Psychedelic drug worked for depression as well as common antidepressant, small trial finds

Kaitlin Sullivan NBC 4/14/2021

A couple doses of a psychedelic drug may be as effective in treating depression as one of the most commonly prescribed antidepressants, a small and short study published Wednesday shows.

© Provided by NBC News

A phase 2 clinical trial, conducted by researchers in London, was the first randomized one to compare therapeutic doses of psilocybin — the psychedelic compound found in so-called magic mushrooms — with a daily medication. The results were released in The New England Journal of Medicine.

“This is huge because it’s showing that psilocybin is at least as good — and probably better — than the gold standard treatment for depression,” said Roland Griffiths, director of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University, who was not involved in the study.

Research on how psychedelics can be used to treat mental health conditions is still in its early stages, and much more will be needed to determine whether or not psychedelics including psilocybin are an effective long-term treatment. It’s also still unclear how treatment involving psychedelics would be used in the real world, as patients must be monitored for hours when given the drug.

This small, six-week trial included 59 adults, nearly 40 percent of whom were taking medication to treat their depression prior to the study, but were weaned off. Thirty participants received two 25 mg doses of psilocybin three weeks apart, plus six weeks of a daily placebo pill. The remaining 29 were also given psilocybin during two visits, but such a small amount that it did not have an effect and was only meant to be a placebo. The second group also took a daily dose of escitalopram — the generic version of the antidepressant Lexapro — a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI.

Participants in both groups were given the psilocybin dose in a clinician’s office where they were monitored until the clinician determined any effects had worn off and the individual could safely go home.

At the end of the six weeks, the researchers used four different measures of depression to determine whether or not the participants’ symptoms had improved: Two questionnaires filled out by the participants, and two evaluations from the clinicians.

All but one, a self-reported questionnaire called QIDS-SR-16, showed that people who took psilocybin reported a greater improvement in depressive symptoms than those who took Lexapro. The QIDS-SR-16 results, which was the depression measurement method the researchers reported they would focus on before starting the trial, showed that psilocybin was as effective as escitalopram. (Before beginning a study, researchers must outline what measures they plan to evaluate, and stick to this methodology regardless of the results.)

“We were honestly surprised that psilocybin performed as well as it did,” said lead researcher Robin Carhart-Harris, head of the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London.

Carhart-Harris and his team noted they were not able to measure the long-term effects of psilocybin compared to escitalopram, which takes longer to start working and may not have reached its full therapeutic potential during the six-week trial.

The researchers kept the trial relatively short because some volunteers had to come off their current depression treatments to participate, which can be risky, Carhart-Harris noted. To look at longer-term effects, his team plans on collecting data from the participants at the six-month mark.

Some outside experts also pointed out limitations of the study: It did not include a control group of people who received no treatment, and the cohort was 66 percent men, though women in the real world are more likely to experience depression. It’s also difficult to make a study involving psychedelics truly blinded, since patients may be able to guess which group they are in based on if they experience noticeable effects of the higher dose of psilocybin.

But the findings do add to a growing body of research suggesting that psychedelic drugs could be used in a clinical setting to treat depression, and likely have lasting effects.

According to Alan Davis, an assistant professor of social work at Ohio State University and adjunct assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, the new trial shows that there may be untapped depression treatments that could help people reach remission without daily medication –– and the cost and side effects that come with it. “To me, that represents a breakthrough,” he said.

More than 13 percent of American adults are prescribed antidepressants, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show, and SSRIs are the most commonly prescribed class of the medication. However, scientists still don’t understand exactly how those medications — or psychedelics — work on symptoms of depression.

“The receptors SSRIs work on seem to inhibit responses in the brain, particularly stress responses, and we think that takes the edge off so you can tolerate stress better,” Carhart-Harris said. “With psychedelics, it’s almost the opposite. It’s almost like a brutal confrontation with the root of your suffering, which can allow people to better understand where their depression stems from.”

Griffiths, who has also conducted research on psilocybin and depression, said he was initially skeptical about what effect, if any, the drug would have on symptoms of depression. He expected to see a lot more variability in the outcomes of psilocybin research than there has been so far — most research has shown that psilocybin appears to have a positive effect on depressive symptoms in many of the trials in which it has been studied. Another small clinical trial published in November in JAMA Psychology, for example, found that more than 70 percent of participants reported their depression eased within the first week after taking two comparable doses of psilocybin and more than half were in remission within four weeks.

“People ask me what I believe and my answer is I believe in the data,” Griffiths said. “Psilocybin therapy is not going to be effective for everyone and we are still at a very early stage of understanding what populations will be the most sensitive to the treatment. But there is no question that there is something v

UAE Moon rover taps Japanese startup aiming to be the SpaceX of lunar landings

Chris Davies - Apr 14, 2021,

A new Moon rover project is in the works, with the UAE partnering with Japanese robotics company ispace on the Emirates Lunar Mission. Unlike NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, which are currently on Mars, the Rashid rover that the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) has in mind for 2022 will be a lot more compact. It’ll also tap SpaceX for transportation.

The plan is to put the rover on a SpaceX Falcon 9, which will launch next year from Florida. Compared to the length of the trip to Mars, the journey itself will be a relatively short one – though ispace does point out that the launch may be delayed as it works on the rover technology – though that doesn’t mean Rashid will be retreading old ground.

Instead, the goal is to land the rover in an area of the lunar surface that hasn’t been explored fully before. It’ll have four wheels – rather than the six of NASA’s Mars rovers – and be significantly smaller than the SUV-scale Perseverance. All the same, ispace says, it should still be able to navigate across difficult terrain.

There’ll be 360-degree cameras for photos and video, and a set of different experiments to look at dust and soil on the Moon. In addition, ispace will also provide wired communication and power services via the Hakuto-R lunar lander during the cruise phase, and then wireless communication when on the lunar surface.



It’ll be part of what ispace has been calling Mission 1, or M1, set to be the first privately-led Japanese mission to land on the Moon. The company aims to reduce the cost of lunar exploration, including eventually using landers like the Hakuto-R to release fleets of robotic rovers. These will use swarm intelligence to interconnect, improving things like mapping and pooling the results of experiments and surveys. As a result, it’s aiming to dramatically lower the barrier to lunar exploration for governments and private companies.

Hakuto-R can also carry experiments and other equipment itself. The original M1 plan had been to perform a soft-landing on the Moon, and only release a rover in the second, M2 phase. That was scheduled to be launched in 2023.


If successful, it’ll follow only three nations to successfully land spacecraft on the Moon, with the US, Russia, and China all having run lunar programs of their own. NASA is currently readying its own return to the Moon as part of the Artemis project, aiming to deliver human astronauts to the lunar surface. Technology developed for Artemis is expected to go on to be used for future crewed missions to Mars, and potentially beyond.

UK

Lawyer’s video documenting Johnson repeatedly lying in parliament racks up 10 million views

Peter Stefanovic fact-checked the PM's claims about C02 emissions, economic growth and poverty among other things.
 

by Jack Peat
April 14, 2021
in Politics




A lawyer’s viral video documenting spurious claims made by Boris Johnson in parliament has surpassed 10 million views, he has revealed.

In August last year Peter Stefanovic compiled and uploaded a two-minute video in which he fact-checked several claims made by Johnson since he became prime minister.

These include the government’s record on emissions reductions, economic growth, nurses’ bursaries, hospital car parking, NHS spending, the Covid-19 track and trace app, and poverty in the UK.


Just over six months later, the video has been widely shared and Mr Stefanovic said it surpassed 10 million views on Tuesday.

5 Johnson claims debunked by Stefanovic

Stefanovic said the public had “sent a message to UK media that if they won’t hold this prime minister to account for all his lies we will damn well do it ourselves” after the video reached the landmark.

Here’s some of the spurious claims he fact-checked:

CO2 emissions

In the first example, the prime minister can be seen speaking back in late 2019 or early 2020 when Sajid Javid was still Chancellor.

Mr Johnson says: “We have cut CO2 emissions in this country since 2010 on 1990 levels by 42 per cent – that is an astonishing achievement.”


Mr Stefanovic then responds: “Well it would be if it were true, but it’s just another lie. CO2 emissions fell by 39 per cent between 1990 and 2018. Not from 2010 onwards.”
Economy has grown by 73 per cent

Johnson then goes onto claim that the economy, under this Conservative government, “has grown by 73 per cent,” which is also wrong.

As Mr Stefanovic points out, the official records do not back up Mr Johnson’s quite astonishing claim.

The economy has grown by roughly this level since 1990 according to the ONS, during which there have been Conservative and Labour governments and the Lib-Dem-Tory coalition government.

Under Conservative-led governments since 2010, the UK’s GDP has grown by around 20 per cent.

Nurses bursary

The next bare-faced lie was made in relation to nurses bursaries, which were apparently “restored” by the Conservatives, according to Johnson.

But this is not the case. The government introduced a small grant, which still leaves nurses saddled with huge amounts of debt. Their training was completely free up until 2017.

Hospital car parking

Johnson also said “there’ll be free hospital car parking for everyone who attends a hospital”, in parliament.

This plan was abandoned by Mr Johnson, reportedly at the health secretary, Matt Hancock’s, request.

Poverty

“Absolute poverty and relative poverty have both declined under this government, and there are 400,000 fewer families living in poverty now than there were in 2010,” Johnson claimed.

This claim from June 2020 caused outrage at the time.

According to official records the number of people living in relative poverty in the UK increased from 13.6 million in 2009-10 to 14.5 million in 2018-19.

But absolute poverty did decline over the same period by 100,000 to reach 12.9 million.

Climate change is making it harder to get a good cup of coffee

POTSDAM INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE IMPACT RESEARCH (PIK)

Research News

 

Ethiopia may produce less specialty coffee and more rather bland tasting varieties in the future. This is the result of a new study by an international team of researchers that looked at the peculiar effects climate change has on Africa's largest coffee producing nation. Their results are relevant both for the country's millions of smallholder farmers, who earn more on specialty coffee than on ordinary coffee, as well as for baristas and coffee aficionados around the world.

"Climate change has conflicting impacts on coffee production in Ethiopia. The area that is suitable for average quality coffee might actually increase gradually until the 2090s, according to our computer simulations," says lead author Abel Chemura from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). "Yet more is not necessarily better. Because on the flipside, the suitable area for high quality specialty coffee types which are valued for their floral, fruity and spicy notes, will likely shrink if climate change continues unchecked. This is an issue not just for coffee lovers, but for local agricultural value creation."

The suitable areas for specialty coffee are shrinking

Under various scenarios the researchers looked at how a total of 19 climatic factors will affect the cultivation of five distinct specialty coffee types in the future, including mean temperature, annual rainfall levels, and seasonality. For example, if it gets warmer, the coffee cherry matures faster than the development of the bean, which in turn leads to coffee that is lower in quality. Increased rainfall, on the other hand, favors coffee production in general but may be not necessarily beneficial for individual specialty coffee types.

Thus, while the researchers project that the area suitable for four out of five specialty coffee types will decline, some are hit harder than others. For example, the renowned Yirgacheffe type, one of the world's oldest and most sought after coffee types cultivated in Ethiopia's southwest, under the worst case scenario, could lose more than 40% of its suitable area by the end of the 21st century.

A blow to Ethiopia's economy

This would not only affect coffee drinkers worldwide, especially those who grind their own beans or prefer sophisticated blends - it would also have consequences for Ethiopia's economy. "If one or more coffee regions lose their specialty status due to climate change this has potentially grave ramifications for the smallholder farmers in the region," says co-author Christoph Gornott from PIK and the University of Kassel, Germany. "If they were forced to switch to growing conventional, less palatable and bitter coffee types, they would all of the sudden compete with industrial production systems elsewhere that are more efficient. For the country, in which coffee exports account for roughly a third of all agricultural exports, this could prove fatal."

However, there may be ways to stop this trend. "As distinct specialty coffee types are strongly influenced by different local climatic, spatial and soil-related factors, what is needed are adaptation measures that are tailored to each specific region," adds Christoph Gornott. "Our study underscores the importance of localized adaptation planning and responses. We show how climate change has very concrete effects on the availability and taste of one of the world's most beloved beverages and, more importantly, on economic opportunities in local communities of the global South."

###

Article: Abel Chemura, Bester Mudereri, Amsalu Woldie Yalew & Christoph Gornott (2021): Climate change and specialty coffee potential in Ethiopia. Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-87647-4.

French winegrowers hit by rare frost brace for bleak harvest

Agence France-Presse
April 13, 2021

A picture shows frozen vines in the Luneau-Papin wine estate vineyard in Le Landreau, near Nantes, western France, on April 12, 2021, as temperatures fall below zero degrees celsius. © Sebastien Salom-Gomis, AFP

First came US taxes on French wines, then the pandemic and the dumping of gallons of unsold wine and champagne as France shutdown and alcohol consumption plummeted. Now winemakers and fruit growers are facing one of their bleakest harvests after a three-day agricultural disaster blanketed crops in frost. Though the government has pledged financial aid, many are staring down the barrel of financial ruin.

It took just three days, from the evening of April 5 until the morning of April 8, for a rare cold snap to plunge temperatures to unseasonal sub-zero levels, piling frost over vineyards and fruit crops across France in one of the worst episodes of its kind on record.

"It's a national phenomenon," said Jérôme Despey, secretary general of the FNSEA farming union and a winemaker from the southern Hérault region. "You can go back in history, there have been (freezing) episodes in 1991, 1997, 2003 but in my opinion it's beyond all of them."

Frost has always been the enemy of winegrowers but it was a combination of unseasonal and extreme temperatures that rendered this year such a disaster.

After an unusual heat in mid-March when temperatures peaked at around 26°C, and which caused vegetation to burst into bloom early, temperatures suddenly dropped to the vicinity of -5°C to -7°C, resulting in the decimation of budding crops. Whether in the north or south, France recorded exceptionally unseasonal temperatures. Low-temperature records for April were broken in the usually warm southern city of Nîmes, which reached -0.7°C, while in the northern city of Beauvais, the unseasonal heat in March saw its mercury rise to 25°C.

Every wine-producing area in France has been affected, from the Val-de-Loire to Provence, from Beaujolais to Corsica, from the Rhône Valley to Languedoc, and in the famed red wine regions of Bordeaux and Burgundy.

Only Alsace and large parts of Champagne and the Cognac region have been somewhat spared.

'Agricultural disaster'

As in so many other regions, there are winegrowers in Bordeaux who have had their entire vineyards destroyed.


"There will be winemakers here who will be financially ruined by this," Christophe Chateau, who represents winemakers and wine merchants in the Bordeaux region, said.

"We just don't know how many, yet."

In the Rhone Valley area, the head of the local wine producers' body, Philippe Pellaton, said that it would be "the smallest harvest of the last 40 years" with losses of 80-90 percent compared with a normal harvest.

Winemakers are "shattered, desperate", he said, with the famed Côte-Rôtie area particularly badly hit.

In Burgundy, which produces some of the finest white wines in the world, the head of the local producers' association estimated that "at least 50 percent" of the 2021 harvest had been lost.

Early estimates state that up to 80 percent of French vineyards have been affected. Farmers growing fruit and field crops, such as rapeseed, apples and apricots, are also facing gross losses.

Since France declared an "agricultural disaster" on April 8, Prime Minister Jean Castex has pledged "emergency relief" and the removal of caps on compensation for agricultural disasters. The government has also called on support from banks and insurers.

Winemakers and fruit growers met with the agriculture minister Monday to put forward their demands to help the industry navigate its way back to recovery. Aside from financial aid, they want repayments on bank loans to be suspended temporarily and improvements to insurance in a sector where only a third of winemakers are insured.

Weathering Trump's taxes, pandemic

But emergency relief cannot come fast enough, with recovery likely to be long and difficult. Before the frost hit, winegrowers had spent the last two years charting a rough course thanks to tax duties imposed by Donald Trump that reduced the flow of wine exports to a comparative trickle. By the last quarter of 2019, French wine exports to the United States plunged by almost a fifth.

Then came the Covid-19 pandemic. Bar and restaurant closures led to a drop in alcohol consumption with slower sales at one point leaving producers with no choice but to dump gallons of unsold bottles of champagne, beer and wine. Meanwhile, a halt to tourism due to lockdowns and international border closures have had a knock-on effect on the wine sector, which relies on dollars from tourists who visit French wineries in droves.

By January, however, French winemakers were talking up their prospects of a better year: Trump's ouster ended taxes on their wines and signs of an economic bounce in Asia and other markets augured well.

Chateau said there was a sense "we were getting through the bad times and things were going to be good again". Even with produce lost to the frost this year, winemakers could fall back on supplies stored in vast cellars from previous years' harvests, but many are concerned about their supplies for 2022 and even 2023. Severe damage to vines will make it even more difficult to recoup losses and for winemakers to rebound from the pandemic.

"If there is less wine, even if the price is high because of lower supplies, it is going to have an impact," Chateau said.

French wine and spirits exports in 2020 were valued at around €12 billion, reflecting a 14 percent decrease compared to 2019, according to the Federation of Exporters of French Wines and Spirits.

After seeing so many winemakers trying to protect their crops from the frost with fire, fans or even helicopters -- often in vain -- Chateau said he would like part of the government relief package allocated to innovative technologies to help wine-growers better adapt to climate changes. A growing number of technologies such as scanning devices are being used by growers to track nitrogen and sap flow and even check the health of vine wood.

Some, like Laetitia Allemand, whose vineyard is in the Hautes-Alpes are keeping to more traditional methods. She relied on an old vine, the Mollard, which flowers later in the year, and her grapes did not suffer from the frost. "No one was interested in this variety 10 or 20 years ago," she told Franceinfo, though the recent crisis could lead others to follow her example.

Chateau remains optimistic for the future of the wine industry. "We'll be strong enough to get through because of the strong culture of wine in France and its image overseas," he said. "But we'll have less [winegrowers] in years to come because many just won't get through this crisis, but those who do will be stronger."

 Snow chaos in Europe caused by melting sea-ice in the Arctic

UIT THE ARCTIC UNIVERSITY OF NORWAY

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE FINNISH METEOROLOGICAL INSTITUTE'S OBSERVATION STATION USED IN THE STUDY, PALLAS NATIONAL PARK, ARCTIC FINLAND. view more 

CREDIT: JEFF WELKER

They are diligently stoking thousands of bonfires on the ground close to their crops, but the French winemakers are fighting a losing battle. An above-average warm spell at the end of March has been followed by days of extreme frost, destroying the vines with losses amounting to 90 percent above average. The image of the struggle may well be the most depressingly beautiful illustration of the complexities and unpredictability of global climate warming. It is also an agricultural disaster from Bordeaux to Champagne.

It is the loss of the Arctic sea-ice due to climate warming that has, somewhat paradoxically, been implicated with severe cold and snowy mid-latitude winters.

"Climate change doesn't always manifest in the most obvious ways. It's easy to extrapolate models to show that winters are getting warmer and to forecast a virtually snow-free future in Europe, but our most recent study shows that is too simplistic. We should beware of making broad sweeping statements about the impacts of climate change." Says professor Alun Hubbard from CAGE Center for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate at UiT The Arctic University of Norway.

Melting Arctic sea ice supplied 88% of the fresh snow

Hubbard is the co-author of a study in Nature Geoscience examining this counter-intuitive climatic paradox: A 50% reduction in Arctic sea-ice cover has increased open-water and winter evaporation to fuel more extreme snowfall further south across Europe.

The study, led by Dr. Hanna Bailey at the University of Oulu, Finland, has more specifically found that the long-term decline of Arctic sea-ice since the late 1970s had a direct connection to one specific weather event: "Beast from the East" - the February snowfall that brought large parts of the European continent to a halt in 2018, causing £1bn a day in losses.

Researchers discovered that atmospheric vapour traveling south from the Arctic carried a unique geochemical fingerprint, revealing that its source was the warm, open-water surface of the Barents Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean between Norway, Russia, and Svalbard. They found that during the "Beast from the East", open-water conditions in the Barents Sea supplied up to 88% of the corresponding fresh snow that fell over Europe.

Climate warming is lifting the lid off the Arctic Ocean

"What we're finding is that sea-ice is effectively a lid on the ocean. And with its long-term reduction across the Arctic, we're seeing increasing amounts of moisture enter the atmosphere during winter, which directly impacts our weather further south, causing extreme heavy snowfalls. It might seem counter-intuitive, but nature is complex and what happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic." says Bailey.

When analyzing the long-term trends from 1979 onwards, researchers found that for every square meter of winter sea-ice lost from the Barents Sea, there was a corresponding 70 kg increase in the evaporation, moisture, and snow falling over Europe.

Their findings indicate that within the next 60 years, a predicted ice-free Barents Sea will likely become a significant source of increased winter precipitation - be it rain or snow - for Europe.

"This study illustrates that the abrupt changes being witnessed across the Arctic now, really are affecting the entire planet." says professor Hubbard.

CAPTION

Professor Alun Hubbard downloading information from an Automatic Weather Station in the Barents Sea.

CREDIT

Alun Hubbard

CAPTION

The Beast from the East on March 15, 2018, captured by Aqua MODIS satellite imagery. The parallel cloud bands ("cloud streets") streaking south across the Barents Sea indicate convection rolls of warm, moist air rising from the ice-free surface.

CREDIT

NASA

A potential fix to police violence is staring us in the face

John Stoehr, The Editorial Board
April 12, 2021

www.rawstory.com

Look, I'm no expert on, well, pretty much anything! But there is one thing I do know. There is one thing anyone can know if they are willing to see. It's that the people we all trust to keep the peace in this country aren't doing a good job of it. What's more, the people we entrust to keep the peace are often themselves responsible for the violence. It's getting to the point where I'm thinking it's a good idea to take away their guns.

This article was originally published at The Editorial Board

Yes, I know. Taking guns away from local law enforcement officials sounds crazy. But think about it. Is it any more absurd than what we are seeing right now? How many times does a Black man have to die at the hands of a police officer who is looking for a reason—any reason—to use legitimate force during a routine traffic stop? How many times does that have to happen before we start distrusting people with such power?

The crazy is worse than you think. After Daunte Wright, 20, was shot and killed Sunday by a cop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, the community was outraged. People started organizing. They started protesting outside the police station. They started demanding justice. Cops responded by arming themselves in riot gear and forming a thin line around the building as if civilization itself would collapse if it didn't hold

There's more. Not only did police come out ready for battle, the mayor ordered a curfew, which was just the excuse the "warriors" needed to start assaulting unarmed American citizens with tear gas and "pepper bombs" and other "non-lethal" weaponry that can tear human flesh and cause serious injury. And that made the people who were demanding justice even more pissed off, which in turn provided another excuse to these militarized agents of the state to commit what would otherwise be felonies.

And this is only the beginning of the crazy. At some point, it's nearly certain, the family of Daunte Wright will bring the city of Brooklyn Center to court, claiming damages of a certain dollar amount. While criminal juries almost never hold police officers criminally accountable, civil juries are far more likely to award civil damages. That costs the city money that cities usually do not have. So they sell debt to Wall Street. In order to repay Wall Street, cities must raise revenues, which means raising taxes on city residents, which include members of the family of Daunte Wright. Seriously, is taking cops' guns away more absurd than all of this? I don't think so.

If we're not going to take their guns away (and we won't), then we should take away some of the power we have given them. Why? Because no one should be trusted with that much power. Police departments across the country have become, in effect, small occupying armies unaccountable to the democratic will that can, and that do, extract tribute1 in the form of loan repayments from residents they claim to serve and protect. This isn't just institutional racism. It's institutional racism that neuters republican government. It's institutional racism that, in the end, puts every one of us in a cage.

Anti-maskers protest local library for making 'health and safety' its 'highest priority'

Brad Reed

April 14, 2021

Shutterstock

A group of anti-maskers in Sandpoint, Idaho this week protested a local library and criticized it for making "health and safety" its top priority.

The Bonner County Daily Bee reports that protesters gathered this week to demand that the Sandpoint Library rescind its mask mandate and let them into the library without any kind of face covering.

Protester Grant Dorman, for one, criticized the library's policy of prioritizing the health of its staff and patrons.
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"The first sentence of the [library board] policy states, 'the health and safety of employees and patrons is our highest priority,'" he said. "This ideology is the view of the board. And while health and safety [are] important, it surely isn't the most important thing in everyone's view."

Another protester, identified only as Robert R., expressed incredulity that more people in the city didn't believe his claims that masks were actually harmful to people who wear them.

"What I encounter is people who have no idea what I'm talking about, and their standard questions, 'oh, where do you get your information?'" he said. "I can tell you, it doesn't come from CNN and it doesn't come from Google."

In the end, however, the library refused to back down from its policy and reminded the anti-maskers that it offers pick-up services to people who don't want to wear masks.

Ruins, ghosts and cats: Rome's 'Area Sacra' to welcome visitors

Alexandria Sage| Agence France Presse


ROME: History buffs will be able to roam the ruins of Rome's "Area Sacra," perhaps catching a glimpse of Julius Caesar's ghost, after the site becomes an open-air museum next year.

Work to adapt the Largo Argentina archaeological site for tourists begins next month, with upgrades to allow entry into the vast sunken square containing the ruins of four Roman temples, Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi announced on Wednesday.

Today, the expanse of excavations in the historic site can only be gazed upon from street level.

"With this work we'll begin entering into the area and... walk among the vestiges of our history," she said at a press conference.

Julius Caesar is believed to have been stabbed in the Curia Pompei, a Senate building, part of whose limestone foundation is still visible.

But visitors are more likely to spot an apparition of the four-legged kind -- namely, a cat.

The ruins are the domain of a colony of hundreds of rescued cats, fed, sterilized and cared for by a private non-profit shelter, who scamper through the site, lounging atop truncated marble pillars or posing for tourist photos -- altogether unimpressed by the historical significance of their vast litterbox.


The temples, which date to between the third and second centuries B.C., include a circular monument to the goddess of Fortune, whose colossal marble head now sits in Rome's Centrale Montemartini museum.

They were uncovered as recently as 1926 in an urban planning project when demolished medieval houses revealed ancient Roman ruins underneath.

The work, which is expected to take a year, will include elevated walkways, illuminated at night, footpaths, an elevator and a covered exhibition area along one side of the site.

The project is being financed by jeweler Bulgari, owned by France's luxury conglomerate LVMH, which donated about one million euros ($1.2 million). Bulgari was a previous sponsor on the restoration of Rome's Spanish Steps and an intricate mosaic floor within the Baths of Caracalla.

Excavations and preparatory work for the project continued despite the coronavirus restrictions of the past year, but the expected opening of the site in 2022 will hopefully coincide with a new wave of post-pandemic tourism, said Raggi.

"We are preparing for the arrival of new tourists when Covid is over," she said.

But what about the cats?

The city said the new site would not affect the area "where the historic feline colony of Largo Argentina is housed."

Trump-era spike in Israeli settlement growth has only begun

By JOSEPH KRAUSS

AP

4/14/2021

1 of 16

Sunlight peeks through clouds over a section of the West Bank Jewish settlement of Efrat, March 12, 2021. Israel went on an aggressive settlement spree during the Trump era, according to an AP investigation, pushing deeper into the occupied West Bank than ever before and putting the Biden administration into a bind as it seeks to revive Mideast peace efforts. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

EFRAT, West Bank (AP) — An aggressive Israeli settlement spree during the Trump era pushed deeper than ever into the occupied West Bank — territory the Palestinians seek for a state — with over 9,000 homes built and thousands more in the pipeline, an AP investigation showed.

If left unchallenged by the Biden administration, the construction boom could make fading hopes for an internationally backed two-state solution — Palestine alongside Israel — even more elusive.

Satellite images and data obtained by The Associated Press document for the first time the full impact of the policies of then-President Donald Trump, who abandoned decades-long U.S. opposition to the settlements and proposed a Mideast plan that would have allowed Israel to keep them all — even those deep inside the West Bank.


Although the Trump plan has been scrapped, the lasting legacy of construction will make it even harder to create a viable Palestinian state. President Joe Biden’s administration supports the two-state solution but has given no indication on how it plans to promote it.

The huge number of projects in the pipeline, along with massive development of settlement infrastructure, means Biden would likely need to rein in Israel to keep the two-state option alive. While Biden has condemned settlement activity, U.S. officials have shown no appetite for such a clash as they confront more urgent problems. These include the coronavirus crisis, tensions with China and attempting to revive the international nuclear deal with Iran — another major sticking point with Israel.

At the same time, Israel will likely continue to be led by a settlement hawk. In the wake of yet another inconclusive Israeli election, either Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or one of his right-wing challengers is poised to head the government, making a construction slowdown improbable.

Hanan Ashrawi, a veteran Palestinian spokeswoman, called the Trump administration a “partner in crime” with Netanyahu. She said Biden would have to go beyond traditional condemnations and take “very serious steps of accountability” to make a difference.

“It needs a bit of courage and backbone and willingness to invest,” she said.

According to Peace Now, an anti-settlement watchdog group, Israel built over 9,200 new homes in the West Bank during the Trump presidency. On an annual average, that was roughly a 28% increase over the level of construction during the Obama administration, which pressed Israel to rein in building.

Perhaps even more significant was the location of the construction. According to Peace Now, 63% of the homes built last year were in outlying settlements that would likely be evacuated in any peace agreement. Over 10% of the construction in recent years took place in isolated outposts that are not officially authorized, but quietly encouraged by the Israeli government.

“What we’re seeing is the ongoing policy of de facto annexation,” said Hagit Ofran, a Peace Now researcher. “Israel is doing its utmost to annex the West Bank and to treat it as if it’s part of Israel without leaving a scope for a Palestinian state.”

Israel has also laid the groundwork for a massive construction boom in the years to come, advancing plans for 12,159 settler homes in 2020. That was the highest number since Peace Now started collecting data in 2012. It usually takes one to three years for construction to begin after a project has been approved.

Unlike his immediate predecessors, who largely confined settlement construction to major blocs that Israel expects to keep in any peace agreement, Netanyahu has encouraged construction in remote areas deep inside the West Bank, further scrambling any potential blueprint for resolving the conflict.

Settler advocates have repeatedly said that it would take several years for Trump’s support to manifest in actual construction. Peace Now said that trend is now in its early stages and expected to gain steam.

“2020 was really the first year where everything that was being built was more or less because of what was approved at the beginning of the Trump presidency,” said Peace Now spokesman Brian Reeves. “It’s the settlement approvals that are actually more important than construction.”

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip — territories the Palestinians want for their future state — in the 1967 Mideast war. It withdrew from Gaza in 2005 but has cemented its control over east Jerusalem — which it unilaterally annexed — and the West Bank.

Nearly 500,000 Israeli settlers live in some 130 settlements and dozens of unauthorized outposts, according to official figures. That amounts to roughly 15% of the total population in the West Bank. In addition, over 200,000 Jewish Israelis live in east Jerusalem, which is also home to over 300,000 Palestinians.

The Biden administration says it is opposed to any actions by Israel or the Palestinians that harm peace efforts. “We believe, when it comes to settlement activity, that Israel should refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and that undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said this month.

Continued settlement growth could meanwhile bolster the case against Israel at the International Criminal Court, which launched an investigation into possible war crimes in the Palestinian territories last month. Israel appears to be vulnerable on the settlement issue because international law forbids the transfer of civilians into lands seized by force.

Israel and its Western allies have rejected it as baseless and biased. Israel is not a member of the court, but any potential ICC warrants could put Israeli officials at risk of arrest abroad.

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UNPRECEDENTED SUPPORT

The settlements are scattered across the West Bank, running the gamut from small hilltop clusters of tents and mobile homes to full-fledged towns with residential neighborhoods, shopping malls and in one case, a university. Every Israeli government has presided over the expansion of settlements, even at the height of the peace process in the 1990s.

The Palestinians view the settlements as a violation of international law and an obstacle to peace, a position with wide international support. Israel considers the West Bank to be the historical and biblical heartland of the Jewish people and says any partition should be agreed on in negotiations.

The two sides have not held serious talks in more than a decade, in part because the Palestinians view the continued expansion of settlements as a sign of bad faith.

Trump took unprecedented steps to support Israel’s territorial claims, including recognizing Jerusalem as its capital and moving the U.S. Embassy there. His Mideast plan, which overwhelmingly favored Israel, was adamantly rejected by the Palestinians.

Trump’s Mideast team was led by prominent supporters of the settlements and maintained close ties to settlement leaders throughout his tenure.

He remains popular in Efrat, a built-up settlement in the rolling hills south of Jerusalem that is expanding toward the north into the outskirts of the Palestinian city of Bethlehem.

“You keep using the term settlement,” said Moti Kellner, a retiree who has lived in the area since 1986. “Walk around, does this look like something that’s a camp, with tents and settling? It’s a city!” He described Trump’s policies as “very good, if they’re not overturned.”

Efrat’s mayor, Oded Revivi, says Trump’s legacy can be seen more in the increased approval of projects than in actual construction.

“When Trump got elected, the table was basically empty, with no building plans which were approved,” he said. More importantly, he credits Trump with accepting the legitimacy of settlements, “instead of battling with the reality that has been created on the ground.”

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THE FEAR OF LOSING YOUR PLACE

Thousands of Palestinians work in the settlements, where wages are much higher than in areas administered by the Palestinian Authority, and on a personal basis, many get along well with their Jewish employers and co-workers.

“We do know how to live alongside one another, we do know how to build a peaceful relationship,” says Revivi.

But most Palestinians view the growth of settlements as a slow and steady encroachment — not only on their hopes for a state, but on their immediate surroundings. As the years roll by, they watch as the gated settlements spill down hillsides, roads are closed or diverted, and terraced olive groves and spring-fed valleys come to feel like hostile territory.

Most Palestinians in the West Bank live in cities like Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus and Hebron, which are administered by the Palestinian Authority under interim peace agreements signed in the 1990s. Those cities are all largely surrounded by settlements, settlement infrastructure and closed military zones. Hebron has a Jewish settlement in the heart of its Old City.

Palestinians know to steer clear of settlements. Farmers who tend lands near them risk being beaten or pelted with rocks by the so-called Hilltop Youth and other Jewish extremists. Rights groups have documented dozens of attacks in recent months and say the Israeli military often turns a blind eye. Palestinians have also carried out attacks inside settlements, including the killing of a mother of six who was out jogging in December.

Around a kilometer (mile) north of Efrat, in an area administered by the PA, is a cultural and historical site popularly known as Solomon’s Pools, a network of spring-fed stone reservoirs and canals with ruins dating back more than 2,000 years.

Every few months, dozens of settlers — escorted by Israeli troops — break into the site and force out Palestinian visitors or renovation workers, according to George Bossous, CEO of the company that manages the site and an adjacent convention center.

“You always fear that you are losing more and more of your place,” he said. “To live together means you need to take care of everyone and give rights for all.”

Fatima Brijiyah heads the local council in al-Masara, a Palestinian village southeast of Efrat. The 70-year-old grandmother remembers wandering its hills in her youth, when she and her brother would ride on their father’s donkey when he went to fetch water from a nearby well.

The well is still there, but she says it’s too close to the settlement for Palestinians to visit it safely.

“You feel the pain of not being able to go there now, even just to look,” she said. “You feel that everything about the occupation is wrong.”

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POINT OF NO RETURN?

Some critics say the U.S. focus on managing the conflict instead of resolving it has led to a point of no return. They say that there are so many settlements across the West Bank that it is impossible to create a viable Palestinian state. Others argue that Israel has become a single apartheid state in which millions of Palestinians are denied basic rights afforded to Jews.

Peace Now says that — at least in a logistical sense — a partition deal remains possible.

Under a two-state solution based on past proposals, up to 80% of the settlers could stay where they are. Many of the largest settlements are close to the 1967 lines and could be incorporated into Israel in mutually agreed land swaps.

That means at least 100,000 Jewish settlers, and likely more, would have to relocate or live inside a Palestinian state. Some 2 million Palestinians live inside Israel, where they have citizenship, including the right to vote.

“From a logistical standpoint, it’s very possible,” Reeves said. “From a political standpoint, that’s where the trick is.”

Most experts agree that a negotiated two-state solution would require an Israeli government with a mandate to make historic concessions, a united Palestinian leadership able to do the same and a powerful external mediator like the U.S. that could strong-arm both sides.

None of those three elements exist now or will in the foreseeable future.

Israelis are deeply divided over Netanyahu’s leadership, but a strong majority appears to support the settlements and are opposed to a Palestinian state. Those voters back right-wing parties that won 72 seats in the 120-member Knesset last month.

The Palestinians are geographically and political divided between the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Islamic militant group Hamas ruling the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians have not held a vote in more than 15 years, and elections planned for the coming months could be called off.

The last five U.S. presidents have tried and failed to resolve the conflict. The Obama administration scolded Israel over its settlements, while Trump unabashedly supported them. Neither made any headway in resolving the conflict with the Palestinians.

Biden, who has devoted much of his nearly 50-year political career to foreign policy, knows this well. His administration has signaled it hopes to manage the conflict, not resolve it.

“The question is, can there be momentum? There won’t be peace, but can there be momentum in these next four to eight years?” Reeves said.

“If there is, then I think a two-state solution is very much alive. If there’s not, and there’s another 100,000 settlers added, it just makes it that much harder to make peace.”

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Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Moshe Edri in Efrat Settlement and Jelal Hassan in al-Masara, West Bank, contributed.