Canada, Sweden pave way for compensation talks with Iran on downed plane
Issued on: 03/07/2020 -

Mourners lit candles in Toronto, Canada in early January 2020 at a vigil honoring the victims of Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752 Geoff Robins AFP/File
MANY OF THE IRANIAN CANADIAN VICTIMS WERE FROM EDMONTON
Ottawa (AFP)

Canada announced Thursday an agreement to launch negotiations with Iran on compensation for the families of the foreign victims of a Ukrainian passenger plane shot down in January, with Sweden expressing confidence Tehran would pay.

An international "coordination and response group" of countries whose nationals died on the plane signed a memorandum of understanding, formally paving the way for negotiations with Tehran, according to a Canadian government statement.

The countries -- Canada, Britain, Ukraine, Sweden and Afghanistan -- each had citizens die when Tehran's armed forces mistakenly shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752.


"The five states created the legal structure necessary to start these negotiations," Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne told AFP.

"It is a first step -- necessary but only a first step -- to begin negotiations to obtain reparations for the victims' families," he said.

Earlier in the day, Sweden's Foreign Minister Ann Linde told news agency TT that Tehran had agreed to compensate the families of foreign victims.

There is "no doubt" that Iran would follow through on the compensation, she said, adding that it was still unclear what sums would be paid out.

"We have signed an agreement of mutual understanding that we will now negotiate with Iran about amends, compensation to the victims' next of kin," Linde said.

Ukraine, the group's designated speaker on the negotiations, will be responsible for proposing a date to launch the talks in Tehran, Champagne said.

"These kinds of negotiations generally take several months or even years," added Champagne, whose country chairs the coordinated group.

"Iran had indicated to us its desire to start negotiations. I always judge Iran not by its words but by its actions," he warned.

The 176 victims of the crash, which occurred shortly after taking off from Tehran airport on January 8, were mostly Iranian-Canadians.

Of countries apart from Iran, Canada was the hardest hit, with a total of 85 victims (both citizens and permanent residents).

The Islamic Republic admitted days after the downing that its forces accidentally shot the Kiev-bound jetliner.

At the end of June Iran officially enlisted the help of France's BEA air accident agency to download and read the data on the flight recorder.

Ottawa had been demanding that Iran, which does not have the technical means to extract and decrypt the data, send the plane's black boxes abroad.

© 2020 AFP

Little-known archives discreetly testify to Europe's wars
Issued on: 03/07/2020 -

Former OSCE Documentalist Alice Nemcova looked after the archives of the OSCE from 1991 until last month Michal Cizek AFP

Prague (AFP)

They are gathering dust on shelves, but could make war criminals tremble: the archives of the OSCE, an international organisation addressing security-related concerns, are increasingly becoming a source for those who seek to prove abuses committed during conflicts in Europe.

The field reports of the observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe -- stacked in an elegant white villa on a leafy hill on the outskirts of Prague -- document conflicts on the continent since 1975.

No media have until now been allowed access, according to the OSCE, as the organisation -- set up during the Cold War to build trust between the West and the Soviet Union -- usually doesn't seek publicity to continue collecting information from the ground as much as possible.


But it is here that famous prosecutor Carla Del Ponte combed through documents for the 2002 indictment of former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic.

- Precedent set -

Documentalist Alice Nemcova, who reigned over this universe of cardboard boxes enclosing billions of yellowed A4 sheets from 1991 until last month, has seen the collection gain in importance over the years.

"The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) set a precedent by wanting to access our files," the 63-year-old told AFP.

"Mrs Del Ponte kept asking for more. She received four metal boxes filled with testimonies and photos of mass graves," Nemcova recalled.

The UN established the ICTY in 1993 to try perpetrators of war crimes committed in the ethnic violence that followed the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Milosevic, who faced 66 counts including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia, was never convicted as he died in prison in 2006 during the trial.

However, others accused by the tribunal have been found guilty and jailed.

"The International Criminal Court (ICC) also made a request concerning Georgia in 2012," Nemcova revealed.

Four years later, the Netherlands-based ICC launched an investigation into the conflict between the Caucasus country and Russia.

The Kosovo Force (KFOR), the NATO-led troops tasked with protecting Kosovo for the past two decades, also applied for access to the OSCE in 2017, as did the Red Cross, which was looking for people who had gone missing in conflicts.

- 'Invaluable source' -

The OSCE is an important source of information because it "specialises in questions of democracy, freedom and minority rights" and is a constant presence on the ground over an area larger than that of the European Union or NATO, said researcher Nicolas Badalassi.

From Vancouver to Vladivostok, the Vienna-based OSCE has 57 member states, and its archives are "enormous", said Badalassi, who lectures contemporary history at the Institute of Political Studies in Aix-en-Provence, France.

OSCE is the only international organisation to have immediately gone to the crash site of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, which was shot down by a Russian-made missile over rebel-held eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 people aboard.
A trial opened in March in the Netherlands against four men -- three Russians and one Ukrainian -- accused of downing the plane.

The OSCE has had observers in the rebel-held eastern Ukraine for years to monitor the conflict there.

"In the future, it is clear that the reports in Ukraine since the start of the war in 2014 will be an invaluable source for justice," Badalassi said.

"In fact, I don't see anyone else describing the crisis as seen from the inside. Besides, observers have even been kidnapped -- to hinder their work."

Even after the Cold War, the OSCE also maintained offices in many countries and regions, including those accused of authoritarianism, such as Chechnya and Belarus.

It also sends election observers regularly to monitor polls around the world.

But not everyone looks towards the OSCE archives kindly.

A former rebel leader once tried to have his name deleted from its search engine. "He must not have had a clear conscience," Nemcova said.

© 2020 AFP

Hong Kongers scrub social media history in face of security law

Issued on: 03/07/2020 -
 

Legal analysts and rights groups warn the broad wording of the law will choke civil liberties and free speech in Hong Kong Philip FONG AFP

Hong Kong (AFP)

Hong Kongers are scrubbing their social media accounts, deleting chat histories and mugging up on cyber privacy as China's newly imposed security law blankets the traditionally outspoken city in fear and self-censorship.

China's authoritarian leaders enacted sweeping new powers on Tuesday -- keeping the contents secret until the last minute -- after more than a year of often violent protests in a financial hub increasingly chafing under Beijing's rule.

Certain political views such as wanting independence became outlawed overnight and legal analysts and rights groups warn the broad wording of the law -- which bans subversion, secession, terrorism and colluding with foreign forces -- will choke civil liberties and free speech.


Despite assurances from Beijing that political freedoms would not be hindered, many Hong Kongers moved to delete digital references of their opposition to China's ruling Communist Party, which uses similar laws on the mainland to crush dissent.

"I changed my profile name and switched to a private account so that my employer will not be able to see future posts which they deem to be offensive to China or have breached the national security law," Paul, an employee of a large company whose management he described as "pro-Beijing", told AFP.

He said he would be "very careful" about posting in the future, fearing colleagues or even friends might report him, and asked not to be identified.

- VPNs and deleted chats -

After the law came in, many Hong Kongers took to Twitter and other social media platforms such as Telegram and Signal to either announce their departure or share tips on internet safety.

"We will clear all the messages for your safety," one popular Telegram group used by pro-democracy protesters wrote. "Please watch out for what you say."

One lawyer with pro-democracy leanings messaged an AFP journalist asking for their entire WhatsApp history to be deleted.

Another announced they were moving all communications to Signal, which they felt was a more secure messaging app.

Beijing has said some serious cases will be prosecuted on the mainland, dismantling the legal firewall that has existed between Hong Kong's judiciary and China's Communist Party-controlled courts since the 1997 handover from Britain.

Local police have been granted wider surveillance powers to monitor suspects, including wiretapping and accessing digital communications, without a judge's approval.

The new law also allows China's feared security agencies to set up shop in Hong Kong for the first time.

Beijing says it can now prosecute national security crimes committed outside it borders -- even by foreigners -- raising concerns that people visiting of transiting through Hong Kong could be arrested.

Companies providing virtual private network (VPN) tools -- which can make internet access more secure -- have reported a spike in downloads since the law was announced.

Billie, a 24-year-old assistant to a district councillor, said he started using a VPN in May when China announced plans for the new law.

He culled many of his social media followers and removed some "sensitive" posts -- even though Beijing's new law is not supposed to be retroactive.

"I feel very ashamed and embarrassed. I never wanted to do so, but I felt I have to, in order to survive," he told AFP, also asking for anonymity.

"A part of me is gone."

- 'Lennon Walls' removed -

It is not just digital walls being scrubbed.

Several pro-democracy restaurants and shops have taken down their "Lennon Wall" displays expressing support for protests or criticism of China's leadership.

Gordon Lam, a pro-democracy activist prominent within the city's catering sector, told AFP at least one restaurant sought his advice after police visited and warned their display "might violate the national security law".

"It seems the government is using the national security law to put pressure on the yellow economic circle," Lam said, using a local phrase to describe businesses that support calls for democracy and are popular with protesters.

The first arrests under the new security law were made during protests on Wednesday when thousands defied a ban on rallies, many chanting slogans.

Most were arrested for having flags and leaflets in favour of Hong Kong independence, a clear signal that even possession of such items was now illegal.

Others vowed to avoid censoring themselves.

"It's not that I am not at all worried," Chow Po-chung, an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, wrote on Facebook.

"I just don't want to be overly worried and live in fear all the time. Because once fear takes root in our minds, we can't live up to what we want for ourselves."

© 2020 AFP

US sanctions on ICC staff are unprecedented, says Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda

Issued on: 02/07/2020 -
 

© FRANCE 24 screengrab

By:Marc Perelman

Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), tells FRANCE 24’s Marc Perelman that the decision to sanction the ICC officials investigating alleged war crimes committed by US troops in Afghanistan is "a naked attempt to interfere with the course of justice".

Bensouda describes the US decision as an “unprecedented and coercive” move against the court and its judicial independence, noting that such sanctions are usually reserved for terrorists and drug traffickers.

Despite the economic and legal pressure the court has come under, Benouda said she is determined to continue her investigations, which include probing suspected crimes carried out by Israel in the Palestinian Territories, despite the pressure Israel is also putting on the court.

Click on the video player to watch the full interview.

French court to rule on reopening probe of former Rwandan president's assassination



Issued on: 03/07/2020 -

Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana (C) was killed when his plane was shot down in 1994, triggering the genocide of some 800,000 in the east African country. AFP/File

Text by:NEWS WIRES

A French court will decide Friday whether to reopen an investigation into the assassination 26 years ago of Rwanda's president in a plane downing that triggered the country's 100-day genocide.

The appeals court in Paris has been asked to revisit a 2018 decision to throw out the probe against nine members and former members of incumbent President Paul Kagame's entourage in a case that has poisoned relations between the two countries.

A plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana, from Rwanda's Hutu majority, was shot down in Kigali on April 6, 1994, unleashing a killing spree that would leave 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis but also moderate Hutus, dead.

The plane was struck by at least one missile as it came in to land at Kigali, also killing Burundi's president Cyprien Ntaryamira, another Hutu, on board.

A probe was opened in France in 1998 after a complaint by families of the French plane crew.

Ties broken

The investigation initially focused on allies of Kagame, a Tutsi who led the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebel movement that came to power after defeating the extremist Hutu regime.

Kagame, who became Rwanda's president in 2000, broke diplomatic ties with Paris between 2006 and 2009 after France issued arrest warrants for his allies.

Then in 2012, a report by French experts pinpointed the camp of Kanombe, controlled by Habyarimana's army, as the missile launch site -- shifting the investigation's focus.

Kigali said that finding vindicated its belief that the attack was carried out by Hutu extremists who believed Habyarimana was too moderate and who opposed the Arusha peace process then under way.

As investigations dragged on, Kagame accused France ahead of the genocide's 20th anniversary in 2014, of having played a "direct role" in the killing.

And in November 2016, Kigali launched an inquiry into the alleged role of 20 French officials in the genocide that began hours after the plane was brought down.

'Past is behind us'

France has always denied the allegations and last year, President Emmanuel Macron announced the creation of a panel of historians and researchers to look into the claims.

In December 2018, French judges dropped their probe for lack of evidence.

Families of the victims of the missile attack, including Habyarimana's widow Agathe, lodged an appeal against that ruling.

If the appeals judges agree Friday, the investigation can be reopened, or some or all of the suspects directed to appear before a criminal court for trial.

At a January hearing, however, prosecutors urged the court to confirm the 2018 decision to abandon the case.

Kagame agreed.

"I believe that the past is behind us," he told the Jeune Afrique weekly news magazine this week.

"Reopening a classified file is to invite problems," he said. "If things are not definitively clarified, our relations are likely to suffer one way or another."

(AFP)

IF YOU CAN'T PLAY  TOGETHER 
EVERYBODY OUTTA THE POOL
Pentagon: China military exercises will 'further destabilize' S. China Sea

ALL YOU HAVE TO KNOW

The region is believed to have valuable oil and gas deposits.


Issued on: 03/07/2020 -


Disputed claims in the South China Sea AFP

Taking the measure of noise pollution during COVID lockdown
Issued on: 03/07/2020 -

The World Health Organization (WHO) has tagged noise pollution as the second most dangerous environmental risk factor for humans after air pollution Phineas RUECKERT AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

Samuel Challeat was riding his bike in the city of Toulouse in the hours before France's strict COVID-19 lockdown took hold when the thought came to him.

What impact will confinement have on the urban sound environment, and how could it be measured, he wondered.

That same day, Challeat, a geographer at the University of Toulouse II, launched an appeal to scientists and researchers around the world to measure the "unique perturbation" of city sounds during confinement.


The project, called Silent Cities, was up and running within 48 hours, and now has more than 350 participants in 40 countries around the world, including France, the United States, India and Brazil, Challeat told AFP in an interview.

Participants captured ambient sound -- recording one out of every 10 minutes -- and uploading the data into an open-source database.

Because the project is open-source, anyone can access the data and the sound files for free.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has tagged noise pollution as the second most dangerous environmental risk factor for humans after air pollution.

One in five Europeans is exposed to long-term noise pollution that is harmful to health, according to the European Environment Agency.

Confinement was the perfect natural experiment for establishing a baseline for noise pollution in cities, according to Jerome Sueur, a bioacoustician at Paris's natural history museum.

- Silent cities -

"It showed us to what extent we are in a noisy environment and allows us to quantify that," he said.

Sueur set up sound measurement instruments called magnetometers in Paris and Cachan, the suburb where he lives, as part of the Silent Cities project.

In mid-June, the magnetometer in the gardens of Paris's natural history museum had made more than 8,000 recordings and amassed 50 gigabytes of data, he said.

During confinement, noise was drastically reduced across the board in the French capital.

Environmental sound pollution dropped by as much as 90 percent in some areas of Paris during confinement, according to Fanny Mietlicki, the executive director of BruitParif, an organisation that measures urban noise pollution.

"It was an unprecedented situation over this long of a time period," she told AFP.

- Unhealthy noise levels -

As car, rail and air traffic slowed nearly to a halt, BruitParif's sound map of the Paris region -- typically red to indicate high-levels of noise pollution -- suddenly became green.

Noise pollution from automobile and train traffic alone costs the European Union -- in degraded health, lost productivity, and other impacts -- some 40 billion euros per year, according to a 2011 European Commission report.

Compared to air pollution, "noise seems to have a larger impact on indicators related to quality of life, and on mental health and well-being," said Eulalia Peris, the European Environment Agency's environmental noise expert.

Paris was the world's third most noise-polluted city, according to a 2017 report compiled by the WHO and Norwegian-based technology research group SINTEF.

The research also showed a tight statistical link between urban noise pollution and hearing loss.

Whether or not peace-and-quiet had positive effects on people is hard to say, Mietlicki cautioned.

"Not everyone had the same conditions of confinement," she said.

Challeat and his colleagues plan to publish a dataset paper at the end of the summer, and are currently seeking funding to extend the project into 2021 to measure noise pollution levels year-on-year, Challeat said.

This, he added, would be critical in showing just how unique the COVID-confinement moment was.

"We have grown accustomed to unhealthy noise levels in cities," said Peris, at EEA.

"Due to the drop in noise as a result of the lockdown, maybe people will start to realise that cities can be a lot quieter and more peaceful."

But a two- to three-month reduction in noise pollution during confinement most likely wouldn't have an effect on health, she cautioned.

"It requires societal change," she said.

© 2020 AFP

ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION
Monkeys infected with novel coronavirus developed short-term immunity
Issued on: 03/07/2020 -

Rhesus macaques are often used in scientific experiments because of their similarities to humans JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER AFP Washington (AFP)

Test monkeys infected with the novel coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic were protected from reinfection for up to 28 days later, a Chinese study out Thursday in the journal Science said.

While the monkeys displayed initial immunity, it's unclear how long such immunity will last in humans - it will be necessary to wait months, or even years, to know if the millions of people infected at the start of the pandemic are protected from re-infection.

Scientists from Peking Union Medical College performed an experiment on rhesus macaques, often used because of their similarities to humans, to find out if they have a short-term immunity to the virus.

Six rhesus macaques were infected in their trachea with a dose of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. They developed mild to moderate symptoms, and took about two weeks to recover.

Twenty-eight days after the first infection, four of the six monkeys received another dose of virus, but this time, despite a brief rise in temperature, they showed no sign of reinfection, the study authors wrote.

By taking frequent samples the researchers discovered that the peak viral load was reached three days after the monkeys were infected.

The monkeys showed a stronger immune response after the first infection, producing more so-called neutralizing antibodies which may have protected them against short-term reinfection, the scientists wrote.

More experiments are needed to see how long this immune defense remains, the authors said.

© 2020 AFP

Current dominant strain of COVID-19 more infectious than original: study
Issued on: 03/07/2020 -

The SARS-CoV-2 virus viewed under an electron microscope 

Handout National Institutes of Health/AFP/File
Washington (AFP)

The genetic variation of the novel coronavirus that dominates the world today infects human cells more readily than the original that emerged in China, according to a new study published in the journal Cell on Thursday.

The lab-based research suggests this current mutation is more transmissible between people in the real world compared to the previous iteration, but this hasn't yet been proven.

"I think the data is showing that there is a single mutation that actually makes the virus be able to replicate better, and maybe have high viral loads," Anthony Fauci, the United States's top infectious disease specialist, who wasn't involved in the research, commented to Journal of the American Medical Association.

"We don't have a connection to whether an individual does worse with this or not. It just seems that the virus replicates better and may be more transmissible, but this is still at the stage of trying to confirm that," he added.

Researchers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and Duke University in North Carolina partnered with the University of Sheffield's COVID-19 Genomics UK research group to analyze genome samples published on GISAID, an international resource for sharing genome sequences.

They found that the current variant, called "D614G," makes a small but potent change in the "spike" protein that protrudes from the surface of the virus, which it uses to invade and infect human cells.

The scientists first posted their paper to the medical preprint site bioRxiv in April, where it received 200,000 hits, a record.

But it was initially criticized because the scientists had not proved that the mutation itself was responsible for its domination; it could have benefitted from other factors or from chance.

The team therefore carried out additional experiments, many at the behest of the editors of Cell.

They analyzed the data of 999 British patients hospitalized with COVID-19 and observed that those with the variant had more viral particles in them, but without this changing the severity of their disease.

Laboratory experiments meanwhile showed that the variant is three to six times more capable of infecting human cells.

"It seems likely that it's a fitter virus," said Erica Ollmann Saphire, who carried out one of the experiments at La Jolla Institute for Immunology.

- 'This variant is the pandemic' -

But everything at this stage can only be said to be "probable": in vitro experiments often do not replicate the dynamics of a pandemic.

As far as we know, although the variant circulating right now is more "infectious," it may or may not be more "transmissible" between people.

At any rate, said Nathan Grubaugh, a virologist at the Yale School of Public Health who was not part of the research: The expansion of the variant "whether through natural selection or chance, means that this variant now is the pandemic."

Writing in a commentary piece, Grubaugh added that, for the general public, these results don't change much.

"While there are still important studies needed to determine if this will influence drug or vaccine development in any meaningful way, we don't expect that D614G will alter our control measures or make individual infections worse," he said.

"It's more of a live look into science unfolding: an interesting discovery was made that potentially touches millions of people, but we don't yet know the full scope or impact."

USA!USA! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!

The United States reported more than 55,000 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, the largest daily increase any country has ever reported, according to a Reuters tally.

A surge in coronavirus cases across the United States over the past week has put President Donald Trump's handling of the crisis under the microscope and led several governors to halt plans to reopen their states after strict lockdowns.

The daily U.S. tally stood at 55,274 late Thursday, topping the previous single day record of 54,771 set by Brazil on June 19.

Just two weeks ago, the United States was reporting about 22,000 new cases a day. It has now reported more than 40,000 cases for seven straight days and broken records for new cases three days in a row, according to the tally.

New infections rose in 37 out of 50 U.S. states in the past 14 days compared with the two weeks prior in early June, according to a Reuters analysis.


Florida reported the biggest increase of any state so far on Thursday, recording over 10,000 new cases in a single day. With 21 million residents, the state has reported more new daily coronavirus cases than any European country had at the height of their outbreaks.Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned earlier this week the daily increase in new U.S. cases could reach 100,000 without nationwide measures to slow the rate.

While testing rates have increased, so has the percentage of positive results. Hospitalizations have also skyrocketed.

Nationally, 7% of coronavirus diagnostic tests came back positive last week, up from 5% the prior week, according to a Reuters analysis. Arizona's positivity test rate was 24% last week, Florida's was 16%. Nevada, South Carolina and Texas were all at 15%, the analysis found.

(REUTERS)