‘This is a big deal’: Iowa Gov. ends voting ban for people with felony convictions
Published August 5, 2020 By Common Dreams


The new executive order means there is now no U.S. state categorically banning people with former convictions from voting.

In a development heralded as “a historic sea change,” Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed an executive order on Wednesday overturning the state’s policy of permanently banning those with felony convictions from voting.

“Today we take a significant step forward in acknowledging the importance of redemption, second chances, and the need to address inequalities in our justice system,” said Reynolds, a Republican, whose order (pdf) is expected to restore voting rights to roughly 40,000 people.

Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, welcomed the order.

“This is a big deal,” Gupta tweeted. “Iowa was the last remaining state that permanently and categorically banned people with former convictions from voting.”

Previously, those who’d completed felony sentences had to individually appeal to the governor for possible re-enfranchisement.

Eliza Sweren-Becke, voting rights and elections counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, responded similarly to the order, tweeting, “This is a HUGE—now NO state in the country has a policy of permanently and categorically banning people from voting because of past convictions—a historic sea change.”

BREAKING: Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds just restored voting rights to tens of thousands of Iowans with former convictions by executive order. This comes with no requirements to pay off fees and fines.
— Brennan Center (@BrennanCenter) August 5, 2020

The change is also good news for racial justice.

“This action will benefit people regardless of race or ethnicity, but with the grave racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it will very significantly benefit African Americans and other people of color,” Betty C. Andrews, president of the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP, said in a statement.

As KPBS reported:

Reynolds’ order restores voting rights to felons who have completed their sentence, including probation, parole, and special sentences that are associated with sex offenses. Reynolds’ order does not require payment of victim restitution or any other fines or fees as a condition of being able to vote, a point of contention in Florida that has been caught up in court.

The order doesn’t cover those convicted of felony homicide offenses—an exclusion lamented by ACLU of Iowa executive director Mark Stringer, who said his group would “continue to work to ensure that all Iowans who have completed their sentences can once again participate in the democracy that so profoundly affects them.”

Voting rights advocates also recognized that Wednesday’s win could be easily yanked away—they saw that happen in 2011 when then-Gov. Terry Branstad rescinded a 2005 executive order that had restored voting rights to Iowans who had completed sentences for felony convictions.

As such, said Stringer, “it’s important that we continue to pursue a more permanent fix to the problem of felony disenfranchisement in our state. Another governor could issue a different executive order to reverse this current executive order.”

“That’s why we’ll continue to advocate for an amendment to the Iowa Constitution,” he said.

Elizabeth Warren Wants To Know Why This Company Was Spying On BLM Protesters

A group of Democratic lawmakers is demanding answers about protester surveillance conducted by data broker Mobilewalla.

Caroline Haskins BuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on August 4, 2020

Drew Angerer / Getty Images
Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks during a news conference.

Four lawmakers, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, said Tuesday that they have "serious concerns" about data-mining company Mobilewalla following a BuzzFeed News story in June that showed the company had used cellphone location data to predict the race, age, gender, and home location of more than 17,000 Black Lives Matter protesters.

In a letter sent Tuesday to Mobilewalla CEO Anindya Datta, Warren, Sen. Ron Wyden, Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, and House Committee on Oversight and Reform Chair Carolyn Maloney demanded more information about the data that the company collects and how it’s used. They also asked which, if any, American and non-American governments have accessed the data.

The lawmakers, who said they were “concerned that data collected by Mobilewalla or other data brokers could be used to enable state-sponsored retaliation against protesters,” demanded Datta respond by Aug. 17.

“In June, your company released a report that disturbingly revealed that location data collected from cell phones was used to identify specific characteristics of American protesters at Black Lives Matter demonstrations around the United States,” the letter read. “We have serious concerns that your company’s data could be used for surveillance of Americans engaging in Constitutionally-protected speech.”

As BuzzFeed News reported, Mobilewalla analyzed location information data it collected from thousands of protesters' cellphones at protests in Minneapolis, New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta between May 29 and May 31. Mobilewalla used this data to predict if protesters were male or female, young adult (18–34); middle-aged (35–54), or older (55+); and “African-American,” “Caucasian/Others,” “Hispanic,” or “Asian-American.” By using long-term location data, Mobilewalla also attempted to predict whether protesters were from the city of the protest or out of town. These findings were compiled in a report titled “George Floyd Protester Demographics: Insights Across 4 Major US Cities.”

Asked in June why Mobilewalla conducted this research, Datta offered little in the way of explanation. “It’s hard to tell you a specific reason as to why we did this,” he said. “But over time, a bunch of us in the company were watching with curiosity and some degree of alarm as to what’s going on.”

In their letter, the lawmakers said Mobilewalla had surveilled people who were “participating in First Amendment-protected activities." They also suggested that if the company gave cellphone data to a government agency, it may have violated a 2018 Supreme Court ruling which requires police to get a warrant first. There's currently no federal law that regulates how data brokers like Mobilewalla can buy, repackage, and sell people’s information.

In its privacy policy, Mobilewalla says it gets people’s information by purchasing mobile location data, browsing history, and device information from advertisers, data brokers, and internet service providers. Using artificial intelligence, the company then analyzes that information to predict people’s race, age, gender, zip code, and personal interests. It sells this information to advertisers to help them target people with ads.

However, Mobilewalla also has a history of working for political groups. As Motherboard reported, the company has worked with Republican super PACs, including efforts that targeted evangelical voters during the 2016 presidential election. Mobilewalla CEO Datta said in a podcast interview with Nathan Latka that the company monitored the movements of possible evangelicals on Election Day and told campaign workers how many of them were near a voting location.

Thousands of people in hundreds of cities have demonstrated against police brutality following the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, often demanding that cities defund their police departments and reallocate that money toward social services and education.

Police have sometimes retaliated against protesters violently, using weapons like tear gas, batons, mace, and their own police vehicles. In cities like Portland and New York, plainclothes federal offices have arrested demonstrators by sweeping them away in unmarked vans.

In their letter, the lawmakers asked Datta if Mobilewalla has collected and analyzed data from protesters in Portland, and if the company planned to put out a report or provide that data to law enforcement.


MORE ON THIS
Almost 17,000 Protesters Had No Idea A Tech Company Was Tracing Their Location

Caroline Haskins · June 25, 2020

Many Police Departments Have Software That Can Identify People In Crowds

Caroline Haskins · June 12, 2020

Here Are The Minneapolis Police's Tools To Identify Protesters

Caroline Haskins · May 29, 2020


Caroline Haskins is a technology reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

NEW POLICY 

THREE STRIKES YOU'RE DEAD
Nearly half of inmates at Arizona prison test positive for virus
BET NOT ALL OF THEM ARE IN THERE FOR MURDER
SOMETHING, SOMETHING, CRUEL AND INHUMAN TREATMENT

Issued on: 06/08/2020 

Los Angeles (AFP)

More than 500 inmates -- nearly half the population -- of a prison in the US state of Arizona have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, officials said, while at a California prison the virus death toll hit 22.

The Arizona Department of Corrections said Tuesday that 517 inmates at the ASPC-Tucson Whetstone prison "have tested positive for COVID-19."

Those inmates "are currently being housed as a cohort together in separate areas and are receiving appropriate medical care. They will not be allowed back into the general population until they have been medically cleared," its statement read.


The coronavirus has severely afflicted US jails and penitentiaries, home to the world's biggest prison population, which comprises 2.3 million inmates.

Officials are unable to force adequate distancing in crowded cells and face shortages of medical personnel and personal protective gear.

Arizona, population 7.3 million, has reported more than 180,000 coronavirus cases, of which 1,429 are in prisons. Seven of its COVID-19 fatalities came in state prisons.

California however has reported 51 deaths among prisoners, including 22 in the notorious San Quentin prison just north of San Francisco.

The most recent victim "died August 4th at an outside hospital from what appear to be complications related to COVID-19," the California Department of Corrections said.

One day earlier prison authorities reported the death of a San Quentin prisoner on death row after contracting COVID-19, while five other inmates died between July 24 and 26.

California, population 40 million, has reported more than 524,000 coronavirus cases and 9,700 deaths.

In an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus in the close confines of prisons, since March 11 authorities in the state have released 15,683 inmates who were behind bars for minor crimes or were nearing the end of their sentences.

© 2020 AFP

US Border Patrol raids humanitarian aid camp, seizing phones and arresting migrants

AMERIKA IS  A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

Volunteers at Byrd Camp near Arivaca, Arizona managed to capture just a few images of the July 31, 2020 Border Patrol raid before agents seized their cellphones.

UNITED STATES / IMMIGRATION - 08/04/2020

At sunset on the evening of July 31, agents from the US Border Patrol and the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) raided a humanitarian aid station known as Byrd Camp near Arivaca, Arizona. Forces arrived with an armoured vehicle, two helicopters, and an estimated 24 other vehicles. More than 30 migrants were arrested, and many of the aid workers were detained. Agents arrived with a warrant to confiscate cellphones on the property, preventing most volunteers from documenting the raid.

Border Patrol agents had first entered the camp around 9am the morning of Thursday July 30 and detained one migrant receiving care. After the arrest, agents set up 24-hour surveillance around the camp’s property, with at least a dozen agents monitoring the camp at all times, aid workers said.

Byrd Camp offers medical treatment, water, and other resources to migrants crossing into the US illegally from Mexico. The region is known as one of the most dangerous desert passages along the 3,145-km border. In a statement, No More Deaths, a faith-based NGO that operates Byrd Camp, called the raid on their aid station a “military-style assault". BORTAC, known as the “SWAT team” of Border Patrol, is the same force that has recently been deployed in US cities like Portland to crack down on Black Lives Matter protests.


🚨🚨🚨 UPDATE — At sunset last night, in a military-style assault, Border Patrol raided our humanitarian aid camp, chasing and arresting 30+ people who were receiving care and detaining all aid workers, whose phones were confiscated along w/ any video footage of the raid. pic.twitter.com/yiGAB98KYi No More Deaths (@NoMoreDeaths) August 1, 2020
These are a few images volunteers managed to take of the raid before their phones were confiscated by Border Patrol agents.

“They confiscated all the cellphones they could find”
Hannah Taleb, a volunteer with No More Deaths, recounted the raid to the Observers team.
From all accounts it was a really hectic scene because they basically busted in with guns drawn. And they chased and terrorised and detained all of those people that were receiving care.

There were two helicopters circling overhead. They arrived with military vehicles. They brought a cameraman. The vehicles had the BORTAC insignia on them. And they had guns drawn. When volunteers approached asking to see a warrant for entry, they were detained and their cellphones were all taken. Two of the volunteers that approached first asking for a warrant were zip-tied and detained. We only have a little bit of video footage and camera photos from the incident because of that.

They searched the entire camp, and in doing so trashed it. They slashed tents. They destroyed medical supplies. They unhooked the power supply to our well. And we have built so much of our platform on why water is a right for people who are crossing.

They confiscated all the cellphones they could find, including the Red Cross phone that we have for people to make calls to their families and loved ones. They took them all: No More Death's phones, volunteers' phones, the Red Cross phone, and phones from those receiving care.

Border Patrol and BORTAC arrested people receiving care and ransacked the humanitarian aid station, ripping apart tents and destroying medical supplies. pic.twitter.com/jb5Ov4RwVJ No More Deaths (@NoMoreDeaths) August 2, 2020Images of destruction in the camp after the raid. Volunteers say the Border Patrol agents cut the power to the camp's well and destroyed medical supplies.

Especially with the current climate, they wanted to make sure that what they did was not documented in that moment. They were able to place those cellphones on the warrant, so they have some sort of legal backing for what they did. I think being able to have real-time, or close to live, video of what happened, would have looked really bad for them.

Border Patrol officials Aug. 4 told the group their cellphones would be held for at least a month, according to Taleb.

Although Border Patrol agents brought a cameraman, they had not released any images of the raid as of Aug. 5. Tucson sector Border Patrol Chief Roy Villareal published a brief statement on Twitter, writing that agents “executed a federal search warrant on the No More Deaths camp near Arivaca. Upon entry, over three dozen illegal border crossers were found in the camp".

In an earlier thread of tweets, Villareal wrote that agents had tracked a group of migrants in the desert “through remote mountains for two days” southeast of Arivaca. According to Villareal, Border Patrol EMT evaluated and detained a migrant “outside the perimeter of the camp” on July 30 and sent the migrant to a nearby hospital for treatment.

The 30+ people that were receiving care at Byrd Camp are listed as “items” to be seized during the raid; “illegal aliens” was placed at the end of a list including cell phones and documentation. pic.twitter.com/0XIfPFJd7X No More Deaths (@NoMoreDeaths) August 3, 2020
A copy of the warrant listing items to be seized, including "cellular phones" and "illegal aliens."
Representatives from No More Deaths dispute this account, saying the July 30 arrest occurred within the camp boundaries.

We know anecdotally and from the release of documents that when Border Patrol tracks people for as long as they say, they are trying to exhaust them [a tactic known as ‘chase and scatter’]. It's to make them not try to access resources, especially in this heat. I think it's really disgusting that their rationale for why they were surveilling and threatening to enter our camp was because they were tracking this group.

In a massive show of force, Border Patrol + BORTAC—the same militarized tactical unit recently mobilized against protestors in US cities—descended on the camp with an armored vehicle, three ATVS, two helicopters, and ~24 marked and unmarked vehicles. pic.twitter.com/z1MUlk7gad No More Deaths (@NoMoreDeaths) August 1, 2020
This video is one of the few recorded of the raid. Volunteers' cellphones were seized by Border Patrol and BORTAC agents.

A pattern of retaliation

Friday’s raid is similar to one that occurred at Byrd camp on June 15, 2017. On July 29, No More Deaths released documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that disclosed the involvement of BORTAC and the Border Patrol Union in the 2017 raid, Taleb said.

No More Deaths does have a really long history with raids unfortunately at this point.

A few days before the [July 31] raid, we released some FOIA-ed emails that showed that BORTAC was also involved with [the 2017] raid. I think that the move to confiscate cellphones was because of the media that we were able to do around the 2017 raid.
In 2017, volunteers from No More Deaths were able to post photos on social media as the raid was happening. They attached the phone number for US Customs and Border Protection in Arizona and a script for callers, asking people to call and demand that the surveillance end. Without cellphones, volunteers were unable to do so this time.


NEW PHOTOS:
One volunteer was able to get a few pictures from inside camp when BORTAC and Border Patrol entered.

Heavily armed agents drove straight into the humanitarian aid camp in a Bearcat tank as helicopters circled overhead. pic.twitter.com/Vnu9ecsQ9A No More Deaths (@NoMoreDeaths) August 2, 2020

The second, and currently only other, set of photos that a volunteer managed to take on July 31.

"Border Patrol has always worked hardest to suppress the narratives of those directly affected by the crisis they have created. We are simply an extension of that."

After the raid, the three dozen arrested migrants were loaded onto buses and sent to detention centres. The volunteers were released. The dangers for the arrested migrants are high, Taleb explains.

They detained and arrested over 30 people that night. They probably chose not to arrest our volunteers because they wouldn't get as much bad media for harming the lives of people migrating as they would for harming humanitarian aid workers. And they know that.

Immigration detention is a really deadly intervention in somebody's life. We know that Covid-19 is rampant in immigrant detention. We also know that there are many, many people that are being rapidly deported at this moment.

The M.O. of Border Patrol in the field every single day is violent. We saw kind of a microcosm of their tactics, just maybe with more guns and also with the Border Patrol cameraman on the scene standing on top of trucks and getting shots of people while they're getting pulled out.

Border Patrol has always worked hardest to suppress the narratives of those directly affected by the crisis they have created. We are simply an extension of that.

The people that have to bear the brunt of all of their actions against our organisation are the folks that are migrating.

People have been telling stories since the beginning of prevention through deterrence. It’s those narratives that tell the actual true story. It feels important to highlight this false reality that [Border Patrol agents] are rescuers in the desert, when they also create the crisis that causes people to die.

Article by Sophie Stuber

'Back to the Wild West': Gun ownership on the rise among anxious black Americans

WOULD THAT BE THE WILD WEST OF OAKLAND IN 1968 AND THE FOUNDING OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY 

Issued on: 05/08/2020 - 12:44Modified: 05/08/2020 - 12:46

A member of the Hudson Valley Nubian Gun Club in New York fires a weapon at a shooting range on July 30, 2020. © Reuters / France 24

Text by:Sam BALL|
Video by:Sam BALL

There has been a sharp rise in the number of black Americans buying firearms and joining gun clubs, according to the National African American Gun Association (NAGAA), purchases attributed to growing anxiety over the Covid-19 crisis and increased racial tensions following the death of George Floyd.

NAGAA says its figures shows gun ownership levels among black people has been growing in recent months, with the death of Floyd at the hands of white police officers in May and a subsequent spate of protests a particular driving factor. More than 2,000 people joined the group in the 36 hours after Floyd’s killing.

Damon Finch, president of all-black Hudson Valley Nubian Gun Club in New York, says he has also witnessed a similar trend.

He started the club earlier this year after noticing a spike in interest in firearms among the black community.

"Initially, we started off with just a couple of people getting together,” he told Reuters.





“And then all of a sudden, you start to get all these phone calls from people who were both firearm owners and also people who are looking to get firearms. And I figured, let's get together. Let's create a gun club.

“Our membership almost every night is doubling, tripling. It's just amazing how many people are now joining our group."

First-time gun owners include those who had never previously considered buying a firearm.

"At 61 years, I've not needed it, not ever thought of it. I would say 'Get the guns away. No, no, no!’ But now my views have changed because I guess the world is changing right before our eyes,” first-time gun owner Margaret Powell told Reuters.

"It's like we're going back in time to maybe the Wild, Wild West or something. Everybody has to have a gun.”

Some groups, such as Black Guns Matter, have advocated for black gun ownership as a means for self-protection in the wake of Floyd’s killing, the sometimes violent protests that have followed and other reports of police violence against black people.

Meanwhile, a newly formed and heavily armed black militia, the Not Fucking Around Coalition, has appeared at some recent protests.

"Self-preservation is universal law. We should be able to protect ourselves,” Gahiji Manderson, a member of the Hudson Valley Nubian Gun Club, told Reuters.

“We're not looking for trouble, but to be able to protect ourselves if trouble comes towards our way."

But it is not just black people buying weapons in growing numbers. Total US gun sales in June were the highest on record with 3.9 million firearms sold, according to figures from the Brookings Institute, in a country where firearms kill nearly 40,000 people a year.

US wants to eliminate Chinese apps from US app stores

MONOPOLY CAPITALISM
USA! USA! WE ARE (BULLY) NUMBER ONEIssued on: 06/08/2020 -

The targeting of app usage and cloud services expands the 5G Clean Path program the State Department unveiled on April 29

IT'S POLICY

Washington (AFP)

The US is expanding its China-targeted Clean Network program to include Chinese-made cellphone apps and cloud computing services that it claims are security risks, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Wednesday.

Pompeo said the US wants to ban untrusted Chinese apps from the app stores of US mobile carriers and phonemakers.

"With parent companies based in China, apps like TikTok, WeChat, and others are significant threats to the personal data of American citizens, not to mention tools for CCP content censorship," he said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.


But he added that the US also wants to block American-made apps from being pre-installed, or made available for download, on Chinese-made phones and wireless equipment from global giant Huawei and other makers.

"We don't want companies to be complicit in Huawei's human rights abuses or the CCP's surveillance apparatus," the top US diplomat said.

Pompeo also said the US government will seek to limit the ability of Chinese service providers to collect, store and process sensitive data in the United States.

He cited specifically Chinese tech giants Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent.

His announcement came two days after President Donald Trump told Chinese tech company ByteDance to sell its hugely popular TikTok app to an American company or see it shut down by mid-September.

Washington says TikTok gleans massive amounts of personal data from hundreds of millions of users, which could be passed on to Chinese intelligence.

The targeting of app usage and cloud services expands the 5G Clean Path program the State Department unveiled on April 29.

At its core the program is a multi-country initiative to prevent Huawei and other Chinese telecom suppliers from dominating next-generation or 5G wireless telecom services.

The United States says Huawei technology could open the door for Chinese intelligence to easily tap communications in other countries.

The US government has banned Huawei equipment and strongly discouraged authorities and businesses around the country from using it.

China's ambassador in London Liu Xiaoming condemned on Wednesday the Clean Network program as bullying and called it contrary to free trade ideals.

"The US bullying on the issue of 5G not only undermines fair international trade rules, but also damages the environment of free global market. The US is not qualified at all to build so-called 'Clean Network,'" Liu said in a tweet.

© 2020 AFP

Porn video interrupts US court hearing for accused Twitter hacker
Issued on: 06/08/2020

The Florida court hearing of the teenager accused of masterminding a major Twitter hack, held online via the Zoom app, was interrupted with rap music and pornography 

Olivier DOULIERY AFP

Miami (AFP)

A court hearing held via Zoom for a US teenager accused of masterminding a stunning hack of Twitter was interrupted Wednesday with rap music and porn, a newspaper reported.

The purpose of the hearing was to discuss reducing bail terms set for the 17 year old Tampa resident arrested last Friday over the hack last month of the accounts of major US celebrities.

But the interruptions with music, shrieking and pornography became so frequent that Judge Christopher Nash ended up suspending it for a while, the Tampa Bay Times said.


Investigators view the youth -- AFP has chosen not to release his name because he is a minor -- as the brains behind the mid-July cyberattack that rocked Twitter.

Hackers accessed dozens of Twitter accounts of people such as Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Elon Musk, after gaining access to the system with an attack that tricked a handful of employees into giving up their credentials.

The hack affected at least 130 accounts, with tweets posted by the usurpers duping people into sending $100,000 in Bitcoin, supposedly in exchange for double the amount sent.

Bail for the 17 year old was set for $725,000 and in the hearing his lawyers were seeking to reduce it.

After the judge suspended the hearing, and eventually resumed it, hackers went at it again -- with interruptions that disguised their user names as organizations such as CNN and BBC.

In the end, judge Nash ruled against reducing the youth's bail.

He was arrested along with two others, aged 19 and 22, one of whom lives in Britain, and was charged with cyber fraud.

© 2020 AFP

TRUE CANADIAN FACTS 
Dinosaurs got cancer too, say scientists
SCIENTIFIC PROOF SMOKING DOESN'T CAUSE CANCER
"You have an animal that surely wasn't smoking (a leading cause of cancer in humans) and so it shows that cancer is not a recent invention, and that it's not exclusively linked to our environment."

Issued on: 06/08/2020 -

Ottawa (AFP)

Dinosaurs loom in the imagination as forces of nature, but a new study that identifies the first known case of cancer in the creatures shows they suffered from the debilitating disease too.

A badly malformed Centrosaurus leg bone unearthed in the Alberta, Canada badlands in 1989 had originally been thought by paleontologists to be a healed fracture.

But a fresh examination of the growth under a microscope and using a technique also employed in human cancer care determined it was actually a malignant tumor.

"The cancer discovery makes dinosaurs more real," study co-author Mark Crowther told AFP.

"We often think of them as mythical creatures, robust and stomping around, but (the diagnosis shows) they suffered from diseases just like people."

The findings were published in the August issue of The Lancet Oncology.

Most cancers occur in soft tissues, which are not well-preserved in fossil records, noted Crowther, a dinosaur enthusiast and chair of McMaster University's medical faculty in Canada.

"Oddly enough, under a microscope it looked a lot like human Osteosarcoma," he said.

"It's fascinating that this cancer existed tens of millions of years ago and still exists today."

Osteosarcoma is an aggressive bone cancer that still afflicts about three out of one million people each year.

- 'Just part of life' -

In this horned herbivore that lived 76 million to 77 million years ago it had metastasised and likely hobbled the giant lizard, the researchers said in the study.

But neither the late-stage cancer nor a predator looking to make a meal out of slow and weak prey is believed to have killed it.

Because its bones were discovered with more than 100 others from the same herd, the researchers said, it's more likely they all died in a sudden disaster such as a flood, and that prior to this catastrophe the herd protected the lame dinosaur, extending its life.

Lead researchers Crowther and David Evans, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and their team sifted through hundreds of samples of abnormal bones at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta, to find the bone with a tumour, which is about the size of an apple.

The team also used high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scans, a multidisciplinary diagnostic technique used in human cancer care.

Crowther said dinosaurs would probably have been at higher risk of Osteosarcoma, which affects youths with fast-growing bones, because they grew very quickly and big.

"In terms of the biology of cancer," he said, "you often hear about environmental, dietary and other causes of cancer. Finding a case from more than 75 million years ago you realize it's just a part of life."

"You have an animal that surely wasn't smoking (a leading cause of cancer in humans) and so it shows that cancer is not a recent invention, and that it's not exclusively linked to our environment."© 2020 AFP

Coronavirus pandemic leaves Amazon more vulnerable than ever

THE AMAZON IS SHARED BY BRAZIL, PERU, BOLIVIA, ECUADOR, COLOMBIA, VENEZUELA

Issued on: 06/08/20

A boat travels on the Jurura river in Carauari, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, in March 2020 -- the entire region is facing many challenges, and now must battle the coronavirus crisis as well 

Florence GOISNARD AFP/File

Montevideo (AFP)

The indigenous peoples of the Amazon have already seen their homelands ravaged by illegal deforestation, industrial farming, mining, oil exploration and unlawful occupation of their ancestral territories.

Now, the coronavirus pandemic has magnified their plight, just as the forest fires are raging once more.

The Amazon, the world's largest tropical rainforest, is a vital resource in the race to curb climate change -- it spans over 7.4 million square kilometers (2.85 million square miles).


It covers 40 percent of the surface area of South America, stretching across nine countries and territories: Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela.

Around three million indigenous people -- members of 400 tribes -- live there, according to the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO). Around 60 of those tribes live in total isolation.

The following is a look back over at how the novel coronavirus spread through the Amazon jungle, and how those communities are handling the crisis.

- Isolated but not protected -

In mid-March, panic struck Carauari, in western Brazil.

Carauari is home to one of the most isolated communities in the world, and is only accessible by a week-long boat ride from Manaus, the nearest major city.

At first, the virus was seen as a threat that was well removed from the multi-colored houses on stilts that overlook the Jurua river, a tributary of the Amazon.

But the announcement of the first case in Manaus, the regional capital of Amazonas state, quickly sowed panic in the community.

No one in Carauari had forgotten how diseases brought by European colonizers ripped through the native populations in the Americas, nearly eliminating them altogether due to their lack of immunity.

"We're praying to God not to bring this epidemic here. We're doing everything we can -- washing our hands often, like they tell us on TV," said Jose Barbosa das Gracas, 52.

The first confirmed case amongst Brazil's indigenous population was confirmed in early April: a 20-year-old health care worker from the Kokama tribe, who lived near the Colombian border.

She had worked with a doctor who also tested positive.

- Calls for help -

Sensing the mounting threat, indigenous leaders and celebrities sounded the alarm, warning that Amazonian indigenous communities could face annihilation without help.

"There are no doctors in our communities. There is no protective gear to aid prevention," Jose Gregorio Diaz Mirabal, the elected leader of the collective of Amazon indigenous organizations, said in late April.

For Yohana Pantevis, a 34-year-old inhabitant of Leticia, in Colombia's Amazonas state, "falling ill here is always scary, but now we're more afraid than ever."

Brazilian-born photojournalist Sebastiao Salgado, known for his work in the Amazon, warned of the "huge risk of a real catastrophe."

"If the virus gets into the forest, we don't have a way to get help to them. The distances are so huge. The indigenous people will be abandoned," said the 76-year-old.

"I call that genocide -- the elimination of an ethnic group and its culture," he said, accusing the government of Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro of anti-indigenous policies.

In early June, iconic indigenous leader Raoni Metuktire accused Bolsonaro of wanting "to take advantage of this disease."

"He's saying, 'Indians have to die, we have to finish them off'," he told AFP in an interview.

- Running scared -

In mid-June, the little indigenous village of Cruzeirinho in Brazil with its wooden huts was left practically deserted as most inhabitants -- fearing coronavirus infection -- fled into the jungle.

They "preferred to take everything they had with them into the forest and avoid contact with others," said resident Bene Mayuruna, who was amongst the few who stayed.

The Brazilian army deployed a team of health workers to Cruzeirinho to provide care for the remaining members of the local tribe.

- Medicinal plants and barricades -

A week's journey by boat from Cruzeirinho, the inhabitants of the Umariacu indigenous reserve adopted a different strategy: they blocked all outsiders from their villages.

"Attention: indigenous land. Closed for 15 days," said a hand-painted sign next to a roadblock at the entrance to the reserve.

The area covers 5,000 hectares (12,000 acres) in northern Brazil near the Peruvian and Colombian borders, and is home to about 7,000 people.

To avoid any dependence on the often maxed-out Brazilian public health system, indigenous people often turn to their ancestral traditions.

In mid-May, members of the Satere Mawe ethnic group, wearing colorful feather and leaf headdresses, scoured the river in search of medicinal plants.

"We've been treating our symptoms with our own traditional remedies, the way our ancestors taught us," said Andre Satere Mawe, a tribal leader who lives in a rural area on the outskirts of Manaus.

The Satere Mawe remedies include teas made from the bark of the carapanauba tree, which has anti-inflammatory properties, or the saracuramira tree, an anti-malarial.

- Virus takes hold -

In Manaus, Maria Nunes Sinimbu saw five members of her family die of COVID-19 in less than a month, including three of her 12 children.

"My daughter didn't believe this illness was so serious. She kept working and traveling normally, without taking any precautions," said the 76-year-old retired school teacher.

In late July, the Pan-Amazonian Church Network said more than 27,500 indigenous people belonging to 190 tribes had been infected on the continent with over 1,100 deaths.

Amongst the victims have been important tribal leaders such as Paulinho Paiakan and Aritana Yawalapiti in Brazil, and Peru's Santiago Manuin.

- Indigenous culture under threat -

For many indigenous people living deep in the rainforest, the health crisis has left them with a cruel choice: stay in their villages with limited medical resources or head into bigger towns where they might not be able to practice ancestral funeral rites.

Brazilian Lucita Sanoma lost her two-month-old baby on May 25. The boy was buried, without her knowledge, 300 kilometers (185 miles) from her home village after dying in a hospital in Boa Vista.

The burial followed government health guidelines but ran counter to the traditions of her Yanomami tribe, which dictate that the deceased must be left in the open air in the forest before their bones are collected and cremated.

The ashes are kept in an urn for a long time before eventually being buried in a new ceremony.

In Colombia, Ticuna chief Remberto Cahuamari spoke in early June of his concern that the loss of the older generation to COVID-19 would spell the end of the passing down of ancestral wisdom.

"We'd be left with our young who in the future won't know anything about our cultures and our customs. That's what scares us," he told AFP.

Added to that is the threat of isolation as riverside villages become cut off as authorities suspend boat traffic in a bid to curb the spread of the virus.

- The scourge of wildcat miners -

For the Yanomami people, illegal gold miners are the main problem on their territory, a vast swathe of territory on Brazil's border with Venezuela that is home to about 27,000.

"Without that, we would be fine," said indigenous leader Mauricio Yekuana, whose white mask contrasts with his black face paint.

According to NGOs, around 20,000 gold miners make regular incursions into indigenous land, encouraged by Bolsonaro, who wants to "integrate" those areas with "modernity."

But Greenpeace Brazil warns that gold miners are "potential transmitters" of COVID-19.

A study conducted by Minas Gerais University showed that as many as 40 percent of Yanomami living close to mining areas risked becoming infected with the virus if nothing is done.

- Record deforestation -

While the world's attention is laser-focused on the coronavirus, forest fires continue to ravage the Amazon, after an already challenging 2019.

Land-grabbers in Brazil want to accelerate deforestation to make way for soybean plantations or pasture land for cattle -- two key exports. The resumption of fires is no accident.

"What I saw in the places I went to was that the trees had already been cut down, they just hadn't yet been burnt," Erika Berenguer, a researcher at Oxford and Lancaster universities, said in June.

She feared that "breathing problems caused by the fires" could make things worse for those who contract the coronavirus.

Authorities have a limited ability to prevent deforestation -- and sometimes are found to be complicit in the operations.

The latest figures make for some grim reading: Amazonian deforestation over the first half of the year was 25 percent higher than the same period in 2019, which was already a record, Brazil's national space agency INPE said.

Experts fear August will be particularly devastating.

© 2020 AFP

Brazil adrift as virus toll approaches 100,000

WHEN KEEPING UP WITH AMERICA IS NOT A GOOD IDEAIssued on: 06/08/2020 - 

People walk along a commercial street, in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil on August 4, 2020, amid the new  LONG FIRST WAVE coronavirus pandemic NELSON ALMEIDA AFP


Sao Paulo (AFP)

Five months after confirming its first case of the new coronavirus, Brazil is fast approaching the bleak milestone of 100,000 deaths from COVID-19, a tragedy experts blame on the country's lack of coherent response.

It will be just the second country to cross that grim threshold, after the United States, where the death toll is now over 150,000.

"It's a tragedy, one of the worst Brazil has ever seen," said sociologist Celso Rocha de Barros, as the number of infections in the sprawling South American country approached three million -- also the second-highest in the world, after the US.


Brazil confirmed its first case of the new coronavirus on February 26: a Sao Paulo businessman returning from a trip to Italy.

The country of 212 million people registered its first death on March 16.

"At that point, Brazil was more or less getting organized to deal with the pandemic," said Paulo Lotufo, an epidemiologist at the University of Sao Paulo.

But then, political chaos ensued.

Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro condemned the "hysteria" around the virus and railed against decisions by state and local authorities to impose stay-at-home measures to contain it, arguing the economic damage would be worse than the disease.

Meanwhile, the country's infection curve exploded.

Chilling images emerged from Sao Paulo of six-minute speed burials by grave-diggers clad head-to-toe in protective gear and mass plots excavated by bulldozers in the Amazon city of Manaus.

The curve has plateaued in recent weeks, but at a high level: Brazil has registered an average of around 1,000 deaths per day for more than a month.

The toll stood at 2.9 million infections and 97,256 deaths late Wednesday. The country appeared to be on track to record its 100,000th death at the weekend.

- 'Face up to it' -

A fervent advocate of the drug hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19 -- despite a lack of evidence for its effectiveness -- Bolsonaro churned through two health ministers in less than a month, after falling out with them over the response to the pandemic.

The post is now held on an interim basis by an army general with no prior medical experience.

The president meanwhile has continued to downplay the virus, even after catching it himself last month. He was forced into quarantine for three weeks.

"Nearly everyone here is going to catch it eventually. What are you afraid of? Face up to it," he said after emerging from isolation.

The message from the Bolsonaro government has been "the exact opposite" of what it should have been, said Barros.

"Lockdown is difficult. It has to be coordinated by a leader with political credibility," he told AFP.

"You have to explain to people that it's hard, but necessary to avoid a massacre."

Instead, most Brazilian states started exiting lockdown in June, under pressure from Bolsonaro and despite warnings from experts that it was too soon.

Beaches, bars and restaurants were soon packed, even as the death toll continued to soar.

The virus has hit hardest among poor and black Brazilians, especially in the favelas -- slums where crowded living conditions and lack of clean, running water make social distancing and hand-washing difficult.

The Amazon region has also been devastated, particularly indigenous peoples, who have a history of vulnerability to outside diseases.

- 'Feeling of powerlessness' -

As states now start to consider reopening schools, "the way people behave in the coming weeks will be decisive," said Lotufo.

The country is in a strange gray zone between crisis mode and normality.

"It's shocking to see some people partying while so many others are dying," said Andre Rezende, a driver for a ride-hailing service whose mother-in-law died of COVID-19 and whose brother just came out of 30 days in intensive care with the virus.

"A lot of people are getting back to normal life. The feeling of powerlessness makes some people think, 'Might as well try to live normally, because there's no solution to this,'" said Barros.

Some are putting their faith in one of the two vaccines that are currently in advanced clinical trials in Brazil -- an ideal testing ground because the virus is still spreading so fast.

© 2020 AFP