THEY LEFT THE LENS CAP ON HUBBLE ORIGINALY 

Space eye: Hubble trouble continues as Webb telescope moves ahead

Scientists at NASA are working to fix the ageing Hubble Space Telescope as a new window to the cosmos, the James Webb Telescope, passes a key test and prepares to launch in November.
The James Webb Space Telescope, slated to launch in November, is expected to expand on the Hubble Space Telescope's 31-year legacy by peering even further into the universe than Hubble ever could [File: Desiree Stover/NASA via AP]

By Amy Thompson
7 Jul 2021

NASA’s next great eye in the sky, the golden-mirrored James Webb Space Telescope, passed a key review this week, bringing it one step closer to launching in November and observing new parts of the cosmos for scientists here on Earth.

That’s good news for the United States’ space agency, which has spent the last several weeks trying to troubleshoot issues with its current window on the universe, the Hubble Space Telescope.

The storied telescope that has revolutionised our understanding of the cosmos for more than three decades is experiencing a technical glitch. According to NASA, the Hubble Space Telescope’s payload computer, which operates the spacecraft’s scientific instruments, went down suddenly on June 13.

During its more than 30 years in the sky, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured stunning images like this one of the Messier 106 galaxy [File: STScI/AURA, R Gendler via AP]

As a result, the instruments on board meant to snap pictures and collect data are not currently functioning. The agency’s best and brightest have been working diligently to get the ageing telescope back online and have run a barrage of tests but still can’t seem to figure out what went wrong.

“It’s just the difficulty of trying to fix something orbiting 400 miles [653 kilometres] over your head instead of in your laboratory,” Paul Hertz, the director of astrophysics for NASA, told Al Jazeera.

“If this computer were in the lab, it would be really quick to diagnose it,” he explained. “All we can do is send a command, see what data comes out of the computer, and then send that data down and try to analyse it.”
Hubble’s legacy

When Hubble launched on April 24, 1990, scientists were excited to peer into the vast expanse of space with a new set of “eyes”, but they had no idea how much one telescope would change our understanding of the universe.

The telescope has looked into the far reaches of space, spying the most distant galaxy ever observed — one that formed just 400 million years after the big bang.

This image taken with the Hubble Space Telescope shows a hot, star-popping galaxy that is farther than any previously detected, from a time when the universe was a mere 400 million years old [File: Space Telescope Science Institute via AP]Hubble has also produced stunning galactic snapshots like the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

Captured in one single photograph are hundreds of thousands of ancient galaxies that formed long before the Earth even existed — each galaxy a vast and thriving stellar hub, where hundreds of billions of stars were born, lived their lives, and died.

The light from these galaxies has taken billions of years to reach Hubble’s sensors, making it a time machine of sorts – one that takes us on a journey through time to see them as they were billions of years ago.

Hubble has also spied on our cosmic neighbours, discovering some of the moons around Pluto.

Its observations showed us that almost every galaxy has a supermassive back hole at its centre, and Hubble has also helped scientists create a vast three-dimensional map of an elusive, invisible form of matter that accounts for most of the matter in the universe.

Called dark matter, the enigmatic substance can’t be seen. Scientists only know it exists by measuring its effects on ordinary matter. Thanks to Hubble’s suite of scientific instruments, scientists were able to create a 3D map of dark matter.
What went wrong

Scientists have been planning for Hubble’s inevitable demise for quite some time. Over the past 31 years, the telescope has seen its fair share of turmoil.

Shortly after it launched, NASA discovered that something wasn’t quite right: Hubble’s primary mirror was flawed. Fortunately, the problem could be fixed, as the telescope is the only one in NASA’s history that was designed to be serviced by astronauts.

Astronauts Steven L Smith and John M Grunsfeld serviced the Hubble Space Telescope during a December 1999 mission [File: NASA/JSC via AP]Over its lifetime (and the course of the agency’s shuttle programme), groups of NASA astronauts have repaired and upgraded Hubble and its instruments five different times.

When the space shuttle retired in 2011, it meant that Hubble would be on its own. If the telescope were in trouble, ground controllers would need to troubleshoot remotely.

So far that has proven to be effective. That is, until June 13.

Just after 4pm EDT (20:00 GMT), an issue with the observatory’s payload computer popped up, putting the telescope and its scientific instruments into safe mode.

Hubble has two payload computers on board — the main computer and a backup for redundancy. These computers, called a NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer-1 (or NSSC-1), were installed during one of the telescope’s servicing missions in 2009; however, they were built in the 1980s.

They’re part of the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit, a module on the Hubble Space Telescope that communicates with the telescope’s science instruments and formats data for transmission to the ground. It also contains four memory modules (one primary and three backups).

The current unit is a replacement that was installed by astronauts on shuttle mission STS-125 in May 2009 after the original unit failed in 2008.

When the main computer went down in June, NASA tried to activate its backup, but both computers are experiencing the same glitch, which suggests the real issue is in another part of the telescope.

Currently, the team is looking at the various components of the SI C&DH, including the power regulator and the data formatting unit. If one of those pieces is the problem, then engineers may have to perform a more complicated series of commands to switch to backups of those parts.

This image made by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows M66, the largest of the Leo Triplet galaxies [File: NASA, ESA/Hubble Collaboration via AP]NASA says it’s going to take some time to sort out the issue and switch over to the backup systems if necessary. That’s because turning on those backups is a riskier manoeuvre than anything the team has tried so far.

The operations team will need several days to see how the backup computer performs before it can resume normal operations. The backup hasn’t been used since its installation in 2009, but according to NASA, it was “thoroughly tested on the ground prior to installation on the spacecraft”.

Part of the trouble with Hubble is that the observatory was designed to be serviced directly. Without a space shuttle, there’s just no way to do so.

“The biggest difference between past issues and this one is there’s no way to replace parts now,” John Grunsfeld, a former NASA astronaut, told Al Jazeera.

But, he added, “The team working on Hubble are masters of engineering. I”m confident they will succeed.”
Looking to the future

The James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in November, is expected to expand upon Hubble’s legacy. The massive telescope, essentially a giant piece of space origami, will unfold its shiny golden mirrors and peer even further into the universe than Hubble ever could. Its infrared sensors will let scientists study stellar nurseries, the heart of galaxies and much more.

Hubble has shown us that nearly all galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centres, the brightest of which we call quasars. These incredibly bright objects can tell us a lot about galaxy evolution, as the jets and wind produced by a quasar help to shape its host galaxy.

Previous observations have shown that there is a correlation between the masses of supermassive black holes and the masses of their galaxies, meaning that quasars could help regulate star formation in their host galaxy.

In August 2020, the Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the planet Jupiter and one of its moons, Europa, at left, when the planet was 653 million kilometres (406 million miles) from Earth [File: NASA/ESA via AP]

“We see black holes at a time when the universe was only 800 million years old that are almost as massive as the biggest we see today, so they evolved extremely early,” Chris Willott of the Canadian Space Agency told Al Jazeera.

“By studying their galaxies, we can see what the impact of such extreme black holes is on the early formation of stars in these galaxies.”

Through Hubble’s eyes, scientists cannot detect individual stars in the galaxies with these ultra-bright quasars, but with Webb, scientists hope they will be able to see not only individual stars, but also the gas from which these stars form.

That means the Webb telescope has the potential to truly revolutionise our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution, the same way that Hubble did for our knowledge of the universe over the past three decades.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

#CANCELTOKYOOLYMPICS
Japan to impose COVID emergency in Tokyo, mulls fan-free Olympics

As Japanese capital battles a new wave of cases, pressure grows on Olympic organisers about spectators.

Japan is expected to impose a state of emergency in Tokyo that will last throughout the Olympic Games [Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters]
8 Jul 2021

Japan is set to declare a state of emergency for Tokyo to contain the city’s latest wave of coronavirus, which will continue even as it hosts the Olympics, a key minister said on Thursday, as organisers consider banning all spectators from the event.

Medical advisers experts have said for weeks that having no spectators at the Games would be the least risky option amid widespread public concern that the influx of thousands of athletes and officials will fuel a fresh wave of infections.
KEEP READINGSuga’s LDP falls short of majority in Tokyo city election‘This is hell’: 1,500 rescuers search mud for Japan missingTokyo goes to the polls as COVID-shadowed Olympics loomTokyo 2020 organisers warn of no-fan Olympics as COVID cases rise

Organisers have already banned overseas spectators and have set a cap on domestic fans at 50 percent of capacity, to a maximum of 10,000 people. Talks to finalise the restrictions on the spectators are expected either on Thursday or on Friday.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach, who arrives in Tokyo on Thursday to oversee the last leg of the preparations, will preside over the talks.

Japan’s economy minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, who heads the government’s coronavirus response, said a state of emergency in Tokyo is set to begin on July 12 and remain in force until Aug 22.

The Olympic Games are scheduled to begin on July 23 and run for two weeks. They will be followed by the Paralympic Games.

The decision to impose a state of emergency follows a rise in Tokyo cases to their highest since mid-May. The Japanese capital is currently under slightly less strict “quasi emergency” measures.

The move is expected to be made official later on Thursday and followed by a news conference by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.

Areas neighbouring Tokyo where some Olympic events are also slated to take place, such as Chiba and Kanagawa, are set to remain under “quasi emergency” through August 22.

Underscoring the last-minute nature of the preparations, organisers told Olympic sponsors on Wednesday they are anticipating two scenarios when Tokyo goes under the state of emergency: having no spectators or setting a 5,000-person limit on spectators, a source familiar with the matter told the Reuters news agency.

In the no-spectator scenario, the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as all sports events, will probably be carried out without fans, including tickets allocated to the sponsors, the organisers told companies in online meetings.

If the number of spectators is capped at 5,000 per venue, tickets allocated to Olympic sponsors would be halved, and organisers also expect any session after 9pm (12:00 GMT) would be staged without spectators, the source said.

There have been persistent protests against holding the Games with the issue blamed for a relatively poor performance by the ruling party in recent city elections [Kimimasa Mayama/EPA]The organising committee did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Until this week, officials have insisted they could organise the Games safely with some spectators, but a governing party setback in a Tokyo assembly election on Sunday, which some of Suga’s allies attributed to public anger about the Olympics, had forced the change of tack, sources said.

Japan will hold a parliamentary election later this year and the government’s insistence that the Games – already postponed by a year because of the pandemic – should go ahead could cost it support at the ballot box, they said.

SOURCE: REUTERS

Tokyo to be put under state of emergency for duration of 2020 Olympic Games

Measure increases the likelihood that the Games in Japan will be held without a single spectator

Japan is set to place Tokyo under a state of emergency starting next week and lasting through the Olympic Games. Photograph: Shinji Kita/A

Justin McCurry in Tokyo

THE GUARDIAN
Thu 8 Jul 2021 

Japan’s government is to declare a state of emergency in Tokyo that will be in force during the Olympics, as the capital battles a sharp rise in coronavirus infections.

The measure, expected to be made official by the prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, later on Thursday, increases the likelihood that the Games will be held without a single spectator.

The latest blow to Japan’s troubled Olympic preparations comes after Tokyo reported 920 new infections on Wednesday. That compares with 714 last Wednesday and is the highest total since 1,010 were reported on 13 May.

The economy minister, Yasutoshi Nishimura, who heads the government’s coronavirus response, said Tokyo’s fourth state of emergency would begin on 12 July – 11 days before the Games open – and end on 22 August, two days before the start of the Paralympics.


Tokyo Olympics: attendance to be slashed at opening ceremony

Weeks of quasi-emergency measures targeting Tokyo’s night-time economy have failed to prevent the latest wave of cases. The government is expected to reimpose an unpopular ban on serving alcohol at bars and restaurants, Japanese media reported.

The emergency declaration in Tokyo – the centre of Japan’s outbreak for much of the pandemic – is an embarrassment for Suga, whose handling of the crisis saw his party perform badly in Tokyo metropolitan assembly elections last weekend.

“Politically speaking, having no spectators is now unavoidable,” a ruling party source told Reuters.

Suga’s insistence that organisers and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will be able to stage a “safe and secure” Olympics even as cases rise in the host city could further anger voters just a few months out from a general election.

The IOC and the Tokyo 2020 organising committee said last month that attendances would be capped at 50% of a venue’s capacity, or a maximum of 10,000 people.

But Suga and the organising committee’s president, Seiko Hashimoto, said a ban on fans was also an option, depending on the number of virus cases in the host city.

Medical advisers have said for weeks that having no spectators at the Games would be the least risky option, amid public concern that the arrival of tens of thousands of athletes, officials, sponsors reports and support staff could trigger a new wave of infections.


Surge in Covid-19 cases in Tokyo, less than a month out from Olympics

Having banned overseas sports fans, the Olympic movement was pinning its hopes on a limited number Japanese spectators creating a semblance of atmosphere.

But with the opening ceremony just two weeks away, it is looking more likely that competitions will take place in empty venues, including the opening ceremony at the new $1.4bn national stadium. IOC officials, however, could attend in their role as “organisers”, media reports have said.

The IOC, organisers and Japanese government officials were due to meet by the end of the week to discuss spectator numbers. The talks will include the IOC’s president, Thomas Bach, who arrives in Tokyo on Thursday to oversee the last phase of preparations.

Bach, who will self-isolate at his hotel for three days, and other senior IOC officials have drawn criticism for insisting the Games will go ahead regardless of case numbers and pressure on medical services in Tokyo.

Earlier this year, John Coates, an IOC vice-president who is overseeing preparations, said the Games could “absolutely” be held even if Tokyo were under a state of emergency.

Suga has backed the IOC’s push to stage the Games, despite widespread opposition among the Japanese public and warnings from his own chief medical adviser, Shigeru Omi, that the Olympics – combined with the summer holidays and the spread of the more transmissible Delta variant – could spark a surge in infections.

“Infections are in their expansion phase and everyone in this country must firmly understand how serious that is,” Omi told reporters on Wednesday. “The period from July to September is the most critical time for Japan’s Covid-19 measures.”

Japan has reported about 810,000 cases and nearly 14,900 deaths. Only 15% of the population is fully vaccinated, compared with 47.4% in the US and almost 50% in Britain.

Agencies contributed to this report

BACKGROUNDER

Haiti president Jovenel Moïse assassinated by ‘armed commando group’

Arrests made after prime minister says attackers posed as members of the US Drug Enforcement Agency

Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse. The assassination is likely to plunge the Caribbean nation into further turmoil. Photograph: Andrés Martínez Casares/Reuters

Peter Beaumont, Tom Phillips and Julian Borger

THE GUARDIAN

Thu 8 Jul 2021 

The president of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, has been assassinated in his home by a group of armed men who also seriously injured his wife, according to a statement and comments made by the country’s interim prime minister.

Speaking on a local radio station, Claude Joseph confirmed that Moïse, 53, had been killed, saying the attack was carried out by an “armed commando group” that included foreigners.

In a televised national address later on Wednesday, Joseph declared a state of emergency across the country, and made a call for calm. “The situation is under control,” he said.

Late on Wednesday Haiti’s communications secretary said police had arrested the “presumed assassins”. Frantz Exantus did not provide further details about the killing or say how many suspects had been arrested. The police chief later said officers were fighting with the group and that four had been shot dead and another two arrested.

According to the Haitian ambassador to Washington, Bocchit Edmond, Moïse’s killers claimed to be members of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) as they entered his guarded residence.

“This was a well-orchestrated commando attack,” Edmond told the Guardian. “They presented themselves as DEA agents, telling people they had come as part of a DEA operation.”

In videos circulating on social media, a man with an American accent is heard saying in English over a megaphone: “DEA operation. Everybody stand down. DEA operation. Everybody back up, stand down.”

Residents reported hearing gunshots and seeing men dressed in black running through the neighbourhood.

“It could be foreign mercenaries, because the video footage showed them speaking in Spanish,” Edmond said. “It was something carried out by professionals, by killers … But since the investigation has been just been opened, we prefer to wait on legal authorities to have a better assessment of the situation. We don’t know for sure, with real certainty, who’s behind this.

“This is an act of barbarity. It’s an attack on our democracy,” he said.

Edmond said he had asked the White House on Wednesday morning for US help in identifying and capturing the killers.

“We need a lot more information,” Joe Biden said later at the White House, calling the killing “very worrisome”.

In a written statement, the US president offered condolences and assistance. “We condemn this heinous act, and I am sending my sincere wishes for First Lady Moïse’s recovery,” the statement said. “The United States offers condolences to the people of Haiti, and we stand ready to assist as we continue to work for a safe and secure Haiti.”

Advertisement

The attack took place at Moïse’s house in the Pelerin 5 district of Pétionville, a wealthy area with sometimes substantial and leafy villas in the hills above the capital, Port-au-Prince, with a reputation for being safe. It is an area critics of Moïse said he was loth to leave.

Military vehicles block the entrance to the neighbourhood where Jovenel Moïse lived. Photograph: Joseph Odelyn/AP

“Around one o’clock in the morning, during the night of Tuesday 6 to Wednesday 7 July 2021, a group of unidentified individuals, including some speaking Spanish, attacked the private residence of the president and fatally injured the head of state,” Joseph said in a statement quoted in the media.

Edmond said that Moïse’s three children were safe but his wife, Martine, was seriously wounded in the attack and was being taken to a hospital in Miami on Wednesday.

The attack happened barely 24 hours after Moïse had named a new prime minister, Ariel Henry, to take charge as head of the government and prepare the country for presidential elections in the next two months.

Moïse, a former entrepreneur, was the anointed political successor of the former president Michel Martelly. The assassination is likely to plunge the impoverished Caribbean nation into further turmoil after several years marked by political unrest and violence.

The US embassy said it would be closed on Wednesday owing to the “ongoing security situation”. “We’re still gathering information,” the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said on MSNBC. “We’re still assessing right now.”

“It’s a horrific crime,” Psaki added in an interview with CNN. “We stand ready and stand by them to provide any assistance that’s needed.”

Advertisement

Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, said: “I am shocked and saddened at the death of President Moïse. Our condolences are with his family and the people of Haiti. This is an abhorrent act and I call for calm at this time.”

As details of the assassination emerged, the Colombian president, Iván Duque, called on the Organisation of American States to send an urgent mission to “protect the democratic order in Haiti”.

Moïse’s time in office was marked by an increase in political instability, allegations of corruption and a long-running dispute about when his period in office should end. He had been ruling by decree for more than a year after the country failed to hold legislative elections and he wanted to push through controversial constitutional changes.

There have been intermittent periods of protests and street violence and a rise in gang violence, some of it tied to political parties.

Killers lurk in the shadows as Haiti chaos takes a sinister turn

Read more

Haiti’s opposition claims Moïse should have stepped down on 7 February to coincide with the fifth anniversary of 2015 elections that were cancelled and then re-run a year later because of allegations of fraud. They allege that because Moïse failed to hold legislative elections in 2019, he violated the country’s 1987 constitution. His supporters rejected that argument, saying he only took power in 2017 after winning the re-run. In February the US said it supported Moïse’s position that he had the right to govern until February 2022.

Instability has been exacerbated by the Petrocaribe scandal, a controversy that arose from a scheme to buy discounted oil from Venezuela on cheap credit. The idea was to free up funds for social schemes, but the money was pocketed by politicians.

Earlier this year amid allegations by Moïse of a coup attempt that planned to “murder him” and fresh protests, he moved to protect his position, ordering the arrest of 23 people including a supreme court judge and a senior police official, while declaring he was “not a dictator”.

Opponents had also accused Moïse’s government of fuelling political violence by providing gangs with guns and money to intimidate his adversaries.

The Caribbean country – the world’s first black republic after its revolution against French rule – has a history marked by poverty, authoritarian rule, political instability and external interference including a long US occupation. It has struggled to rebuild since a devastating earthquake in 2010 and Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

ALSO SEE

HaitiLibre.com : Haiti news, news 7/7, diaspora, politics, insecurity, elections, economy and more...

Turkmenistan: Some Maternity Wards in Secretly Offer Abandoned Babies For Illegal Adoption

July 8, 2021
By RFE RL


(RFE/RL) — Some maternity wards in Turkmenistan secretly offer abandoned babies for illegal adoption to prospective parents willing to pay a bribe to skip the normal bureaucracy and long wait that goes with the process, several sources tell RFE/RL.

The illegal deal often involves employees from registry offices who provide the new parents with false birth certificates that show them as the biological parents, the sources claim.

People with knowledge of the deals blame rampant corruption in the agencies involved in the legal adoption process for pushing some parents to a “cheaper and faster” option.

RFE/RL spoke to a married couple who admitted illegally adopting a baby in 2020 after paying about $4,300 in bribes. The couple, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they initially tried for three years to adopt a child legally, but without success.

Like many other countries, Turkmenistan requires prospective parents to provide documents from various agencies to ensure their suitability to adopt a child. The couple said they diligently assembled the necessary documents and submitted them, but each official involved in the process demanded bribes and deliberately delayed the process, the husband said.

Then, in the autumn of 2020, a Registry Office worker suggested another option: to adopt a newborn from a maternity ward and “experience all the joys of raising a child from the very beginning.”

“She gave me the name of a doctor at the maternity hospital who would help me to get a baby and said it wouldn’t cost a lot,” the man said. “I knew that such a practice existed, but I didn’t know anyone who could help me.”

The couple decided to approach the maternity hospital doctor, who found them an infant allegedly abandoned by his mother. Soon thereafter they became parents to a newborn baby boy through an illegal adoption.

Sign up for the Eurasia Review newsletter. Click here to have Eurasia Review's newsletter delivered via RSS, as an email newsletter, via mobile or on your personal news page.

The employee at the Registry Office helped them obtain a birth certificate. In all of the documents the couple are registered as the biological parents of the child.

The process cost the family about 15,000 manats or nearly $4,300 at the official exchange rate. It’s a significant amount of money in the country, but the couple say they were happy to pay.

The new parents say they don’t see “anything wrong” in the way they got their son, who “is being raised in a loving family.”

“After all, the child was abandoned — he could have ended up in an orphanage,” the wife said. “The day we brought him home was the happiest day of our lives. Of course, we’d prefer everything was done legally.”

The couple blame corrupt officials for leaving them “with no other choice” in the matter.

‘Illegal Trafficking’

RFE/RL has asked Turkmen government officials for comment several times since interviewing the couple in June. There has thus far been no response.

Officials in the secretive, authoritarian Central Asian country usually refuse to speak to the independent media. But speaking on condition of anonymity, an official at a regional health department confirmed to RFE/RL that illegal adoptions at maternity wards do indeed take place. The official condemned the practice as “child trafficking.”

“It’s illegal trafficking in babies, no more and no less,” the official said. “The price of the child in this unlawful trade can rise to several thousand manats.”

Like the adoptive parents, the official said the “very complex adoption process and rampant bribery in the system” were the main reason some “desperate prospective parents” chose the illegal option.

“In the legal process, they have to go through dozens of government agencies and pay bribes to each of them. They usually wait for years before the documents are approved,” the official said. “Also, orphanages in Turkmenistan usually offer older children for adoption, while many parents [prefer] infants.”

One married couple in the eastern Farap district told RFE/RL that they had to provide documents and letters from 40 different agencies to support their adoption application. Yet three years later there was still no decision on their bid.

Meanwhile, wealthier applicants in Farap received a child for legal adoption within four months after applying because they paid up to 50,000 manats (about $14,300) in bribes, they said.

“We don’t have such money to pay,” the couple lamented.

Written by Farangis Najibullah based on reporting by RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service

RFE RL

RFE/RL journalists report the news in 21 countries where a free press is banned by the government or not fully established

Ancient Islamic Tombs Cluster Like Galaxies


Landscape views of scatters of qubbas around the Jebel Maman.

CREDIT: Stefano Costanzo (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

July 8, 2021 
By Eurasia Review

Sudanese Islamic burial sites are distributed according to large-scale environmental factors and small-scale social factors, creating a galaxy-like distribution pattern, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Stefano Costanzo of the University of Naples “L’Orientale” in Italy and colleagues.

The Kassala region of eastern Sudan is home to a vast array of funerary monuments, from the Islamic tombs of modern Beja people to ancient burial mounds thousands of years old. Archaeologists don’t expect these monuments are randomly placed; their distribution is likely influenced by geological and social factors. Unraveling the patterns of the funerary landscape can provide insight into ancient cultural practices of the people who built them.

In this study, Costanzo and colleagues collected a dataset of over 10,000 funerary monuments in the region, distributed over 4000 km2, identified by field work and remote sensing using satellite imagery. They then analyzed the arrangement of these sites using a Neyman-Scott Cluster model, originally developed to study spatial patterns of stars and galaxies. This model revealed that, just like stars cluster around centers of high gravity, burials in Kassala cluster in the hundreds around central “parent” points which likely represent older tombs of importance.

The authors hypothesize that the larger scale distribution of tombs is determined by the environment, with “high-gravity” areas centering on regions with favorable landscapes and available building materials. Smaller scale distribution seems to be a social phenomenon, with tombs commonly built nearby older structures, possibly including recent family burials or more ancient burials of traditional importance. This is the first time this cosmological approach has been applied to archaeology, representing a fresh tool for answering questions about the origins of archaeological sites.

The authors add: “An international team of archaeologists discovered the environmental and societal drivers underlying the creation of the monumental funerary landscape of Eastern Sudan with a novel application of advanced geospatial analysis.”

Secret To Weathering Climate Change Lies At Our Feet

Drought-stricken farmland in New Mexico. 

CREDIT: Richard Wellenberger/iStock/Getty Images 

July 8, 2021
By Eurasia Review

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently discovered that the ability of agricultural grasses to withstand drought is directly related to the health of the microbial community living on their stems, leaves and seeds.

“Microbes do an enormous amount for the grasses that drive the world’s agriculture,” says Emily Bechtold, a graduate student in UMass Amherst’s microbiology department and lead author of the paper recently published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology. “They protect from pathogens, provide the grass with nutrients such as nitrogen, supply hormones to bolster the plant’s health and growth, protect from UV radiation and help the grass manage drought.” Yet, the increased severity and longevity of climate-change-driven drought conditions across the world is sapping the ability of the microbiome to thrive.

Since 60% of all agriculture is grass-related – think of the cows, sheep and other grass-munching livestock that provide meat, milk, cheese, leather, wool and other staples – the bacteria living on grass touches every aspect of our lives, from what we eat for breakfast to food security, economics and international development.

The new research, which is the first of its kind, focuses on two different types of grasses: those that make up the majority of grasslands in temperate zones and those that predominate in tropical regions. “The goal of this research,” says Klaus Nüsslein, professor of microbiology at UMass Amherst, and the paper’s senior author, “is to be able to manage the interactions between plants and the bacteria they host in order to support a truly sustainable agriculture.” Until now, however, it was largely unknown how grass and its microbiome supported one another, and what effects drought might have on the bacterial communities.

The researchers, whose work was supported by the Lotta M. Crabtree Foundation and the National Science Foundation, grew their temperate and tropical grasses in two different greenhouses. Each greenhouse’s climate was controlled to mimic natural climactic conditions. Once the grasses reached maturity, the researchers further divided each group into three sub-groups. The first, the control group, maintained optimum climactic conditions. A second sub-group had its climate altered to mimic mild drought conditions, while the third was subjected to severe drought conditions. Over the course of a month, the researchers counted, gathered, and sequenced the DNA of the bacteria across all the groups of grasses and compared the results.

What they found was that when the bacteria showed signs of drought-induced stress, so did the plants. As expected, the tropical grasses were better able to withstand drought than the temperate grasses, but there were significant shifts in the microbiomes of all the grasses under severe drought conditions. Not only were there fewer total bacteria, but the microbial communities became less diverse, and so less resilient to environmental stress. In some cases, there was an increase in the count of bacteria that can prove harmful to grass.

However, there is hope. A few potentially beneficial bacteria were shown to thrive under mild drought conditions. More research needs to be done, but, says Bechtold, their research indicates that plans to actively support and biofertilize with these beneficial bacteria could be the key to weathering the drought conditions that will only become more widespread in the era of global warming.

 

festiv

Canada indigenous community signs agreement with government to reclaim child welfare jurisdiction

Lubaina Baloch | U. Calgary Law School, CA

JULY 8, 2021 04:15:52 AM

The Cowessess First Nation became the first Canadian Indigenous community on Tuesday to sign an agreement with the Canadian and Saskatchewan governments under Canada’s landmark Bill C-92 passed in 2019. The subsequent legislation empowered Indigenous communities to reclaim jurisdiction based on their own history, culture and laws. The jurisdiction is recognized as federal law and is prioritized over provincial and family services laws. Notably, Cowessess First Nation announced the discovery of an estimated 751 unmarked graves near a former residential school in Saskatchewan earlier this month.

A ceremony and signing celebration took place at the Cowessess First Nation Powwow Grounds, where the First Nation team finalized the agreement with the governments. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe travelled to the Saskatchewan community to announce the agreement with Chief Cadmus Delorme.

Before the agreement signing, Chief Delorme explained the state of affairs of children in care, stating that jurisdiction over such children has been removed from the First Nation since 1951, such that non-Indigenous laws governed the final decision-making and judicial decision-making processes. However, a positive step was taken under Bill C-92 in March 2020, when the Cowessess First Nation passed legislation intended to give Indigenous communities greater control over child welfare in their communities while reducing the number of Indigenous children in foster care. He added that the responsibility for children in care is:

Part of the long-term goal of controlling our own plan to self-government based on our Inherent Rights and Treaty relationship. The coordination agreement is a transition plan to assure the transfer of jurisdiction is professional and at the pace of Cowessess First Nation. The fiscal agreement confirms the investment the Government of Canada and Government of Saskatchewan takes in supporting the Cowessess First Nation.

The current Canadian system has been criticized for several shortcomings, such as not meeting the cultural needs of Indigenous children and their consistent overrepresentation in the care system. In 2016, federal data found that over 52.2 percent of children under age 15 in foster care were Indigenous, despite only representing 7.7 percent of the child population.

To help the Cowessess community establish its independent child and family services system, Ottawa will contribute $38.7 million over the next two years. Other Indigenous groups have also shown intentions to control their child and family services regimes.

Furthermore, Trudeau has indicated that the Canadian government is working with other First Nation communities to establish similar agreements. In addition to bringing changes to the child welfare programs, such agreements will possibly transfer control in other areas such as education, health care and business.

Former Military Commissions Prosecutor Calls For Closure Of Guantánamo – OpEd


This is a guard tower at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Credit: US Navy

July 8, 2021

By Andy Worthington

Since Joe Biden was inaugurated as president in January, there has been a considerable outpouring of high-level demands for the closure of the shameful and disgraceful prison at Guantánamo Bay, which marked the 19th anniversary of its opening just before Biden’s inauguration, as the fatigue of the Trump years, when the White House was occupied by a president with no interest in addressing the horrors of Guantánamo, came to an end.

In January, seven former prisoners (all authors) had a letter published in the New York Review of Books calling for the prison’s closure, followed in February by a letter from 111 human rights organizations, including Close Guantánamo. Most significantly, in April, 24 Democratic Senators, including Dick Durbin, Patrick Leahy and Dianne Feinstein, followed up with their own demand for the prison’s closure, including detailed explanations of how that is possible.

There have also been op-eds by former Bill Clinton advisor Anthony Lake and Close Guantánamo co-founder Tom Wilner, by Lee Wolosky, the former Special Envoy for Guantánamo Closure, by retired Rear Admirals Donald J. Guter and John Hutson, by former CIA analyst Gail Helt, by Valerie Lucznikowska of September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, and by the attorney Benjamin R. Farley, who represents one of the men accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, as part of the DoD’s Military Commissions Defense Organization.

Last week, Omar Ashmawy, a former prosecutor in the military commissions, set up after 9/11 specifically to prosecute a handful of the nearly 800 men held without charge or trial at Guantánamo over the last 19 years, made his own contribution via an op-ed in the Washington Post, which I’m cross-posting below.

Ashmawy’s op-ed begins with a shocking insight into quite how long Guantánamo has been open, and how elusive justice has been. He was, he explains, “one of the prosecutors for the only two litigated U.S. military tribunals since Nuremberg” — the trials 13 years ago, in 2008, of Salim Hamdan, a driver for Osama bin Laden, who was released five months later, and Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, who made promotional videos for al-Qaeda, and was given a life sentence after refusing to mount a defense.

Prior to these trials, one prisoner (David Hicks) negotiated a plea deal, and since then five other cases have proceeded to trial (of Ibrahim al-Qosi, Omar Khadr, Noor Uthman Muhammed, Ahmed al-Darbi and Majid Khan), and have also involved plea deals. However, the last of these was nearly ten years ago, and many of them have been overturned on appeal, on the basis that, as Ashmawy explains, they involved “charging ex-post facto crimes such as ‘material support for terrorism’ that didn’t exist before 9/11, in violation of the U.S. Constitution.”

Ashmawy describes how “drag[ging] the judicial process out for this long — up to nearly 20 years — is absurd and un-American,” and also explains that, during his service, from 2007 to 2009, his entire experience of the commissions confirmed only that it was an irreparably broken system. He calls on President Biden to end this long betrayal of justice by prosecuting those charged with crimes to face federal court trials on the US mainland, and to bring the very existence of the prison at Guantánamo Bay to an end by releasing everyone else.

As he states, “Guantánamo was designed to bypass the Constitution and the U.S. criminal justice system. It failed because that idea is contrary to American principles.” As he also explains, “If we can bring home our troops from Afghanistan by September 2021, we can close Guantánamo by then as well. We must.”

I was one of the prosecutors for the only two litigated U.S. military tribunals since Nuremberg. These were the trials of Salim Ahmed Hamdan and Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, who were among those detained at Guantánamo Bay Naval Baseafter the attacks of 9/11. While it’s been 12 yearssince I served in Guantánamo, and the number of detainees has dropped dramatically,the realities that must be faced for trials to proceed haven’t changed. Military tribunals are sometimes a necessary consequence of war, but to drag the judicial process out for this long —up to nearly 20 years — is absurd and un-American. It’s an abandonment of our commitment to rule of law and what we consider to be fair jurisprudence.

My entire experience at Guantánamo was a rude awakening. I believed in the system after the first failed effort at prosecuting alleged terrorists was repaired in the Supreme Court case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, where the court acknowledged the unconstitutionality of the process. I thought our pursuit of justicecould be fair and impartial, and an example to the world. I was wrong. Everything I saw and experienced while serving in that assignment convinced me of that. Nothing I’ve observed since has changed my mind.

For years, leaders across the political, legal and humanitarian spectrum have called for the prison at Guantánamo to be closed.Thus far, the Biden administration has paid only lip service to that idea, except for clearing the potential release of three detainees who are still in custody.Without a comprehensive plan for trying the others — or, themore politically difficult alternative,releasing many of them without trial — closing the facility is impossible. Practically, this would meancoming to terms with the crimes the United States has committed: torture, extraordinary rendition and indefinite, illegal confinement — all of which are antithetical to our concepts of justice and international norms. Can you imagine the outrage if an American were snatched off the streets of Cancún, Mexico, accused of crimes, tortured until they confessed and held formore than 10 yearswithout trial? It would be an act of war.

Except for U.S. v. Hamdan and the case against Bahlul, we have been unable to successfully litigate a tribunal since Sept. 11, 2001. Two decades of failed efforts speak for itself — no tribunal held in Guantánamo after nearly20 years of unlawful confinement could come to a conclusion that the legal or humanitarian community will accept. The recent ruling in U.S. v. Nashiri — saying a jury can’t hear evidence derived from torture, but the same evidence can be introduced to bring an accused person to trial — is too little too late; it’s a Band-Aid that only accentuates the failures of the process.

As an American, a former military officer and an attorney, I am disgusted by what I witnessed during the George W. Bush presidency and continued to observe over the next two administrations. A short list includes the lack of transparency; the fiscally irresponsiblecost of maintaining the prison; the intelligence community’s continued lack of cooperation; the palpable anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiment; and charging ex-post facto crimes such as “material support for terrorism” that didn’t exist before 9/11, in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Legally, the answer is as simple as it is politically difficult. Of the original approximately 780 original detainees, 40 remain —almost all of whom have been detained for 15 years or more — and only seven are facing a military trial. Some prominent voices are calling for the immediate release of the 28 prisoners who have yet to be charged with any crime. That should be done, but it does not go far enough. We should bring the individuals who can be tried to the United States for prosecution in federal courts. Release the rest. Yes, there will be recidivism, but we must address that on the battlefield, not by continuing to abandon our judicial standardsof right and wrong.

To those who fear bringing committed terrorists to prisons on U.S. territory: They are already here. To those who think civilian federal courts can’t handle crimes of international terror: They already have — almost 1,000 cases of international terrorism have been prosecuted by the Justice Department since 9/11, with an 84 percent record of conviction.

Guantánamo was designed to bypass the Constitution and the U.S. criminal justice system. It failed because that idea is contrary to American principles. Putting it more bluntly: When it comes to our foreign enemies, we must kill them or arrest and try them for their crimes. Anything else is a setup for failure. If this administration is committed to ending the forever wars of 9/11, it cannot do so without closing one of the last vestiges of them. If we can bring home our troops from Afghanistan by September 2021, we can close Guantánamo by then as well. We must.

Omar Ashmawy, staff director and chief counsel for the Office of Congressional Ethics, is a retired Air Force major who served as a war crimes prosecutor from 2007 to 2009.

I wrote the above article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner

 Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to his RSS feed (he can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see his definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, and, if you appreciate his work, feel free to make a donation.