history, both Hogarth and Thomas Bernard say.

"We still talk about Black History Month, divorced from Canadian history," Hogarth says. "Black history is Canadian history."

And when Thomas Bernard showed a photo of Desmond's sister Wanda Robson holding the new $10 bill during a presentation for a Grade 3 class in Ajax, Ont. in February of last year, she says only one child knew who the woman on the note was: her grandson.

"We're missing the point if we're not teaching about this woman on the $10 bill," she says.
WHITE CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS
Hungary's Viktor Orban and Poland's Jaroslaw Kaczynski defy the EU even as their countries profit from it

© Czarek Sokolowski/The Associated Press, John Thys/Reuters Jaroslaw Kaczynski, left, the leader of Poland's ruling Law and Justice party, and Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orbán, right, are both staunch nationalists who have resisted the federalist vision of the…

Dozens of newspapers, TV stations and websites blank or black: this was what the national strike of private media in Poland protesting a sudden and crippling government tax on advertising looked like on Feb. 10.

In Hungary the same week, an opposition radio station was ordered by a court to turn off its microphones this coming Monday.

This is the politics of the slow squeeze in Central Europe. It's a strategy designed by two men, the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, and the vice-premier and de facto leader of Poland, Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Their countries, both former members of the Soviet bloc, belong to the European Union, and profit from it, but their ideas on democracy and the rule of law, principles their countries agreed to uphold when joining in 2004, are far from those endorsed by EU leaders in Brussels.
'A 21st-century Christian democracy'

For Hungary's Orban, democracy of the liberal kind is a dirty word. He has, instead, vowed to build an "illiberal state."

"We have replaced a shipwrecked liberal democracy with a 21st-century Christian democracy, which guarantees people's freedom and security," Orban proclaimed to the Hungarian parliament in May 2018.

A year later, he told a summit of students and policy makers that "the essence of illiberal democracy is Christian liberty and the protection of Christian liberty."

"Our task will be to turn against liberal internationalism," he said.
© John Thys/AFP via Getty Images Orbán speaks to the media as he arrives at EU headquarters in Brussels on Dec. 10, 2020. Earlier this month, a Hungarian court ordered the closure of one of Klubrádió, one of the last remaining independent radio stations in the country.

Kaczynski is a devout Catholic but above all a devout Pole.

Late last year, the biggest chain of regional dailies and weeklies in Poland, with a reach of 17 million readers, was bought from a German publishing house by state-controlled petrochemical company PKN Orlen. On Feb. 4, Kaczynski explained that for two decades, the German-owned, or "non-Polish" as he prefers to put it, papers had been "demoralizing" Polish young people.

His government's goal was "re-polonization," and this was a shining example. Others see the deal as a Putin-style approach.

"The consolidation of the state, the oil sector and the media is a well-known manoeuvre in the Russian scenario," Peter Wolodarski, editor-in-chief of the major Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter and of Polish origin himself, wrote in his paper late last year.

"This should be an alarm signal for the world."

© Kacper Pempel/Reuters 'Media without choice' read the headlines on the front pages of Poland's main private newspapers, part of a protest against a proposed media advertising tax that journalists say is politically motivated to consolidate government control over media.

The politics of resentment


Kaczynski, 72, and Orbán, 57, are believers in nationalism and the politics of resentment.

Kaczynski's view is that, in the years after communism crumbled more than 30 years ago, Poland's liberal democratic leaders betrayed the country's Christian principles.

He went on record in 2005 with this apocalyptic prediction: "the affirmation of homosexuality will lead to the downfall of civilization."

When it won elections that year, his Law and Justice party promised a "moral revolution" to root out corruption and a so-called fourth republic, in league with the Catholic Church.
© Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images Kaczynski, seen in the lower house of parliament in Warsaw last May, is a devout Catholic and has promoted the idea of a 'moral revolution' in Poland.

Orban, his country's longest-serving prime minister, posted on Facebook last year a map of a pre-WWI "Greater Hungary." The country was on the losing side of the First World War and stripped of about 70 per cent of its territory. Predictably, the post infuriated neighbouring countries.

Orban's vision is of a Christian Hungary with no Muslim refugees, or "invaders" as he called them in a 2018 interview.

Both Orban and Kaczynski are nationalists who refuse the dreams of a more federal, multicultural Europe and brook little or no criticism of their vision.

Media feel the squeeze


And so, the strike and the radio station.

The sudden tax on advertising threatens the existence of independent Polish media outlets, their editors said.

"This is simply extortion," they wrote in an open letter to the government on Feb. 10.

The Polish prime minister defended the tax as "a fair step," saying the money raised would go toward fighting COVID-19 and would level the playing field between domestic and foreign players and small and big companies.

The editors said that Polish state media, filled with ruling-party loyalists, receive huge subsidies and would likely get more to offset the tax. The independent sector would receive none, they said.

The closure in Hungary of Klubradio is a slight departure from Orban's previous strategy, which involved government allies buying up critical media. In 2019, Reporters Without Borders said the degree of media control under the Orban government was "unprecedented" among EU member states.

© Bernadett Szabo/Reuters An employee of Klubradio works at the station's headquarters in Budapest. The station's licence will expire Sunday after Hungary's broadcast regulator refused to renew it, a move that Orban critics say was intended to silence opposition to his government.

In the spring of 2020, a pro-Orban businessman took a 50 per cent stake in the firm that controls the advertising and revenue of Index, Hungary's biggest news site. The editor-in-chief was soon under fire. Then he was gone. Seventy journalists resigned in protest. And Index is now a tame animal.

Klubradio's licence, which expires Feb. 14, was not renewed last September by the government broadcasting authority for violating broadcasting rules on "six occasions in the last seven years," according to the secretary of state for international communication and relations.

The station argued its infractions were minor and similar to those of other broadcasters that had not had their licences revoked.

The government has called allegations that the closure is part of a government crackdown on press freedom "a fiction" and part of the anti-Orbán agenda of the mainstream liberal media.

State TV decries 'leftist fascism'


In Poland, when the Law and Justice party took power in 2015, its first priority was to fill the top positions in state-financed TV and radio with loyalists.

The result was on display when tens of thousands of women demonstrated in October 2020 against a court ruling that struck down one of the few remaining exceptions to the near-total restriction on abortions.

The state TV channel TVP displayed a banner saying, "Leftist fascism is destroying Poland" on several occasions during its coverage of the demonstrations and opposition parties' protests against the abortion law in parliament.

This bitterly contested ruling was the result of the alliance between the government of the majority Catholic country and the Catholic Church. But first, it required compliant judges.

So, soon after coming to power, the government brought in rules lowering the retirement age for judges, then replacing the departing ones with loyalists on the Constitutional Tribunal. They, in turn, handed down the abortion ruling.
© Omar Marques/Getty Images A large crowd in Warsaw protests a ruling by Poland's Constitutional Tribunal that struck down one of the few remaining exceptions to abortion restrictions Oct. 30, 2020.

Kaczynski's government, which denies trying to influence the court, proceeds carefully. After the massive demonstrations, it postponed bringing the abortion law into effect. Then, three months later, in the middle of a cold winter, it activated the ruling.

There were more nights of demonstrations by thousands of women, but there was a sense of frustration.

"This pause between the verdict and its coming into effect is typical of how they proceed," one demonstrator named Ania told French daily Le Figaro. "They go slowly, and people get tired."

It was another example of the slow squeeze.

EU intervention comes too late


Orban changed the retirement rules for judges as well, then also packed the courts with loyalists.

He then squeezed Central European University in Budapest, funded by Hungarian-American Jewish financier George Soros, a frequent target of Orban's and the subject of various conspiracy theories and rhetoric widely decried as anti-Semitic.

The university was forced to move to Vienna after the courts said the university was illegal because it was incorporated in the U.S

The EU has tried to fight back, launching cases in the European Court of Justice and winning them. Hungary's actions against Soros's university were ruled illegal under EU law as was its forced early retirement of judges. Poland's new retirement rules for judges were also deemed unconstitutional.

But the cases took several years. New judges were already in place in Poland and Hungary. The university had moved.

© Bernadett Szabo/Reuters People attend a rally in support of Central European University in Budapest in November 2018. The school was deemed illegal because it was incorporated in the U.S., a ruling that the European Court of Justice later found violated EU law.

There are, however, worrying signs for both leaders. In Hungary, six opposition parties have united and polls show their coalition neck and neck with Orban's party, Fidesz.

"Fidesz is gradually dropping, and this is mostly due to the virus's economic impact and the perception that the government isn't handling the crisis as well it should," Tibor Zavecz, head of Zavecz Research, told BNN Bloomberg in December.

In Poland, support for the Law and Justice party has dropped from 47 per cent in May 2020 to 36 per cent in February, according to Politico's poll of polls. Here, too, the pandemic has hurt.

But Orban doesn't face an election until 2022 and Kaczynski not until 2023.

Until then, the work of the "moral revolution" in Poland and of "illiberal democracy" in Hungary will go on.

In a Weird Twist, Scientists Discover Venus Flytraps Generate Little Magnetic Fields

The Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) is already a fascinating enough plant, but scientists have discovered something else amazing about it: It generates measurable magnetic fields as its leaves snap shut 

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© Marco Klug/500px Prime/Getty Images

And going way beyond D. muscipula, the latest research could teach us a lot about how plant life uses magnetic field signalling to communicate and as an indicator of disease (something we also see in human beings and other animals).

It's well known that plants use electrical signals as a sort of nervous system, but capturing biomagnetism has been tricky.

A 2011 study attempted to detect a magnetic field around a Titan arum (Amorphophallus titanium) – that large, very smelly plant – using atomic magnetometers that are able to detect the smallest of fluctuations.

That study revealed that the plant generated no magnetic field greater than a millionth of the strength of the magnetic field surrounding us on Earth, resulting in the experiment being considered a failure.

The researchers involved in the 2011 study said their next steps, if they were to take any, would be to focus on a smaller plant.

For the new study, a different group of researchers did indeed go smaller.

"We have been able to demonstrate that action potentials in a multicellular plant system produce measurable magnetic fields, something that had never been confirmed before," says physicist Anne Fabricant, from the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (JGU) in Germany.


Putting Venus flytraps under observation. (Anne Fabricant)

These "action potentials" are quick bursts of electrical activity, and the Venus flytrap can have multiple triggers: If the plant is touched, injured, affected by heat or cold, or loaded with liquid, then action potentials can be set off.

Here the researchers used heat stimulation to activate the electrical activity, and a glass cell magnetometer to measure magnetic disturbances. This approach not only kept background noise down to a minimum but had advantages over other techniques in that it could be miniaturised and didn't require cryogenic cooling.

The magnetic signals measured went up to an amplitude of 0.5 picotesla, comparable to nerve impulses firing in humans and millions of times weaker than the Earth's magnetic field – a small ripple, but a detectable one.

"You could say the investigation is a little like performing an MRI scan in humans," says Fabricant. "The problem is that the magnetic signals in plants are very weak, which explains why it was extremely difficult to measure them with the help of older technologies."

Besides MRI scans, other techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) are used to measure magnetic fields in humans, potentially identifying problems without any invasive procedures.

With the help of this current research, the same sort of scanning might now be possible with plants too: crops could be scanned for temperature shifts, chemical changes or pests without having to damage the plants themselves, for example.

And we can add the findings to our growing knowledge about how plants send signals both internally and externally, communicating via a hidden network that scientists are only just beginning to properly explore.

"Beyond proof of principle, our findings pave the way to understanding the molecular basis of biomagnetism in living plants," write the researchers in their published paper.

"In the future, magnetometry may be used to study long-distance electrical signaling in a variety of plant species, and to develop noninvasive diagnostics of plant stress and disease."

The research has been published in Scientific Reports.