UPDATED 
South Korea 'comfort women' activist group battles to survive amid scandal

The South Korean organization that first raised the issue of "comfort women" is defending its activities as counter-protests grow.

ByElizabeth Shim

Activists protest local newspapers that have published stories about Yoon Mi-hyang of the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Wednesday. Photo by Elizabeth Shim/UPI

SEOUL, May 27 (UPI) -- An influential South Korean organization that has claimed for decades it represents the interests of "comfort women" forced to work in Japanese wartime brothels may be fighting for its life, in the wake of fund misappropriation allegations against the group's founder, Yoon Mi-hyang.

The Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery suggested at its weekly rally on Wednesday that the organization has been hit hard, following accusations from former comfort woman Lee Yong-soo that the victims were used as a front for Yoon's donation drives.

The group did not clarify whether the setbacks were financial, but did say activities among affiliated groups had "diminished" in the wake of the charges.

Lee Na-young, the newly elected president of the council, said the organization is "looking back and re-examining" the group's mistakes, including "being unable to resolve the pain of the victims and the prolonging of the problem for 30 or so years."
RELATED Exchange with North Korea must resume, South's politicians say

Lee did not directly address the accusations against Yoon, which include purchasing personal real estate and paying for tuition at an expensive U.S. school -- using money intended for the victims. The organization is believed to have collected at least millions of dollars.

Lee said the scandal fundamentally undermines the meaning and value of the comfort women movement, namely compelling the Japanese government to apologize for Japan's history of sexual violence.

Accusations directed at the council "reverse the progress of the last 30 years," Lee claimed.

RELATED Ex-comfort woman decries 'betrayal' in South Korea activist scandal

The new head of the council also took a moment to defend Yoon, calling her an activist who "devoted her entire life to solve the issue of Japanese wartime sex slavery."Accountability issues

One of the ways the council grew its presence was to bring former victims of wartime rape stations to the rallies. Many former comfort women took part in the rallies over the years, including Lee Yong-soo. On Wednesday, none of the elderly women came out to support Yoon.

Lauren Richardson, director of studies and lecturer at the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at the Australian National University, told UPI in an email the council and the victims have a long history of tensions, and that their interests have not always aligned.

RELATED South Korea legal group denies urging repatriation of defectors

"This is because the council was never led by victims, but activists," Richardson said. "Therefore there have always been accountability issues with its representation of the victims."

The analyst said the council did help bring the women public and official recognition, but the group may have sought Japanese state-level compensation even when some of the victims "were prepared to settle for less."

Misappropriation of funds by the council was also suspected decades ago, when Japanese professors involved in implementing the 1995 Asian Women's Fund in South Korea complained the money was not reaching the victims, according to Richardson.

Clusters of counter-protesters surrounded the council's rally on Wednesday. The different groups appeared to agree on Yoon's culpability, but varied slightly on the issue of relations with Japan.

Right wing South Korean groups The Wind of Freedom, Freedom Korea National Defense Corps and Turn Right, said Wednesday Yoon did not even provide meals for the elderly victims as she "dragged them from rally to rally," even though the "grandmothers complained they were hungry."

"If you have a conscience, if you have been using the grandmothers to forward your own agenda, the least you can do is give them something to eat," they said.

The conservative coalition of groups did not suggest the search for a just solution to past sufferings should be suspended because of the accusations against Yoon, even as the council said the demise of the group would lead to an end to the comfort women movement. They focused instead on the charge that Yoon "emptied the pockets of citizens in order to enrich herself, for her glory and honor."

"She fooled us for 30 years, while emptying out the piggy banks of small children. Yoon swindled the grandmothers."


Ex-comfort woman decries 'betrayal' in South Korea activist scandal
By Elizabeth Shim


Former South Korean comfort woman Lee Yong-soo has spoken out against Yoon Mi-hyang, head of the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance. File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo

May 25 (UPI) -- The former South Korean comfort woman who accused an activist of misappropriating funds said Monday she had been "betrayed overnight" after being "used" by lawmaker-elect Yoon Mi-hyang for three decades.

Lee Yong-soo, 91, said Monday at a press conference in the South Korean city of Daegu her relationship with Yoon began in June 1992, Yonhap reported.

Yoon had requested former comfort women who had come forward at the time to gather at a church, where, according to Lee, Yoon distributed about $1,000 in cash to each woman.

According to Lee, Yoon claimed the money was from a retired teacher in Japan. Lee also said she had no idea how Yoon handled cash as Yoon grew her organization, presently known as the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery.

RELATED Accusations against South Korea comfort women activist center on real estate deals

Referring to allegations Yoon used comfort women funds collected from the public -- including South Korean and Japanese students -- to enrich herself, Lee said she had been "living in the dark."

"Had I known the Japanese had paid 1 billion yen, I would have sent it back," Lee told reporters, referring to the 2015 formal agreement between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and former South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Yoon may have been apprised of the fund while leaving the surviving victims in the dark.

The money was returned following protests from some of the victims.

On Monday, Lee also said Yoon had "committed a crime," and should be justly punished.

Lauren Richardson, director of studies and lecturer at the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at the Australian National University, told UPI on Monday the Korean Council played a definitive role in the failure of the 2015 accord, which "did not meet its demands."

"It's important to note that some of the former 'comfort women' are in agreement with the Council's demands, but some are not," Richardson said.

The Council rejected offers from Japan on behalf of victims, even when some of the victims were "prepared to settle for less."

Misappropriation of funds by the Council was also suspected decades ago, when some of the Japanese professors involved in implementing the 1995 Asian Women's Fund in South Korea complained the money was not reaching the victims, according to Richardson.

Accusations against South Korea comfort women activist center on real estate deals
By Elizabeth Shim


A South Korean activist at the forefront of comfort women's issues is under growing scrutiny. File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo

May 18 (UPI) -- A prominent South Korean activist who advocates for former comfort women is refusing to resign as allegations grow over misappropriated funds intended for victims of Japanese wartime brothels.

Yoon Mi-hyang, president of the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, is accused of misusing funds for a comfort women community home and possibly using donations to purchase her personal apartment in 2012, Yonhap reported Monday.

The community-living facility for the elderly women, located outside Seoul, was purchased by Yoon's NGO for about $600,000. The group received donations from Hyundai Heavy Industries, according to The Korea Times.

Meanwhile, Yoon's father received about $60,000 for maintaining the building.



RELATED North Korea denied abducting South Koreans on 1969 flight, document shows

The Korean Council also spent about $80,000 on interior design for the house.

In an interview with South Korea's CBS Radio, Yoon, a lawmaker-elect with the ruling Democratic Party, said the money on interior design and equipment was spent in order to "make the grandmothers feel good" about their residence.

The women were never moved into the house, however, according to reports.


Yoon has also denied claims she purchased her current home, an apartment, using funds from her organization. According to local reports, the activist purchased her home before she sold her previous house, inviting allegations she may have used funds that did not belong to her household.

A Korean Council source told local newspaper Hankyoreh the organization has always been "a one-woman system" under Yoon for 20 years. Employees and volunteers are not trusted with internal information, particularly on the flow of funds, which may have been under the exclusive supervision of Yoon.

Yoon's appointment to the National Assembly came under scrutiny earlier this month, when former comfort woman Lee Yong-soo accused the activist of misappropriating funds and "using" past victims of wartime rape stations as a front for her money-raising activities.

Lee, who has said she was first raped at the age of 16 at a Japanese military brothel in Taiwan, told reporters she and other women had never seen the funds raised during rallies and other donation drives. Yoon has not addressed Lee's charges directly.

Ohio counties sue major pharmacies for role in opioid crisis

A pair of Ohio counties field a lawsuit alleging CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens, Giant Eagle and pharmacies operated by Walmart were complicit in perpetuating the opioid crisis by selling excess amounts of the drug. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo


May 27 (UPI) -- Two Ohio counties on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against several major U.S. pharmacies, stating they were complicit in perpetuating the opioid crisis.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in Cleveland alleges that pharmacies operated by CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens, Giant Eagle and Walmart sold excess quantities of opioids and failed to report suspiciously large orders and sales.

"The crisis arose not only from the opioid manufacturers' deliberate marketing strategy, but from distributors' and pharmacies' equally deliberate efforts to evade restrictions on opioid distribution and dispensing," the suit states. "These distributors and pharmacies acted without regard for the lives that would be trammeled in pursuit of profit."

In the complaint, the counties allege that CVS worked with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma to offer its pharmacists seminars on pain management so they would be able to reassure patients and doctors about the safety of opioids.

CVS also partnered with Endo Pharmaceuticals to send letters to patients encouraging them to maintain prescriptions of the opioid Opana. The Food and Drug Administration ordered the extended-release version of Opana removed from the market in 2017 due to extensive abuse, the suit states.

Further, the suit states that a Rite Aid in the town of Painesville, Ohio, which has a population of 19,524, sold more than 4.2 million doses of oxycodone and hydrocodone while the retailer offered bonuses to stores with the highest productivity.

Other retailers, including Walgreens and Walmart allegedly sought to circumvent federal oversight policies that required them to report large orders to the FDA.

Walgreens and CVS both signed deals with distributors, which stated they would be permitted to regulate their own orders without oversight from the distributors.

In 2012, Walmart placed a fixed limit on opioid quantities it would distribute to stores, but allowed stores to place additional orders from third-party distributors.

CVS responded to the suit in a statement to The New York Times, stating that pharmacists are only responsible for dispensing opioids to patients.

"Opioids are made and marketed by drug manufacturers, not pharmacists," the company said. "Pharmacists dispense opioid prescriptions written by a licensed physician for a legitimate medical need."

Few in U.S. with private insurance receive opioid overdose follow-up treatment


Having health insurance is no guarantee of receiving treatment following an opioid overdose, according to a new study. Photo by LizM/Pixabay

May 27 (UPI) -- Fewer than 20 percent of people with private healthcare insurance who suffered a non-fatal opioid overdose ultimately receive abuse or addiction treatment, according to a study published Wednesday by JAMA Network Open.

Moreover, black and Hispanic opioid users were less likely than their white counterparts to get treatment within 90 days of experiencing an overdose, the authors found.

"An opioid overdose is more than an isolated event -- for people that survive, it is an opportunity to engage in treatment for opioid use disorder," study co-author Dr. Austin S. Kilaru, an emergency physician at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, told UPI.

"However, even commercially insured patients have lower rates of treatment after opioid overdose than we think is acceptable," he said.

RELATED Increasing opioid doses doesn't reduce pain, study shows

Opioids include illegal drugs such as heroin, as well as prescription pain medications. Heroin overdoses are believed to have increased by as much as 50 percent in the United States during the last decade, based on estimates from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Some 11 million people misused prescription opioid pain medications in 2017, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Such misuse accounts for more than 1,000 visits daily to U.S. emergency rooms, the agency estimated.

For the study, Kilaru and his colleagues analyzed data from a large, unidentified private health insurance carrier, focusing on claims over a five-year period, from October 2011 to September 2016.

RELATED Study: Opioid overdose 14 times more likely in general public than cancer survivors



In all, 6,451 people covered by the insurer suffered a non-fatal opioid overdose during the study period, and most were older adults around 45 years old, researchers found.

Just 1,069 patients, or roughly 17 percent, received follow-up treatment within 90 days after their overdose, according to the researchers. Older age appears to reduce the likelihood of receiving follow-up care, they added.

"The current rate of treatment is not adequate," Kilaru said. "Our healthcare system must encourage coordinated care so that vulnerable patients, like those with opioid use disorder, successfully transition from the hospital to sustainable, ongoing treatment."

RELATED Study: Overdose risk doubles for young people with family on opioids

Currently, "our healthcare system lets too many patients fall through the cracks," he said.

Boeing sends layoff notices to more than 6,000 employees


A Boeing 787-9 performs a demonstration flight at international Paris Air Show at Le Bourget, France, last June. File Photo by Eco Clement/UPI | License Photo


May 27 (UPI) -- Boeing said Wednesday it is laying off more than 6,000 employees in the first phase of its plans to reduce its workforce by 10 percent as the airline industry reels from the coronavirus pandemic.

In a letter to employees, Boeing President and CEO Dave Calhoun said the first 6,770 workers to be involuntarily laid off under the reductions are being notified by the aviation giant this week.

"We will provide all the support we can to those of you impacted by the [layoffs] -- including severance pay, COBRA healthcare coverage for U.S. employees and career transition services," he said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a "devastating impact" on the airline industry, the CEO said, resulting in deep reductions in the number of commercial jets and services that Boeing's airline customers will need "over the next few years."

"I wish there were some other way," he said of the layoffs.

Boeing last month said it is seeking to shed 10 percent of its worldwide workforce of around 160,000 through a combination of voluntary and involuntary layoffs and early retirements.

More than 5,000 additional Boeing employees have been approved for voluntary separations.

In addition to the air travel disruptions caused by the pandemic, Boeing has been suffering financially since its fleet of 737 Max jetliners was grounded in March 2019 due to trouble with the model's automated flight software.

It confirmed that in April it lost more than 100 orders for the 737 Max, won no new orders and delivered just six aircraft.

Report: USAF covered up incidents of racial bias

A report on Wednesday by Protect Our Defenders alleges that the U.S. Air Force knew about racial bias within its ranks but failed to follow through on recommendations. Photo courtesy of U.S. Air Force

May 27 (UPI) -- The U.S. Air Force tried to cover up racial bias in its justice system, a report by an independent advocacy group said Wednesday.

The 25-page report was issued by Protect Our Defenders, a Virginia-based group with a self-described mission of "ending the epidemic of rape and sexual assault in the military and to combating a culture of pervasive misogyny, sexual harassment, and retribution against victims."

Using the Freedom of Information Act and a prior report portraying racial disparities in the military justice system, it said that an Air Force working group failed to meet regularly and offer only superficial recommendations in fixing a perceived racial bias.

"The Air Force has engaged in a multi-year effort to keep the findings and recommendations of its working group hidden, forcing POD to file suit in federal court," a statement on Wednesday said. "A U.S. District Court in Connecticut referred to the Air Force's investigation as a 'mystery,' questioned whether it conducted any 'real governmental decision making process,' and accused it of trying to change its story and 'plug gaps' over time."

It cited a slide in a 2017 presentation to Air Force headquarters, which said, "the data reflects a persistent and consistent racial disparity" in the Air Force justice system. Another slide said African American airmen of the E-2 rank, the lowest in the Air Force, are disciplined at double the rate of other demographics.

That slide added, "If this were the case for airmen that were female, versus male, we were would have concerns about what is making the difference, and investigate -- we clearly must address this disparity in the same way."

The Air Force has done nothing to solve the problem, POD president Don Christensen, a former Air Force colonel and former Air Force chief prosecutor, said.

"Instead, the Air Force dedicated time and effort to cover up its failure to act on any solutions," Christensen said. "All service members must have faith that they are treated equally when facing punishment. The Air Force has utterly failed to do that."

In a statement by Lt. Col. Ann Stefanek, the Air Force acknowledged that it is working on a long-standing problem.

"While we have taken steps to elevate unconscious bias training at all levels of our command structure, we have more work to do to identify and remove barriers that stand in the way of our people's succes

Listen to the science: it was wrong to go ahead with major sporting events

New report suggests Cheltenham Festival and Liverpool match ‘increased several-fold’ the number of Covid-19 cases

Barry Glendenning Wed 27 May 2020
 

Huge crowds attended the Cheltenham Festival from 10-13 March, despite widespread public misgivings. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/the Guardian

Now we know. The much-maligned decisions to go ahead with the Cheltenham Festival and Liverpool’s Champions League match against Atlético Madrid in March “caused increased suffering and death”, according to the scientist leading the UK’s largest Covid-19 tracking project. Well, colour all those who foresaw that particular revelation coming down the pipe surprised.

In much the same way that you don’t need to be an optician to appreciate that loading the family into the car for a 60-mile pre-journey journey is not the best way to test your eyesight, an intimate working knowledge of Bunsen burners, pipettes and Erlenmeyer flasks was never going to be a prerequisite for forecasting that hundreds of thousands of sports fans rubbing shoulders in close proximity during a pandemic would result in unnecessary illness and fatalities.

Officials to investigate potential Covid-19 link with Liverpool match
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/officials-to-investigate-potential-covid-19-link-with-liverpool-match

It now seems beyond much doubt that since Liverpool last played a match, their game against Atlético added to an excess UK death toll that has now risen well above Anfield’s 54,074 capacity. Sadly, it cannot be proved beyond all doubt and it is this lack of total certainty those responsible for not just allowing but encouraging people to attend these mass gatherings have chosen to cling.

Let’s hear what they have to say. “There are many factors that could influence the number of cases in a particular area, including population density, age, general health, and the position of an area on the pandemic curve,” said a government statement issued to BBC Radio’s File On 4 – Game Changer, its author apparently affronted by the very notion that cramming 250,000 punters on to a provincial racecourse across four days for a glorified booze-up may be among the more obvious ones.

Thousands of Atlético Madrid supporters travelled to Liverpool for the Champions League match on 12 March. Photograph: Alex Livesey/ Danehouse/Getty Images

This official unwillingness to countenance the results of meticulous scientific research seems all the more galling when we recall various government ministers repeatedly using – you’ve guessed it – science of the weirdest variety as a shield with which to defend themselves against critics of what were quite obviously very bad decisions. Decisions taken, the government insist, on the back of “continuous consultation with scientific and medical experts”. Experts such as their own chief scientific officer, Sir Patrick Vallance, who at the time was referencing the idea of herd immunity that could scarcely have been more ill-advised.

Experts call for inquiry into local death toll after Cheltenham Festival
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/apr/21/experts-inquiry-cheltenham-festival-coronavirus-deaths

Speaking specifically about events in the Cotswolds and at Anfield, Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, said data collected from millions of volunteers revealed cases of Covid-19 “increased several-fold” in both areas and the reasons were abundantly clear. “Sporting events should have been shut down at least a week earlier,” he said. “Because they’ll have caused increased suffering and death that otherwise wouldn’t have occurred.”

Not content with having giddily boasted about shaking hands “with everybody” in a hospital on the same day his scientific advisers warned against doing anything of the kind, Boris Johnson’s presence at Twickenham for a Six Nations rugby match a few days later would go on to be cited by Cheltenham Festival organisers as one of the main reasons they decided to press ahead with four days of racing despite widespread public misgivings. At the time, the decision looked baffling. With the benefit of the kind of 20-20 hindsight you can only develop on a trip to Barnard Castle, it now seems insane.

Liverpool v Atlético virus links 'interesting hypothesis', says government scientist
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/20/liverpool-v-atletico-virus-links-interesting-hypothesis-says-government-scientist

This was back in the days before Johnson and his cabinet were portentously urging us to stay at home and save lives. In mid-March, assorted frontbenchers were whistling an entirely different tune, insisting mass gatherings in sporting amphitheatres were just what the doctor ordered.

“There’s no reason for people not to attend such events or to cancel them at this stage,” said the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, in response to increasingly loud calls to call off Cheltenham and top-flight football, while the Tory MP for Tewkesbury, Laurence Robertson, was also extremely vocal in his support for the lucrative racing festival that takes place annually in his constituency.

“The disruption to people’s lives, and the risk to their livelihoods, caused by cancelling events and activities would be too great to justify [cancelling] at the moment,” Robertson said in the buildup. “This assessment would include the potential costs to local businesses in Gloucestershire, which would run into tens of millions, if the Festival were to be cancelled. This morning the chief medical officer endorsed this approach.”

‘I thought it was appalling': anger over Atlético fans attending Anfield

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/mar/22/liverpool-atletico-madrid-coronavirus-champions-league

A noted racing enthusiast who subsequently came under fire for failing to declare in time all of the £4,000 worth of hospitality he received over the four days of Festival, Robertson put his tardiness down to an oversight. This month he lost his father to coronavirus and on Tuesday said being unable to visit the 89-year-old in hospital as he fought for his life would “haunt me for the rest of my days”. The MP spoke out as he called on Johnson to sack Dominic Cummings for his well-documented lockdown escapades.

Robertson may or may not regret the enthusiasm with which he lobbied for his constituency’s annual cash cow in March, although his entirely reasonable pre-Festival caveat that “a change of policy would be introduced if the scientific and medical evidence points in that direction” suggests the personal grief he has since endured may have prompted regrets.

The current scientific and medical evidence appears to leave us in little or no doubt mass gatherings at major sporting events should have been banned much earlier, even if our leaders remain predictably unwilling to listen to the kind of independent expert testimony it doesn’t suit them to hear.

Cop26: Glasgow climate change conference 2020

UK urged to tie green recovery from Covid-19 crisis to Cop26 summit

Climate experts push Britain, as talks host, to work on ‘zero carbon’ route from pandemic


Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent
THE GUARDIAN Thu 28 May 2020

Former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson, fourth from right, at the UN Climate Change Conference COP25 in December 2019. Photograph: Cristina Quicler/AFP/Getty Images

The UK government must urgently set out clear plans on a green recovery from the coronavirus crisis if the delayed UN climate summit is to be a success, say leading experts.

The climate talks known as Cop26 and scheduled to be held in Glasgow, are expected to be postponed by a year from their original date this November, dashing hopes that the summit would be swiftly reconvened. A formal decision on the delay will be taken by the UN Thursday evening.

Tying the Cop26 talks to a green recovery from the Covid-19 crisis is now essential to regain momentum and ensure the summit produces the fresh global commitment needed on the climate crisis, experts say.

Mary Robinson, former UN climate envoy, and chair of the Elders group of international leader, said: “Very definitely we need to tie together a green recovery and Cop26 – that is imperative. UK leadership can and should urge forward a net-zero carbon transition from the Covid-19 crisis. Leadership is needed, moral, political, economic and social leadership.”

Achim Steiner, administrator of the UN Development Programme, said: “The UK presidency comes at an absolutely critical time. There is an extraordinary opportunity to restart the economy and look at creative ways [to recover]. We need to find ways to become more resilient.”

The Cop26 talks are seen as vital because nations are obliged under the Paris agreement of 2015 to present renewed plans every five years on how to meet the legally binding goal of holding global heating to no more than 2C, and preferably no more than 1.5C, above pre-industrial levels.

Current commitments on curbing emissions, set in Paris, would take the world far beyond those limits, to about 3C of heating, which scientists say would spell disaster around the world. That means fresh national commitments on carbon reductions by 2030 must be set this year, ahead of the Cop26 talks.

As host nation the UK carries responsibility for bringing governments together to make Cop26, the most important conference since Paris in 2015, a success.

Without a clear plan of its own to reach net-zero carbon emissions, a target enshrined in British law, the UK will struggle for credibility in urging other countries to come forward with national plans, according to participants and close observers of the talks.

Some countries would like to see the UK present a formal submission to the UN, setting out its emissions reduction targets for 2030 and 2050. Known as a nationally determined contribution (NDC), these formal plans are a legal requirement under the Paris accord.

“It would be a very welcome and important signal [to set out an NDC],” said Steiner. “We need to see a high level of ambition and a national strategy.”

Christiana Figueres, the former UN climate chief, told a committee of MPs last week: “It definitely would set a good example to other countries. I believe the UK should do it as soon as it responsibly can.”

Developing countries are also anxious that NDCs should not be delayed by the long hiatus before Cop26.

Janine Felson, Belize’s ambassador to the UN and chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, said: “All developed countries should bring forward their NDCs.”

Few large-scale economies have submitted an NDC yet. Chile, the original host of Cop25, in 2019 (before the transfer to Madrid), submitted its plan earlier this year, Norway has strengthened its NDC, and Rwanda last week became the first African nation to do so. Japan set out plans that drew widespread criticism for lack of ambition but China, India, the EU, and other large green house gas emitters are still holding back.

Leading figures have said that the formal submission of NDCs can wait while ministers and officials consider the impact of the Covid-19 crisis. Yet the UK has to urgently show leadership by announcing concrete measures for a green economic recovery.

Lord Stern, a climate economist, said: “It’s more important to set out actions for a green recovery, that is key. We can do that now, bring forward these carbon reductions. Set out policies and then we can see how the NDC can become more ambitious.”

The Committee on Climate Change, the UK government’s independent advisers, has delayed until December the publication of its advice on the country’s sixth carbon budget, in order to take account of the impact of the Covid-19 crisis. Chris Stark, chief executive of the committee, said it would be better for the government to delay the NDC too.

Setting out a formal NDC was less urgent than setting out a clear direction for the economic recovery, added Robinson. “I was very close to despair in January,” she said, referring to a flawed start to the UK’s presidency, when the government fired its initial choice for Cop president, the former MP Claire O’Neill, and failed to produce a clear plan for the summit. “I could not see an ambition [to have a good Cop26]. Now Covid-19 has turned the world upside down. We have to get up momentum for a green and nature-based recovery.”

The delay of Cop26 also means that other international meetings can lay the ground for success. The UK holds the 2021 presidency of the G7 group of industrialised nations, whose leaders are likely to meet in the summer when Cop26 will be discussed. Italy, co-host with the UK of Cop26, will chair the G20 with a similar aim.

Carbon dioxide emissions have fallen sharply amid the lockdowns, by about 17% on average in early April, according to a recent study. But that will have no measurable effect on efforts to meet the Paris goals, as emissions will resume their rise as the lockdowns ease unless lasting changes are made to countries’ energy production and consumption patterns.

A spokesperson for the UK government said: “As hosts of Cop26 and the first major economy to legislate for net zero, the UK is committed to delivering a clean and resilient economic recovery from Covid-19.

“The great global challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss have not gone away and it will be the duty of every responsible government to see our economies are revived and rebuilt in a way that stands the test of time. That’s why we’re calling on all nations to come forward with more ambitious climate plans.”

DEAR AMERICA;

NOV 3 

THE CHOICE IS 

THE GRIFTER

 OR THE GAFFER

Interpol seizes 19,000 stolen artefacts in international art trafficking crackdown

101 suspects arrested and rare cultural treasures recovered in huge global investigation

KARMA PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL 

Sam Jones in Madrid  Fri 8 May 2020
 

Spanish police recovered a unique Tumaco gold mask. Photograph: Interpol


Two huge international police and customs operations targeting the trade in stolen artworks and archaeological artefacts have led to the arrest of 101 people and the recovery of more than 19,000 items, including a pre-Columbian gold mask, a carved Roman lion and thousands of ancient coins.

A Menaion from 1760 was seized in Romania as well as coins. Photograph: Interpol

The joint initiatives – which involved officers from Interpol, Europol, the World Customs Organization and many national police forces – focused on the criminal networks that steal from museums, plunder archaeological sites and take advantage of the chaos in war-afflicted countries to loot their cultural treasures.

Details of the two concurrent investigations carried out last autumn are emerging only now for operational reasons.

Police officers in Spain recovered several rare pre-Columbian objects at Madrid’s Barajas airport, including a unique Tumaco gold mask, gold figurines and pieces of ancient jewellery. All had been illegally acquired by looting in Colombia.

Three traffickers were arrested in Spain, while Colombian police carried out a series of searches in Bogotá, resulting in the confiscation of a further 242 pre-Columbian objects – the largest such seizure in the country’s history. 

Colombian authorities retrieved 242 objects. Photograph: Interpol

Spain’s Guardia Civil police force said nine people were arrested in the country during the crackdown, and a Roman lion carved in limestone was recovered, as well as a frieze and three Roman columns.

Argentinian federal police seized 2,500 ancient coins, Latvian state police a further 1,375 coins, and Afghan customs officials at Kabul confiscated 971 cultural objects bound for Istanbul.

Other items recovered during the operations included fossils, paintings, ceramics and historical weapons

Cultural objects seized in Italy. Photograph: Interpol

Interpol said particular attention had been paid to monitoring online marketplaces. In the course of a “cyber patrol week”, officers led by the Italian carabinieri gathered information and identified targets that led to the seizure of 8,670 cultural objects offered for sale online.

“The number of arrests and objects show the scale and global reach of the illicit trade in cultural artefacts, where every country with a rich heritage is a potential target,” said Interpol’s secretary general, Jürgen Stock.

“If you then take the significant amounts of money involved and the secrecy of the transactions, this also presents opportunities for money laundering and fraud as well as financing organised crime networks.

”
Afghan customs recovered 971 cultural objects at Kabul airport. Photograph: Interpol

Europol said law enforcement agencies across the world needed to combat what it termed a “global phenomenon” that went well beyond the trade in looted artefacts, and that was closely related to other kinds of widespread criminal activity.

“Organised crime has many faces,” said its executive director, Catherine de Bolle. “The trafficking of cultural goods is one of them: it is not a glamorous business run by flamboyant gentlemen forgers, but by international criminal networks. You cannot look at it separately from combating trafficking in drugs and weapons: we know that the same groups are engaged, because it generates big money.”

Spanish dig closes in on burial site of Irish lord Red Hugh O'Donnell

Valladolid archaeologists find human skull in chapel where Christopher Columbus was also buried


Sam Jones in Madrid and Rory Carroll in Dublin
Wed 27 May 2020 

 

The excavated site reveals a human skull and bones. Photograph: Mayor of Valladolid/Twitter

Somewhere beneath a street in north-west Spain – probably between a bank branch and a budget clothes shop – lies the ruined chapel where an eight-toed rebel Irish lord was buried after his final, fatal mission 418 years ago.

Red Hugh O’Donnell, who escaped captivity and led a rebellion that almost expelled the Tudor English forces from Ireland, fled to Spain after the Battle of Kinsale in 1602 when the rebels tried to team up with a beleaguered Spanish expeditionary force.

He came to the country to lobby for a fresh Spanish invasion but died of a suspected tapeworm infection near the city of Valladolid aged 29.

Four centuries after O’Donnell’s death, investigators and archaeologists in the city are hunting for the chapel where he was buried – and which also held the body of Christopher Columbus before the explorer’s remains began a long intercontinental voyage of their own. Three years after he was buried in the Valladolid monastery, Columbus’s remains were moved to Seville and later sent to the Caribbean. After a sojourn on the island of Hispaniola – present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic – they went to Cuba before returning to Seville in 1898.
Oscar Puente(@oscar_puente_)

En la capilla de las Maravillas, en el lugar exacto donde se cree que se enterró a Red Hugh O’Donnell así como en su día a Cristobal Colón, han aparecido algunos restos y dos ataúdes. pic.twitter.com/yP0KTP0jPIMay 26, 2020

Efforts to locate the Chapel of Wonders, which was part of Valladolid’s huge St Francis monastery, began last year after an Irish visitor asked the local authorities if anyone knew where O’Donnell lay.


Óscar Burón, an architect for the city council, was one of those consulted. A year on, Burón, his fellow investigator Juan Carlos Urueña and a team of archaeologists are into their second week of excavations and believe they are closing in on the chapel.

“The monastery, which had been built at the end of the 13th century, was the most significant in the city in terms of both size and importance,” said Burón.

By the time O’Donnell died in the nearby village of Simancas, he added, Valladolid was serving as the seat of the court of Philip III and the monastery would have been “at the height of its splendour”. But the site was sold and destroyed in 1836 during a wave of monastic expropriations.

Using records, digital technology and the only surviving plan of the monastery, which dates from 1835, the team set about looking for the chapel.

“We’ve been piecing together the plans and looking for the trail over the past 200 or 300 years to find out where certain walls and lines are now,” said Burón.

“Now it’s just a question of putting that together – and praying a lot. On Monday morning, the archaeologists said they’d come across another of the walls we were expecting to find, which means we’re getting very close.” 

The dig in the centre of Valladolid, Spain. Photograph: Jesús Guerra
The project has turned up hundreds of bone fragments and on Wednesday found six more-or-less intact skeletons, leading the team to suspect they are already in or around the Chapel of Wonders.

The dig has attracted considerable interest from Ireland, where O’Donnell remains a romantic – and romanticised – figure, and a symbol of defiance on a par with Scotland’s William Wallace. O’Donnell was born in 1572 in what is today County Donegal, a north-west corner of Ireland that had held on to its Gaelic identity and independence against English encroachment.

He clashed with local rivals, raided cattle and pillaged much of Galway but Irish schoolchildren tend to focus on 1592, when he escaped imprisonment in Dublin Castle and lost two toes to frostbite while fleeing over the Wicklow mountains.

With his father-in-law, Hugh O’Neill, he led a nine-year campaign that scored notable victories against Queen Elizabeth I’s forces before defeat at Kinsale. From there, he struck out for Spain.

“He was a formidable operator – powerful and probably quite charismatic,” said Jane Ohlmeyer, a professor of modern history at Trinity College Dublin and author of Making Ireland English: the Irish Aristocracy in the Seventeenth Century.

“He was a very significant regional powerbroker and periodically a thorn in the side of the English crown. Taking him out would have been a priority for Queen Elizabeth and her officials in Ireland.”

Were they to be found, his remains could yield DNA that would confirm or scotch a theory that he was poisoned, said Ohlmeyer. “You can tell a lot from people’s bones. They could tell us not only how he died but how he lived.”

Burón, however, is adamant that no one should be holding their breath. The monastery was used as a burial site for hundreds of years and the bones it held were churned and mixed up when it was destroyed in 1836. And besides, he added, real-life archaeological quests seldom end as neatly as they do in Indiana Jones films.

“People in Ireland are hoping that a skeleton missing two toes will turn up and that it’ll be poor old Red Hugh,” said the architect. “But it would be impossible to do a DNA test on each of the 300 or 400 bone fragments we’ve found – unless a Bill Gates type wants to come along and spend their millions on it.”

For him and the rest of the team, the project is about much more than bones, no matter how illustrious. “What we’re doing is trying to locate the chapel where Columbus and O’Donnell were so that the site can get the respect it deserves,” said Burón.

“It’s important for the people of Valladolid and important for the people of Ireland. This monastery was one of the biggest in Spain at the time and it’s very sad that a place with so much heritage and history was lost overnight. It’s so valuable and yet it’s been forgotten.”

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: gripping not-just-for-kids cartoon that openly centres queer love

(ALWAYS SUSPECTED THAT SHE WAS THE PAL OF GAY HUNK HE-MAN)

Ostensibly a children’s show, She-Ra is a fantastical, nuanced treatment of good and evil that feels oddly relatable in these times

Megan Maurice

Thu 28 May 2020
 

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is quite joyful to watch with a small child. Photograph: Netflix


“We’ve gotta find every bit of strength that we have and never let it go,” urges the theme song of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, as it draws you into its warm embrace.

It feels relatable in these times. Sure, the reason I need “every bit of strength” is to figure out how to work from home while parenting a small child rather than to save the universe from unspeakable evil, but it’s comparable.

It’s one of many ways that She-Ra is perfect lockdown viewing. A reimagining of the 1980s spin-off of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, the reboot delivers colourful escapism that’s gripping and plot-driven while also leaving you with the sense that you’d dive right in and fight alongside the rebellion if given the chance.

Riverdale: a campy, maximalist romp that leans into its own post-comic book absurdity

Read more

I originally tuned in when it began in 2018 because it looked like something my then four-year-old daughter might be interested in. By the time I discovered it was a few more steps towards terrifying than Bluey or Doc McStuffins, it had become essential family viewing.

The show centres around teenage soldier Adora, who was adopted into the Horde as a baby and has spent her life in the Fright Zone training to fight to wrest control of Etheria from the evil princesses that rule the planet. Just as she is preparing to embark on her first real mission, she stumbles across a mysterious sword and meets Glimmer and Bow, enemies of the Horde.

 Shadow Weaver and Adora: ‘good’ and ‘bad’ characters in She-Ra are equally humanised. Photograph: Netflix

In a moment reminiscent of Mitchell and Webb’s “Are We the Baddies?” sketch, Adora suddenly realises she has been fighting on the side of evil and the people she considers family are terrorising Etheria. Her connection to the sword becomes clear as she realises she can transform into She-Ra, a mythical princess with superhuman powers.

For all of its excitement and action, what I like best is the way it blurs the line between good and evil in a way that’s incredibly nuanced for what is ostensibly a children’s show. From Adora’s childhood best friend Catra, to the hug-loving butch Scorpia and even second-in-command Shadow Weaver who at first appears to be the epitome of an irredeemable villain, the members of the Horde are humanised and have as much depth to their characters as those in the rebellion.

This depiction of the characters as complex people with varying amounts of light and shade makes the relationships, illustrated against a background of a war zone, come to life. While elemental princess Mermista and the flamboyant sea captain Seahawk provide much of the comic relief with their unlikely romance, it’s the way She-Ra openly centres queer love and romance that’s really powerful.

Seahawk, Mermista, Perfuma and Scorpia. Photograph: Netflix

From married princesses Netossa and Spinnerella, to Rebellion archer Bow’s two dads, showrunner Noelle Stevenson put her cards on the table early in the series and continued to develop queer relationships that become more and more central to the plot as the series progresses.

It’s something that is quite joyful to watch with a small child. After years of seeing Disney princesses marry copy-and-paste princes, being able to see my daughter connecting with all these diverse relationships has been wonderful.

At the heart of the show is the relationship between Adora and Catra – fighting on opposite sides, they are at war for much of the show but through a series of flashbacks we see the depth of their connection as children and understand what they mean to each other. It’s a complicated relationship that’s tied up in friendship, hate, jealousy, power and love.

While the backdrop might not be of this world, the characters are as familiar as old friends, and finding every bit of strength that you have and never letting go is something we can all relate to, whether we’re fighting for our lives or just hoping to one day go back outside.

• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, a Netflix Original, is streaming on Netflix

The long read
How the free press worldwide is under threat

 Illustration: Guardian Design

From Mexico to Malta, attacks on journalists and publishers have proved deadly to individuals and chilling to broader freedoms. And now Covid-19 is being used as an excuse to silence more voices. 

By Gill Phillips
Thu 28 May 2020

Just after 7am on the morning of 23 March 2017, journalist Miroslava Breach Velducea, a 54-year-old mother of three, was driving her 14-year-old son to school in the city of Chihuahua, Mexico, when a man walked up to her car and shot her eight times. According to reports, her son was not injured, but Breach died on the way to hospital.

The Mexican newspaper la Jornada reported that a cardboard note was found at the scene of the murder, which read: “For being a snitch. You’re next, Governor – El 80.” According to Mexican police, “El 80” was Carlos Arturo Quintana, son of the leader of an organised crime syndicate known as La Línea, which in its heyday controlled one of the lucrative smuggling routes for the supply and transfer of drugs from Colombia to the US. Three days before Breach was murdered, Quintana’s father had been killed in a confrontation between rival gangs.

Breach worked for la Jornada and for the regional paper Norte de Ciudad Juarez, covering politics and crime; she had also set up her own news agency, Mir. She had reported extensively on the links between organised crime and politicians in Chihuahua state. On 4 March 2016, Breach wrote in la Jornada about the alleged criminal connections of mayoral candidates in several small towns in western Chihuahua. Breach had received threats to her life on at least three occasions as a result of her reporting. In October 2016, she had told a meeting of the Federal Mechanism for Journalists and Human Rights Defenders that she had been threatened. Nevertheless, on the day she was killed, she had no protection.

 

A protest in Mexico City after the murder of Miroslava Breach in 2017. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Breach’s story is not an isolated one. She was one of six journalists killed in Mexico in 2017; more than 150 journalists have been killed there since 2000, 22 of them in the state of Chihuahua. In 2019, according to data compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Mexico had the seventh-highest number of unsolved murders of journalists in the world, behind Somalia, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, the Philippines and Afghanistan. On 18 May this year, gunmen killed the owner of a newspaper, Jorge Miguel Armenta Ávalos, and one of the policemen assigned to protect him, following earlier threats. Armenta, who is at least the third journalist to be murdered in Mexico in 2020, was attacked in broad daylight while leaving a restaurant.

According to the World Press Freedom Index for 2020, compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and released in March, journalists in Mexico face a dire situation: “Collusion between officials and organized crime poses a grave threat to journalists’ safety and cripples the judicial system at all levels. Journalists who cover sensitive political stories or organized crime are warned, threatened and often gunned down in cold blood.”

Attacks on journalists around the world take many forms, some of which are sanctioned in law. Legal or quasi-legal mechanisms include the use of civil or criminal legal actions, covert surveillance, overt censorship and financial threats (such as withdrawing state advertising), as well as more direct intimidation and threats.

In recent years, another way of silencing journalists has proliferated: the use of what are known as strategic lawsuits against public participation, or Slapps, where defamation or criminal lawsuits are brought with the intention of shutting down forms of expression such as peaceful protest or writing blogs. Originally regarded as an American legal mechanism, such lawsuits are now fairly widespread in Europe. Before she was killed in 2017, the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was facing around 40 libel lawsuits filed by companies, government officials and individuals, which were described by her son Matthew as a “never-ending type of torture”.

Věra Jourová, the vice-president of the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, has been working on introducing protections against Slapp lawsuits, the defence of which can cost individuals a fortune and tie up their time and resources. Justin Borg-Barthet, a legal academic at Aberdeen University, has called for EU law to be changed to prevent “forum shopping” to countries with claimant-friendly laws, so that defamation suits would have to be filed in the courts of the country where the media organisation or journalist was based. Slapp lawsuits are commonly used against journalists investigating government corruption or exposing corporate abuses, but are also used against civil society organisations, activists such as environmental campaigners, trade unionists and academics, to shut down or silence acts of criticism and protest.

In France, media organisations and NGOs have been hit with what they view as Slapp suits for publishing accusations of land-grabbing from villagers and farmers in Cameroon by companies associated with the Bolloré Group. In the UK, fracking companies including Ineos, UK Oil & Gas, Cuadrilla, IGas and Angus Energy have since 2017 sought and been granted wide-ranging court injunctions, often directed against persons unknown, to prevent protests and campaigning activities at drilling sites. These injunctions had a chilling effect on the right to protest and free speech, until the court of appeal ruled in April 2019 that parts of an Ineos injunction prohibiting protests on the public highway and against the Ineos supply chain, and which had been used as a template for similar orders granted to other oil and gas companies, were unlawful.

 

Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was murdered by a car bomb in 2017. Photograph: Darrin Zammit Lupi/Reuters

Alongside Slapp suits, there are more traditional ways to keep journalists quiet. More than 150 countries retain some sort of criminal defamation laws, many of which include the possibility of imprisonment. Blasphemy and insult laws remain commonplace in many countries, and are often used by politicians and government officials against any critical media. A number of countries including Turkey and Egypt have expansive definitions of “terrorism” that allow them to arrest and detain anyone who voices political dissent or opposition, including journalists.

In countries such as Hungary and Poland, governments and political allies exercise quasi-legal control of public information. Media owners can be pressured on what content to publish by threats to limit access to finance and advertising revenues.

Separately, the lack of legal protections for journalists against those who attack them acts as a strong deterrent. Impunity fuels a vicious cycle of violence, bolstering those who aim to silence public debate and block sensitive information.

In 2013, the UN published a plan of action on the safety of journalists, and the problem of impunity for perpetrators. The plan provides a framework for co-operation between UN bodies, national authorities, media actors and NGOs. Spearheaded through Unesco, the plan was incorporated into the Declaration of the Council of Europe in April 2014, and in guidelines published by the EU soon after. In April 2016, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a recommendation on the protection of journalism and safety of journalists and other media actors.

By the end of 2018, the Council of Europe’s Platform for the Protection of Journalism and Safety of Journalists, set up to record information on serious concerns about media freedom and the safety of journalists in Council of Europe (CoE) member states, had registered more than 500 alerts, with year-on-year rises of incidents in every year except 2017. Nearly half of all alerts are marked as category 1, covering the most severe and damaging violations of media freedom, such as murder, direct threats to life and physical assaults. The majority of threats came from the state, with physical attacks and detentions making up nearly half the alerts. Since 2015, only 11% of all alerts have been marked as resolved, a figure that goes down to 1.82% for alerts entered in 2018. Interviews with journalists echo these statistics. In 2017, a study that interviewed 940 journalists from all CoE member states found that a staggering 40% of them had suffered slander.

According to a May 2020 report by Peter Noorlander on the implementation of the 2016 CoE recommendation, attacks against journalists remain insufficiently investigated, and a very high percentage of incidents go unpunished. “Journalists have little confidence that attacks or threats against them will be investigated, and often do not report them,” the report said. “This has a grave effect on them, and many no longer report attacks but instead self-censor and shy away from potentially controversial issues … [CoE] Member States have committed to creating an enabling environment for freedom of expression, yet, what journalists experience on the ground is increased violence, threats, denigration, arbitrary arrests and detention.”

Some of the most high-profile cases of attacks against the media in the last few years have involved journalists in countries where neither democracy nor the rule of law is respected. Many of the more recent attacks have been perpetrated or encouraged by heads of state.

They include cases such as the politically sponsored harassment of Philippines journalist Maria Ressa, the editor of Rappler, a social news network. Under Ressa, the site has revealed the activities of the online “troll army” that supports the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte and spreads disinformation about his opponents. Rappler has also reported critically on extrajudicial killings, human-rights violations and the rising death rates from Duterte’s war on drugs. The law suits that would follow were presaged during Duterte’s state of the union speech in July 2017, when he declared that Rappler was “fully owned” by the Americans, and therefore in violation of the constitution.

In January 2018, the Philippine securities and exchange commission revoked Rappler’s licence. The government then investigated Rappler for tax evasion, and a warrant for Ressa’s arrest was issued in November 2018. In February 2019, Ressa and Rappler were hit with another lawsuit alleging libel relating to a story published in 2012, using a law enacted four months after the story was published.

Other infamous cases of state-sponsored crimes against journalists include the brutal murder, on 2 October 2018, of Saudi dissident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The CIA have concluded that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the journalist’s assassination. On 19 July 2019, the office of the UNHCR released a report describing Khashoggi’s death as “premeditated extra judicial execution”.

In many western countries, there is a risk that intimidation and violence against the media is becoming normalised. On Czech election day in October 2017, Czech president Miloš Zeman held up a mock assault rifle with an inscription that was translated as “At journalists”. Donald Trump has regularly shouted at and abused journalists, and a BBC camera operator was violently shoved and abused at a Donald Trump rally in 2019; in May 2017, a Guardian reporter was assaulted by a Republican candidate, now an elected congressman. Most recently there have been threats against reporter Glenn Greenwald from the far-right government of President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. This sort of hostility towards journalists by political leaders has global as well as domestic repercussions.

Czech President Milos Zeman holds a mock assault rifle with “At journalists” inscribed on it in October 2017. Photograph: CTK/Alamy Stock Photo

The Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is currently held in HMP Belmarsh, while the UK decides if he can be extradited to the US, where he has been charged with violating the Espionage Act, and faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison if he is found guilty. As Alan Rusbridger, the former editor of the Guardian, has written, the charges against Assange are “attempting to criminalise things journalists regularly do when they receive and publish true information given to them by sources or whistleblowers”.

According to the RSF, “the next 10 years will be pivotal for press freedom because of converging crises affecting the future of journalism: a geopolitical crisis (due to the aggressiveness of authoritarian regimes); a technological crisis (due to a lack of democratic guarantees); a democratic crisis (due to polarisation and repressive policies); a crisis of trust (due to suspicion and even hatred of the media); and an economic crisis (impoverishing quality journalism).”

It is easy to dismiss concerns about press freedom as relevant only to countries led by repressive, unelected regimes. But that would be a mistake. In 2007, Thames Valley police searched the home and office of Sally Murrer, a local journalist. “I was just pottering around doing typical local stories and in May 2007, eight police officers swooped at my home while eight swooped simultaneously at the office,” she told reporters from the Press Gazette. “They seized all my computer equipment, searched my house, phones, laptops. They took me into custody where I stayed for a couple of days, strip-searched me. I honestly had no idea [why]. They said the charge was aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office and it carried life imprisonment.

“It was only later when they interviewed me, which they did copious times, and played me tapes and showed me transcripts of texts, that I realised I had been under surveillance for the previous eight weeks. It was just a ghastly feeling.”

Thames Valley police had secretly recorded a conversation that took place between her and a police officer. Murrer was accused of receiving sensitive stories from the police officer and selling them to the News of the World. “The stories were about a local GBH committed by a footballer, and the murder of a local man where there was a link to cannabis and his wife was the secretary of the then-MP.” After 19 months, during which she had been on police bail, Murrer’s trial collapsed after the judge ruled police had breached her rights.

More recently, in August 2018, the police in Northern Ireland arrested two journalists, Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey, over the alleged theft of documents from the Northern Ireland police ombudsman into the 1994 Loughinisland massacre, when members of a loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force, burst into a pub with assault rifles and fired on the customers. Six were killed and five wounded. Birney and McCaffrey’s homes and offices were raided. In May 2019, three appeal judges quashed the search warrants. 

Journalists Trevor Birney (left) and Barry McCaffrey in Belfast last year after judges ruled police search warrants against them illegal. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA

In the US in 2019, San Francisco police officers investigating the leak of a police report following the death of a public defender, Jeff Adachi, obtained a warrant “to conduct remote monitoring on a journalist’s telephone number device, day or night, including those signals produced in public, or location not open to public or visual surveillance”. In May 2019, the police raided the journalist Bryan Carmody’s home and office, and seized computers, phones and other electronic devices. A court has now ruled that the raid was unlawful, and the San Francisco police department has reportedly paid a substantial amount of damages to the journalist.

In Australia, in June 2019, police launched raids on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Sydney HQ, with search warrants naming two reporters and a news director; and on the home of a News Corporation journalist. The ABC raid related to articles published in 2017 about alleged misconduct by Australian special forces in Afghanistan, “based off hundreds of pages of secret defence documents leaked to the ABC”. The raid on the home of the News Corporation journalist was in response to a story she had written about how the Australian Signals Directorate was seeking new powers to spy on Australian citizens. In February, a court ruled the search was legitimate as the police were investigating valid national security offences. ABC’s managing director, David Anderson, described the decision as “a blow for public interest journalism” and argued that it highlighted a “serious problem” with Australia’s national security laws.

Since the outbreak of coronavirus, protections for journalists have become more urgent than ever. According to RSF’s secretary-general, Christophe Deloire, “The coronavirus pandemic illustrates the negative factors threatening the right to reliable information, and is itself an exacerbating factor.”

“Both China and Iran censored their major coronavirus outbreaks extensively. In Iraq, the authorities stripped Reuters of its licence for three months after it published a story questioning official coronavirus figures. Even in Europe, prime minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary had a ‘coronavirus’ law passed with penalties of up to five years in prison for false information, a completely disproportionate and coercive measure.” RSF also say reporters have been arrested in Algeria, Jordan and Zimbabwe while reporting on lockdown-related issues, and that Cambodia’s prime minister has used the coronavirus crisis to bolster his authority.

In March, the Guardian journalist Ruth Michaelson was forced to leave Egypt after she reported on a scientific study that said Egypt was likely to have many more coronavirus cases than have been officially confirmed, and the New York Times Cairo bureau chief was reprimanded over supposed “bad faith” reporting on the country’s coronavirus cases. The Columbia Journalism Review, in an article entitled “Covid-19 is spawning a global press-freedom crackdown”, reported at the end of March that police in Venezuela had violently detained a journalist in reprisal for reporting on the pandemic, and that in Turkey, seven journalists were detained in reprisal for their reporting. In South Africa, the government has enacted a new law that makes it a crime to publish “disinformation” about Covid-19.


In light of the pandemic, the UK and other members of the executive group of the Media Freddom Coalition (Canada, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands and the US), agreed a statement on 6 April 2020, reaffirming the fundamental importance of media freedom, and calling on all states to continue to protect access to free media and the free exchange of information. The statement said that the executive group were concerned by the efforts by some states to use the crisis to put in place undue restrictions on a free and independent media: “Such actions deny societies critical information on the spread of the disease and undermine trust in responsible government”. It also urged “governments to continue guaranteeing the freedom and independence of media, the safety of journalists and other media professionals, and to refrain from imposing undue restrictions in the fight against proliferation of the coronavirus”.

On the day of the murder of Miroslava Breach Velducea in 2017, Mexico’s federal special prosecutor for crimes against freedom of expression stated that a federal investigation had begun. Seven days later, according to la Jornada, Chihuahua’s attorney general said that two suspects had been identified in the shooting, and that Breach was killed because her reporting affected the interests of organised crime.

Later that year, the finger of blame for the killing was pointed at “Los Salazares”, a criminal organisation linked to the Sinaloa cartel, led by the Mexican drug lord El Chapo, who has since been convicted in the US for trafficking tons of cocaine, heroin and marijuana and engaging in multiple murder conspiracies, and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison . A hitman linked to Los Salazares – Juan Carlos Moreno Ochoa, alias “El Larry” – was arrested by authorities on Christmas Day 2017 during an early morning raid. Surveillance cameras had captured him walking in the vicinity of the murder scene.

In March 2020, a federal court judge found Morena guilty of overseeing the journalist’s murder. Testifying under the alias “Apolo”, the son of the leader of Los Salazares gave evidence about how his father was upset that a relative lost a mayoral election in the town of Chinipas, el Heraldo newspaper reported. The judge found that Morena supervised the crime and enlisted the help of two other people, Jaciel Vega Villa, who allegedly drove the car to Breach’s home, and Ramón Andrés Zavala Corral, who was suspected of having fired the shots that fatally wounded her. Zavala had been found dead in December 2017, a few days before Moreno Ochoa’s arrest. Vega remains at large, a fugitive from justice.

Rwanda’s Khashoggi: who killed the exiled spy chief?


The guilty verdict came too late to save Breach’s newspaper. In April 2017, the editor of Norte de Ciudad Juarez, where Breach had worked, announced that the paper was closing. In an editorial published shortly after the assassination, Oscar Cantú said he could not continue to publish in the face of the violence against journalists in Mexico and the impunity of those responsible. “There are neither the guarantees nor the security to exercise critical, balanced journalism,” he wrote. “Everything in life has a beginning and an end, and a price to pay, and if the price is life, I am not prepared for any more of my colleagues to pay it, nor am I prepared to pay it either.”

The work of journalists in all media around the world is even more important at a time when misinformation and disinformation spread so rapidly across the internet, and when powerful political and business actors can attack journalists with impunity. As Unesco said in their campaign literature for this year’s World Press Freedom Day: “Today, citizens are on lockdown, eager for news like never before. And more than ever, the news must be fact-checked, verified. Because disinformation spreads as fast as the virus itself, and journalists are on the frontline in the fight against the distortion of truth. More than ever we need facts. Facts to avoid spreading fear, fake news and panic. More than ever we need a free press.”

Gill Phillips is director of editorial legal services at the Guardian

• This article was amended on 28 May 2020 to clarify details of the respective raids on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and on the home of a News Corporation journalist in 2019.

David Attenborough to publish 'witness statement' on climate crisis

Broadcaster and historian says A Life on Our Planet book will record ‘dreadful damage wrought by mankind’ and propose solutions


Alison Flood

Thu 28 May 2020

David Attenborough, pictured in Iceland while filming the 2019 BBC documentary Seven Worlds, One Planet. Photograph: Alex Board/AP

David Attenborough is to publish his “vision for the future” of Earth this autumn, laying out “the dreadful damage” done by humanity, and the ways “we can begin to turn things round”.

A Life on Our Planet, which the 94-year-old has described as his “witness statement”, will cover his career documenting the natural world and his first-hand observations of the decline of the planet’s environment and biodiversity, as well as possible solutions.

“This book records some of the dreadful damage mankind has already wrought upon the natural world, and the real and imminent danger that things could get much, much worse if we do not act now,” said Attenborough. “But it is also a hopeful book: it offers a different future. It describes some of the ways in which we can begin to turn things around, if only we all have the will to do so. Surely together we must now find that determination, and begin to make that change, for the sake of all the inhabitants of our planet.”

The broadcaster and natural historian said he has had “an extraordinary life”, and that “it’s only now that I appreciate how extraordinary”.

He added: “As a young man, I felt I was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world – but it was an illusion. The tragedy of our time has been happening all around us, barely noticeable from day to day: the loss of our planet’s wild places, its biodiversity. I have been a witness to this decline, and this book contains my witness statement, and my vision for the future – the story of how we came to make this, our greatest mistake. And how, if we act now, we can yet put it right.”

Attenborough, whose career with the BBC spans six decades, has written several bestselling books including Adventures of a Young Naturalist, Journeys to the Other Side of the World, Life on Air and Life on Earth.

Publisher Ebury described A Life on Our Planet as “legacy-defining” for Attenborough. It will be released in October, coinciding with a Netflix documentary film of the same name commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund. “It’s David’s masterpiece – a book with huge heart and urgency, and a message the world needs now more than ever,” said publisher Albert DePetrillo, who is using the book as the launch title for a new imprint devoted to natural history books by writers who help us “see the world, and make it better”.