The need for diversity in genome sequencing

A majority of the DNA that has been sequenced for research comes from donors of European ancestry. That causes a knowledge gap about the genome of people from the rest of the world.


Humans across the world share a lot of the same DNA, but there are decisive differences.

Among various things that unite humans around the world, the DNA sequence hovers at the top: a whopping 99.9% of human DNA sequences are identical among people.

Gregor Mendel, a monk and scientist whose 200th birthday is this Wednesday (July 20), proposed that certain "invisible factors" were responsible for the various characteristics we display. Today, we know that these factors are genes, which make up our DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid.

This acid molecule gives genetic instructions to living beings. If humans share so much of the same DNA, why is diversity important in the context of DNA sequencing?


Gregor Mendel first discovered pea plants varied in color based on what we today know as genes

To understand that, we have to shift our focus to the 0.1% of the difference in the human DNA sequences. The seemingly small difference stems from variations among the nearly 3 billion bases (or nitrogen-based compounds) in our DNA.

All the dissimilarities we know between different humans, including hair or eye color or the height of a person, are due to these variations.

However, over the years scientists found that these variations could also give us vital information on a person's or a population's risk for developing a specific disease.

We can then use the risk assessment from the genetic data to design a health care strategy that is tailored to the individual.

Genetics and disease risk assessment

Many of us have had the experience of filling out forms at the doctor's office that ask us about the different diseases that have affected our parents or relatives. You are warned to stay away from sweets and processed sugars if a parent was diabetic, for example.

While transfer of heart diseases, cancer or diabetes between one generation to another is known more commonly, there are many more diseases that can be inherited genetically.

For example, we know that sickle cell anemia occurs when a person inherits two abnormal copies of the gene that makes hemoglobin, a protein in our red blood cells, one from each parent.

In recent decades, genetic research has advanced to the point that scientists can isolate the genes responsible for many of these diseases.

Here's the catch: We know this correlation between genes and diseases for a very restricted population.

Eurocentric data

Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Pennsylvania in the US, is one of many in the scientific community pushing for more diverse genomic datasets.

"Let's say that a study focused on people with European ancestry identifies genetic variants associated with risk for heart disease or diabetes, and uses that information to predict risk for disease in patients not included in the original study," said Tishkoff.

"We know from experience that this prediction of disease risk doesn't work well when applied to individuals with different ancestries, particularly if they have African ancestry."

Historically, the people who have provided their DNA for genomics research have been overwhelmingly of European ancestry, "which creates gaps in knowledge about the genomes from people in the rest of the world," according to the National Human Genome Research Institute in the US.

The institute states that 87% of all the genome data we have is from individuals of European ancestry, followed by 10% of Asian and 2% of African ancestry.

As a result, the potential benefits of genetic research, which includes understanding early diagnoses and treatment of various diseases, may not benefit the underrepresented populations.

Lack of equitability in treatment

The problem does not stop with disease risk assessment. It permeates the space of equitable health care as well, said Jan Witkowski, a professor from the Graduate School of Biological Sciences at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the US state of New York.

"Say you have two groups: group A and group B, who are very different. The knowledge and information you learn about people in group A may not apply to people in group B. But imagine developing medical treatments based on information from just group A for everyone," he said, adding, "it is not going to work on group B."

By including diverse populations in genomic studies, researchers can identify genomic variants associated with various health outcomes at both the individual and population levels.

The National Human Genome Research Institute also states, however, that diversifying the participants in genomics research is an expensive affair and requires the establishment of trust and respectful long-term relationships between communities and researchers.

FROM THE FINGERPRINT TO BIOMETRIC DATA

A standard in modern forensics for 125 years

In 1891, a Croatian born, Argentine criminologist, Juan Vucetich, started building up the first modern-style fingerprint archive. Since then, fingerprints have become one of the main forms of evidence used to convict criminals. Here, a police officer spreads dust on the lock of a burglarized apartment. Fingerprints become visible.

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Edited by: Carla Bleiker

The complex negotiations to get grain out of Ukraine


Sofia BOUDERBALA
Wed, July 20, 2022 


Talks are progressing on the opening of sea corridors to allow 20 million tonnes of grain still blocked in Ukraine and the upcoming harvests to be shipped around the world.

But even if an agreement is reached, it will not provide any immediate relief for importing countries.

- Crucial negotiations -

Negotiations have intensified since the beginning of June, with Turkey acting as mediator between Russia and Ukraine, which together account for around 30 percent of global trade in crops.

The talks are crucial insofar as no other country has come forward so far able to make up for the shortfall on the market of initially 25 million tonnes of Ukraine grain. And prices for agricultural commodities were already high before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, notably as a result of the post-Covid economic recovery.

The war has sparked a surge in the price of grains such as wheat and corn to levels unsustainable for countries dependent on their import, such as Egypt, Lebanon and Tunisia.

In recent weeks, prices have progressively receded again on the prospect of the upcoming harvest, fears of recession and the progress made in the negotiations regarding the sea corridors.

Negotiations have accelerated in recent days: Turkey said an agreement in principle had been reached on creating a protected sea corridor.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said "progress" had been made in discussions before telling reporters that any deal hinged on the West's willingness to yield some ground.

"We will facilitate the export of Ukrainian grain, but we are proceeding from the fact that all restrictions related to possible deliveries for the export of Russian grain will be lifted," he said.

However, market experts say that no sanctions directly target Russian agricultural goods, but are nonetheless penalised by sanctions on the country's banking sector.

- What is Turkey's role? -

"There's only a handful of countries -- Turkey is one, Qatar is another -- that's able to kind of speak to almost everybody and avoid major blowback," said Colin Clarke, director of research at the US-based Soufan Group.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has "proven that he can do it and that's why he's been a trusted broker not only by the Russians, but I think begrudgingly NATO countries -- that's the best that they have," the expert said.

Turkey had "a strong hand to play here", Clarke continued.

"Erdogan gets to play the hero, he gets to tell everybody that he's working to solve the global food crisis, but we know that Turkey is doing a lot to obstruct negotiations in other areas.

"They've got their concerns, and their priorities don't always align with the priorities of the international community, the priorities of NATO, or even the priorities of their allies."

- What sort of deal? -

As much as 90 percent of Ukrainian exports of wheat, corn and sunflower were transported by sea, mostly from the port of Odessa, which accounts for 60 percent of all port activity in the country.

Any agreement to resume large-scale shipping will have several stages: the de-mining of the ports that Ukrainians mined; the loading of the ships, which could be put under the supervision of the UN; the inspection of the shipments; and the escorting of the boats, as demanded by Russia to ensure that the cargoes do not include weapons, said Edward de Saint-Denis, trader at Plantureux and Associates.

Diplomatic sources say however that complete de-mining is not necessary as safe transit routes remain in the measures meant to protect coastal areas from invasion.

A number of other points remain very controversial: if Moscow manages to control -- and even seize -- boats, will the checks be carried out in Ukrainian or international waters? Which vessels will be authorised to transport the shipments and what will the nationality of their crews be?

"Russians don't want Ukrainians and vice versa," de Saint-Denis said.

At one point, Turkey suggested using its fleet, but a compromise could be reached to use "flags of convenience", according to one market observer.

- What are the consequences? -

"In the very short term, agreement would bring down prices, but in terms of the flow of grain shipments, nothing would change immediately," said Edward de Saint-Denis.

"One or two months would be needed to de-mine the ports," the expert said.

And the loading areas would have to be renovated, notably in Odessa where part of the port administration was damaged in the fighting, he said.

Despite the various possible obstacles, agricultural market analyst, Gautier Le Molgat said that it was now "in everyone's interests that maritime traffic resumes on the Black Sea: first and foremost for the Ukrainians, but also for the Russians, who have an exceptional harvest to export".

sb/spm-rl/gw

Rights group slams Morocco, Spain over migrant deaths

AFP - TODAY

A rights group on Wednesday said Moroccan and Spanish authorities were responsible for a horrific border tragedy last month in which two dozen migrants died.

It resulted in the highest migrant death toll in years of attempts to enter the Spanish enclave of Melilla, one of the European Union's only land borders with Africa.

"The tragedy of June 24 cost the lives of 27 migrants and was due to unprecedented repression by the Moroccan authorities, with the complicity of their Spanish counterparts," Omar Naji of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) told journalists in Rabat.

Moroccan authorities have said 23 migrants died when some 2,000 people, many from Sudan, stormed the frontier.

Naji, presenting a report on the deaths, called it "a despicable crime, the result of deadly migration policies".

The report accuses Moroccan forces of "massive use of tear gas" as migrants tried to enter a cramped border post or scale the barbed wire-topped metal barrier.

"The decision to violently attack the asylum seekers once they arrived at the barrier is probably the main cause behind the very heavy toll," the report reads.

Morocco's state-backed CNDH rights group said last week that 23 migrants had died, mostly likely from suffocation, in a crush at a border post where manual turnstiles allow the passage of a single person at a time.

The CNDH said videos apparently showing security forces beating prone migrants were "isolated" cases.

But the AMDH linked the incident to a resumption in cooperation between Madrid and Rabat in March after a year-long diplomatic spat.

Since then there has been a sharp uptick in Moroccan police raids of migrant camps in the forest near the border, it said.

It added that Spanish authorities had "turned back about 100 migrants" on June 24, while some 64 are still missing.

Spanish premier Pedro Sanchez initially blamed "human trafficking mafias" for what he said was "a well-organised violent assault" on the frontier.

But Naji dismissed that as part of a "discourse of criminalisation" of migrants, pointing out that those at the Melilla frontier were attempting to cross "free of charge, unlike those who try to cross by sea".

A Moroccan court on Tuesday sentenced 33 migrants to 11 months in jail for "illegal entry", while a separate trial of 29 migrants including a minor is set to resume on July 27.

kao-agr/fka/par/pjm

MORE FUZZY FOTOS

Webb telescope may have already found most distant known galaxy

Issam AHMED 

Wed, July 20, 2022 

Just a week after its first images were shown to the world, the James Webb Space Telescope may have found a galaxy that existed 13.5 billion years ago, a scientist who analyzed the data said Wednesday.

Known as GLASS-z13, the galaxy dates back to 300 million years after the Big Bang, about 100 million years earlier than anything previously identified, Rohan Naidu of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics told AFP.

"We're potentially looking at the most distant starlight that anyone has ever seen," he said.

The more distant objects are from us, the longer it takes for their light to reach us, and so to gaze back into the distant universe is to see into the deep past.

Though GLASS-z13 existed in the earliest era of the universe, its exact age remains unknown as it could have formed anytime within the first 300 million years.

GLASS-z13 was spotted in so-called "early release" data from the orbiting observatory's main infrared imager, called NIRcam -- but the discovery was not revealed in the first image set published by NASA last week.

When translated from infrared into the visible spectrum, the galaxy appears as a blob of red with white in its center, as part of a wider image of the distant cosmos called a "deep field."

Naidu and colleagues -- a team totaling 25 astronomers from across the world -- have submitted their findings to a scientific journal.

For now, the research is posted on a "preprint" server, so it comes with the caveat that it has yet to be peer-reviewed -- but it has already set the global astronomy community abuzz.

"Astronomy records are crumbling already, and more are shaky," tweeted NASA's chief scientist Thomas Zurbuchen.

"Yes, I tend to only cheer once science results clear peer review. But, this looks very promising," he added.

Naidu said another team of astronomers led by Marco Castellano that worked on the same data has achieved similar conclusions, "so that gives us confidence."

- 'Work to be done' -

One of the great promises of Webb is its ability to find the earliest galaxies that formed after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.

Because these are so distant from Earth, by the time their light reaches us, it has been stretched by the expansion of the universe and shifted to the infrared region of the light spectrum, which Webb is equipped to detect with unprecedented clarity.

Naidu and colleagues combed through this infrared data of the distant universe, searching for a telltale signature of extremely distant galaxies.

Below a particular threshold of infrared wavelength, all photons -- packets of energy -- are absorbed by the neutral hydrogen of the universe that lies between the object and the observer.

By using data collected through different infrared filters pointed at the same region of space, they were able to detect where these drop-offs in photons occurred, from which they inferred the presence of these most distant galaxies.

"We searched all the early data for galaxies with this very striking signature, and these were the two systems that had by far the most compelling signature," said Naidu.

One of these is GLASS-z13, while the other, not as ancient, is GLASS-z11.

"There's strong evidence, but there's still work to be done," said Naidu.

In particular, the team wants to ask Webb's managers for telescope time to carry out spectroscopy -- an analysis of light that reveals detailed properties -- to measure its precise distance.

"Right now, our guess for the distance is based on what we don't see -- it would be great to have an answer for what we do see," said Naidu.

Already, however, the team have detected surprising properties.

For instance, the galaxy is the mass of a billion Suns, which is "potentially very surprising, and that is something we don't really understand" given how soon after the Big Bang it formed, Naidu said.

Launched last December and fully operational since last week, Webb is the most powerful space telescope ever built, with astronomers confident it will herald a new era of discovery.

ia/sst

Mercosur trade bloc denies Zelensky request to address summit

Author: AFP| 20.07.2022

Mercosur exports to Singapore in 2021 amounted to $5.9 billion, and imports $1.2 billion / © AFP

South America's Mercosur trade bloc has declined a request by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to address its upcoming summit, host Paraguay said on Wednesday.

Bloc members Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay failed to reach an agreement on Zelensky's request, made to the host country last week, according to deputy foreign minister Raul Cano, who declined to say which states were against it.

Zelensky has addressed several national parliaments as well as regional and international forums since Russia's invasion of his country in February, including NATO, the G7, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations and even the Cannes Film Festival.

The Ukrainian leader spoke to Paraguay's President Mario Abdo Benitez last week, asking to be allowed to address a Mercosur summit to be held on Thursday, following a ministerial meeting on Wednesday.

"There was no consensus," said Cano, adding the decision had been communicated to Kyiv.

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, whose presence at the summit has not been confirmed, has said his country would remain "neutral" over Russia's war on Ukraine.

He had travelled to Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in February, just days before the invasion.

- Deal with Singapore -

Last month, Bolsonaro said he had received assurances from Putin that Russia would continue to deliver much-needed fertilizer to the South American agricultural giant.

Last week, Brazil said it would buy as much diesel from Russia as it could, despite international sanctions against Moscow.

Argentina's Alberto Fernandez was also in Moscow in early February. On the day of the start of the invasion on February 24, Fernandez urged "all parties" in a tweet "not to use military force."

"We call on the Russian Federation to put an end to the actions taken and for all parties involved to return to the dialogue table," he said at the time.

Brazil and Argentina did not sign a February 25 Organization of American States (OAS) resolution condemning the war, while Uruguay and Paraguay did.

Mercosur announced Wednesday that it had concluded a free trade agreement with Singapore.

Mercosur exports to Singapore in 2021 amounted to $5.9 billion, and imports $1.2 billion, according to data provided by the four-member bloc.

Created in 1991, Mercosur represents a market of some 300 million people, with a territory of almost 5.8 million square miles (14.8 million square kilometers).

The deal could mean additional exports of about $500 million per year to Singapore, a country of about six million people, said Paraguay's deputy economy minister Ivan Haas.

The ministers also agreed to reduce by 10 percent the Common External Tariff (AEC) on a range of imported products -- a key demand of Brazil.

The bloc imposes common tariffs on imports from abroad, and Argentina -- for whom Brazil is a major tariff-free market -- has opposed a reduction of the AEC.

"It is a historic decision, an essential decision... particularly at a time of economic crisis and international inflation," according to Brazilian Foreign Minister Carlos Franca, who said it would boost competitiveness and regional production.

Not officially on the agenda for the meeting is Uruguay's plan to unilaterally negotiate a free trade agreement with China.

Mercosur introduced a rule in 2000 under which it is compulsory to jointly negotiate common trade deals with third parties.

Argentina is opposed to Uruguay's proposal.

Yemen truce holds, but blocked roads a 'major' worry for UN

Issued on: 20/07/2022 -

Traffic on a heavily damaged narrow road that serves as a lifeline between the Yemeni city of Taez, besieged by Huthi rebels, and the southern port of Aden 

AHMAD AL-BASHA AFP

Dubai (AFP) – A truce has brought respite to Yemen after seven years of devastating war, but the blockage of roads remains a "major" humanitarian concern, a UN official has warned.

Yemen's conflict pitting the Saudi-backed government against Iran-backed Huthi rebels has killed hundreds of thousands since 2015 and pushed the country to the brink of famine.

A UN-brokered truce that took effect in early April has provided a rare respite from violence for much of the country and alleviated some of the suffering.

"The situation has improved overall," said Diego Zorrilla, UN deputy humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, citing a drop in casualties, more regular fuel supplies and a resumption of flights.

But "roads are still blocked, so the improvement is not up to people's expectations", he told AFP, referring to one of the main parts of the truce yet to be implemented.

UN special envoy Hans Grundberg has sought to get the warring factions to agree to reopen roads at talks in Jordan, but so far they have resisted, fearing such a move would benefit the other side.

Travel is arduous between the loyalist areas and the rebel-held north, which accounts for 30 percent of Yemen's territory but where 70 percent of the population lives.

The routes are punctuated by roadblocks and detours can see the cost of transportation quadruple, complicating the delivery of aid and depriving many from access to basic services.

'People will die'

"The situation is particularly serious in Taez," a city surrounded by mountains, which is home to between 1.5 million and two million people, said Zorrilla.

Yemeni men try to move a vehicle stuck on a heavily damaged narrow road that serves as a lifeline for Yemen's third-largest city of Taez

 AHMAD AL-BASHA AFP

The city, which was once an important cultural, academic and historical centre, is split by a 16-kilometre-long (10-mile-long) front line.

About 80 percent of the population lives in the government-held part of Taez, but the rebels control the higher ground where the city's water wells are located.

The divide has kept 16,000 workers from seeing their families, and most people have to buy water in expensive tanks, Zorrilla said.

Access to hospitals has also been hampered in Taez, which is cut off from the rest of the country.

"Instead of travelling 20 minutes for dialysis, patients sometimes have to go all the way to Aden", he said, referring to the southern port city that takes up to nine hours to reach on dangerous mountain roads.

The reopening of the roads is "a major humanitarian, economic and development issue", he said, adding that more than two thirds of Yemen's 30 million people need humanitarian aid.

The UN says it has only secured a quarter of the $4.3 billion it needs to help more than 17 million people needing aid in Yemen this year.

The shortfall is mainly due to declining contributions from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which say they are prioritising their own humanitarian causes.

The two Gulf states, members of a military coalition supporting Yemen's government, in April pledged $3 billion in economic aid to the country, but this has yet to be dispersed.

"People will die" unless the UN receives the necessary funding, said Zorrilla.

"The longer a crisis goes on, the more our attention decreases, but that doesn't mean the situation doesn't get worse."

The truce, which ends on August 2, must be renewed to work towards "the opening of roads and other more ambitious issues", he added.

© 2022 AFP

Yemen: The increasing brutality of truck

 hijackers on the 'road of death'

There have always been bandits on the road between Taiz and Aden. 

But they are getting more violent, with security forces seemingly 

unable to stop them

ByMEE correspondent in
Aden, Yemen

Published date: 12 June 2022 

Mohammed, along with dozens of other Yemeni truck drivers, protested on Monday in front of the administrative offices of Taiz's al-Shimayateen district, demanding that the authorities arrest the hijackers who last week killed a child in Lahij.

Akram al-Azazi, 15, was shot dead on 2 June while sitting in the truck driven by his father, a driver who carries goods between Taiz and Aden.

The case created fury on social media and among Yemenis everywhere. Many truck drivers protested and stopped working for a day to express their anger. Some drivers are still on strike today.

'Five months ago, the hijackers stopped me and put a Kalashnikov to my head. I had no option but to give them all my money'

- Mohammed, truck driver

Mohammed, 53, who asked for his last name to be withheld for security reasons, has been driving trucks between Taiz and Aden for more than 10 years and believes that the route through the Lahij governate's Tour al-Baha region is the most dangerous one for drivers to use, with hijackings now commonplace.

The road has become the main one between Taiz and Aden, after the Yemen war closed other key routes.

"When we drive through Tour al-Baha, we feel that we will meet our fate at any time. This has been our suffering for years," Mohammed told Middle East Eye.

"Although we pay thousands [of rials] each trip for the security forces at checkpoints to secure the road, they don't do anything. When we tell them about the hijacking of our colleagues, they say they can't do anything."

Mohammed said that hijackings had been happening for years, and that the security forces used to chase the bandits, but they no longer did.

"Five months ago, the hijackers stopped me and put a Kalashnikov to my head. I had no option but to give them all my money and my phone. I just about convinced them to let me go with my truck," he said.

"I was lucky, but others like Azazi were killed while security forces did nothing."

Chewing qat together

The director of the Tour al-Baha district said in a video statement that he had provided the security forces in Lahij with the names of the hijackers, but that they hadn't done anything.


He accused the security forces in Lahij of supporting the hijackers, saying that they chewed qat together at security checkpoints.

A source in Tour al-Baha district confirmed that a campaign had been started to protect the road but that the killers of Azazi and other victims were still free.

Yemenis dream of peace and open roads as truce continues to hold

Read More »

"We know there is insecurity in some areas, and this is normal amid this situation, but security forces have been doing their best to protect roads in different areas," the source told MEE.

Mohanned is a taxi driver in his 40s who transports passengers between Taiz and Aden. He said the hijackings were not a new phenomenon but that the killings represented a sharp escalation in the levels of violence and brutality.

"Hijackers have been there for years in Lahij, but they used to loot cars, mobiles, money and other belongings. However, now they kill passengers," he told MEE.

"I call the Tour al-Baha road the road of death."

Mohanned said that when drivers faced hijackers, they usually tied to negotiate with them to not physically harm them and just take money, but he confirmed that the new ones were much more brutal.

"I have resorted to using an alternative road, which is through a valley and hard and long, but that is safer than sacrificing my lives and going along that dangerous road."

Mohanned said that other truck drivers avoided this alternative road as their trucks got damaged quickly, so they carried on using the road the hijackers favoured.

"When the trucks drive fast, the hijackers don’t dare to stop them, but when a truck breaks down or can't move very fast, it becomes a target for the hijackers."
Tribes

Some believe that the hijackers are backed by the tribes in Lahij province, but local residents deny that.

Ahmed al-Sobaihi, a Lahij resident, said that hijackers did not represent their tribes and they were not backed by any tribe.

"The hijackers have different kinds of weapons, and those are their own weapons, and they aren't weapons of a tribe, so this is the work of individuals," he told MEE.

"I think bad people are there in every province and tribe in the country, but we should talk about specific people and not a whole tribe or province."

He said that the road was safe at the moment because the security forces were stationed on it. He hoped that they would arrest the killers and send them to trial.

"We respect the law, and we hope that those who committed these crimes get punished so the whole country can be safe," Sobaihi said.

Yemen’s terrifying, severely damaged road to Taiz on brink of collapse

Vehicles are pictured on a damaged road, the only travel route between Yemen’s cities of Taiz and Aden. Yemen has been left in ruins by six years of war, where over 24 million people are in need of aid and protection. (AFP)

Short Url
https://arab.news/57f3n

 26 September 2020
AFP

Convoys of vehicles big and small move at a snail’s pace as they squeeze past each other on the narrow road that has been severely damaged over the years by heavy rainfall

TAIZ: Lorries filled to the brim with goods labor up and down the dangerously winding and precipitous road of Hayjat Al-Abed, the mountainous lifeline to Yemen’s third largest city.

Unlike all other routes linking southwest Taiz to the rest of the war-torn country, the road — with its dizzying drop-offs into the valley below — is the only one that has not fallen into the hands of the Houthi rebels.

Some 500,000 inhabitants of the city, which is besieged by the Iran-backed Houthis, depend on the 7-km stretch of crater-filled road for survival, as the long conflict between the insurgents and the government shows no signs of abating.

Convoys of vehicles big and small move at a snail’s pace as they squeeze past each other on the narrow road that has been severely damaged over the years by heavy rainfall.
“As you can see, it is full of potholes, and we face dangerous slopes,” Marwan Al-Makhtary, a young truck driver, told AFP. “Sometimes trucks can no longer move forward, so they stop and roll back.”

Makhtary said nothing was being done to fix the road, and fears are mounting that the inexorable deterioration will ultimately bring the supply of goods to a halt.
Dozens of Taiz residents on Tuesday urged the government to take action, forming a human chain along the road — some of them carrying signs saying: “Save Taiz’s Lifeline.”

NUMBER 

500,000 inhabitants of Taiz, which is besieged by the Iran-backed Houthis, depend on the 7-km stretch of crater-filled road for survival.

“We demand the legitimate government and local administration accelerate efforts to maintain and fix the road,” said one of the protesters, Abdeljaber Numan.
“This is the only road that connects Taiz with the outside world, and the blocking of this artery would threaten the city.”

Sultan Al-Dahbaly, who is responsible for road maintenance in the local administration, said the closure of the road would represent a “humanitarian disaster” in a country already in crisis and where the majority of the population is dependent on aid.
“It is considered a lifeline of the city of Taiz, and it must be serviced as soon as possible because about 5 million people (in the province) would be affected,” he told AFP.

Humanitarian aid

Meanwhile, Yemen’s president on Thursday urged his government’s rival, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, to stop impeding the flow of urgently needed humanitarian aid following a warning from the UN humanitarian chief last week that “the specter of famine” has returned to the conflict-torn country.

President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s plea came in a prerecorded speech to the UN General Assembly’s ministerial meeting being held virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It aired more than a week after Human Rights Watch warned that all sides in Yemen’s conflict were interfering with the arrival of food, health care supplies, water and sanitation support.

Climate protesters block UK’s busiest motorway after heatwave

ByAFP
Published July 20, 2022

Dozens of wildfires broke out across England on Tuesday due to a fierce heatwave that pushed temperatures to record levels - Copyright AFP Wakil KOHSAR

Climate demonstrators on Wednesday triggered a lengthy tailback on Britain’s busiest motorway, warning that a record-breaking heatwave was a dire reminder for urgent action.

Members of the group Just Stop Oil climbed gantries over the M25 encircling London, causing police to intervene and vehicles to back up for several miles (kilometres) in one direction.

Surrey Police later said a 22-year-old woman who had climbed a gantry was arrested on suspicion of causing a danger to road users, causing a public nuisance and for being a pedestrian on the motorway.

Three lanes that were shut as she was brought down were later reopened, the forced added.

Temperatures topped 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in southern England for the first time on Tuesday, with a new record set at 40.3C.

The extreme heat caused huge transport disruption and sparked the same kind of wildfires seen in Europe in recent years.

Government minister Kit Malthouse told parliament that 34 places saw temperatures in excess of the previous record of 37.8C in 2019.

Firefighters saw “their busiest day since World War II”, dealing with dozens of wildfires as 15 fire and rescue services declared major incidents, he said.

He said at least 41 properties were destroyed in London, 14 in Norfolk, eastern England, five in Lincolnshire, and smaller numbers elsewhere.

Malthouse, who chaired weekend meetings of the government’s emergency contingencies committee, called for the public to heed safety advice, as the risk of more wildfires was still high despite a dip in temperatures.

“Tragically… 13 people are believed to have lost their lives after getting into difficulty in rivers, reservoirs and lakes while swimming in recent days –- seven of them teenage boys,” he added.

London Fire Brigade said 16 firefighters were injured around the capital with two taken to hospital.

The city’s mayor Sadiq Khan said the service received more than 2,600 calls on Tuesday — up from a normal day of about 350.

Khan also accused Conservative leadership candidates vying to succeed Prime Minister Boris Johnson of ignoring “the elephant in the room” of climate change.

Just Stop Oil said it regretted disruption to the public from its latest action on the M25, after activists had previously staged sit-in protests on that road and others.

But declaring the M25 “a site of civil resistance”, it warned of further protests to come this week.

“This is the moment when climate inaction is truly revealed in all its murderous glory for everyone to see: as an elite-driven death project that will extinguish all life if we let it,” the activist group said.

Dissidents of Russian culture face dilemma between silence and exile
July 20, 2022
in Culture, Europe, Music, News



Punk-rave band Little Big were among the latest figures in Russian culture to have to flee the country last month. The lyrics to the new song they released upon their exile says it all: “I’ve got no, I’ve got no / I’ve got no voice / Die or leave, die or leave / I’ve got no choice,” goes one verse in this tune, “Generation Cancellation”.

“We condemn the Russian government’s actions and we are so disgusted by the Kremlin’s military propaganda that we’ve decided to drop everything and leave the country,” the band wrote in a statement quoted by independent news site Meduza.

This hitherto apolitical band, formed in St Petersburg in 2013, are the latest in a stream of cultural figures who have left Russia after opposing the invasion of Ukraine – including rock star Zemfira, who recently fled to France, and Boris Grebenchtchikov, leader of the band Aquarium, who has described Vladimir Putin’s war as “pure madness”.

‘Our Caesar’s Napoleonic plans’

“Grebenchtchikov left because he thought he could express himself better abroad,” said Clementine Fujimora, a professor of anthropology and Russia analyst at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. “This way he can carry on playing concerts and post new songs on Telegram, Instagram and Facebook.”

The singer recently released two songs about the horrors of the war in Ukraine, “Obdidaba” and “Vorozhba”. In the latter, Grebenchtchikov sings about dark magical spells that make “coffins grow in our hearts”.

Other dissident musicians have stayed in Russia – but are paying a heavy price. An icon of Russian rock, Yuri Shevchuck from the band DDT, was on stage in central Russia’s Ufa in May when he declared: “patriotism isn’t about kissing the president’s arse all the time”.

After repeatedly criticising Putin over the past several years, the 65-year-old doyen of contemporary Russian music also lamented that the “youth of Ukraine and Russia are dying” because of “our Caesar’s Napoleonic plans”.

In response, all of Shevchuk’s concerts have been cancelled and he is being prosecuted for “discrediting” the Russian army.

The clearest sign of the amplifying repression in Russia is a law decreeing that spreading “false information” about the Russian army is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The legislation was put in place at the start of March, a week after the invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow insists is merely a “special military operation”. Analysts say the law demonstrates that Russia’s mode of government has changed from authoritarianism to a form of totalitarianism.

One of the most prominent victims of this repressive measure is artist and activist Alexandra Skochilenko – whose crime was to have replaced price tags in supermarkets with anti-war messages.

To avoid prison, others have had to make quick getaways. In May, Pussy Riot member Maria Alekhina disguised herself as a food delivery worker to escape police surveillance and reach safety across the Lithuanian border.

“I’ll stay here as long as I’m not in danger,” Manija, the singer who represented Russia in the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest, told Radio France Internationale. “I think there are many people in Russia who share my view,” she said. Nevertheless, her concerts have been called since she took a stand against the invasion of Ukraine.

‘Afraid of cultural figures’

So one of the old dilemmas from the Soviet era is returning: do writers, musicians and artists stay as an act of defiance, even if they risk losing everything? Or do they leave so they can be safe and speak freely?

“During the Soviet period, dissident cultural figures who left the country often felt a certain guilt because they were leaving people behind”, Fujimura said, noting that many in Russia questioned some exiles’ loyalty.

Fujimura mentioned the most famous dissident of them all, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist, essayist and historian Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who left the USSR for the US in 1974. “When he returned from exile in 1994, some expressed anger that he hadn’t come back sooner,” she observed.

This issue is resurfacing in the current context. Explaining her promise not to leave Russia at the outset of the Ukraine war, Diana Arbenina from 1990s rock band Night Snipers cited a line from a 1992 Anna Akhmatova poem: “I was with my people, where my people and their misfortune were.”

“Most of the artists I follow on social media have no intention of leaving; they want to stay, even if they’ve been fined, threatened and banned from performing concerts,” Fujimora said. “The Russian regime has always been afraid of cultural figures expressing themselves through social media – or indeed any other media – because they have the ability to change people’s consciences.”

But it looks like it will only get more difficult to be a writer, artist or musician in Russia. Not only is the Kremin cutting off dissident voices, it also wants to put the creative arts in the service of its national narrative – especially within Russia’s most influential institutions.

The heads of the Sovremennik Theatre and Gogol Centre in Moscow were ousted in early March. “From the point of view of art, this is not just sabotage – this is murder,” fumed Kirill Serebrennikov, the Gogol Centre’s exiled artistic director, renowned for making the performing arts centre a world leader in avant-garde theatre. Since then over twenty more theatre directors have been sacked.

This article was translated from the original in French.

Kamloops powwow organizers apologize, make changes following outrage

Michael Potestio, Kamloops This Week -


KAMLOOPS — Kamloopa Powwow organizers have issued an apology and made changes, following public backlash to event rules said to discriminate against two-spirit people, young mothers and those of partial Indigenous ancestry.

© Provided by Vancouver Sun

Kamloopa Powwow organizers have issued an apology and made changes, following public backlash to event rules said to discriminate against those who are of partial indigenous ancestry, two-spirit and young mothers. Kamloops This Week.

On July 12, the Kamloopa Powwow Society posted its dance rules online for those participating in the 41st annual competition. The powwow is set to return from July 29 to July 31 after two years of cancellations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The document stated participants must be at least one-quarter native blood. Other rules stated: Each contestant must dress in full regalia and be of the “correct gender” for that category. Those participating in the princess pageant were required to be single, have no children or spouse and be a female enrolled in high school.

The rules came under fire across several social media channels, with outrage and disappointment expressed. Comments were posted to the society’s Facebook page, including accusations of the rules being transphobic, colonial and discriminatory. Others called for rule changes and a boycott of the powwow.

Garry Gottfriedson, a Secwépemc cultural adviser at Thompson Rivers University, told Kamloops This Weel he was angered and saddened when he saw the rules. He said Indigenous culture is complicated and rules around blood are colonial constructs that dictated who could be defined as Indian.

“Our societies never operated that way,” Gottfriedson said. “If you were willing to live in our community and you were willing to accept our culture — no matter how much Indian blood you have in you — then you were accepted as a member of our tribe.”

Kamloops Pride president Ashton O’Brien said she heard from two-spirit and gender-diverse individuals who did not feel welcomed by the event rules and thought they were now being excluded from a cultural celebration, due to the gender requirements.

“For a lot of people, that didn’t make sense,” she said. “Like, what is the correct gender and, if that meant aligning with whatever gender the category was, it felt exclusive.”

On July 13, the Kamloopa Powwow Society posted an apology online and said wording of the rules did not reflect how the event was run in the past. It said the organization would update its dance rules to “reflect equality.” Over the weekend, the society posted rule revisions.

The society stated it had removed outdated and discriminatory language regarding gender and updated rules to welcome all self-identified Indigenous people.

In the updated rules, the one-quarter blood requirement has been changed to “dancers must self-identify as Indigenous” and language in the document now includes both sexes.

As for the princess pageant, the only remaining stipulation is contestants must be between the ages of 13 and 17.

The society said beginning this year it is also adding an annual switch dance special and two-spirit round dance to the powwow. It also plans to appoint youth and a two-spirit member to its committee.

“We are inclusive in honouring our 2SLGBTQIA+ and will continue to recognize our relatives,” the online apology read.

Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir said in a statement that the band is happy the society is taking corrective steps.

“Those rules do not reflect (Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc) values,” Casimir said. Our “chief and council endorses the implementation of a National Action Plan that addresses violence against Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit and 2SLGBTQQIA++. They are our people and are our k’wséltkten, our family and we all hold them dear.”

Kamloopa Powwow Society president Delyla Daniels indicated the powwow’s tabulators and others have dropped out of this year’s powwow.

“I do not know how we are going to recover from this,” Daniels said. “We’ve impacted so many people who were set to have specials and celebration of their family and loved one that are no longer having specials.”

C&T Tabulating, a business that does powwow tabulations, posted online last week that it had withdrawn from the powwow, due to the viral social media outrage. It is not clear if the company now intends to rejoin the powwow, given the updated rules.

Iraqi PM slams Turkey after Kurdistan strike kills 9 civilians

Nine civilians, including at least two children, were killed in a park in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region Wednesday by artillery fire Baghdad blamed on neighbouring Turkey, a country engaged in a cross-border offensive.

© Ari Jalal, Reuters

In an unusually strong rebuke, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi warned Turkey that Iraq reserves the "right to retaliate", calling the artillery fire a "flagrant violation" of sovereignty.

Turkey launched an offensive in northern Iraq in April dubbed "Operation Claw-Lock", which it said targets fighters from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The victims included Iraqi tourists who had come to the hill village of Parakh in Zakho district to escape sweltering temperatures further south in the country, according to Mushir Bashir, the head of Zakho region.

"Turkey hit the village twice today," Bashir told AFP.

People gather outside a hospital following shelling in the city of Zakho in the north of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region on July 20 Ismael ADNAN AFP

A source in Turkey's defence ministry said that he had "no information reporting or confirming artillery fire in this area".

The artillery strikes killed nine and wounded 23, Zakho health official Amir Ali told reporters. He had earlier put the toll at eight dead, including two children.

'Bodies in the water'

In front of a hospital in Zakho, Hassan Tahsin Ali spoke to AFP wearing a bandage around his head.

He said he was lucky to survive the deluge of fire that fell on the park and its water features, where visitors had been relaxing.

"We come from the province of Babylon," the young man said in a slow voice.

"There were indiscriminate strikes on us, there were bodies in the water," he added. "Our young people are dead, our children are dead, who should we turn to? We have only God."

Iraq's prime minister dispatched the country's foreign minister and top security officials to the site.

"Turkish forces have perpetrated once more a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty," Kadhemi said on Twitter, condemning the harm caused to "the life and security of Iraqi citizens."

"Iraq reserves the right to retaliate against these aggressions and take all necessary measures to protect our people," Kadhemi added.

>> Read more: As Ukraine crisis rages, Erdogan trains his sights on Kurdish northern Syria

Designated as a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies, the PKK has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, has complicated relations with the PKK as its presence in the region hampers vital trade relations with neighbouring Turkey.

The military operations have seen Turkey's ambassador in Baghdad regularly summoned to the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs.