The battle for Aleppo ends with liberation for some, Armageddon for others

Government supporters celebrate defeat of rebels in Aleppo, while humanitarian disaster unfolds on other side of battle lines, writes Richard Hall

Left: In the west of Syria's northern province of Aleppo on 16 February, people flee advancing Syrian government forces. Right: Meanwhile, crowds gather to celebrate at the Saadallah al-Jabiri square in Aleppo ( AFP )

It was the kind of split-screen moment that has come to define the Syrian war.

Over the past week, thousands of desperate families have been fleeing airstrikes and shelling in western Aleppo, many of them leaving their homes for the third or fourth time in a seemingly futile search for safety.

At the same time, inside the city itself, crowds of government supporters took to the streets to celebrate the rout of rebel forces on its outskirts, and the Syrian army claimed a symbolic and strategic victory in the long-running battle for Aleppo.

Backed by intensive airstrikes from Russian and Syrian jets, government troops captured more than 30 villages in the western countryside of Aleppo over the weekend. In doing so, they put the country’s second city out of reach of rebel fire for the first time in years and cemented control of the former commercial hub’s link to the capital, Damascus.

In a televised address on Monday, President Bashar al-Assad promised to push on further with the offensive.

“This liberation does not mean the end of the war, and does not mean the end of the schemes nor the end of terrorism or the surrender of enemies,” he said.

“But it means that we rubbed their noses in the dirt as a prelude for complete victory and ahead of their defeat, sooner or later.”

Syrian regime bombards Idlib
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Syrian state news reported that the city had been rescued “from terrorism and shells of hatred and spite from which the city has been suffering for many years.”

But what was a liberation for some was little short of Armageddon for others.

Some 900,000 people have been displaced since early December by the offensive in western Aleppo and neighbouring Idlib province – the largest single displacement of the entire war.

The vast majority of those fleeing are women and children. With no shelter available for the new arrivals, many are being forced to sleep in the open air in freezing temperatures. As many as seven children – including one baby only seven months old – have died from the cold and horrific living conditions in camps, according to Save the Children.
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Masses of civilians flee regime bombs in Syria’s Idlib

Many of those who fled from western Aleppo in recent weeks were uprooted from the city itself in 2016, when rebel forces surrendered in east Aleppo after years of bloody fighting.

Ahmed Aziz, a 29-year-old charity worker, was one of them. After living in the western suburbs of Aleppo since then, he left a few weeks ago with his family for the city of Azaz, near the Turkish border, when the fighting came too close.

“I didn’t go away from my city. I lived in the countryside and it was so close, I could see the western parts of the city. I dreamed of returning,” he tells The Independent by phone.

That dream has now faded, he says.

“For those Assad supporters in my city, I find it brutal that they dance on our bodies. Those who have been killed by the government are human beings. They are people who wanted to live in a free country,” he says. 

 
Civilians flee from Idlib to find safety inside Syria near the border with Turkey, 11 February 2020 (AP)

The battle for the ancient city of Aleppo was one of the most consequential of the entire war.

The capture of the eastern parts of the city by rebels in 2012, after the government violently cracked down on peaceful protests against Mr Assad’s rule, marked one of the opposition’s biggest early successes, even as it failed to breach the west of the city.

Despite a devastating and indiscriminate air campaign by government jets, rebel forces held out in east Aleppo for years. That changed in 2015, when Russia entered the war on the government’s side.

By 2016, with Moscow’s help, Syrian government forces besieged east Aleppo. While rebel forces were also responsible for indiscriminate shelling of the city’s western half, intensive Russian and Syrian government airstrikes targetted hospitals and civilian infrastructure in the east on a much larger scale, squeezing rebels and civilians alike until they surrendered in December 2016. 

The biggest humanitarian horror story of the 21st Century will only be avoided if Security Council members, and those with influence, overcome individual interests and put a collective stake in humanity first. The only option is a ceasefire.Mark Lowcock, United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs

An array of rebel groups, jihadist militias among them, left the city for western Aleppo and Idlib province, as did thousands of civilians. The loss of Aleppo was a crushing blow for rebel forces, from which they never fully recovered.

Today, again backed by Russian airstrikes, Mr Assad’s forces are pushing further into the last rebel-held bastion of Idlib and western Aleppo, which is controlled by both nationalist and jihadist groups who have united to fight off the attack, among them the extremist Hayyat Tahrir al-Sham.

Russian and Syrian bombing has killed close to 300 civilians since 1 January, the United Nations said on Tuesday, 93 per cent of which were caused by the Syrian government and its allies. Civilians are fleeing for the Turkish border and overwhelming relief agencies. Drone footage of a displacement camp in Northern Idlib, Syria.

“Civilians fleeing the fighting are being squeezed into areas without safe shelter that are shrinking in size by the hour. And still they are bombed. They simply have nowhere to go,” UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said in a statement.

On Monday, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Mark Lowcock, warned of “the biggest humanitarian horror story of the 21st century” if a ceasefire is not reached.

The UN has called on Russia and Turkey, which backs a number of rebel groups and has its own forces stationed in Idlib, to agree to broker another ceasefire to allow humanitarian groups to assist those in need.

On Tuesday, a Turkish delegation ended two days of talks with Russian officials in Moscow with no statements made.

Turkey has kept its border closed to Syrians fleeing the fighting, fearing another wave of refugees to add to the 3.5 million already in the country.

That has left those displaced from the recent fighting, like Mr Aziz, with nowhere to go.

QANTAS UNION BUSTING

QANTAS WARNS PILOTS IT MAY HIRE NEW CREW TO FLY LONDON-SYDNEY NONSTOP

‘If we can’t reach agreement with the union soon, we’ll be putting the offer directly to our pilots’ – Qantas International CEO, Tino La Spina

The union representing Qantas pilots has warned the airline that a plan to hire new flight crew for the London-Sydney nonstop could "damage the airline for many years to come".

The Australian airline’s “Project Sunrise” is aimed at launching the world’s longest flight. The plan is to use Airbus A350 jets, which Qantas does not currently fly, to link Heathrow with Kingsford-Smith airport in Sydney. The distance is 10,573 miles, more than 1,000 miles longer than the current longest flight, between Singapore and New York.

The project is not covered by existing agreements with the Australian & International Pilots Association (AIPA), the union representing flight crew working for Qantas Group. 

The Australian airline has warned existing pilots that unless they make concessions to cut costs on future ultra-long-haul flights, it will set up a separate operation and recruit new flight crew on less favourable terms. 

The union said the plan was “not acceptable to a majority of our members” and warned there is currently “no legal basis” for the planned flights to operate.

The airline and AIPA have been in talks on the issue for six months. The biggest stumbling block is the airline’s proposed pay rates for future second officers. These are more junior pilots deployed on flights too long to be operated by a captain and first officer alone.

Qantas claims paying the second officers less than at present is “a major contributor to making the Sunrise business case stack up”.

Tino La Spina, chief executive of Qantas International, said: “We’ve had extensive discussions with AIPA for months and months and while they have told us they don’t like what’s on offer, they haven’t put forward a proposal of their own."

He warned the pilots’ union that, if no deal is reached, the airline will operate “Project Sunrise” flights through a new lower-pay unit to make the service financially viable.

Mr La Spina said: “We have a good deal on the table for our long-haul pilots, with pay increases and promotional opportunities. We’ve structured it so their take home pay is not negatively impacted.

“The reality is we are running out of time to keep our aircraft delivery slots with Airbus. If we can’t reach agreement with the union soon, we’ll be putting the offer directly to our pilots so they can have their say.”

Flight crew will be asked to vote in March, before the airline is expected to announce its decision.

If pilots vote against the agreement, the airline says it “will be left with no viable option than to employ pilots to operate Airbus A350s for Project Sunrise through a new entity”.

Airline to fly nearly empty plane from London to Sydney

But Mark Sedgwick, president of AIPA, said: “The announcement by Qantas that it was prepared to use an external workforce to engage in ultra-long range flying if it could not reach agreement with AIPA is not acceptable to a majority of our members.”

He warned the plan “risks damaging pilot engagement and would potentially damage the airline for many years to come”.

Mr Sedgwick said: “Qantas claims that it has been flexible in its approach to these negotiations but the productivity targets that it is asking pilots to agree to has remained absolutely fixed.

“Current restrictions on pilot duty hours means there is no legal basis for Qantas’ Project Sunrise proposal to operate.”

In 2019 Qantas conducted a series of what it called “research flights” nonstop from New York and London to Sydney.

The airline has operated nonstop flights between Heathrow and Perth since 2018. Routes from London to Brisbane and Melbourne are also being considered as part of Project Sunrise.

Frankfurt and Paris may also be connected nonstop with Sydney.

Would Bernie Sanders really wreck the US economy if he became President?

Lloyd Blankfein, a registered Democrat supporter, tweeted that: 'Sanders is just as polarizing as Trump AND he’ll ruin our economy'
Ben Chu Economics Editor @Benchu_

AFP

This week Bernie Sanders, fresh from his victory in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire, was attacked by a vampire squid.

Or rather he was attacked by the former boss of that Wall Street banking vampire squid (that’s how it was described by Rolling Stone magazine) known as Goldman Sachs.

Lloyd Blankfein, a registered Democrat supporter, tweeted that: “Sanders is just as polarizing as Trump AND he’ll ruin our economy.”

Sanders was unphased. “Let me see, a billionaire executive on Wall Street doesn’t like me,” he told CNN. “Hmm, I am shocked by that.”

But is Blankfein right? Would the Vermont senator ruin the US economy if he won the White House?



What are Sanders’ economic policies?
His website lists a host of objectives such as free-at-the-point-of-use healthcare for all, a jobs guarantee, a cancellation of student debts, a wealth tax on the richest 0.1 per cent and a major investment in public housing and green energy.

Wealth taxes? Free health care? A jobs guarantee? Isn’t that socialism?
Well, Sanders is perfectly happy to describe himself as a socialist.

Read more

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Will bitter moderates vote for Bernie Sanders?

But while policies such as free universal healthcare are seen as extreme in the US they are perfectly ordinary in Europe.

The higher tax and spending proposed by Sanders would also not be out of place on the other side of the Atlantic.

The economist Paul Krugman says Sanders is better described as a European-style social democrat rather than a socialist, not least because Sanders isn’t proposing to nationalise private industries.

OK, but would this ruin the American economy?
Given similar policies have not ruined European economies it’s hard to see why, prima facie, why they would prove so destructive in the US.

The French economist Thomas Piketty even argues Sanders’ policies could be beneficial to the US economy by raising the country’s growth rate, and says that his wealth distribution policies tap into an older tradition of American policymaking.

“Remember that the US is actually the country that invented progressive taxation of income and wealth in the 20th century,” Piketty points out.

Others have described Sanders as a “New Dealer”, referring to the progressive economic policies put in place by former Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt in the wake of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

So why are people describing Sanders as dangerous?
A cynic would say it’s because they don’t personally want to pay more tax.

But it may also be that the genuinely fear Sanders’ policies, even if they are in the mainstream of the European tradition, will do damage in the US context.

Or they may be assuming that Sanders, if he won power, would pursue policies that go much further than those he has proposed, with the 78-year-old proving more radical in office, perhaps like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

Against this, though, is the institutional fact that US presidents are constrained by Congress in what policies they can enact. Sanders might be in favour of relatively radical redistribution, but that’s not true of the wider Democratic party.

Even some of Sanders’ rivals for the Democratic nomination, such as Pete Buttigieg, are critical of his policies such as the $15 federal minimum wage.

That’s why many analysts – even those who support the principle of “medicare-for-all” – think there is little chance he could actually deliver it, even if he won power.

And while some financiers are sounding the alarm, others are more sanguine.

Another Wall Street Bank, JPMorgan, recently told its clients that, even if Sanders were elected, “we put the probability of major changes like medicare-for-all or a wealth tax at less than 5 percent.”

All of which raises a question: is the risk less that Sanders ruins the US economy than that he disappoints his supporters?

SCIENTISTS LAUNCH MAJOR NEW SEARCH FOR ALIEN LIFE IN HOPE OF FINDING EVIDENCE OF EXTRATERRESTRIALS
'Determining whether we are alone in the universe as technologically capable life is among the most compelling questions in science'

Scientists have launched a major new search for alien life.

The new scheme uses the latest techniques to scour the skies in the hope of finding data that could be an indication of extraterrestrial intelligence.

And they will also make the data from their searches available to the public in the hope that citizen scientists can spot potential evidence in what they have found.

The researchers at the SETI Institute, which is devoted to looking for alien life, are hunting for "technosignatures", or hints in the data that suggest they could be coming from planets that are home to other beings. They could be anything from sniffing hints of chemicals on alien worlds to indications that there could be structures or lasers on other planets.

Dr Tony Beasley, director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) telescope based in Virginia, US, said: "Determining whether we are alone in the universe as technologically capable life is among the most compelling questions in science."

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures
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SETI scientists plan to develop a system that will "piggyback" on the Very Large Array (VLA) telescope based in Mexico and provide data to their technosignature search system.

Dr Beasley added: "As the VLA conducts its usual scientific observations, this new system will allow for an additional and important use for the data we're already collecting."

Read more

AI could trick us into thinking we have found aliens, scientists warn
Life forms, whether intelligent or not, can produce detectable indicators such as large amounts of oxygen, smaller amounts of methane, and a variety of other chemicals, the experts said.

So in addition, scientists are also developing computer models to simulate extraterrestrial environments that can help support future searches for habitable planets and life beyond the solar system.

Victoria Meadows, principal investigator for Nasa's Virtual Planetary Laboratory at the University of Washington, which studies to detect exoplanetary habitability, said: "Upcoming telescopes in space and on the ground will have the capability to observe the atmospheres of Earth-sized planets orbiting nearby cool stars, so it's important to understand how best to recognise signs of habitability and life on these planets.

"These computer models will help us determine whether an observed planet is more or less likely to support life."

Meanwhile, SETI's Breakthrough Listen Initiative, which launched in 2015 to "listen" for signals of alien life, has released nearly two petabytes of data from the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the plane of the Milky Way galaxy and the region around its central black hole.


The organisation is now inviting the public to search the data, gathered from various telescopes around the world, and look for signals from intelligent civilisations. Scientists hope that citizen scientists will be able to find interesting things in the data – whether that is unknown natural phenomena, or something even more unexpected, such as alien life.

“Since Breakthrough Listen’s initial data release last year, we have doubled what is available to the public,” said Breakthrough Listen’s lead system administrator, Matt Lebofsky. “It is our hope that these data sets will reveal something new and interesting, be it other intelligent life in the universe or an as-yet-undiscovered natural astronomical phenomenon.”

Yuri Milner, an entrepreneur and founder of the Breakthrough initiative, said: "For the whole of human history, we had a limited amount of data to search for life beyond Earth.

"So, all we could do was speculate.

"Now, as we are getting a lot of data, we can do real science and, with making this data available to general public, so can anyone who wants to know the answer to this deep question."

The initiatives and strategies in expanding the search for extraterrestrial life were presented at the the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Seattle.

Additional reporting by agencies

Is China’s new rail system leaving small-town Kenya behind?


Two hours from Nairobi, a derelict train station is but a blur from the view of the new high-speed service as it whizzes past without stopping

Baz Ratner
3 days ago

Is China's new rail system leaving small-town Kenya behind?
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The soporific buzz of bees fills the abandoned train station at Kiu, a two-hour drive from Kenya‘s capital Nairobi. Rusting rail sleepers lie on the grass outside. A new Chinese-built rail track lies about 500m away from the old colonial-era railway station, which closed in 2012. The new high-speed trains thunder through without stopping; Kiu is just a dusty blur glimpsed through the window.

Residents of this eastern Kenya town serving 6,000 people depended on the old station and railway to get to work, or the nearest hospitals. Travelling by road is a slow and costly alternative.​ The new £2.5bn railway, which opened in 2017, is part of China‘s Belt and Road Initiative – a multitrillion-dollar series of infrastructure projects upgrading land and maritime trade routes between China and Europe, Asia and Africa.

The new railway sliced travel times in half for passengers and cargo travelling between the capital Nairobi and the port city of Mombasa. The non-express service takes just over four hours to make six stops but only runs once a day, a steep reduction from the 46 stops of the old service that ran twice a day.

“This new railway is just for the rich. We do not benefit,” says Thomas Mutevu, a welder in Kiu. He used to commute to work in Nairobi by train every day. But now the train no longer stops, he has stopped commuting. It is too far and expensive by road. Other Kiu residents who work in Nairobi now only come home at weekends, he adds.

State-run Kenya Railways said the new line has boosted local travel. Passengers surged to 1.765 million in the year to June 2019, up from 1.239 million in the year to June 2018, because people who used to travel by road or air now opt for the train. Cargo was up to five million tons last year, although some businesses complain they are being forced to use the new line.
Read more

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The new rail sliced Emily Katembua’s farm in half. Although she was compensated, she struggles to get to the market without the train. “The government should put a station here so we can benefit since we are traders who need to travel and sell our produce,” she says, surrounded by goats and sheep.

Residents must now pay about 500 shillings (£3.78) to get there by motorbike and minibus, five times what it used to cost on the old rail, they said. Taxis are only for emergencies – they cost 10,000 shillings (£75.50), almost a month’s wages for a labourer.
Children look out of the window of a train from Mombasa to Nairobi (Reuters)

Some want the old line revived as an attraction. It was dubbed “the Lunatic Express” when British colonialists built it more than a century ago, because it cost the lives of thousands of construction workers from British India and was considered a huge waste of British taxpayers’ money.

“It should actually be a steam train so you can actually see the smoke,” says Mohammed Hersi, the chair of the Kenya Tourism Federation, a private sector lobby. “That would be something special.”

Reporting by Duncan Miriri, Reuters

Rising Antarctic temperatures show how desperately we need a Green New Deal

As glaciers in the region continue to retreat and the temperature increases, scientists are again warning about the impact on rising sea levels

We have the answer: a 10-year ambitious, national action plan to transform our economy and secure a liveable climate while building a fair society

Hannah Martin@Hannah_RM

Hannah Martin is the co-executive director of Green New Deal UK / @GreenNewDealUK

Sunday 16 February 2020 11:45

On Friday, temperatures on an island in Antarctica peaked, hitting over 20C. This followed a record week in which temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula reached over 18C, the highest since a similar peak in March 2015. As the World Meteorological Organisation spokeswoman Clare Nullis told the press, it “is not a figure you would normally associate with Antarctica, even in the summertime”.

As glaciers in the region continue to retreat and the temperature increases, scientists are again warning about the impact on rising sea levels. Earlier this month, the BBC reported on the melting of the “doomsday Thwaites glacier” in Antarctica. This glacier is the size of Britain and already accounts for 4 per cent of world sea rise each year. This glacier is so large that the water it contains alone could ensure a global sea level rise of half a metre.

As these huge systems, like the Antarctic, respond to a warming planet, the scientific community have condemned governments who are guilty of inaction and the companies who continue to make money from a global economy reliant on fossil fuels. Last year, organisers of the Edinburgh Science Festival imposed a blanket ban on sponsorship deals with fossil fuel companies, explaining the decision by asserting that “the oil and gas sector is not moving fast enough” to meet climate change targets.

As condemnation increases, so too will the greenwashed cries from those responsible. This week the new BP CEO joined Instagram and announced to the world that the company was listening and would respond by committing to shrinking its carbon footprint to “net zero by 2050”. But as Alice Bell’s forensic look at BP’s plan to do this says, we should all “beware oil execs in environmentalists’ clothing. They may simply wish to seize the growing energy for change and steer it towards their own ends: the continued burning of fossil fuels.”

Our changing climate is warming due to heat caused by excessive carbon dioxide transmitted into the air by the burning of fossil fuels. The very same fossil fuels which governments keep subsidising and companies keep extracting. However, things are coming to a head. Climate change is now in the news like never before as temperature records continue to be broken, storms batter the UK and flooding, heat waves and the resulting disruption become the new normal.

We know that the British public is increasingly concerned about climate change. A poll by Green New Deal UK last year showed that a majority of the UK public and almost half of Conservative voters support a radical plan to transform the economy and tackle the climate crisis. For the UK government, this comes at a time when many communities that will be impacted by climate change are still suffering under the weight of a decade of austerity and an economy that isn’t working for them. We are one of the richest countries in the world, yet 14 million of us live in poverty.

Environmental action doesn’t need to be at the expense of human flourishing; we can live in a world where there is economic security and protection of the natural world. A programme like the Green New Deal, a 10-year ambitious national action plan to transform our economy and secure a liveable climate while building a fair society, is the answer. 

With several candidates committing to the Green New Deal in the Democratic primaries, as well as commitment from campaigns that are springing up across the world, such a plan would mean that we are able to improve basic human rights like energy, housing, and transport while creating well-paid jobs, lower bills and giving people more control over their lives.

It would mean a homebuilding and retrofitting programme to make our houses more sustainable and energy efficient. Our bills will be lower and nobody will have to live in cold, draughty and damp conditions. We would see a massive rollout of cheaper, faster and improved public transport to provide a safe, clean and easy way of getting around that doesn’t cost the earth.

History shows that we can’t sit back and rely on politicians to deliver the transformation we need. Public pressure and social movements have always been instrumental to changing our society for the better, from the fight for the rights of women, people of colour and the LGBTQ+ community, to the fall of oppressive regimes across the world, and from the minimum wage and the right to a weekend to key environmental protections.

It is up to us to build that movement which can absorb the truth of our changing planet, and then shift the balance of power to force political action at every level on climate change.

Disease found in 66-million-year-old dinosaur tail that still affects humans today
Israeli researcher says find is a world first 

Rory Sullivan Sunday 16 February 2020 

‘This is the first time this disease has been identified in a dinosaur,’ said lecturer Dr Hila May ( SWNS )

A disease which still affects people today has been discovered in the fossilised tail of a dinosaur that lived over 66 million years ago.

The discovery came after a tumour was found in the vertebrae of a young dinosaur which had been unearthed in Alberta, Canada.

Following a micro-CT scan of the tail in Tel Aviv, Israeli researchers created a reconstruction of the tumour.

They identified the disease as Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH), which is a rare condition that is sometimes classified as a cancer.

According to the NHS, LCH is an “unusual condition” which displays “some characteristics of cancer.”

It is also recognised as a cancer by the National Cancer Institute, a US government agency.

Dr Hila May, a lecturer in anatomy and anthropology at Tel Aviv University, said large cavities in two sections of the dinosaur’s vertebrae were “extremely similar” to those produced by LCH.

Dr May said that further analyses confirmed it was LCH, adding: “This is the first time this disease has been identified in a dinosaur.”

The researchers think their findings could help the study of evolutionary medicine, which looks at the behaviour and development of diseases over time.

Israel Hershkovitz, also of Tel Aviv University, said: “We are trying to understand why certain diseases survive evolution with an eye to deciphering what causes them in order to develop new and effective ways of treating them.”

John Oliver Breaks Down Medicare For All, 

Slams Pete Buttigieg's 'S**t Sandwich' Plan

Jenna Amatulli HuffPost February 17, 2020


John Oliver strikingly broke down Medicare for All proposals during the season premiere of “Last Week Tonight” on Sunday, and took a pointed dig at Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg’s “shit sandwich with guac” ideas for health care.

Oliver explained on his HBO show how health care in the United States currently works, and what a government-funded single-payer program like Medicare for All would do to potentially fix it.

Zeroing in on three things that often arise in the discussion of Medicare for All ― cost, wait times, and choice ― Oliver deftly explained the myths associated with each.

He also pointed out how “fucked” the current health care system is, with examples: crowdfunding campaigns for surgeries; insurance companies paying for people to fly to Mexico for cheaper medications; and patients having to choose which ailing organ is most in need of treatment.

Conservatives are not the only ones pushing back on Medicare for All, Oliver said, pointing to Buttigieg’s Medicare for All Who Want It plan.

“What Buttigieg is referring to when he says Medicare for All Who Want It is basically the public option. That is where the government doesn’t replace the private insurance system. It just introduces its own plan that would compete with it. It would definitely be an improvement over what we have now. The problem is, it would leave so much of our current insurance infrastructure with all of its problems intact,” Oliver explained.

He continued:


So, that’s kind of like being offered either a shit sandwich or a slightly smaller shit sandwich with guac. I mean, I guess I’ll take the second one if you’re asking, but honestly the lack of guac wasn’t really my main fucking concern.

Oliver acknowledged that he bashes his native Britain “a lot.” But one thing it does well is the National Health Service.

“I’ll be honest with you, I’ve never had a bad experience [with NHS], and I don’t know anyone who has. But, since moving to America, I don’t think I have met anyone who doesn’t have at least one insurance industry horror story,” he said.

The host wrapped up the segment by saying that he personally supports “some version of carefully designed universal health coverage.”

“I will own all the things about it that are difficult, including the fact that politically, it would be incredibly hard to get passed, but in return, anyone who’s resistant to significant change is going to have to own all the flaws of our current system,” he said.

“One in which, when Americans get sick, they can find themselves comparison shopping with a burst appendix, flipping a coin between lifesaving medications, and praying they can come up with a catchy enough hashtag to cover their care.”

You can watch the entire Medicare for All segment below:

Warren says 'egomaniac billionaire' Bloomberg will make a good Trump stand-in during Democratic debate

Tim O'Donnell, The Week•February 18, 2020


The remaining Democratic presidential candidates don't seem very happy about billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg qualifying for Wednesday's debate in Las Vegas ahead of the Nevada caucus Saturday. But Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sees a silver lining.

Warren on Tuesday blasted Bloomberg over Twitter, calling him an "egomaniac billionaire," but she suggested his presence could come in handy because he can serve as a stand-in for President Trump, giving the other candidates on stage a chance to show voters how they'd go after the incumbent should they win the Democratic nomination.

It’s a shame Mike Bloomberg can buy his way into the debate. But at least now primary voters curious about how each candidate will take on Donald Trump can get a live demonstration of how we each take on an egomaniac billionaire. https://t.co/H02radEZcv— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) February 18, 2020

Warren and her competitors may indeed get a chance to test out some of their offensive game plan for Trump on Wednesday, but it remains to be seen if Bloomberg will fire back in a similar manner to Trump. At the least, they should expect fewer nicknames.

Locust swarms arrive in South Sudan, threatening more misery

AFP•February 18, 2020


Pest: Desert locusts are threatening millions of people in East Africa with hunger (AFP Photo/TONY KARUMBA)

Juba (AFP) - Swarms of locusts which are wreaking havoc across East Africa have now arrived in South Sudan, the government said Tuesday, threatening more misery in one of the world's most vulnerable nations.

Billions of desert locusts, some in swarms the size of Moscow, have already chomped their way through Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, Tanzania, Sudan and Uganda.

Their breeding has been spurred by one of the wettest rainy seasons in the region in four decades.

Experts have warned the main March-to-May cropping season is at risk. Eggs laid along the locusts' path are due to hatch and create a second wave of the insects in key agricultural areas.

The arrival of the locusts could be catastrophic in South Sudan, where war followed by drought and floods has already left six million people -- 60 percent of the population -- facing severe hunger.

Agriculture Minister Onyoti Adigo Nyikiwec said the locusts had crossed the eastern border with Uganda on Monday.

"The report came that these are matured. As you know locusts are like human beings, they send their reconnaissance ahead of time to make sure that whether there is food or not and if the area is good for breeding."

Meshack Malo, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative in South Sudan, said about 2,000 locusts had been spotted so far, and if not controlled quickly, could have a devastating impact.

"These are deep yellow which means that they will be here mostly looking at areas in which they will lay eggs."

He said the FAO was training locals and acquiring sprayers and chemicals to try and combat the locusts. It is the first locust invasion in 70 years in the country.

Other countries have employed aircraft to spray the swarms, while desperate locals have employed tactics like banging pots and pans or shooting at them.

Nyikiwec said the government had prepared a contingency plan.

"We are training people who will be involved in spraying and also we need chemicals for spraying and also sprayers. You will also need cars to move while spraying and then later if it becomes worse, we will need aircraft."

Earlier this month Somalia declared a national emergency over the invasion.
The FAO says the current invasion is known as an "upsurge," the term for when an entire region is affected.

However, if the invasion cannot be rolled back and spreads, it becomes known as a "plague" of locusts.

There have been six major desert locust plagues in the 1900s, the last of which was in 1987-89. The last major upsurge was in 2003-05.




Huge locust outbreak in East Africa reaches South Sudan

MAURA AJAK, Associated Press•February 18, 2020

Huge locust outbreak in East Africa reaches vulnerable South Sudan

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — The worst locust outbreak that parts of East Africa have seen in 70 years has reached South Sudan, a country where roughly half the population already faces hunger after years of civil war, officials announced Tuesday.

Around 2,000 locusts were spotted inside the country, Agriculture Minister Onyoti Adigo told reporters. Authorities will try to control the outbreak, he added.

The locusts have been seen in Eastern Equatoria state near the borders with Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. All have been affected by the outbreak that has been influenced by the changing climate in the region.

The situation in those three countries “remains extremely alarming,” the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said in its latest Locust Watch update Monday. Locusts also have reached Sudan, Eritrea, Tanzania and more recently Uganda.

The soil in South Sudan's Eastern Equatoria has a sandy nature that allows the locusts to lay eggs easily, said Meshack Malo, country representative with the FAO.

At this stage “if we are not able to deal with them ... it will be a problem,” he said.

South Sudan is even less prepared than other countries in the region for a locust outbreak, and its people are arguably more vulnerable. More than 5 million people are severely food insecure, the U.N. humanitarian office says in its latest assessment, and some 860,000 children are malnourished.

Five years of civil war shattered South Sudan's economy, and lingering insecurity since a 2018 peace deal continues to endanger humanitarians trying to distribute aid. Another local aid worker was shot and killed last week, the U.N. said Tuesday.

The locusts have traveled across the region in swarms the size of major cities. Experts say their only effective control is aerial spraying with pesticides, but U.N. and local authorities have said more aircraft and pesticides are required. A handful of planes have been active in Kenya and Ethiopia.

The U.N. has said $76 million is needed immediately. On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a visit to Ethiopia said the U.S. would donate another $8 million to the effort. That follows an earlier $800,000.

The number of overall locusts could grow up to 500 times by June, when drier weather begins, experts have said. Until then, the fear is that more rains in the coming weeks will bring fresh vegetation to feed a new generation of the voracious insects.

South Sudanese ministers called for a collective regional response to the outbreak that threatens to devastate crops and pasturage.

Locusts swarm into South Sudan as plague spreads

By Denis Dumo, Reuters•February 18, 20203 Comments

JUBA, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Swarms of locusts ravaging crops and grazing land across east Africa have reached South Sudan, already reeling from widespread hunger and years of civil war, the country's agriculture minister said on Tuesday.

The locusts crossed into southern Magwi county, on the border with Uganda, Minister Anyoti Adigo Nyikwach said.

Kenya, Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti are battling the worst locust outbreak in decades, and swarms have also spread into Tanzania, Uganda and now South Sudan.

Desert locusts can travel up to 150 km (95 miles) in a day and eat their own body weight in greenery, meaning a swarm just one kilometre square can eat as much food as 35,000 people in a day, the United Nations says.

The invasion is worsening food shortages in a region where up to 25 million people are suffering from three consecutive years of droughts and floods.

Meshack Malo, South Sudan's representative for the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, said the locusts were mature and looking for breeding grounds that will form the basis of the next major infestation.

“These are deep yellow, which means that they will be here mostly looking at areas in which they will lay eggs,” he said.

Teams planned to mark the place where they lay eggs and then come back to kill the young insects in 14 days, he said, since poisoning the eggs in the ground could damage the soil.

At least 2,000 locusts had crossed the border, he said. During each three month breeding cycle, a single locust can breed 20 more, giving rise to the massive swarms that are now threatening crops on either side of the Red Sea.

Oil-rich South Sudan is recovering from five years of civil war that plunged parts of the country into famine in 2017 and forced a quarter of the population to flee their homes. In December, the U.N.'s World Food Programme said the food security outlook was dire after floods affected nearly a million people. (Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Mark Potter)