Brazil indigenous chief Aritana badly ill with virus

Issued on: 22/07/2020 -

Indigenous chief Aritana explains how native handicrafts are made on a 2003 visit by Spain's Queen Sophia to Brasilia EVARISTO SA AFP

Brasília (AFP)

One of Brazil's leading indigenous chiefs, Aritana Yawalapiti, is battling a severe case of the new coronavirus, which has devastated native communities in the Amazon region, his son said Tuesday.

Chief Aritana, who is about 70 years old, tested positive for the virus after having trouble breathing in his village in the Xingu indigenous reserve, his son Tapi told AFP.

He was taken to a hospital in the town of Canarana, in the west-central state of Mato Grosso, then transferred Tuesday to another hospital in Goiania, capital of the neighboring state of Goias, that had an intensive care bed available, Tapi said.

"His condition is still serious. They're transferring him to the hospital in Goiania right now," Tapi said by phone.

Aritana, who is known for fighting to protect the Amazon rainforest and indigenous rights, had been raising funds to help indigenous communities deal with coronavirus when he got sick, he added.

Indigenous peoples in the Amazon region, who have a history of vulnerability to outside diseases, have been hit particularly hard by COVID-19.

In Brazil, more than 17,000 have been infected and 544 have died, according to the Brazilian Indigenous Peoples' Association (APIB).

The virus claimed the life of another top indigenous leader, Paulinho Paiakan, last month.

"We are terribly worried for chief Aritana, who is the leading 'cacique' of the peoples of the Upper Xingu region," said Gert-Peter Bruch, president of French environmental group Planet Amazon.

"All the iconic chiefs of the past 50 years appear to be threatened by the scourge of this disease."

© 2020 AFP

Struggling Cirque du Soleil returns to Mexico
Issued on: 22/07/2020 -

 

'Joya' is the first resident Cirque du Soleil show in Latin America and is performed in a custom-built theater ELIZABETH RUIZ AFP

Playa del Carmen (Mexico) (AFP)

Using face masks, sanitizing gel and social distancing, Cirque du Soleil artists in Mexico practise before a performance -- a rare sign of hope for the famous Canadian circus company.

The circus shut down 44 shows across the world due to the COVID-19 outbreak, furloughing 95 percent of its workforce and filing for bankruptcy protection.

But -- after three months off stage due to the coronavirus lockdown -- performers in the "Joya" show returned earlier this month to the theater in Riviera Maya on Mexico's northeastern Yucatan Peninsula.

Contortionists, jugglers and skaters rehearsed for what will be their fifth show since the end of lockdown. Attendance is limited to 30 percent capacity, or just 200 of the 650 seats.

"We're delighted to be back on stage during this pandemic, to be here with the audience," said Jamie Sullivan, the show's director of operations.

"Joya" was inaugurated in 2014, in partnership with a Mexican hotel chain.

It was only the second of Cirque du Soleil show to reopen following the global lockdown -- the first was "The Land of Fantasy" in Hangzhou, China.

The Montreal-based company last week accepted a purchase offer from its creditors, which will serve as the basis for its auction in August.

It is the first Cirque de Soleil show resident in Latin America.

During the lockdown, which lasted from the end of March until June, almost all of Joya's artists, who come from 15 different countries, remained in Mexico, said Sullivan.

The Quintana Roo state, where Riviera Maya is located, is still subject to Mexico's maximum virus alert.

The country has been hard hit by the virus, with almost 350,000 cases and more than 39,000 deaths.

© 2020 AFP

Natalie Portman, other women celebrities behind new women's pro soccer team


Issued on: 22/07/2020 

Los Angeles (AFP)

A group of celebrities led by Hollywood star Natalie Portman has founded a women's professional soccer team set to debut in 2022, the women's pro soccer league said Tuesday.

Big-names involved in the effort include tennis megastar Serena Williams, as well as Hollywood stars Jessica Chastain, Eva Longoria, America Ferrera and Jennifer Garner.

"A majority woman-founded group" led by Portman "has secured the exclusive right to bring a professional women’s soccer team to Los Angeles to kick off in Spring 2022," the National Women's Soccer League said.

The team's formal name is yet to be announced, but "the group has formally coined itself 'Angel City' in honor of its planned home in Los Angeles," the statement said.

It would become the 11th team in the NWSL. Currently, there are nine teams in the league, but one other team -- the Louisville FC -- is set to rejoin the league in 2021.

The founding investor group includes Williams's young daughter Olympia, and several former US Women's National Team players including Mia Hamm, Lauren Cheney Holiday and Abby Wambach. Gaming entrepreneur Julie Uhrman will be the franchise president.

"Today we take an exciting step by announcing the first women majority-owned and led ownership group," said Portman, who won an Oscar in 2011 for her role in "Black Swan."

"Sports are such a joyful way to bring people together, and this has the power to make tangible change for female athletes both in our community and in the professional sphere," she said.

Portman, who has been active in causes such as the "Time's Up" movement against sexual abuse in the entertainment industry, said that the franchise hopes "to make a substantive impact on our community, committing to extending access to sports for young people in Los Angeles."

The NWSL, which had its inaugural season in 2013, was the first US professional sports league to restart activities amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The league's Challenge Cup tournament has been held since June 27, with teams playing in two stadiums in the state of Utah without spectators and without some of its biggest stars, including Megan Rapinoe.

The tournament's final game is scheduled for Sunday.

The United States is a powerhouse of women's soccer and the current world champions.

© 2020 AFP

Twitter will suspend accounts linked to pro-Trump conspiracy theory group QAnon
Issued on: 22/07/2020

A supporter of the pro-Trump movement "QAnon" at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, on July 1, 2020. © Scott Olson, AFP

Text by:NEWS WIRE

THIS IS THEIR THEORY IN A NUT SHELL INCLUDING THEIR ATTACK LAST ELECTION ON HILLARY 

THEY ARE BEHIND THE INFAMOUS PIZZAGATE WHICH THEY CONTINUE TO PROMOTE 

Twitter Inc said on Tuesday it would permanently suspend accounts that violate its policies while tweeting about QAnon, a fringe group that claims "deep-state" traitors are plotting against President Donald Trump.

Twitter, which announced the change on its Twitter Safety page, said it would not serve content and accounts associated with QAnon in trends and recommendations, and would block URLs associated with the group from being shared on the platform.



The suspension, which will be rolled out this week, is expected to impact about 150,000 accounts globally, Twitter said. It said that more than 7,000 accounts have been removed in the last several weeks for violating the company's rules against spam, platform manipulation and ban evasion.

The suspensions will be applied to accounts "engaged in violations of our multi-account policy, coordinating abuse around individual victims, or are attempting to evade a previous suspension – something we’ve seen more of in recent weeks," Twitter said.

In online conspiracies, the term "deep-state" is used to refer to a combination of elites from the intelligence, political, business and entertainment fields, with QAnon's theories claiming that the "deep-state" is at a secret war with Trump.

QAnon has also claimed that Democratic Party members are behind international crime rings. The group's content has spread widely on mainstream social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. Earlier this year, Facebook removed a U.S. network of fake accounts linked to QAnon.

Last year, the FBI issued a warning about "conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists" and designated QAnon as a potential domestic extremist threat.

(REUTERS)

Bayer loses Roundup weedkiller appeal in US court
Bayer lost appeal challenging the outcome of the first case in the US over the company's weedkiller Roundup
Issued on: 21/07/2020

File photo taken July 9, 2018 of plaintiff Dewayne Johnson in a San Francisco court. © POOL/AFP
Text by:NEWS WIRES

Bayer on Monday lost an appeal challenging the outcome of the first case to go to trial in the US over the company's weedkiller Roundup, though the court reduced the punitive damages awarded to the plaintiff.

The case before the California Court of Appeals concerned Dewayne "Lee" Johnson, a school groundskeeper and heavy user of Roundup who sued Monsanto – a subsidiary of Bayer – in a landmark case after contracting terminal non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

A jury in 2018 found that the herbicide substantially contributed to Johnson's illness and awarded him nearly $40 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages that were later reduced to $78.5 million.

The ruling sent Bayer share prices tumbling at the time and was followed by a wave of lawsuits that have weighed on the company since it bought the US firm Monsanto in 2018.

Under Monday's ruling, the court denied Monsanto's motion for a new trial on condition that Johnson accept a settlement of $10.2 million in compensatory damages and the same amount in punitive damages.

"Although we have concluded that a reduction in the damages awarded is appropriate, we do not otherwise reverse the judgement," the three-judge panel said, affirming Monsanto's liability in the case.

"In our view, Johnson presented abundant – and certainly substantial – evidence that glyphosate, together with the other ingredients in Roundup products, caused his cancer," the judges said in their ruling. "Expert after expert provided evidence both that Roundup products are capable of causing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and caused Johnson's cancer in particular."

Bayer said in a statement that the ruling is a "step in the right direction."

"We nevertheless still believe that the jury ruling and the indemnity payments are not compatible with the presented evidence and the existing laws," the company said.

"Monsanto will examine its legal options, including an appeal to the Supreme Court of California," Bayer added in the statement.

The company last month said it would pay more than $10 billion to end a wave of lawsuits related to Roundup that have sent jitters among shareholders.

Bayer, which is not admitting any wrongdoing as part of the $10 billion-plus settlement package, maintains that scientific studies and regulatory approvals show Roundup's main ingredient glyphosate is safe.

But other research has found that glyphosate can cause cancer.

(AFP)

Brazilian police brutality sparks ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests
Issued on: 22/07/2020 -

Joao Pedro was killed in a police operation while playing with his cousins. He was 14. © France 24
Text by:FRANCE 24Follow

Brazil has its own "Black lives Matter" movement with protesters addressing structural racism in a country dominated by a class discourse. Police crackdowns killed 6,000 people in 2019, five times more than in the US, forcing Brazilians to confront the brutality of law enforcement officers as well as the Covid-19 pandemic that has killed more than 77,000 people.

Braving the ban on public gatherings due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a few hundred people took to the streets of Rio de Janeiro a few weeks ago to denounce police brutality in the Brazilian city’s favelas.

Rio saw a rise in police violence in these poor neighbourhoods. Nearly five people were killed by police every day in the first five months of this year, a record last seen 22 years ago.

To view the report by Laura Damase, click on the video player 

French health workers hailed, but enraged, on Bastille Day unlike any other

Issued on: 15/07/2020 -

A health worker calling for "maille" (money), not medals, at a protest in Paris on July 14, 2020. © Gonzalo Fuentes, Reuters

Text by:Benjamin DODMAN


France’s unconventional Bastille Day festivities served up two tales of a crisis: at one end, a celebration of the workers on the front line of the coronavirus pandemic, and at the other, an excoriation of the policies that left the country’s cherished health care system unprepared for its onslaught

As French President Emmanuel Macron rode into Place de la Concorde on Tuesday, on board an open-top military jeep to the tune of the Marseillaise, a bizarre incident breached the rigid protocol of this year’s pared-down Bastille Day celebrations, dedicated to the workers on the front line of the Covid-19 battle.

Preceding the traditional tricoloured flyover by the Patrouille de France, a large banner carried by a cluster of helium balloons came wafting over the proceedings, eluding the police barriers that cordoned off the area. It read: “Behind the tributes, Macron is suffocating French hospitals.”

"Derrière les hommages, Macron asphyxie l'hôpital"
Une banderole dans le ciel s'incruste dans la cérémonie alors que le président arrive place de la Concorde. #14juillet #soignants pic.twitter.com/yDr7m3zxgm— Pierre Tremblay (@tremblay_p) July 14, 2020

The stunt organised by two members of a health workers’ union, who were briefly detained, illustrates the widely differing narratives of the coronavirus crisis put forward by the government and the doctors, nurses and caregivers who experienced it first-hand. It highlighted deep divisions in a country Macron later described as gripped by fear, negativity and a “crisis of confidence”.

In a televised interview that followed the ceremony, Macron sought to nuance his previous claims of “victory” against the virus. He acknowledged shortcomings in the country’s initial response to the pandemic, though adding: “We were far from being the worst.”


Even as he spoke from his presidential palace, protesters across town marched on place de la Bastille, where the French Revolution was born on July 14, 1789, to decry years of cost cuts that left public hospitals ill-prepared when the virus raced across France.

‘Treating gangrene with a plaster’

The Bastille Day events followed weeks of protests by health workers, angered by policies that have weakened a public health system once touted as the envy of the world. Thousands have rallied in cities across France, determined to turn the broad public sympathy enjoyed during the pandemic into tangible advances for hospital and nursing home employees – those Macron has lauded as "heroes in white coats".

With more than 30,000 fatalities attributed to Covid-19, France has one of the world’s highest confirmed death tolls. Despite government claims that hospitals “coped” with the pandemic, there has been ample evidence of emergency rooms turning away elderly patients due to a desperate shortage of beds.

As in other hard-hit Western countries, the failure to provide France’s Covid-19 heroes with adequate protection has been a recurrent theme at protests. The French public has been shocked to hear of medics having to beg dental surgeries, chemical labs and cosmetics factories to donate blouses, gloves and other equipment, or use bin bags for want of other options. Many were also surprised to discover that the salaries of French health workers rank among the lowest in the Western world – a factor that has been blamed for a hemorrhage of staff heading abroad or into the private sector.


In a move timed to precede the Bastille Day homage, Macron’s government announced on Monday it had reached an agreement with unions to give over €8 billion euros in pay rises for health workers, resulting in an average monthly raise of €183 for nurses and care workers – a gesture France’s newly appointment Prime Minister Jean Castex admitted was overdue in view of the coronavirus pandemic.

"No one can deny that this is a historic moment for our health system," Castex said after a signing ceremony that followed seven weeks of negotiations between government and unions.

However, some unions, including the hardline CGT, refrained from signing the accords, amid widespread dissatisfaction with measures that fell well short of their demands regarding wages, hirings and bed numbers. Speaking to FRANCE 24 ahead of the signing, Thierry Amouroux, a spokesperson for the SNPI union, likened the measures to “treating gangrene with a plaster”.

‘Bullshit’ parade

The mixed response was on full display on Tuesday as medics in white coats replaced uniformed soldiers as stars of the Bastille Day ceremony, while others rallied in protest.

With tears in their eyes or smiles on their faces, nurses and doctors stood silently as lengthy applause in their honour rang out over the place de la Concorde. The usual grandiose military parade was recalibrated to honour medics, along with supermarket cashiers, postal workers and other heroes of the pandemic. Families of medical workers who died also had a place in the stands.

Mirage and Rafale fighter jets painted the sky with blue-white-and-red smoke, and were joined by helicopters that had transported Covid-19 patients in distress.

In eastern Paris, meanwhile, riot police sprayed tear gas and unruly demonstrators hurled smoke bombs as the largely peaceful demonstrators marched onto Bastille.

“We are enormously short of personnel,” said protester Sylvie Pecard, a nurse at the Saint-Louis Hospital in Paris who described colleagues falling ill with the virus as Covid-19 patients filled its wards. “It's because we haven't recruited nurses,” Pecard told the Associated Press. “I came here 20 years ago and there were no empty positions. Now all the services are short of personnel, and it's worse and worse.”

Demonstrators sang in support of medical workers, while the Bastille Opera house displayed a huge message of thanks surrounded by portraits of nurses and doctors by street artist JR. Other protesters chanted slogans against police violence, spoke out against racial injustice, or against Macron policies seen as favouring the wealthy, or his decision to appoint a man accused of rape to oversee French police forces.

“The government did not live up to our demands,” Paule Bensaid, a nurse from the northern city of Lille, told AFP. “Where I work, we were left without masks for weeks. So to have us parade on the Champs-Elysees now, I think that’s bullshit.”

At US Capitol, 164 pairs of shoes represent nurses dead from COVID
Issued on: 22/07/2020 -

A total of 164 white shoes outside the US Capitol on July 21, 2020 honor the nurses who have lost their lives from COVID-19 Olivier DOULIERY AFP

Washington (AFP)

A nurses' union placed 164 sets of white shoes outside the US Capitol on Tuesday in a tribute to their colleagues killed by coronavirus, calling on the Senate to pass a huge aid package meant to help fight the pandemic.

Two months ago "my colleagues and I stood in front of the White House surrounded by 88 pairs of shoes, each representing a nurse who had died from COVID," said Stephanie Simms, a Washington-based registered nurse.

"Today we have 164 pairs of shoes. They clearly show how this administration and this Congress has failed nurses who continue to die," said Simms, from the over 150,000-strong National Nurses United (NNU), which organized the display at the Capitol


The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed the $3 trillion Heroes Act in mid-May.

However, the Republican-controlled Senate has blocked the measure, promising a new proposal.

The House bill would provide financial aid to households struggling during the coronavirus pandemic, help rescue the US economy and finance production of protective equipment for frontline workers.

The United States has recorded more than 141,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic amid some 3.86 million cases.

© 2020 AFP

Daughter of DR Congo hero demands Belgium return father's 'relics'



Issued on: 21/07/2020 - 19:34

Downfall: Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba, right, and Joseph Okito, the vice president of the senate, pictured on their arrest in December 1960 in Leopoldville, now Kinshasa - AFP/File

CHE GUEVARA PRAISED PATRICE LUMUMBA FOR LIBERATING THE DR CONGO
Kinshasa (AFP)

The daughter of Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba has called on Belgium to return her father's "relics", in an apparent reference to teeth taken from his body after his assassination in 1961.

"We, Lumumba's children, call for the just return of the relics of Patrice Emery Lumumba to the land of his ancestors," his daughter, Juliana Amato Lumumba, wrote in a letter to Belgium's monarch, Philippe.

The letter, which AFP saw on Tuesday, is dated June 30 -- the 60th anniversary of the independence of Belgium's giant colony in central Africa.

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Philippe, in a landmark gesture, chose the anniversary to express his "deepest regrets" for the "suffering and humiliation" of his country's reign over what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Historians say millions were killed, mutilated or died of disease as they worked on rubber plantations belonging to the rapacious 19th-century king Leopold II.

A charismatic pan-Africanist who played a key part in the fight for independence, Lumumba was appointed, at the age of only 34, as the first prime minister of the newly decolonised country.

In the presence of the then-king Baudouin, he used the moment of independence to lash out at the former colonial masters for racist maltreatment and forcing "humiliating slavery" on the Congolese people.

But Lumumba's stay in power was short.

Within months, the country was plunged into crisis by an army mutiny and the secession of the mineral-rich province of Katanga, a crisis stoked by Belgian involvement.
Lumumba was overthrown, then jailed, tortured and finally killed by a firing squad acting under the orders of secessionists. Forty years later, Belgium acknowledged that it bore "moral responsibility" for his death.

- 'Hero without a grave' -

In 2000, Belgian Police Commissioner Gerard Soete told AFP that he had chopped up Lumumba's body and those of his companions, Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo, and then dissolved the remains in acid.

But in a documentary screened the same year on the German TV channel ARD, Soete showed two teeth that he said had belonged to Lumumba.

In 2016, a Belgian academic, Ludo De Witte, filed a legal complaint against Soete's daughter after she showed a gold tooth, which she said had belonged to Lumumba, during an interview with a newspaper.

In Juliana Lumumba's letter, which she said was written on behalf of her "wider family", she said that her father was a "hero without a grave".

She condemned "vile statements made in Belgium about holding some of his remains" and blasted the authorities' ambiguous response.

"The remains of Patrice Emery Lumumba are being used on the one hand as trophies by some of your fellow citizens, and on the other as funereal possessions sequestered by your kingdom's judiciary," she said.

Kanye West's erratic behavior puts spotlight on bipolar disorder 

ONE DAY HE IS HAPPY HE IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT

THE NEXT DAY HE IS WEARING A BULLET PROOF VEST

AND HIDING IN A BUNKER.

RICH ENOUGH TO AFFORD THERAPY

RICH ENOUGH TO REFUSE TO TAKE IT

West first revealed his diagnosis on his 2018 album "Ye," where he called the illness his "superpower" Angela Weiss AFP/File

IT IS NOT A SUPERPOWER IT CAN LEAD TO SUICIDE

I AM POSTING THIS NOT BECAUSE OF THIS IDIOT BUT BECAUSE IT IS A GOOD DESCRIPTION OF BIPOLARITY 

Washington (AFP)

US rapper and apparent presidential candidate Kanye West has in the past opened up about his struggles with bipolar disorder.

But his recent erratic behavior has again called into question his health and treatment.

He launched his election campaign Sunday with a rambling speech that saw him rant incoherently, reveal he had wanted to abort his daughter, and break down in tears.


What is the mental illness and why do many creative people seem to get it?

- Highs and lows -

Bipolar disorder, formerly known as "manic depression," is characterized by extreme mood swings.

On the one hand, patients experience very high periods known as "mania" when they feel energized, elated and can make reckless decisions. They sometimes also experience delusions.

"They can almost have no inhibitions at all, which means they can spend their life savings in a day," said Andrew Nierenberg, a psychiatry professor at Harvard.

"They can do something that's really bad judgment that they wouldn't ordinarily do, either sexually, or in relationships, or work."

The other "pole" of the illness is depression: ultra-low episodes that can include inability to feel pleasure and suicidal thoughts.

The illness affects up to three percent of the population, which makes it more common than schizophrenia but rarer than depression.

And there can be much variation among patients, said Timothy Sullivan, the chair of psychiatry at Staten Island University Hospital.

Some are more depressive and rarely manic, while others are the other way around.

As a result, diagnoses are typically delayed for years. If a patient has so far only experienced depression, they may be misdiagnosed.

West first revealed his diagnosis on his 2018 album "Ye," where he called it his "superpower." Last year, he revealed it caused him paranoid delusions and described being handcuffed during treatment.

- Risk factors -

Bipolar disorder is known to be "one of the more heritable mental illnesses" said Katherine Burdick, a psychologist at Harvard and the Brigham and Women's Hospital.

If one of your parents had the disorder, your risk is somewhere between 10 to 20 percent.

Scientists are looking for the genes responsible, and trying to understand how these might affect the parts of the brain that deal with emotion.

Another line of research suggests that bipolar disorder could be linked to a flaw in how cells regulate energy, said Nierenberg.

There may also be environmental factors.

For many, but not all patients, "there's a higher rate of childhood trauma, childhood abuse and neglect," said Burdick.

Substance abuse is also a risk factor, and women sometimes develop it later in life compared to men.

- COVID a trigger? -

The bedrock for treatment is mood stabilizing drugs, and the best of these is still lithium, which has been used since the 1940s.

Anti-inflammatory drugs that reduce an abnormal immune response are being investigated as a treatment, but research is preliminary.

Experts have also started to understand the role that the disruption of "social rhythms" play in bipolar disorder, which has shifted more attention toward therapy.

For instance, the death of a pet can trigger a depression-mania cycle, but when scientists studied such events closely, they realized patients were not driven by grief alone.

"Not only did the person suffer psychologically from that loss, but they used to take the dog out for walks,they got exercise, and it also got them up early in the day so that they had social interactions," said Sullivan.

People with bipolar disorder are sensitive to such disruptions, which means events like the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns can cause particular harm.

"I have actually had one patient who I haven't seen in more than 10 years, who I don't currently treat, who called me up out of the blue and she's clearly manic," said Sullivan.

Support groups like the Depression Bipolar Support Alliance are credited with raising awareness and destigmatizing the illness.

- Creative link? -

There is thought to be an over-representation of artists, writers and musicians among people with bipolar disorder, a subject explored in the book "Touched with Fire."

Figures from history who may have had the illness include Vincent Van Gogh.

"Creative people are distinguished by particularly unique ways of thinking that involve intense emotional experiences" explained Sullivan.

"It may be that that capacity for that sensitivity involves regulatory systems in the brain that also render you vulnerable to mood disorders."

Some patients with bipolar disorder see their condition as an asset, even if it can alienate friends and family.

"Researchers have asked a group of patients with different diagnoses, 'If you had a button that you could press tomorrow and make this go away, would you?' said Burdick.

"And the only group of patients that do not opt, more commonly than not, to press the button, are bipolar patients."

© 2020 AFP