Saturday, September 12, 2020

 Toots Hibbert, beloved reggae star, dead at 77

36 minutes ago
REMOVES REFERENCE TO COVID-19 - In this July 13, 2019 file photo, Toots Hibbert performs with the Maytals in Grass Valley, Calif. In a statement from a family member Hibbert died on Friday, Sept. 11, 2020. (Elias Funez/The Union via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — Toots Hibbert, one of reggae’s founders and most beloved stars who gave the music its name and later helped make it an international movement through such classics as “Pressure Drop,” “Monkey Man” and “Funky Kingston,” has died. He was 77.

Hibbert, frontman of Toots & the Maytals, had been in a medically-induced coma at a hospital in Kingston since earlier this month. He was admitted in intensive care after complaints of having breathing difficulties according to his publicist. It was revealed in local media that the singer was awaiting results from a COVID-19 test after showing symptoms.


News of the five-time Grammy nominee’s ill-health came just weeks after his last known performance, on a national live-stream during Jamaica’s Emancipation and Independence celebrations in August.

A family statement said Hibbert died Friday at University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, surrounded by family.

Ziggy Marley, son of Bob Marley, tweeted about the death saying he spoke with Hibbert a few weeks ago and, “told him how much i loved him we laughed & shared our mutual respect,” adding, “He was a father figure to me.”

A muscular ex-boxer, Hibbert was a bandleader, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and showman whose concerts sometimes ended with dozens of audience members dancing with him on stage. He was also, in the opinion of many, reggae’s greatest singer, so deeply spiritual he could transform “Do re mi fa so la ti do” into a hymn. His raspy tenor, uncommonly warm and rough, was likened to the voice of Otis Redding and made him more accessible to American listeners than many reggae artists. Original songs such as “Funky Kingston” and “54-46 That’s My Number” had the emotion and call and response arrangements known to soul and gospel fans. Hibbert even recorded an album of American hits, “Toots In Memphis,” which came out in 1988.

Never as immersed in politics as his friend and great contemporary Bob Marley, Hibbert did invoke heavenly justice in “Pressure Drop,” preach peace in “Revolution,” righteousness in “Bam Bam” and scorn his 1960s drug arrest and imprisonment in “54-46 That’s My Number.” He also captured, like few others, everyday life in Jamaica in the years following its independence from Britain in 1962, whether telling of wedding jitters (“Sweet and Dandy”) or of trying to pay the rent (“Time Tough”). One of his most popular and surprising songs was his reworking of John Denver’s nostalgic “(Take Me Home) Country Roads,” with the setting changed from West Virginia to a world Hibbert knew so well.

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Almost heaven, West Jamaica

True ridge mountains

Shining down the river


All my friends there

Older than those ridge

Younger than the mountains

Blowin’ like a breeze

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As with other reggae stars, Hibbert’s following soared after the release of the landmark 1972 film, “The Harder They Come,” which starred Jimmy Cliff as a poor Jamaican who moves to Kingston and dreams of a career in music. The Jamaican production was a word of mouth hit in the U.S. and the soundtrack, often ranked among the greatest in movie history, included the Maytals’ “Pressure Drop” and “Sweet and Dandy.” Hibbert also appeared in the film, as himself, recording “Sweet and Dandy” in the studio while Cliff’s character looks on with awe. Around the same time, the Maytals signed with Island Records and released the acclaimed album “Funky Kingston,” which the critic Lester Bangs called “the most exciting and diversified set of reggae tunes by a single artist yet released.” (The album would eventually come out in two different versions).

By the mid-1970s, Keith Richards, John Lennon, Eric Clapton and countless other rock stars had become reggae fans and Hibbert would eventually record with some of them. A tribute album from 2004, the Grammy winning “True Love,” included cameos by Richards, Bonnie Raitt, Ryan Adams and Jeff Beck. Hibbert also was the subject of a 2011 BBC documentary, “Reggae Got Soul,” with Clapton, Richards and Willie Nelson among the commentators.

A guest appearance on “Saturday Night Live” in 2004 brought Hibbert an unexpected admirer, the show’s guest host, Donald Trump, who in his book “Think Like a Billionaire” recalled hearing the Maytals rehearse: “My daughter Ivanka had told me how great they were, and she was right. The music relaxed me, and surprisingly, I was not nervous.”

The Maytals originally were a vocal trio featuring Hibbert, Henry “Raleigh” Gordon and Nathaniel “Jerry” Mathias, with the group later adding such instrumentalists as bassist Jackie Jackson and drummer Paul Douglas. They broke up in the early 1980s, but the following decade Hibbert began working with a new lineup of Maytals.

Hibbert’s career was halted in 2013 after he sustained a head injury from a vodka bottle thrown during a concert in Richmond, Virginia, and suffered from headaches and depression. But by the end of the decade he was performing again and in 2020 he released another album, “Got To Be Tough,” which included contributions from Ziggy Marley and Ringo Starr, whose son, Zak Starkey, served as co-producer.

Grammy nominations for Hibbert included best reggae album of 2012 for “Reggae Got Soul” and best reggae album of 2007 for “Light Your Light.” Hibbert was ranked No. 71 on a Rolling Stone list, compiled in 2008, of the 100 greatest contemporary singers. In 2012, he received the Order of Distinction by the government of Jamaica for outstanding contribution to the country’s music.

Married to his wife, Doreen, for nearly 40 years, Hibbert had eight children, including the reggae performers Junior Hibbert and Leba Hibbert.

Frederick Nathaniel Hibbert (“Toots” was a childhood nickname) was born in May Pen, Parish of Clarendon. He was the son of Seventh-day Adventist ministers and would remember miles-long walks along dirt roads to schools, hours of singing in church and private moments listening to such American stars on the radio as Ray Charles and Elvis Presley.

By adolescence, his parents had died and he had moved to Trench Town in Kingston, where the local music scene was thriving, moving from street parties to recording studios and drawing such future stars as Bob Marley and Desmond Dekker. He formed the Maytals, named for his hometown, with fellow singers Matthias and Gordon, started working with Jamaican record producer Coxsone Dodd and quickly became the star of the national festival competition that started in 1966. The Maytals (eventually renamed Toots & the Maytals) won in the inaugural year with “Bam Bam,” prevailed in 1969 with “Sweet and Dandy” and 1972 with “Pomp and Pride.” Hibbert would joke that he thought it best to start skipping the festival because winning came so easily, although he returned in 2020 with the bright, inspirational “Rise Up Jamaica.”

The Maytals began when ska was the most popular music, continued to rise during the transition to the slowed down rocksteady and were at the very forefront of the faster, more danceable sound of the late ’60s. Their uptempo chant “Do the Reggay” is widely recognized as the song which gave reggae its name, even if the honor was unintended.

“If a girl didn’t look so nice or she wasn’t dressed properly, we used to say she was streggay. I was playing one day and I don’t know why but I started singing: ‘Do the reggay, do the reggay’ — it just stuck,” he told the Daily Star in 2012. “I might have stuck with calling it streggay if I’d thought longer. That’d be something — everyone dancing to streggay music.”

___

Sharlene Hendricks contributed from Jamaica.

Antarctica is still free of COVID-19. Can it stay that way?

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In this handout photo provided by British Antarctic Survey, field guides Sarah Crowsley, left, and Sam Hunt, right, pose for a photo after digging out the caboose, a container used for accommodation that can be moved by a tractor, at Adelaide island, in Antarctica on Friday, June 19, 2020. Antarctica remains the only continent without COVID-19 and now in Sept. 2020, as nearly 1,000 scientists and others who wintered over on the ice are seeing the sun for the first time in months, a global effort wants to make sure incoming colleagues don't bring the virus with them. (Robert Taylor/British Antarctic Survey via AP)

In this handout photo provided by British Antarctic Survey, field guides Sarah Crowsley, left, and Sam Hunt, right, pose for a photo after digging out the caboose, a container used for accommodation that can be moved by a tractor, at Adelaide island, in Antarctica on Friday, June 19, 2020. Antarctica remains the only continent without COVID-19 and now in Sept. 2020, as nearly 1,000 scientists and others who wintered over on the ice are seeing the sun for the first time in months, a global effort wants to make sure incoming colleagues don't bring the virus with them. (Robert Taylor/British Antarctic Survey via AP)

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — At this very moment a vast world exists that’s free of the coronavirus, where people can mingle without masks and watch the pandemic unfold from thousands of miles away.

That world is Antarctica, the only continent without COVID-19. Now, as nearly 1,000 scientists and others who wintered over on the ice are seeing the sun for the first time in weeks or months, a global effort wants to make sure incoming colleagues don’t bring the virus with them.

From the U.K.’s Rothera Research Station off the Antarctic peninsula that curls toward the tip of South America, field guide Rob Taylor described what it’s like in “our safe little bubble.”

In pre-coronavirus days, long-term isolation, self-reliance and psychological strain were the norm for Antarctic teams while the rest of the world saw their life as fascinatingly extreme.

How times have changed.

“In general, the freedoms afforded to us are more extensive than those in the U.K. at the height of lockdown,” said Taylor, who arrived in October and has missed the pandemic entirely. “We can ski, socialize normally, run, use the gym, all within reason.”

Like teams across Antarctica, including at the South Pole, Taylor and his 26 colleagues must be proficient in all sorts of tasks in a remote, communal environment with little room for error. They take turns cooking, make weather observations and “do a lot of sewing,” he said.

Good internet connections mean they’ve watched closely as the pandemic circled the rest of the planet. Until this year, conversations with incoming colleagues focused on preparing the newcomers. Now the advice goes both ways.

“I’m sure there’s a lot they can tell us that will help us adapt to the new way of things,” Taylor said. “We haven’t had any practice at social distancing yet!”

At New Zealand’s Scott Base, rounds of mini-golf and a filmmaking competition with other Antarctic bases have been highlights of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter, which ended for the Scott team when they spotted the sun last Friday. It had been away since April.

“I think there’s a little bit of dissociation,” Rory O’Connor, a doctor and the team’s winter leader, said of watching the pandemic from afar. “You acknowledge it cerebrally, but I don’t think we have fully factored in the emotional turmoil it must be causing.”

His family in the U.K. still wouldn’t trade places with him. “They can’t understand why I came down here,” he joked. “Months of darkness. Stuck inside with a small group of people. Where’s the joy in that?”


O’Connor said they will be able to test for the virus once colleagues start arriving as soon as Monday, weeks late because a huge storm dumped 20-feet (6-meter) snowdrifts. Any virus case will spark a “red response level,” he said, with activities stripped down to providing heating, water, power and food.

While COVID-19 has rattled some diplomatic ties, the 30 countries that make up the Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs teamed up early to keep the virus out. Officials cite unique teamwork among the United States, China, Russia and others that elsewhere might engage in diplomatic sniping.

As a frightened world was locking down in March, the Antarctic programs agreed the pandemic could become a major disaster. With the world’s strongest winds and coldest temperatures, the continent roughly the size of the United States and Mexico is already dangerous for workers at 40 year-round bases.

“A highly infectious novel virus with significant mortality and morbidity in the extreme and austere environment of Antarctica with limited sophistication of medical care and public health responses is High Risk with potential catastrophic consequences,” according to a COMNAP document seen by The Associated Press.

Since Antarctica can only be reached through a few air gateways or via ship, “the attempt to prevent the virus from reaching the continent should be undertaken IMMEDIATELY,” it said.

No more contact with tourists, COMNAP warned. “No cruise ships should be disembarking.” And for Antarctic teams located near each other, “mutual visits and social events between stations/facilities should be ceased.”

Antarctic workers have long been trained in hand-washing and “sneeze etiquette,” but COMNAP slipped in that reminder, adding, “Don’t touch your face.”

In those hurried weeks of final flights, the U.S. “thankfully” augmented medical and other supplies for winter and beyond it, said Stephanie Short, head of logistics for the U.S. Antarctic program.

“We re-planned an entire research season in a matter of weeks, facing the highest level of uncertainty I’ve seen in my 25-year government career,” she said.

Antarctic bases soon slipped into months of isolation known as winter. Now, with the glimmer of spring, the next big test has begun.

Everyone is sending fewer people to the ice for the summer, COMNAP executive secretary Michelle Finnemore said.

In the gateway city of Christchurch, New Zealand, Operation Deep Freeze is preparing to airlift some 120 people to the largest U.S. station, McMurdo. To limit contact between Antarctic workers and flight crew, the plane contains a separate toilet facility mounted on a pallet.

The Americans’ bubble began before leaving the U.S. in early August and continues until they reach the ice. They’ve been isolated in hotel rooms well beyond New Zealand’s 14-day quarantine. Bad weather has delayed their departure for weeks. It’s now planned for Monday.

“We’re trying to do a really good job keeping up their spirits,” said Anthony German, the U.S. Antarctic program’s chief liaison there.

The U.S. is sending a third of its usual summer staff. Research will be affected, though investment in robotics and instrumentation that can transmit data from the field will help greatly, said Alexandra Isern, head of Antarctic sciences for the U.S. program with the National Science Foundation.

The COVID-19 disruptions are causing some sadness, she said. “In some cases, we’re going to have to have contingents digging instruments out of the snow to make sure we can still find it.”

Like other countries, New Zealand will prioritize long-term data sets, some begun in the 1950s, which measure climate, ozone levels, seismic activity and more, said Sarah Williamson, chief executive of Antarctica New Zealand. It’s sending 100 people to the ice instead of 350, she said.

Some programs are deferring Antarctic operations to next year or even 2022, said Nish Devanunthan, South Africa’s director of Antarctic support.

“I think the biggest concern for every country is to be the one that is fingered for bringing the virus,” he said. “Everyone is safeguarding against that.”

Precautions extend to the gateway cities — Cape Town, Christchurch, Hobart in Australia, Punta Arenas in Chile and Ushuaia in Argentina. Each has quarantine and testing protocols for workers boarding planes or ships heading south.

Antarctica always has its challenges, Devanunthan said, but when it comes to COVID-19 and the international community as a whole, “I would say this is on the top of the list.”

A few weeks ago at McMurdo Station, workers carried out a drill to simulate what the rest of the world knows too well: mask-wearing and social distancing. “It will be difficult not to run up and hug friends” once they arrive, station manager Erin Heard said.

He and the others will start wearing masks two days before the newcomers fly in, he said, “to help us get muscle memory.” For the masks, the team plundered McMurdo’s craft room, stocked with fabric, and found designs online.

As colleagues arrive, Heard will leave Antarctica. He once might have planned to thaw out on a beach. Now he’s weighing the new normal. “Do I ask a friend to pick me up? I don’t know if I’m comfortable doing that,” he said as he imagined stepping off the plane.

“It will be super weird, to be honest, to be coming from what feels like another planet.”

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Perry reported from Wellington, New Zealand.

MORE PHOTOS

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In this handout photo provided by British Antarctic Survey, field guide Sasha Doyle, left, and meteorological observer Jack Farr, right, sit in an igloo in Trident area, Adelaide island, in Antarctica in October 2019. Antarctica remains the only continent without COVID-19 and now in Sept. 2020, as nearly 1,000 scientists and others who wintered over on the ice are seeing the sun for the first time in months, a global effort wants to make sure incoming colleagues don't bring the virus with them. (Robert Taylor/British Antarctic Survey via AP)



Attenborough in warning to humanity with new extinction documentary

Issued on: 12/09/2020 
The new film comes after international experts warned this week that global animal, bird and fish populations have plummeted more than two-thirds in less than 50 years due to humanity's rampant over-consumption. Chris J Ratcliffe POOL/AFP

London (AFP)

Renowned TV naturalist David Attenborough, in a new documentary, gives his starkest warning yet for humanity to safeguard species from mass extinction for the sake of our own survival.

His one-hour film "Extinction: The Facts", airing Sunday on the BBC in Britain, does not hold back in portraying the devastating consequences of mankind's encroachment on natural habitats -- and draws a clear link to pandemics such as the coronavirus crisis.

It comes after international experts warned in a report this week that global animal, bird and fish populations have plummeted more than two-thirds in less than 50 years due to humanity's rampant over-consumption.

"We are facing a crisis," Attenborough warns at the start of the documentary, according to the BBC, "and one that has consequences for us all".

The broadcaster said the programme contained "horrific scenes of destruction", such as monkeys leaping from trees into a river to escape a huge fire. In another, a koala limps across a road in a doomed search for shelter from a forest blaze.

The new film from the maker of "Blue Planet" and "Planet Earth" also tracks the suspected origins of Covid-19 to populations of bats living in caves in the Chinese province of Yunnan.

It shows the Chinese "wet market" in the city of Wuhan, specialising in the sale of wild animals for human consumption, which scientists believe was at the root of this year's deadly pandemic.

The film gives dramatic visual reinforcement to this week's Living Planet Index report, which warned that continued loss of natural habitats increases the risk of future pandemics as humans come into ever closer contact with wild animals.

Attenborough also portrays the world's last two northern white rhinos, a mother and daughter in Central Africa.

"Over the course of my life I've encountered some of the world's most remarkable species of animals," the 94-year-old said. "Only now do I realise just how lucky I've been -- many of these wonders seem set to disappear forever."

There is hope, however, as Attenborough retraces an iconic film he made in the 1970s showing a fast-dwindling band of mountain gorillas on the border between Rwanda and the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo.

Their population has recovered from just 250 then to more than 1,000, thanks to a determined conservation campaign in Rwanda, and Attenborough meets the offspring of a playful young female he met four decades ago.

"I may not be here to see it, but if we make the right decisions at this critical moment, we can safeguard our planet's ecosystems, its extraordinary biodiversity and all its inhabitants," he concludes in the documentary.

"What happens next is up to every one of us."

© 2020 AFP
Protests against police brutality leave several dead, hundreds injured in Bogota

Issued on: 11/09/2020
People look at a police hut of the Immediate Attention Commands (CAI) destroyed during a protest in the late night and early morning, against the death of a lawyer under police custody, in Bogota, Colombia, on September 10, 2020. © Daniel Munoz, AFP
Text by:NEWS WIRES



Demonstrators took to the streets for a second night in Colombia’s capital Bogota on Thursday to press ahead with protests against police brutality that have erupted in violence and taken nine lives so far.

The demonstrators were protesting the death this week of law student Javier Ordonez, 46. A widely-shared video filmed by Ordonez’s friend showed the father of two being repeatedly shocked with a stun gun by police. He died later in a hospital.

Some 300 protesters gathered once again Thursday afternoon outside the police station in Villa Luz, where Ordonez was taken before his death and which was heavily damaged on Wednesday.

“How many are you going to kill today,” screamed barista Alejandra Pulido, 25. “The authorities that should protect us are killing us!”

“Pigs, pigs, pigs!” chanted the crowd, as police officers with riot shields stood in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary.

A number threw stones at the assembled police while others spray painted graffiti on their riot shields.

Bogota: several killed, dozens of police stations burned down in protests



Since the protests started Wednesday in Bogota and satellite city Soacha, at least nine people have been killed while hundreds of civilians and police officers have been injured.

Bogota Mayor Claudia Lopez said people should return to their homes by evening, to ease tensions.

“Although there is no curfew in Bogota, we ask that by no later than seven o’clock, all those who can, please stay at home,” Lopez said in a Facebook Live broadcast.

Yet as seven o’clock approached demonstrators threw rocks and bottles at police, attacking the windows of the station with an uprooted road sign and setting the front of the post briefly alight.

Police responded with tear gas and flash-bang grenades, sending protesters running.

Over 60 people suffered gun-related injuries, the mayor’s office said. Lopez compared the unrest to the worst days of Colombia’s armed conflict.

For those wondering what's happening in Colombia/why #ColombiaLivesMatter is trending: Protests erupted today in Bogotá after a viral video showed two police officers beating and tasering a 44-year-old taxi driver to death on Tuesday. Here are some images circulating from tonight pic.twitter.com/QInojYajX1— Miguel Salazar (@miguelxsalazar) September 10, 2020

The video of Ordonez shows him pinned to the ground by police officers and subjected to successive electric shocks early on Wednesday as he begs, “please, no more.”

Police say Ordonez was found drinking alcohol in the street with friends, in violation of coronavirus distancing rules. He was taken to a police station in western Bogota.

Two officers suspected of involvement in the alleged abuse of Ordonez have been suspended pending an investigation, the government has said.

Ordonez’s family called for justice and peaceful protest.

“He was murdered by the police officers,” his sister-in-law, Eliana Marcela Garzon, told Reuters. “We don’t want (deaths) in a country already full of conflict, we want justice.”

Police reform is needed, Garzon said, especially for the future of children like her now-fatherless nephews.

“I don’t want them to grow up feeling like there isn’t justice in this country,” she said. “I want them to grow up knowing laws are followed.”

President Ivan Duque has said abuse of authority should not be tolerated, but the government called for Colombians not to “stigmatize” police officers and appealed for calm.

Bogota’s police will be reinforced with 1,600 more officers, more than half of whom will come from other regions, and 300 soldiers, the defense ministry said.

An effort by labor unions earlier this week to revive last year’s mass protests against Duque’s economic and social policies garnered a tepid response amid ongoing coronavirus restrictions.

But Ordonez’s death could fuel renewed outrage against the police, who were widely criticized last year after a teenage protester was fatally injured by a riot squad projectile.

(REUTERS)







Colombia's defense minister apologizes over police brutality amid protests

Issued on: 11/09/2020 
Demonstrators run as mounted police chase them during a protest against police brutality in Medellin, Colombia, on September 10, 2020. © Joaquin Sarmiento, AFP
Text by:NEWS WIRES

Colombia's defense minister apologized on Friday on behalf of the national police for an incident of police brutality that sparked two nights of protests that rocked parts of capital Bogota and satellite city Soacha, leaving 11 dead and hundreds injured.

Demonstrators have taken to the streets for consecutive nights to protest the death on Wednesday of Javier Ordonez, 46. A widely-shared video filmed by Ordonez's friend showed the father of two being repeatedly shocked with a stun gun by police. He died later in a hospital.

"The national police apologize for any violation of the law or ignorance of regulations by any members of the institution", Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo said in a video message.

The video of Ordonez shows him pinned to the ground by police officers and subjected to successive electric shocks early on Wednesday as he begs, "please, no more."

Police said Ordonez was found drinking alcohol in the street with friends in violation of coronavirus distancing rules. He was taken to a police station in western Bogota which has become a focal point of protests, and later died in hospital.

Two police officers implicated in Ordonez's death face charges of abusing authority and homicide. They have already been suspended and will be fired from the force.

A further five officers have been suspended in connection with Ordonez's death, Trujillo said.

Seven people aged between 17 and 27 years old died after being shot in Bogota during protests on Wednesday, according to the mayor's office, while the national government says three were killed the same night in Soacha.

Family members of some of the Bogota victims told local media their loved ones had not been participating in the protests.

Another woman was killed in Bogota on Thursday as protests continued. She was hit by a stolen public transport vehicle, local and national officials said.

More than 200 civilians and 194 police officers have been injured during the clashes, according to the national government.

Ordonez's death could fuel renewed outrage against the police, who were widely criticized last year after a teenage protester was fatally injured by a riot squad projectile.

(REUTERS)

Rio Tinto executives resign over destruction of ancient Aboriginal site




Issued on: 11/09/2020 
  
Remote-controlled stackers and reclaimers move iron ore to rail cars at Rio Tinto's Port Dampier operations in Western Australia's Pilbara region on March 4, 2010. Rio Tinto's CEO and two other top officers resigned on September 11, 2020 after an uproar over the mining giant's destruction of an ancient Aboriginal heritage site. © Amy Coopes, AFP (file photo)
Text by:NEWS WIRES

Rio Tinto announced the resignation of its CEO and two top lieutenants Friday over the mining giant’s destruction of a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal site to expand an iron ore mine in Australia.

The Anglo-Australian firm faced a growing investor revolt over the destruction of the sacred site in the Juukan Gorge in Western Australia’s remote Pilbara region – one of the earliest known locations inhabited by Australia’s indigenous people.

Following a board investigation into the May 24 incident, Rio Tinto said CEO Jean-Sebastien Jacques was stepping down “by mutual agreement” along with the chief of the company’s core iron ore division, Chris Salisbury, and corporate relations head Simone Niven.

“What happened at Juukan was wrong and we are determined to ensure that the destruction of a heritage site of such exceptional archaeological and cultural significance never occurs again at a Rio Tinto operation,” chairman Simon Thompson said in a statement.

The cultural importance of Juukan Gorge was confirmed by an archaeological dig carried out at one of the caves – known as rock shelters – a year after Rio Tinto obtained approval to blast in the area.

The dig uncovered the oldest known example of bone tools in Australia – a sharpened kangaroo bone dating back 28,000 years – and a plaited-hair belt that DNA testing linked to indigenous people still living in the area.

An internal company review in August determined that “a series of decisions, actions and omissions over an extended period of time” preceded the choice to go ahead with the Juukan Gorge blasting despite concerns over the fate of the sacred Aboriginal site.

In an initial response, the company stripped millions of dollars in bonuses from the three executives.

But the firm’s shareholders and corporate responsibility bodies derided the move as insufficient and called for heads to roll.

‘Crucial first step’

The National Native Title Council, which represents indigenous landowners, welcomed what it called the “dismissal” of the Rio Tinto executives, but said such staff changes were “only the crucial first step”.

“We hope this will send a strong message to the whole mining sector: you need to join the 21st Century and start taking your environmental, social and corporate governance seriously,” said NNTC chief executive Jamie Lowe.

Jacques, who has been CEO since 2016, will remain in his role until a successor can be found or until March 31, whichever is sooner, and the other two executives will leave the company on December 31.

In announcing their departure, Thomspon said all three executives would be paid undisclosed “separation terms” in line with their contracts, raising the spectre of significant payouts which quickly rankled investors.

“We will ... be looking closely at the separation arrangements, with the expectation that any exit won’t provide a windfall,” said Louise Davidson, CEO of the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors.

The Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR) for its part expressed concern at how long it took Rio Tinto to act.

“There are in fact two disasters: The first involves the tragic destruction of Juukan Gorge in May; the second is the dishonest malaise of Rio Tinto’s board and senior management in the months since,” said ACCR legal counsel James Fitzgerald.

‘Vast distance’

Rio Tinto initially defended its blasting in the Juukan Gorge as authorised under a 2013 agreement with the state government.

But protests by Aboriginal leaders, who said they had not been informed of the planned blasting until it was too late to prevent it, led the company to issue an apology.

Australia’s parliament has been conducting its own inquiry into the Juukan Gorge incident, and Western Australia’s state government is reviewing the laws governing mining operations near indigenous heritage sites.

Western Australia Treasurer Ben Wyatt, who is Aboriginal, said Rio Tinto, with dual headquarters in London and Melbourne, had allowed “a vast distance” to develop between its leadership and the Pilbara “where they make 75 percent of their earnings”.

“There’s no one on that board with any real understanding of the Aboriginal groups who own the country on which they operate,” Wyatt, who is also the state’s aboriginal affairs minister, told public broadcaster ABC.

“That, for me, screams risk, and it’s something I am stunned hasn’t been picked up over the years.”

(AFP)

‘Humanity is bullying nature – and we will pay the price,’ WWF chief tells FRANCE 24

Issued on: 11/09/2020 -
A deforested plot of the Amazon near Porto Velho, in Brazil's Rondonia State. © Bruno Kelly, REUTERS

Text by:Benjamin DODMAN

Wildlife populations have fallen by more than two-thirds in less than 50 years, according to a major report by the World Wildlife Fund. FRANCE 24 spoke to the conservation group’s director-general about the staggering loss of Earth's biodiversity, its implications for humanity, and what steps should be taken to reverse this catastrophic decline.

Human activity has severely degraded three quarters of all land and 40 percent of Earth's oceans, and the quickening destruction of nature is likely to have grave consequences on our health and livelihoods, according to the 2020 edition of the Living Planet Index, which was released on Thursday.

A collaboration between WWF International and the Zoological Society of London, the Index said increasing deforestation and agricultural expansion were the key drivers behind a 68 percent decline in global populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish between 1970 and 2016. It warned that continued natural habitat loss increased the risk of future pandemics as humans come into ever closer contact with wild animals.

2020: The year that forced us to stop in the wake of a global pandemic 🛑 pic.twitter.com/r0eIYdRwT6— WWF (@WWF) September 10, 2020

In an interview with FRANCE 24, Marco Lambertini, the director-general of WWF International, said the coronavirus pandemic has helped raise awareness of the direct link between biodiversity loss and vital threats to humanity. He urged world leaders to agree on a goal to reverse catastrophic nature loss, similar to the targets set for climate at a UN summit in Paris in 2015.

FRANCE 24: We’ve heard – and often ignored – such dire warnings before. Were even you surprised by the scale of nature loss this time?

Marco Lambertini: I was shocked, but not surprised. The decline is so steep it is almost difficult to believe it can happen in such a short period of time, compared to the millions of years these species have been on the planet. The surprise, perhaps, is that despite the many warnings the trend is still negative and in fact is almost accelerating. It is shocking, it is sad, because we are failing in our moral duty to respect these other life forms. But there is a new message too and, perhaps, a glimmer of hope: we are actually beginning to look at these figures and get worried. It’s an important cultural shift, from being sad about extinction and deforestation to actually begin to be worried. We’ve seen it happen with climate, now we are beginning to see it also with biodiversity loss. That gives me hope. You need to get worried before you actually do something about it.

Is the fight to preserve nature shifting from a moral duty to an existential struggle for humans too?

Rather than shifting from one to the other, I would say we are starting to understand it as both. There are still many people who are rightly appalled by what we are doing, by this ecocide driven by humans. As the dominant species, we are bullying nature in a way that is unacceptable. On the other hand, we are beginning to understand that we are the ones who are going to pay the price. The planet will survive one way or another, biodiversity will come back, forests will come back. But whether our societies can survive, that’s a big question mark, one that is very worrying for our children. The horizon we are talking about here is not hundreds of years – it’s decades.

How did it come to this? Have we failed to see that by hurting nature we’re hurting ourselves?

There is, to some extent, an opposition between an anthropocentric view of the world and a biocentric one. In the former, human kind is at the centre of everything and comes first, while in the latter, we understand that we have to control our behaviours and be stewards rather than exploiters. But I would say there is something deeper, almost in our genes. Like other species, we’ve been evolving and fighting in a very difficult environment for the majority of our life history. We have developed the hunter-gatherer approach to survive day by day, that’s what most species do. That mentality is still in us, but we need to understand that it is an unsustainable approach and that we cannot continue this way. We are almost 8 billion, with the technology to hurt nature like never before. We have to change our relationship with the planet, from grabbing, without thinking of the consequences, to managing.


Of course, inequality is driving the ecological footprint at different speeds. Some people consume far beyond the limits of the planet while others still struggle to make a living and find food. But the destruction of nature is hurting poor communities most. Rich economies are able to withstand this impact for longer, whereas the people who depend directly on nature, such as subsistence farmers, will find it much harder to cope.

Has the coronavirus pandemic helped bring this reality home to people, in a more explicit way?

In this tragic situation there is perhaps, awfully, a useful lesson in the connection between nature and human health, and the fact that by destroying forests, by consuming and poaching wildlife we expose ourselves to risks that are simply not worth it. The statistics are striking: 60 percent of emerging diseases with potential to become pandemics come from interaction with wildlife. It is most likely the next pandemic will come again from one of these zoonotic diseases [that jump from animals to humans]. So yes, there is a growing awareness.

How can this growing awareness translate into positive action?

We need to make sure that the trillions of dollars that go into the recovery [from the pandemic crisis] incentivise green shifts in agriculture, in forestry and other sectors that destroy nature today. We also need stronger regulation of wildlife trade and consumption – by which I mean commercial trade, not subsistence hunting by indigenous communities. Crucially, next year we will have the opportunity to set a global goal for nature like we did for climate [at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference] in Paris. The French government is extremely active in that sense and we need other governments to embrace that ambition at the UN Convention [on Biodiversity] next year. We need a nature-positive goal that commits to halting and reversing nature loss – meaning natural spaces and wildlife populations – by 2030.

How do we reverse nature loss?

We know exactly how to do it! The other good news at this point in time is that science has never been clearer on both the problems and the solutions. Awareness in the political, societal and business spheres is also beginning to grow, so now is the right time to clinch a solid agreement and agree targets in three key areas.

The first is the need to protect more natural places. We currently protect just 15 percent of land areas and 8 percent of the oceans, when we need to protect at least 30 percent. Secondly, we need to curb the illegal trade of wildlife on land and overfishing. Thirdly, and this is the most challenging, we need to ‘green’ the key economic drivers of nature loss. Agriculture must become deforestation-free and reduce the use of pesticides and fertilizers; fisheries must allow fish stocks to recover and not destroy underwater ecosystems; and then there’s mining, forestry and infrastructure.

Frankly, we can do all this in a way that is more sustainable. It’s a matter of applying the right technology, having the right regulations and, fundamentally, the right financial incentives. Twenty years ago we were saying it’s impossible to replace fossil fuels with clean energy. Here we are, clean energy is now cheaper – it can happen in the other sectors too.

Israel’s ‘shorts rebellion’: Schoolgirls’ protest reveals deeply divided society


CLOTHING AND HAIRSTYLE RESTRICTIONS LED TO STUDENT REBELLIONS ACROSS
HIGH SCHOOLS IN NORTH AMERICA IN THE SEVENTIES

Issued on: 11/09/2020 
Kai, Alma and Shaked, aged 13 to 14, fought for the right to wear shorts to school in Ra'anana, central Israel. © FRANCE 24

By:Clothilde MRAFFKO|Matthias SOMM

At the beginning of the summer, a group of female Israeli teenagers fought for the right to come to school wearing shorts. This seemingly minor battle in fact reveals a deep divide within Israeli society between secular and religious views

Amid a heatwave in Israel, 13-year-old Kai and her friends were sent home from school for wearing shorts deemed too short. The teenagers fought back and started a "shorts rebellion". All over the country, young women stood up for the right to dress as they wish.

While the "shorts rebellion" may appear anecdotal, these teenagers intend to counter the growing influence of religion. Their battle exposed one of the main fault lines of contemporary Israeli society: the opposition between secular and religious Israelis, with how women dress at the forefront of debate.
More than 90% of the world's protected areas are disconnected

With about 60% of Earth's land degraded on some level, researchers say the remaining 40% is not connected enough and threatens the survival of scores of species. Photo by FabricioMacedoPhotos/Pixabay

Sept. 11 (UPI) -- Even as humans carve out and protect significant swaths of terrestrial habitat, the rest of Earth has become increasingly degraded, leaving the planet's protected areas disconnected.

According to a new study, more than 90% of Earth's protected areas are disconnected -- surrounded by human pressures -- according to a study published Friday in the journal Nature Communications.

"Connected landscapes ensure species can move through a landscape," lead study author Michelle Ward told UPI in an email.

"Species travel for many reasons including seasonal migrations, finding a mate, moving away from close relatives to ensure genetic diversity, escaping natural disasters such as fires, or tracking their preferred climates," said Ward, an environmental scientist and doctoral candidate at the University of Queensland in Australia.

RELATED Tropical forests can continue to store carbon, even as the planet gets warmer

To quantify the problem of landscape disconnection, researchers relied on a map called the Human Footprint, which identifies the presence of multiple human pressures, including roads, railways, farmland, urban development, commercial development and more. The map scores a landscape's total pressure on a scale from 0 to 50.

On the Human Footprint, a score of zero suggests the land is relatively wild. A score of 4 or below suggests the land experience only minor human pressures. These landscapes contain most of their natural habitat and host healthy ecological processes.

"This threshold is what we call 'intact' and has been found to be robust from a species conservation perspective because once surpassed, species extinction risk increases dramatically, and several ecosystem processes are altered," Ward said.

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According to the Human Footprint, 40% of Earth's land remains intact, while the remaining 60 percent is relatively degraded.

When researchers looked at the distribution of intact land, they found it rarely forms a bridge between protected areas.

"If two protected areas have 'intact' land in between them, we define those two protected areas as connected," Ward said. "While this kind of structural connectivity alone does not guarantee connectivity for all species, high levels of landscape connectedness is seen as critical for species in regards to migration, escaping natural disasters, and adaptation under human-induced climate change."

RELATED Scientists move to create single, comprehensive list of Earth's living species

Their analysis, showed just 9.7% of the world's protected areas are connected.

To protect Earth's biodiversity and important ecological processes, authors of the latest study argue more must be done to connect the planet's protected areas. That means safeguarding still-intact landscapes and restoring landscapes that can connect isolated pockets of wild habitat.

Members of the United Nations have pledged to restore 865 million acres of degraded land by 2030, but researchers suggest such efforts must be executed strategically.


"We argue that these types of restoration goals should be framed within a broader connectivity agenda and specifically planned to maximize the quality of the landscape matrix between protected areas, as well as degraded land inside protected areas essential to biodiversity outcomes," Ward said.
Northrop's 'life extension' spacecraft heads to the rescue


Northrop Grumman Corp.'s MEV-2, shown being prepared for launch, will act as a new engine and fuel tank to keep a satellite owned by Intelsat functioning in orbit for about five more years. Photo courtesy of Northrop Grumman

ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 11 (UPI) -- A second spacecraft designed by Northrop Grumman to extend the life of satellites in orbit is headed toward a rescue some 22,200 miles above Earth.

The spacecraft is part of Northrop's new in-orbit services. Analysts and observers predict such services will grow into a multibillion-dollar market over the next 10 years.

Northrop is the first commercial service to enable private space companies to extend the life of large, expensive satellites past their life expectancy as desi
gned.

"Satellite operators have few options when a satellite is aging, and they are all expensive," said Joe Anderson, a vice president with Northrop subsidiary SpaceLogistics, based in Dulles, Va.

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The company's rescue satellite, Mission Extension Vehicle-2, or MEV-2, was launched Aug. 15 from the European Space Agency's Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana, South America.

The launch began a seven-month journey to a rendezvous with a communication satellite, Intelsat 10-02. Sent aloft in 2004, the satellite provides service to customers of for Intelsat Corp., whose administrative center is in McLean, Va.

Once it clamps onto the Intelsat, the MEV will become a new engine for the satellite, which is running low on fuel. The Northrop spacecraft will keep the satellite in the proper orbit and pointed toward Earth, Anderson said.

The first MEV spacecraft, launched in October 2019, is operating successfully as a new, supplemental engine for another Intelsat satellite, Intelsat 901, which was launched in 2001, according to Northrop and Intelsat.

That satellite reached the end of its lifespan and had been moved to the so-called graveyard orbit, which is about 300 miles higher than any functional satellites.

The incentive to rescue such large communications satellites is their high cost -- between $150 million and $300 million, Anderson said.

While he declined to reveal the cost of Northrop's MEV units, Anderson said the company intends to sell in-orbit services at a price that is attractive to satellite companies.

Intelsat previously reported in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it would pay about $13 million per year, or $65 million for five years, for MEV-1.

If a company can put off the cost to build and launch a new satellite for five years, it can invest that money in other projects, making the life-extension service a valuable route, Anderson said.

Northrop will own and operate the MEV craft through SpaceLogistics. After the five-year missions for Intelsat, the MEV units can extend their work or move to other missions, Anderson said.

The MEVs are powered by electric engines energized by solar panels to raise their own orbit and control the Intelsat satellites, along with hydrazine chemical propulsion to rendezvous with their target satellites, Anderson said.

The electric thrusters are considered more efficient for such orbital missions, but they take longer to reach high orbit than bigger chemical propulsion engines.

Despite the success of MEV missions, Northrop won't build more similar satellites, but rather develop a new version with more capabilities. It will be known as a Mission Robotic Vehicle, Anderson said.

The MRV would carry several life extension "pods" -- small electric engines that can be dispersed among multiple satellites per mission, Anderson said. Northrop believes that will boost the cost efficiency of each mission.

Northrop also will design the robotic mothership, the MRV, to inspect satellites and possibly conduct limited repairs, providing more value, he said.

Such expanded robotic spacecraft could be valuable to Intelsat, as well, said Jean-Luc Froeliger, vice president of its space systems engineering operations.

"We are definitely interested in the robotic vehicle under development, although nothing is signed yet," Froeliger said. "We're making revenue from the MEV life extension already, but in the long term, MEV doesn't make sense financially."

The robotic version, MRV, should be more fiscally attractive if it can extend the life of multiple Intelsat satellites for each launch, he said.

"We got the rebate of being the first customer to help get the program started," Froeliger said. "I don't think, long term, it makes good financial business for Northrop or for us to make more MEVs. If it was, we'd have signed up for 10 more."

Extending the life of multiple satellites with one MRV could address Intelsat's aging fleet of 51 operational satellites more efficiently, Froeliger added. That's because it will carry multiple engines -- or pods -- that can be dispersed and attached to multiple Intelsat satellites per mission, not just one.

"Life extension of our satellites is just one more tool in our toolbox to handle our fleet," he said.



Such life extension missions haven't been available in the private sector before, said Dallas Kasaboski, an analyst with Northern Sky Research in Cambridge, Mass.

"Governments have repaired or repositioned spacecraft in space for decades, but these Northrop missions are the first truly commercial in-orbit missions of their kind," Kasaboski said.

Spacecraft that extend the life of satellites are just one part of an emerging sector in commercial space known as in-orbit services, Kasaboski said.

The commercial market for such in-orbit services should generate about $3.1 billion over the next decade, based on an analysis his firm released in February.

Many other types of in-orbit services are expected in the coming years, he said.

Those services include "relocation, or repair, especially as governments grapple with the problem of space trash and thousands of new satellites being launched," Kasaboski said.

Although growth is likely for all in-orbit services, life extension may remain only a small niche market for years, said Joel Sercel, a technology entrepreneur and founder of Trans Astronautica Corp., a startup based in the Los Angeles area.

"Life extension for satellites might make sense for large communication satellites, an exquisite spy satellite, or a billion-dollar space telescope, but it could be too expensive for smaller satellites," Sercel said.Out-of-this-world images from space



NASA Astronaut Chris Cassidy, serving as commander of the Expedition 63 mission aboard the International Space Station, took these photos of Hurricane Laura as it continued to strengthen in the Gulf of Mexico on August 25. Photo courtesy of NASA | License Photo

Earthquake may have destroyed Canaanite palace 3,700 years ago)



Researchers have discovered archaeological evidence that one or more sizable earthquakes led the destruction of a Canaanite palace in what is now Israel. Photo by Eric Cline/GW


Sept. 11 (UPI) -- A new archaeological analysis suggests an earthquake may have destroyed a Canaanite palace 3,700 years ago.

Excavations at a large dig site outside of Tel Kabri, Israel, have revealed an impressive palatial complex. Evidence suggests the city and palace flourished during the Middle Bronze Age, from 1900 to 1700 B.C. But roughly 3,700 years ago, the palace was abandoned.

"We wondered for several years what had caused the sudden destruction and abandonment of the palace and the site, after centuries of flourishing occupation," Assaf Yasur-Landau, co-director of the excavation, said in a news release.

"A few seasons ago, we began to uncover a trench which runs through part of the palace, but initial indications suggested that it was modern, perhaps dug within the past few decades or a century or two at most," said Yasur-Landau, who is a professor of Mediterranean archaeology at the University of Haifa in Israel.

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However, the ongoing excavations revealed the trench to be ancient, containing fallen and tilted walls and floors. Intrigued by the rift, researchers examined the stone foundations that anchored the palace's walls and mud-brick superstructures, revealing evidence of a sizable earthquake.

"Our studies show the importance of combining macro- and micro-archaeological methods for the identification of ancient earthquakes," he said. "We also needed to evaluate alternative scenarios, including climatic, environmental and economic collapse, as well as warfare, before we were confident in proposing a seismic event scenario."

Researchers discovered warped floors and signs that mud bricks from the walls and ceilings suddenly caved in on many of the palace's rooms. "It really looks like the earth simply opened up and everything on either side of it fell in," said researcher Eric Cline, professor of classics and anthropology at the George Washington University
.
RELATED Ancient DNA to help solve mysteries of the Canaanites

"It's unlikely that the destruction was caused by violent human activity because there are no visible signs of fire, no weapons such as arrows that would indicate a battle, nor any unburied bodies related to combat," Cline said.

When researchers examined paleoclimate data, they found no evidence of a significant drought in the region. Excavations also failed to turn up mass graveyards, the signature of a pandemic.

During earlier excavations, researchers found evidence of one of the largest and oldest wine cellars in the Near East. More recently, while sorting through the demolished palace, researchers found several dozen more jars of wine.

RELATED Massive clubhouse of ancient cult found in Israel

Researchers detailed their analysis of the palace's sudden collapse in a new paper, published Friday in the journal PLOS One.

"The floor deposits imply a rapid collapse rather than a slow accumulation of degraded mud bricks from standing walls or ceilings of an abandoned structure," said study co-author Ruth Shahack-Gross, professor of geoarchaeology at the University of Haifa.

"The rapid collapse, and the quick burial, combined with the geological setting of Tel Kabri, raises the possibility that one or more earthquakes could have destroyed the walls and the roof of the palace without setting it on fire," Shahack-Gross said.