'For fallen souls' - A survivor says Myanmar fight must go on

(Reuters) - Each morning, Ko Phyo washes himself and his two-year-old son while seated on a chair, a plastic bag covering what remains of a thigh that he says was shattered by a bullet fired by a Myanmar soldier.

© Reuters/STRINGER The Wider Image: 'For fallen souls' - A survivor says Myanmar fight must go on

Ko Phyo says he was wounded on the front lines of the biggest protests against Myanmar's military in decades. Now, he is adjusting to life as an amputee and single parent in a country in chaos since a Feb. 1 coup.


The 24-year-old says he joined the nationwide protest movement in the biggest city Yangon, acting as a guard trying to protect demonstrators from security forces during daily pro-democracy marches and strikes.

(Open https://reut.rs/3wTmBlV in an external browser to see a picture story on Ko Phyo)

"We ran away because we didn't want to get arrested and beaten," he said, recalling a day in early March when he was cornered as police and a soldier advanced.

"Then they started shooting, I was shot in the leg, and fell on the ground."

Security forces have killed more than 800 people since the coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners activist group. The ruling junta says around 300 have died, most of them "terrorists" and "instigators of violence".

Ko Phyo said he carried only a shield.


The bullet that hit him severed three arteries. The soldier who fired the shot removed it with a knife, and a local policeman he knew took him to a military hospital, a journey that took more than two hours, he said.

"I started feeling the pain and I couldn't bear it. I told them to cut off my leg immediately. They cut it on the seventh day."

Ko Phyo has been learning to become mobile in a wheelchair in his three-room home and uses crutches when outdoors to deal with the uneven roads and paths that run between the green fields of his Yangon township.

He hopes to return to his job handling vehicle licensing with the road transport authority, when stability eventually returns.

Concern about the future of his son drove him to join the anti-junta protests and gave him motivation to recover faster and leave hospital after 12 days, he said.

He sees the loss of his leg as a small sacrifice compared to those of the hundreds killed, including one of his fellow guards, a 15-year-old girl.

"All protesters out there are fighting for the next generations ... The military is supposed to protect its own people, but they are killing us instead."

"We must keep fighting," Ko Phyo said. "We must win this revolution to bring justice for fallen souls."

His son is adapting to the new reality too, playing games with his father and bringing him snacks and cushions to make him comfortable on the floor.

"I feel terrible when he asked, 'Dad, where's your leg?'," he said.

"So, I replied 'a dog's eaten my leg but it will grow later'. And he still believes it."

(Reporting by Reuters Staff; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M
A massive cannabis farm raided by UK police turned out to be a bitcoin mine
ilee@insider.com (Isabelle Lee) 8 hrs ago

© West Midlands Police The bitcoin ‘mine’ uncovered during industrial unit raid in UK. West Midlands Police

When UK police were getting ready to raid what they suspected was a cannabis farm, they discovered a crypto mine instead.

Police said the mine was stealing thousands of pounds worth of electricity from the main supply.

"It's certainly not what we were expecting," the police said in a statement.

When police in West Midlands, UK were getting ready to raid what they suspected was a cannabis farm on May 18, they instead discovered a cryptocurrency mine that was stealing thousands of pounds worth of electricity from the main supply.
"It's certainly not what we were expecting," Sandwell Police Sergeant Jennifer Griffin, said in a statement.

British police were alerted of numerous people visiting the location at different times of the day. Wiring and ventilation ducts that were visible and voluminous also raised concerns. Following these suspicions, the police flew a drone above the location, which picked up a considerable heat source from above.

"It had all the hallmarks of a cannabis cultivation set-up," Griffin said.

But upon entry, they discovered a bank of around 100 computer units as part of what's understood to be a bitcoin mining operation. Griffin said this is believed to be the only second such crypto mine British police have encountered in the region

.

© West Midlands Police The bitcoin 'mine' uncovered during industrial unit raid in UK. West Midlands Police

"We've seized the equipment and will be looking into permanently seizing it under the Proceeds of Crime Act," Griffin said. "No one was at the unit at the time of the warrant and no arrests have been made - but we'll be making enquiries with the unit's owner."

Cryptocurrency mining has long been criticized due to its heavy energy use and environmental impact. Various research, including a study from Cambridge University, has shown that bitcoin mining around the world uses more energy each year than some entire nations.

"My understanding is that mining for cryptocurrency is not itself illegal but clearly extracting electricity from the mains supply to power it is," Griffin said.

Western Power, the electricity distribution operator for the Midlands, revealed that thousands of pounds worth of energy had been stolen to power the mine, bypassing the normal electric supply.

More and more governing bodies have raised concerns about the massive energy consumption needed to mine cryptocurrencies.

On May 26, Iran has banned cryptocurrency mining over the summer ahead of an anticipated surge in electricity demand.

China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on May 19 doubled down on its crypto-mining ban by setting up a hotline for the general public to report suspected activity.

In New York, a bill introduced in the State Senate is seeking to halt bitcoin mining for three years until the state has assessed its impact on the environment.

US
Student debt rises as the future of loan forgiveness remains uncertain

Jessica Dickler 

CNBC 5/28/2021

The price of college is going up. The average tuition and fees increased 1.1% for public colleges and 2.1% for private institutions.

This year’s incoming freshman class can expect to borrow more than $38,000 to help cover the cost of a bachelor’s degree, according to a new report.

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Will your student loan debt be forgiven?

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the price of higher education is an even bigger consideration than usual for students and their families. At the same time, the cost of a four-year college or university has never been higher.

Average tuition and fees for the 2020-21 academic year increased by 1.1% to $10,560 for in-state students at four-year public colleges, according to the College Board, which tracks trends in college pricing and student aid. The data also showed tuition and fees at four-year private institutions rose by 2.1% to $37,650.

Most students must borrow to cover much of the cost, which has already propelled collective student loan debt in the U.S. past a stunning $1.7 trillion.

But this year's incoming freshman class will rely on loans even more in pursuit of a degree at a public college or university, new data shows.

Typically, seven in 10 college seniors graduate in the red, owing nearly $30,000 per borrower, according to data from the Institute for College Access & Success.

Going forward, a 2021 high school graduate could take on as much as $38,147 in student loans, on average, according to a recent NerdWallet analysis of data from the National Center for Education Statistics. That's up from $37,200 for 2020 high school grads.

The report factors in that it now takes five years, on average, to complete a four-year bachelor's degree, given that more undergraduates are taking time off.

© Provided by CNBC

Even the interest rates on federal student loans are set to rise by nearly one percentage point starting in July.

This will increase monthly loan payments on a 10-year repayment term to $99.99 from $95.41 for every $10,000 in debt borrowed that academic year, according to higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.

For those already struggling under the weight of student debt, President Joe Biden used his executive powers to extend the pause federal student loan payments until October.

Nearly 43 million federal borrowers are hoping massive student loan forgiveness might be Biden's next major move.

Although the upcoming annual White House budget proposal won't include any student debt forgiveness, the status this proposal is still unknown.

Four methods to pay off your student loans early

"The fact that President Biden didn't include student loan forgiveness in his budget request does not mean that student loan forgiveness won't happen," Kantrowitz said.

Biden has asked the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Education to issue a report on the limits of his authority to forgive student loans through executive action, and he is unlikely to take any action until he receives those findings, whether through executive action or proposed legislation, Kantrowitz added.

The Education Department also said Monday it is starting the process of issuing new regulations focused on student loan repayment and debt-forgiveness programs.

In the meantime, the payment pause offers borrowers a rare opportunity to chip away at the balance of their loans or other high-interest debt or put the money toward an emergency savings fund.

Democrats want to allow 60-year-olds into Medicare as part of Biden's infrastructure package

jzeballos@businessinsider.com (Joseph Zeballos-Roig) 

© Getty/Pool Rep. Pramila Jayapal. Getty/Pool

Democrats are attempting to expand Medicare as a part of Biden's infrastructure plans.

"Medicare expansion means more coverage for more people," a top Democrat said.

The effort may be derailed by Joe Manchin, who says he opposes enlarging Medicare access.

The latest Democratic battle to expand Medicare access is under way.

A group of more than 150 House Democrats from the progressive and centrist wings of the party are launching a campaign to include an expansion of Medicare in President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan, The New York Times reported.

They sent a letter on Thursday to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris arguing to widen the federal health program so it includes a broader range of Americans, along with growing the range of benefits provided so it includes dental, vision, and hearing aids.

"Medicare expansion means more coverage for more people - and by finally allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, it's at a lower cost for taxpayers," Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Pramila Jayapal, a leader of the effort, said in a Friday tweet. "Let's get this done."


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The plan would cut the eligibility age from 65 to 60, adding roughly 23 million Americans into the government health insurance program. The group projects it would amount to $200 billion over a decade. They say the price tag would be offset with another proposal: empowering Medicare to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs, which Democrats have failed to achieve in the past.



Video: Whitmer, GOP leaders cut deal on budget talks, work rules (WZZM-TV Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Creek)


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The effort is certain to trigger Republican opposition and potentially reopen a fierce debate among Democrats on healthcare. The last Democratic presidential primary was largely defined by policy brawls over Medicare for All and whether Americans should be able to keep their private coverage in a reform effort.


Expanding Medicare access is popular with voters, however, particularly reducing prescription drug costs. Up to now, however, Biden and Democrats have directed their efforts at expanding the insurance subsidies available under the Affordable Care Act.

Widening Medicare coverage could run into roadblocks in the Senate from centrist Democrats. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has stated his opposition, complicating the path ahead for other Democrats supportive of the measure. "No, I'm not for it, period," he told The Washington Post last month. It's unclear why Manchin opposes it, although he told The Hill in 2019 the government "can't even pay for Medicare for some."

Biden continues negotiating with Republicans on an infrastructure plan, and the talks are set to stretch into at least early June. The White House did not include a Medicare expansion or a blueprint to cut the price of prescription drugs in its economic plans, though it called on Congress to approve the measures in its budget without laying out specific policies.

Turning Kenya's plastic waste problem into a building solution

CBSNews

5/29/2021

For the latest report in our "Eye on Earth" series, CBS News correspondent Debora Patta went to Kenya to learn about a creative approach to addressing the scourge of plastic pollution.

Nairobi — Floating in the middle of world's largest ocean, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a man-made mess of plastic waste covering twice as much area as the state of Texas. Kenya is one of many countries contributing to the pollution.

Hundreds of tons of plastic waste are created every day in the capital, Nairobi, alone. On the outskirts of the sprawling city festers the Dandora dump — about 30 acres, or 22 football fields, of waste. Despite a pioneering ban on single-use plastics in 2017, Kenya is still drowning it.

Innovative young Kenyan scientist is turning Nairobi's mountain of plastic waste into paving bricks

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Bitcoin falls 5.2% to $33,849, Ether down 6.3

© Provided by CBS News A woman who works selling roasted corn for lunch to people who scavenge garbage for a living walks down a path between hills of garbage at the dump in Dandora, on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, in a December 2018 file photo. / Credit: Ben Curtis/AP

But while most people look at Dandora and see an insurmountable plastic mountain, Patta met a young woman who's finding innovative ways to tackle the problem, and to move that mountain.

There are days in Kenya when you can actually walk on water. Patta saw one river so choked with plastic that it has formed an unsinkable foundation. It's a disturbing health hazard for everyone living there, but not for Nzambi Matee.

"I get excited when I see waste," the materials scientist told Patta, "because I know that's life for us."

The fact that plastic does not sink is precisely what intrigued Matee.

© Provided by CBS News A river in Nairobi, Kenya, clogged with plastic and other garbage. / Credit: CBS/Debora Patta

"I came across this concept of using plastic to [make] building blocks," she explained.

Tons of plastic clogs drains, pollutes rivers and contaminates animal feed in the region, and some of it ends up at the Dandora landfill. The site reached its capacity and was supposed to have been shut down 20 years ago.

But every day, waste pickers trudge through the rancid trash sifting for plastic. It wasn't easy for Matee to figure out whether she really could turn the waste material into useable building bricks.

When it finally worked, "that was the best day ever," she told Patta. "It took us about nine months just to make one brick."

One brick wasn't enough, but that was no problem for a woman who likes to get her hands dirty. Next, she built a machine to mass produce the plastic bricks.

© Provided by CBS News Materials scientist Nzambi Matee holds one of the bricks she's made of plastic from waste gathered at a landfill in Nairobi, Kenya. / Credit: CBS/Debora Patta

First the waste is sorted to remove rubble and metal, and then the plastic is baked — just like "making cookies," joked Matee — before the boiling mixture is molded into building blocks. Her setup can churn out as many as 2,000 per day, and they're 35% cheaper than standard bricks, and up to seven-times stronger.

Right now, Matee's bricks are only being used for pathways in small households, but she wants to target big construction companies.

Kenya's fight against plastic pollution isn't just a homegrown issue. It's complicated by the fact that, two years ago, the U.S. exported more than one billion pounds of plastic waste to 96 nations, including Kenya. Now Washington wants to make the shipment of more plastic waste a condition of a proposed trade deal.

Greenpeace activist Amos Wemanya believes Kenya can barely manage its own waste, let alone recycle America's.

"It would be importing more problems if we were to allow this U.S.-Kenya trade deal to be used as a way of dumping plastic waste on the African continent," he told CBS News.

© Provided by CBS News Single-use plastics cause concern amid virus 04:09

Matee agrees that countries should keep their waste in their own backyards, and she intends to make good on what she calls her triple threat:

"The more we recycle the plastic, the more we produce affordable housing… the more we created more employment for the youth," she said.

Like many young Kenyans, Matee is passionate about saving the environment, but it's not just words. She's hoping that through her actions, the mountain in Dandora will become a mere hill.

Black mistrust remains 100 yrs

after Tulsa Massacre

Duration: 00:50 

There's been progress in the relationship between the Tulsa police and the city's Black community in the 100 years since the masacre in 1921. The police chief is now Black, but studies show that Black people still don't trust the police. (May 28)  The Canadian Press

Inside The Exhibition Box: How White Sexual Imperialism Has Trapped Asian American Women

Anouk Yeh 

REFINERY29

 23 hrs ago


On March 16th, 2021, eight people in Georgia were killed in a string of shootings that took place at three different spas and massage parlors: Young’s Asian Massage in Cherokee County, Georgia, and Aromatherapy Spa and Gold Spa, both in Atlanta.

Six of the eight victims — Soon-Chung Park 박순정, Hyun-Jung Grant 김]현정, Sun-Cha Kim 김선자, Yong-Ae Yue 유영애, Xiaojie Tan 谭小洁 and Daoyou Feng 冯道友 — were Asian women; each of the locations that were targeted were Asian-owned. The gunman was white.

The massacre was an unignorable tragedy; it was also a blaring alarm warning of the increasing anti-Asian xenophobia within the United States. In the months leading up to the shooting, anti-Asian hate crimes had been rapidly on the rise. In January, an 84-year-old Thai man, Vichar Ratanapakdee was murdered in San Francisco. Just a few days later a 91-year-old Asian man was assaulted in Oakland. These are just a few of the hate crimes; in just the first three months of 2021, Anti-Asian hate crimes have increased by 169%.

Along with its accompanying media coverage, the Atlanta shootings were also a wakeup call to examine the way white America perceives — and has historically perceived — Asian women, as unimportant, one-dimensional accessories to the broader American narrative.

It was no coincidence that the public knew the shooter’s name, face, and the fact that, according to a member of the police department, he’d been having a “bad day” — before anyone knew a single name of one of the eight victims, a single one of their faces, a single detail about their lives before they were lost forever.

Arguably more infuriating was the media’s obsessive and suggestive attachment to the six Asian women’s jobs as workers at spas and massage parlors, a “customer is always right” industry that has historically been hypersexualized by the white gaze. This hypersexualization of female Asian labor has led to legislation like the 1875 Page Act, which restricted female Asian service workers from entering the United States under the automatic assumption they were prostitutes.

With this in mind, it was only a matter of time before the police and media outlets alike took on a twisted game of victim-blaming, pointing to the victims’ occupational circumstances and the shooter’s alleged Asian “sex addiction” as, if not excuses for the massacre, then at least rationalizations for it, as if the murder of any human could ever be rationalized. Though, it does become a lot easier to do just that when a society-at-large doesn’t grant a group of people their humanity to begin with.

That is precisely what the situation is in the U.S., which is why the Atlanta massacre, specifically, was a jolting reflection of white America’s perception of Asian women as faceless and submissive — mere ”things” to be conquered. As distasteful and distressing as this stereotype is, it is not shocking — to be surprised by it is to be oblivious to American history.

The United States houses a long history of fetishizing and violating Asian women without repercussion, a phenomenon coined by Sunny Woan as “white sexual imperialism.”

The modern foundation of this imperialist relationship between Asian women and white America can be traced to the American military’s history of objectification and sexual abuse in Asia during the 20th century, but the original roots of it twist back further in time, and are as rooted in the founding and westward expansion of this nation.

In 1834, 14-year-old Afong Moy, the first Chinese young woman to arrive in the United States, was brought here by traders Nathaniel and Frederick Carne, and billed as “The Chinese Lady” as part of an “Oriental” museum exhibit.

In the zoo-like exhibition, Moy was instructed to continuously perform an extreme version of her daily routine, all while on display in a glass box. She drank tea and ate rice with chopsticks as white museum-goers peered and commented on her appearance.

Narrators accompanied Moy’s performance, emphasizing her docility and pointing out different parts of her “exotic” physique to audience members.

The fact that the first Chinese woman in America’s ticket to the United States came at the price of her objectification is important to note, because it forever set the precedent for white interaction with Asian women. Moy, and subsequently, all Asian women, being introduced to America as a larger-than-life docile fantasy created an unshakeable association between Asian women and traits like demure, exotic and serving. Following Moy’s arrival to America, multiple companies within the United States began piloting picture bride systems, which gave white American men the power to pick and order women and girls from East Asia like commodities out of catalogues.
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More recently, and particularly throughout the 20th century, the white American gaze has been filtered through a lens of imperialistic contact, spanning the Vietnam War (1955-1975), during which time tktk can you list a couple different more general examples here tktkt, with one notably horrific attack happening in the village of My Lai, where American soldiers pillaged and massacred the community, and raped approximately 20 Vietnamese women and girls. During World War II’s War of the Pacific, American sailors raped countless civilian women during the Okinawa occupation. After WWII, the US occupied Korea up until the outbreak Korean War, inheriting Japan’s WWII comfort women practice of forcefully exploiting Korean civilian women for sex. To this day, the legacy of the American military’s sexual exploitation of Asian women still lives on. Currently, American military bases in South Korea, or camptowns, are still marked by high prostitution rates.

Five months ago, I turned 17 — three years older than Afong Moy was when she first set foot in the United States. Although it has now been almost two centuries since Moy’s exhibition tour across America, instances like the massacre in Atlanta remind me that I, along with every other Asian woman in America, have never truly left the glass exhibition box.

The massacre in Atlanta and every other instance anti-Asian violence, particularly of the last year, reminded me that, whether I’m conscious of it or not, in the eyes of the white gaze, my body is still just another listing in a catalogue. This isn’t just a metaphor, though, this also manifests in my daily life.

During online school, white classmates ask me my thoughts on the Atlanta victims, wondering specifically what I thought about the fact that they worked in massage parlors. These questions are as pointed as the stares Moy must have endured;I feel like I’m being asked to pour tea for an audience of zoo-gooers.

On the street, a man rolls down his window and yells at me: “Ni hao, baby. I would love a piece of that.” I feel like I have an exhibition sign tacked to my back; I wonder what it was like to be one of the women who was force-purchased from a catalogue, unable to hide from unwanted sexual advances. I log onto social media and see the voices of Korean femme organizers being drowned out by articles about Atlanta’s “happy ending” massages, and it feels like I — like every Asian woman in America — am screaming inside our glass boxes, only nobody can hear us. Nobody wants to. The rest of America just sits and watches from outside the exhibit, free to come and go as they please.

The perpetuation of white sexual imperialism keeps Asian women chained to a caricature of white male fantasy; the centuries-long commodification of our bodies has forced us to inherit hyper-sexualized and overly submissive stereotypes that we never would have chosen for ourselves — but history bore us into this exhibition box.

So where do we go from here? Although it’s hard to dismantle centuries of calcified caricature, what isn’t hard — what shouldn’t be hard — is focusing on the humanity of each Asian woman targeted by white supremacy, of telling their stories, of telling our own.

This means honoring all eight of the victims of the Atlanta massacre outside of a lens of residual imperialist violence, and remembering them for who they were in life. Remember them not for their connection to white supremacy, but for the way they lived and the way they loved; remember them for the way they cooked jjigae stew and watched Korean dramas. Remember them for the way they always welcomed customers new and old with a smile and open arms; remember them for the way they were willing to leave motherlands behind in hopes of forging a better future for their loved ones.

This rhetoric also extends to ourselves. During times of increasing anti-Asian xenophobia, it is extremely important that we, as Asian women, hold close all the joyous and nuanced parts of our identities. Oversimplification is the first step towards dehumanization, so proudly claiming every facet of our personal identities is a radical act of protest — especially in a nation that has only ever allowed Asian women to take up one single, objectified narrative. We boldly claim every facet of our identity when our humanity is questioned by a stranger yelling slurs through a car window or reducing an entire social justice movement down to stereotypes, we know that this is not the total of who we are because we have already self-defined who we are.

Nuanced and compassionate storytelling, after all, is the best way of restoring humanity to a community that has historically been violently denied it.

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Plunder of Pompeii: how art police turned tide on tomb raiders

Angela Giuffrida in Rome 

THE GUARDIAN

5/28/2021

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Cesare Abbate/EPA

By day, the tombaroli, or tomb raiders, marked out the spot. They used long, pointed tools to pierce the earth , beneath which there was a passage that would take them to Roman homes replete with treasure in Civita Giuliana, a suburb of ancient Pompeii, about 700 metres north-west of the main archaeological park.

By night, they dug a network of tunnels. Each was about 40 metres long, starting from their home or abandoned buildings in the countryside area close to the site, and connected to the passage, from where they hammered through ancient walls as they made their way into the homes to seize their loot.

For years, their cunning methods were successful, allowing the tombaroli, a father and son team, to steal artefacts from the site and sell them on for huge sums of money to art traffickers around the world. Then, in 2012, they were caught in action – by Italy’s art police.

The special squad had discovered a hole covered by metal sheets, earth and crops leading to an illegal excavation, along with three frescoes destined for exportation overseas. The relics were recently returned to Pompeii’s archaeological park.

© Provided by The Guardian A fragment of a fresco from Villa Arianna in Pompeii, recently returned to the Museo Archeologico Libero D’Orsi, in Castellammare di Stabia, Italy. Photograph: Parco Archeologico di Pompei pre/AFP/Getty

“The tombaroli know their dig can either go well or badly,” said Gen Roberto Riccardi, the chief of Italy’s cultural heritage protection squad. “The tunnels at Civita Giuliana were found thanks to intelligence work. The tombaroli are usually people we know and have significant experience … often there are generations of them. But this is not their only work: they usually have farming or building trade activities.”

Related: ‘We go after them like pitbulls’ – the art detective who hunts stolen Picassos and lost Matisses

Looters have been plundering Italy’s cultural sites for decades, but since 2012 their trade has not been as fruitful, owing to an intensified crackdown by Italy’s art police, of whom there are 302 across the country.

In 2020, the squad found 24 illegal digs, arrested 68 thieves and recuperated 17,503 archaeological artefacts. The unit carries out controls of archaeological sites on the ground or above by helicopter. A scuba-diving team also patrols archaeological sites along the Italian coast.

© Provided by The Guardian A fragment of a fresco from the Villa San Marco in Pompeii. Photograph: Parco Archeologico di Pompei pre/AFP/Getty

Among the items retrieved last year and recently brought back to Pompeii were three other frescoes that had been sliced off the walls of Villa Arianna and Villa San Marco – homes that once belonged to noble families in Stabiae, a historical site close to the archaeological park’s main excavations – in the 1970s. The relics were smuggled overseas and it is known that they were eventually bought by English, American and Swiss antique dealers in the 1990s. The items later returned to Italy, where, with the help of an archaeological expert, police were able to identify them among the private collection of a businessman in Milan. The archaeologist also noted that the frescoes had been tinkered with in order to make them more valuable.

“There is a whole network of people involved, starting from the tombaroli, who are in touch with dealers, who in turn agree a price with international traffickers. When there is a significant value, either artistic or historic, the traffickers act,” said Riccardi.

The criminal merchants then create a fake paper trail to deceive buyers into believing that they are buying items derived legally.

In the past, looted relics have ended up in some of the world’s biggest museums. In 1996, the Getty museum in Los Angeles acquired artefacts, including frescoes stolen from Pompeii, that led to the museum’s curator later going on trial in Rome, accused by the Italian government of conspiring to traffic looted art, though the charges were dropped in 2007. That same year, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art gave back antiques, including statues and vases, that had been illegally excavated and smuggled out of Italy.

© Provided by The Guardian A fragment of a fresco, probably from Villa Arianna in Pompeii. Photograph: Parco Archeologico di Pompei pre/AFP/Getty

Most of the country’s stolen relics end up with buyers in northern European countries and the US, although countries in the far east and Middle East have emerged as prominent markets, too.

Italy’s cultural heritage, including artworks, has an estimated value of €986bn, making it among the preferred prey of traffickers.

The cultural heritage protection squad was established in 1969 on the basis of an article in the country’s postwar constitution stating that the new Republic must protect its landscape as well as historical and artistic heritage. However, the protection and recuperation of the territory’s historical riches dates back much further. In 1816 the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova negotiated with Paris to repatriate artworks stolen by Napoleon Bonaparte. The Duke of Wellington also played a major role in returning items plundered by Napoleon and his army.

The police squad has a database containing about 1.3m files on stolen artworks and archaeological relics.

“The job is a big challenge,” said Riccardi. “But it’s about reclaiming the history and beauty which our art, in the past and present, has given to Italy.”

Yellowstone National Park is hotter than ever, scientists say

Isabella O'Malley 

THE WEATHER NETWORK

29/5/2021

Yellowstone National Park’s famously harsh environment is once again making headlines, this time for the scorching temperatures that are becoming increasingly common at the park.

A study published in Geophysical Research Letters states that summer temperatures are quickly climbing and the month of August 2016 ranked as one of the hottest summers the park has experienced in the last 1,250 years.

Scientists analyzed tree ring data from Engelmann spruce trees to reconstruct the park’s climate from the years 770–2019, which revealed that 2016 was the single-warmest year on record.

© Provided by The Weather Network

Grand Prismatic Geyser with American Bison passing by in Yellowstone National Park. (Daniel Osterkamp. Moment. Getty Images)

The temperature rise since 2000 has been the most intense period of warming on record and four times more intense than the Medieval Climate Anomaly. This historic warming event occurred from 750 to 1,350 when temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere, South America, China, and Australia were up to 1°C higher than those during 1960–1990.

The study says that annual surface air temperatures across the western U.S. have increased by more than 1°C since 1900 and will continue to increase with continued greenhouse gas emissions and other human activities.

The data revealed that a warming trend began around 1450 and continued into the mid 1600s, which was then followed by roughly 250 years of low variability in temperatures. An “intense warming trend” then began in 2000 and the study says it “far exceeds conditions during any other period over the past 1,250 years, particularly during the Medieval Climate Anomaly.”

© Provided by The Weather Network

Buffalo grazing at Hayden Valley, Yellowstone National Park. 

(Manel Vinuesa. iStock / Getty Images Plus)

Twenty years from 1050 to 1070 featured the most extreme warm event, but the period from 2015–2019 is twice as intense, albeit a shorter duration.

“As 2020 rivaled 2016 for the highest global surface air temperatures on record, current and impending projections of increasing anthropogenic warming, especially for the midlatitudes, suggest that the modern warming will likely soon surpass the Medieval Climate Anomaly,” the researchers hypothesize.

The study says that some of the impacts that Yellowstone National Park could experience as the climate changes include increased fire activity, aridification, extreme drought conditions, and declining biodiversity levels.

© Provided by The Weather Network

The Yellowstone River crashing over the Lower Falls in Yellowstone's Grand Canyon. (MorningDewPhotography. iStock / Getty Images Plus)

“Continued warming will likely lead to increased drought conditions and exacerbated fire regimes (e.g., larger, more severe), threatening to push area ecosystems past a tipping point and leading to a major demographic resetting of the Greater Yellowstone Ecoregion,” the researchers conclude.

“During this era of rapid environmental change, there is a dire need for updating tree-ring records that are temperature sensitive. An updated, high-density temperature proxy network would allow for (1) assessing the degree of spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the 21st century warming trend across western North America and (2) disentangling the relationships between long-term temperature variability and broad-scale climate forcing mechanisms.”

Thumbnail credit: Philippe Sainte-Laudy Photography. Moment. Getty Images

A faction of conservatives pushes to build its own climate movement

Alex Seitz-Wald


WASHINGTON — Before he became a climate activist during his freshman year of college, Benji Backer had spoken at the Conservative Political Action Conference, written for right-leaning sites such as TownHall and RedState, and made a name for himself as a conservative commentator on television.

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But like many other young people, he worried about climate change and didn’t see a place for himself in either the conservative movement, which mostly ignores or denies climate change, or the environmental movement, in which major institutes like the Sierra Club tend to align with Democrats.

So in 2017, Backer founded the American Conservation Coalition, which next month is hosting what it bills as the first conservative climate rally.

“We want to plant a flagpole in the sand to say, this is an issue conservatives can and should lead on,” he said. “There is absolutely zero path to a zero emissions, climate change-free future without bipartisanship — and anybody who doesn't accept that isn't taking this seriously.”

The group has grown to more than 220 branches, many of which are on college campuses, with thousands of grassroots members and relationships on Capitol Hill.

The June 5 rally in Miami, a city that could wind up underwater if sea levels continue to rise, will feature like-minded Republicans such as Florida's former Rep. Carlos Curbelo and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who has integrated climate adaptation into all of the city’s long-term planning.

“It is no longer an issue of the environment versus the economy; the environment is the economy,” Suarez said. “We hope to serve as a model of how conservative policies can protect the environment, invest in the future, and address the challenges of climate change.”

Backer and others say the partisan divide on climate is starting to narrow as people feel the effects of a warming climate and thanks to a rising generation of millennial and Gen Z voters who are far more likely than older Republicans to say human-caused climate change is real and that the government needs to do more about it.

Outside the left, many who care about the environment are turned off by what they view as the hectoring rhetoric of climate activists, Backer said.

“You have all these groups on the left, and then no groups on the right. That's the market gap that we fit,” he said. “We are really the first and only grassroots movement in this space.”

 Before he became a climate activist Benji Backer had spoken at the Conservative Political Action Conference,

Focusing on more optimistic messages of innovation and local solutions can bring new people into the fold, he said, pointing to billionaire Elon Musk as an example of someone being rewarded in the market while reducing carbon emissions by popularizing electric vehicles.

In rural America, there’s a long history of conservation among hunters and fishermen, going back to former President Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican sportsman who founded the national park system, who now feel alienated by the culture of environmentalism and its often abstract goals.

“There are so many parts of this country that could be brought in if you can just make it about their backyards, something they can have personal buy-in," said Backer, who spent much of last year on a cross-country road trip in a Tesla speaking with local groups. “And with climate change, that's really easy to do that because it's going to affect every community in this country.”

On Capitol Hill, a cohort of mostly young Republican members of Congress are pushing the party from the inside and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, despite some uneasiness on his right, just released his own climate plan.

It focuses more on government carrots than sticks, such funding for clean energy research, and emphasizes nuclear power and carbon capture technologies, which progressive environments view warily.

“This shouldn't be a partisan issue and it should be something that we can find sensible common ground on,” said Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., a 33-year-old who thinks Republicans can champion a free market approach to climate solutions, told NBC News. “But that requires the Democratic Party to not greenwash economic redistribution efforts and it requires the Republican Party to stop denialism.”

The American Conservation Coalition has faced predictable criticisms from the left and the right, but has overlapping membership with both youth conservative groups like Turning Point USA and relationships with less politicized environmental groups, like the Nature Conservancy.

The group chose Miami for its first rally because it views Florida as an example of conservative leadership on climate.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a loyalist of former President Donald Trump who is eyeing his own 2024 presidential run, just signed legislation to prepare the state for rising sea levels and more severe storms that won overwhelming support in the GOP-controlled Legislature.

DeSantis notably did not talk much about climate change around the bill, nor does it address carbon emissions, but that may have helped depolarize the issue.

“We can debate all day the whys and how this happens,” Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls, a Republican, said in response to Democratic criticism that it didn’t go far enough, “but if we just do that and we just debated all day, we wouldn’t do anything.”