South Africa violence reflects ‘toxic mixtures of unequal society,’ cleric says

Ngala Killian Chimtom

CRUX
Jul 17, 2021

AFRICA CORRESPONDENT

A protester in a wheelchair passes a burning tyre in Johannesburg, Sunday, July 11, 2021. Protests have spread from the KwaZulu Natal province to Johannesburg against the imprisonment of former South African President Jacob Zuma who was imprisoned last week for contempt of court. (Credit: AP Photo/Yeshiel Panchia.)


(YAOUNDÈ, Cameroon) – To capture the bleak mood in South Africa, which is reeling from a new wave of violence that compounds long-standing political and social tensions, Father Peter John Pearson, head of the Parliamentary Liaison Office of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, needs just five words.

“These are difficult days indeed,” Pearson told Crux.

At least 72 people so far have died, some of whom were trampled to death after violence broke out in two South Africa provinces, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, following the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma.

Zuma was sentenced to a 15-month jail term last week for defying a court order to give evidence before a jury investigating corruption charges during his nine-year tenure as the country’s president from 2009 to 2018.

His incarceration was the immediate trigger of the ongoing violence and looting, but Pearson says the underlying reasons have to do with economic inequalities caused by “three centuries of racism and sanctioned injustices.”

“The violence is totally unparalleled in our recent history,” he said.

“There are many who are of the opinion that this might have begun as a protest against former President Zuma’s incarceration, but it is, in fact, an outburst of the pent-up anger at exclusion from the benefits of the economy, the deepening chasm between those who have and those who don’t, and all the toxic mixtures of an unequal society,” he told Crux in an exclusive interview.

Official statistics speak volumes about how unequal South Africa has been for centuries.

They point to an unemployment rate of 32.6 percent among the work force in general, which rises to 46.3 percent among young people. Income gaps are widening, with CEOs and top lawyers earning as high as $1.4 million a year, while the minimum wage remains a mere $1.40 an hour. The same goes to the widening gap between rich and poor, with South Africa accounting for the largest number of millionaires and billionaires of any nation in Sub Saharan Africa while nearly half its 55 million people are considered chronically poor, according to the Mauritius-based AfrAsia Bank.

Pearson said all these reasons led South Africa to be seen as “a ticking bomb, and it took one thing – it could have been anyone of a dozen triggers – for the bomb to explode.”

“The heart-breaking sadness is that these wanton acts of violence have now rendered thousands more people unemployed thus increasing the burden of poverty and unemployment.”

The cleric said the violence was a test for South Africa’s “democracy and for constitutionality.”

In essence, many Zuma supporters are calling for an expedient political solution to quell the violence, which might involve giving the former resident some sort of public space to calm things down. Pearson, however, sees risks in that approach.

“This would probably be unwise, partly because it’s not at all certain that the numbers involved in the violence represents support for the former president and therefore people over whom he would hold sway. The numbers represent a combination of disgruntled, genuinely aggrieved and opportunists [persons], and calling for his release to quell the violence is not a guarantee. It would give him and his supporters political kudos,” he told Crux.

“It also runs the risk of setting a precedent that others whose day in court is close might try similar tactics,” Pearson said.

The recent violence and accompanying looting marks a stain on the hopes and dreams triggered by the collapse of Apartheid in 1994, but the cleric believes those expectations should “always be tempered by the harsh reality that they started from a legacy of injustice, and so were always going to be hugely difficult to implement. “

He said giving life to the hopes and dreams has been further impeded by a “culture of corruption.”

“We must remember that every act of corruption is a theft from the poor and so an already toxic reality was compounded by this pathology,” Pearson said.

“One of the truths we are going to have to deal with going forward is not just a firm destruction of the culture of corruption but also a close examination of the way privilege still clings to its previous beneficiaries.”

“Racial privilege is still one of the elephants in the room and that too has to be interrogated. If these pathologies are not dealt with then we will always have a deeply fractured nation and social cohesion will always be tenuous,” he said.

Meanwhile, Catholic Bishops in South Africa have called for an end to the violence.

In a July 13 statement, the President of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC), Bishop Sithembele Sipuka of Umtata, called on South Africans to rise above political interests to protect lives.

“Let us not allow the difference of opinion on political matters to be hijacked by criminal intentions to create anarchy in our country that will result in a worse social and economic situation than we presently find ourselves in,” Sipuka said.

“To those who incite this violence and looting for political ends, we call upon them to rise above political interests, to protect life, and to preserve the common good,” he added.

Recalling that it was dialogue that triggered the end of apartheid and the transition to democracy, Sipuka called on all South Africans to “continue to choose the path of dialogue” to settle their differences.

Watch Malaysian officials destroy hundreds of (BITCOIN) mining rigs with steamroller

Brittany A. Roston - Jul 17, 2021, 1:59pm CDT

Officials in Malaysia have taken drastic measures to ensure more than a thousand mining rigs won’t make their way back onto the market to siphon more energy from the nation’s power grid. Local media has published a video of 1,069 mining rigs spread across the ground where they’re systematically flattened using a massive steamroller.

Cryptocurrency has grown into a major commodity and, as a result, an increasing number of massive mining rig farms have popped up around the world. These mining farms often involve dozens or hundreds of mining rigs that grind away 24/7 to mine various digital coins, most commonly Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Unfortunately, officials in multiple countries have discovered mining rig setups that illegally tap into electricity sources, pulling huge amounts of energy from the local power grid while racking up vast bills that will never be paid. In some cases, these mining rig farms are discovered after energy usage and heat signals lead law enforcement to suspect the presence of massive marijuana growing operations.

Though mining crypto isn’t illegal (in most places), stealing electricity is. That is reportedly an issue Malaysia has faced repeatedly, according to local publication Dayak Daily. The report claims half a dozen police raids were conducted in a joint effort by Sarawak Energy Berhad and Miri police from February to April. A total of 1,069 mining rigs were seized and multiple individuals were arrested over alleged theft of electricity.

It seems now that charges were made and jail sentences were issued, the police had no use for the mining rigs. Rather than storing them or auctioning them off, officials decided to smash all 1,069 of them to pieces using heavy machinery. Though it’s painful to see useable hardware go to waste in this way, the dramatic video does serve as a message to others who may consider siphoning energy for their own crypto operations.

Wilhelm Reich; The sexual revolution: toward a self-governing character structure.

"At the end of the Second World War, Wilhelm Reich introduced American readers to some of his earlier writings under the title The Sexual Revolution (1945). Explaining that this revolution went to the "roots" of human emotional, social, and economic existence, he presented himself as a radical (from Latin radix: root), i.e. as a man who examines these roots and who then fearlessly speaks the truth that sets humanity free. when the revolution came to Russia, it expressly included equal rights for women and universal sexual freedom in its program. Thus, for the first time, a "sexual revolution" became official government policy. Unfortunately, as Reich described in his book, after a few years the Russian Revolution betrayed its libertarian goals by becoming sexually oppressive. Reactionary laws were reinstated, and soon, together with many other civil rights, the right to free sexual expression vanished. Reich concluded from this observation that the mere transfer of power from one social class to another was not enough, and that a much more profound transformation was required. Indeed, he felt that such a transformation was already well under way in the United States and other enlightened Western democracies. Therefore, it was no longer a question of wealth or poverty, communism or capitalism, but simply a question of individual autonomy, of a "self-governing character structure". This was an ideal that had to be realized in defiance of all existing political systems with the help of natural science." THE SEX ATLAS Erwin J. Haeberle, Ph.D., Ed.D.

As Reich would write in the Mass Psychology of Fascism anti-sex is anti-freedom. It is used to repress rebellion in the working class and move them towards mysticism, in current terms; reactionary politics and religious fundamentalism Hence the right wing's fetish to deny any value to womens liberation or the sexual revolution,they instead blame these movements for a purported crisis in values. A crisis of their own creation, since their so called family values are a narrow definition of social reality.

" Reich's main, if somewhat eccentric, contribution to the study of collective behavior comes from his Massenpsychologie des Faschismus, first published in German in 1933, later revised, and finally published in English translation in 1946. Here Reich claims to combine the best insights of Freud and Marx to produce a definitive account of the role the masses played, in both economic and psychological terms, in the success of fascism. For Reich, fascism is ultimately the result of the irrational structure of the "mass individual." Any social change depends on mass action: no leader can corrupt an unwilling mass. But the members of the masses do not act in a rational, predictable fashion. Starting from a Marxian concept of the oppressed working class, what Reich finds to be irrational is the fact that starving workers don't strike or steal bread. Mass psychology's task, in Reich's view, is to explain the difference between economic conditions and "characterological" ones-thus accounting for the reactionary nature of some workers, despite their economic repression. He hypothesizes that every social structure creates for itself in the masses of its members the psychological structure which it needs for its main purposes-beyond simple economic inhibition. In modern society, this involves the sexual repression of the working individual. Thus the need for "sex economic" mass psychology, an account of mass behavior which takes into account the various forces that have prohibited the masses from freely expressing their sexual energy and have thus subverted them into betraying their self-interest." From Standford University Humanities Laboratory: Crowds, Theorists.

'Smart' default enrollment policies under ACA can help consumers save, study finds



"Smart" enrollment can help consumers insured under the Affordable Care Act leverage savings, a new study has found. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

July 16 (UPI) -- A "smart" default enrollment policy that automatically shifts low-income consumers to Affordable Care Act plans with discounted premiums, reduced deductibles and "generous" benefits would decrease monthly costs by more than $100, a study published Friday by JAMA Health Forum found.

The concept effectively leverages a provision under the American Rescue Plan, signed into law by President Joe Biden in March, which increases tax credit subsidies through 2022 to reduce marketplace plans' premiums for qualifying enrollees, the researchers said.

Because of the provision, under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, a person earning 150% of the federal poverty level pays essentially pays nothing for a "silver" plan on the health marketplace, the researchers said.

Currently, though, consumers insured under the ACA who automatically enroll in the same health insurance plan at the start of a new year may unwittingly end up with coverage that costs more and provides fewer benefits.

Instead, their "smart" enrollment strategy would automatically enroll in a plan that provides the same benefits as their current one, at the same or lower cost, the researchers said.

"Life changes, policies change and choice changes, so a good choice this year [under the ACA] may or may not be your best choice next year," study co-author David M. Anderson told UPI in an email.

"The American Rescue Plan has upped subsidies for everyone, made zero premium plans available to more people with less cost-sharing -- active choice makes the possibility of a bad choice being made far lower," said Anderson, a researcher at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

Since July 1, unemployed people have been able to enroll in health coverage under the ACA with significant federal subsidies that could help lower premiums to as little as zero per month.

The change allows anyone who received or was approved to receive unemployment compensation for any week in 2021 to apply for subsidized coverage, at least through the end of 2022, according to Anderson and his colleagues.

However, even with increased subsidies, consumers who choose to automatically roll over their insurance plan from 2021 to 2022 could end up with a plan that costs more and provides poorer coverage, the researchers said.

This is because plans with the same name often change benefits, deductibles and co-pays from year to year, meaning consumers who think they are getting the same coverage at the same cost will actually pay more for less, they said.

The "smart" default concept, first proposed by the Hamilton Project in 2015, would mitigate this by allowing consumers enrolled in existing plans to "default" or opt into different existing plans during open enrollment based on cost and value.

In their analysis of nearly 750,000 ACA enrollees in California, nearly 6% under current policy would default into more expensive plans -- even with American Rescue Plan subsidies -- with "less generous" benefits, the data showed.

Of these enrollees, 98% would have incomes below 250% of the federal poverty level, the researchers said.

However, with a smart enrollment strategy, these same consumers would default to plans that save them, on average, $102 in monthly premium costs, nearly $2,000 in annual deductibles and almost $50 specialty prescription co-pays, they said.

"State and federal exchanges have significant data on individuals and households that are returning to the [ACA] marketplaces for 2022," Anderson said.

"They can leverage this data to help eliminate objectively bad choices by defaulting individuals into plans that are not objectively dominated by options that are offered by the same insurer on the same network," he said.

Fauci: US might 'still have polio' if media back then opposed vaccine

Issued on: 17/07/2021 -

Top US disease expert Anthony Fauci, seen speaking to a New York church group on June 6, 2021, has said that polio might not have been eliminated if it faced the media resistance that Covid vaccines face 

Jeenah Moon GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File


Washington (AFP)

Top US scientist Anthony Fauci on Saturday blasted commentators who sound an anti-vaccination theme, saying America might still be battling smallpox and polio if today's kind of misinformation existed back then.

The comments from the country's leading infectious disease expert reflected mounting frustration over the sharp slowdown in the Covid-19 vaccination rate in the United States, even as the disease has been surging in states with low rates.

It also came days after President Joe Biden expressed his own visible frustration, saying social media that carry widely heard misinformation about vaccines are "killing people."

Fauci was responding to a CNN interviewer who asked if he thought "we could have defeated the measles or eradicated polio if you had Fox News, night after night, warning people about these vaccine issues that are just bunk."

Fauci said: "We probably would still have smallpox and we probably would still have polio ... if we had the kind of false information that's being spread."

Initial vaccine skepticism in many areas has increasingly evolved into outright hostility, a message magnified by baseless conspiracy theories regularly aired on Fox and other conservative networks.

"Maybe it doesn't work and they're simply not telling you that," Tucker Carlson, one of Fox's most popular commentators, said recently.

The vaccines have instead proved extraordinarily effective. Officials in Maryland, for example, said that not one of the people who died of the disease last month in the state had been vaccinated.

To suggestions of sending vaccine educators door-to-door to encourage people to get the jab, Fox commentator Charlie Hurt said, "They've become like the Taliban."

Conservative politicians have increasingly echoed former president Donald Trump's mockery of Covid precautions.

Door-to-door educators, suggested Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, might instead come and take people's guns -- or their Bibles.

After an initial burst of vaccinations around the country, the pace has slowed sharply.

Biden's announced goal of having 70 percent of adults vaccinated by July 4 fell short by about three points, and the vaccination rate has slowed further since then, even as the disease's Delta variant has spread rapidly.

A few Republicans have sought to place blame for the disease's ravages and economic dislocations on the widely respected Fauci himself.

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has introduced the so-called Fire Fauci Act, calling for his salary to be reduced to zero and requiring the Senate to confirm a replacement. The bill is not expected to go anywhere.

Fauci was asked on CNN about T-shirts being sold by a political action group linked to Florida governor Ron DeSantis that say "Don't Fauci My Florida."

He appeared genuinely perplexed.

"Taking an individual who stands for public health, for truth... and to use my name in a derogatory way to prevent people from doing things that's for the benefit of their own health, go figure that one out.

"That doesn't make any sense at all," he said, shaking his head.

© 2021 AFP

Environmental concerns grow as space tourism lifts off

Issued on: 18/07/2021 - 

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo uses a type of synthetic rubber as fuel and burns it in nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas Patrick T. FALLON AFP/File

Washington (AFP)

After years of waiting, Richard Branson's journey to space this month on a Virgin Galactic vessel was supposed to be a triumphant homecoming. Instead, the jaunt attracted significant criticism -- about its carbon footprint.

With Jeff Bezos set to launch on a Blue Origin rocket on July 20, and Elon Musk's SpaceX planning an all-civilian orbital mission in September, the nascent space tourism industry finds itself facing tough questions about its environmental impact.

Right now, rocket launches as a whole don't happen often enough to pollute significantly.


"The carbon dioxide emissions are totally negligible compared to other human activities or even commercial aviation," NASA's chief climate advisor Gavin Schmidt told AFP.

But some scientists are worried about the potential for longer term harm as the industry is poised for major growth, particularly impacts to the ozone layer in the still poorly understood upper atmosphere.

Virgin Galactic, which came under fire in op-eds on CNN and Forbes, as well as on social media, for sending its billionaire founder to space for a few minutes in a fossil fuel-guzzling spaceship, says its carbon emissions are about equivalent to a business-class ticket from London to New York.

The company "has already taken steps to offset the carbon emissions from its test flights and is examining opportunities to offset the carbon emissions for future customer flights, and reduce our supply chain's carbon footprint," it said in a statement to AFP.

But while transatlantic flights carry hundreds of people, Virgin's emissions work out to around 4.5 tonnes per passenger in a six passenger flight, according to an analysis published by French astrophysicist Roland Lehoucq and colleagues in The Conversation.

That's roughly equivalent to driving a typical car around the Earth, and more than twice the individual annual carbon budget recommended to meet the objectives of the Paris climate accord.

"The issue here is really one of disproportionate impacts," Darin Toohey, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder told AFP.

"I actually grew up on the space program and that got me into science.... but if someone offered me a free ride, I would be very nervous taking it because I would know that my own footprint is way larger than it should be," he said.

- Cleaner fuels possible -

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo uses a type of synthetic rubber as fuel and burns it in nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas.

The fuel pumps black carbon into upper stratosphere, 30-50 kilometers (18 to 30 miles) high.

Once there, these particles can have multiple impacts, from reflecting sunlight and causing a nuclear winter effect, to accelerating chemical reactions that deplete the ozone layer, which is vital to protecting people from harmful radiation.

"We could be at a dangerous point," said Toohey, who wants more scientific investigations into these effects before the launches become more frequent.

Virgin has said it wants to conduct 400 flights a year.

Compared to Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo spaceplanes, Blue Origin's are much cleaner, according to a recent paper by scientist Martin Ross of Aerospace, which Bezos' company plugged on Twitter.

That's because it burns liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, which combusts as water vapor.

Ross' paper found Blue Origin's vertical launch reusable rocket causes a hundred times less ozone loss and 750 times less climate forcing magnitude than Virgin's, according to ballpark calculations.

But that doesn't mean it's totally clean.

"It takes electricity to make liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen," Ross told AFP.

"You could go back and calculate how much electricity was used to make the propellant," he said. "It depends how far back in the supply chain you look."

- Space shaming? -

The impact of suborbital launches such as those by Virgin and Blue Origin pale in comparison to the impact of rockets that achieve orbit.

When SpaceX puts four private citizens into space in September, it will use its Falcon 9 rocket, which calculations show puts out the equivalent of 395 transatlantic flights-worth of carbon emissions.

"We are living in the era of climate change and starting an activity that increases emissions as part of a tourism activity is not good timing," Annette Toivonen, author of the book "Sustainable Space Tourism," told AFP.

The world is far more aware of the climate crisis now than when these companies were founded in the early 2000s and that could encourage businesses to look at ways to minimize pollution through cleaner technologies to get ahead of the problem.

"Who would want to be a space tourist if you can't tell people you were a space tourist?" argued Toivonen, who lectures at Finland's Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences.

© 2021 AFP

Deal! Sports trading cards boom in pandemic-era US

Issued on: 18/07/2021

Traders try to strike deals on sports cards at Bleecker Trading in New York on July 06, 2021 Kena Betancur AFP


New York (AFP)

Inside an unassuming store in New York's Greenwich Village, around a dozen men unlock black briefcases, remove sports cards and begin to trade them -- a growing hobby and industry that has boomed during the pandemic.

Excitement is high after a San Francisco-based investment fund announced earlier that day that it had bought a card of Golden State Warriors' basketball star Stephen Curry for $5.9 million, setting a new record.

Michael Campobasso, a 38-year-old jewelry dealer, hopes that sale will spur interest in his highly graded card of Curry from the three-time NBA champion's rookie 2009-10 season.


"After that card this is probably one of his more coveted cards. I'd sell it for $80,000," says Campobasso, who paid $25,000 for it last year.#photo1

The sports trading card industry has been growing for several years but coronavirus lockdowns reinvigorated hobbyists and attracted new ones, with investors helping to send prices skyrocketing.

"It's had a massive impact," Jacob Salter, product manager at Bleecker Trading which hosted the trade night in New York, said of the pandemic.

"People were home, they were bored, cooped up in their house, reliving their childhood. They started buying sports cards," added the 25-year-old.

The early days of lockdown coincided with the release in April 2020 of hit Netflix series "The Last Dance," about Michael Jordan's celebrated Chicago Bulls team of the 1990s.

It sent demand for Jordan memorabilia soaring and contributed towards basketball cards taking center stage in the sports trading card world, which had long been dominated by baseball.

In February this year, a rare Jordan card signed by the six-time NBA champion himself sold for $1.44 million at auction, breaking the previous record for a card of his by $500,000.

A LeBron James rookie card fetched $5.2 million in April.

Basketball cards dominate exchanges at the Bleecker Trading event, where organizer Salter estimates the total value of cards in the room over the course of the night at $20 million.

The authenticity of the cards have all been attested to by grading companies, which rate them on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the highest. Ratings factors include rarity and condition.

All of the cards are encased in see-through plastic "slabs," which the traders proudly display on racks inside hard suitcases that have combination number locks due to their contents' high-value.#photo3

For 28-year-old Vahe Hekimian, collecting sports cards started as a hobby that morphed into his main source of income.

"It's a passion. I love it. But I also sell to keep going," he tells AFP, explaining that sports stars' performances impact the value of their cards.

- 'Assets' -

He once paid $50,000 in a partial cash-trade transaction for rising NBA star Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks who will represent Slovenia at this summer's Olympics.

The most valuable trade of the night exceeds $90,000 and involves multiple cards, including of baseball hotshot Shohei Ohtani and young NFL quarterback Justin Herbert. Those involved want to remain anonymous.#photo4

Campobasso doesn't sell his card of Curry but he does strike a deal worth $11,000.

A 44-year-old collector calling himself Cage Lawyer, who owns a Jordan card worth half a million dollars, says trading cards are now increasingly seen as astute investments.

"People view them as an alternative asset class now, something akin to art and cryptocurrency. People are looking for something to put their money in to hedge against inflation," he explains.

The frenzy is a boon for the growing number of investment groups now trading in sports cards.

Alt, which invests in untraditional assets, estimates that the trading card market is currently worth $15 billion. It splashed out the $5.9 million on the autographed Curry card.

Collectable is another company that engages in fractional ownership where investors buy shares in cards.#photo5

PWCC is a trading card marketplace that holds auctions and runs a secure vault where owners can store their cards.

It expects to do over $500 million in sales this year, roughly three times what it did in 2020, according to business development director Jesse Craig.

"We're very confident that our industry is going to keep growing," he told AFP.

© 2021 AFP

Cuban president denounces unrest as a 'lie'

Issued on: 17/07/2021 -

A woman holds a flag with the image of late Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara in Havana, on July 17, 2021 YAMIL LAGE AFP


Havana (AFP)

Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel on Saturday denounced what he said was a false narrative over unrest on the Caribbean island, speaking during a rally alongside ex-president Raul Castro and before thousands of supporters in Havana.

"What the world is seeing of Cuba is a lie," Diaz-Canel said.

He decried what he said was the dissemination of "false images" on social networks that "encourage and glorify the outrage and destruction of property."


Diaz-Canel's comments come days after historic demonstrations against the communist government.

On July 11 and 12, thousands of Cubans took to the streets in 40 cities around the island shouting "Freedom," "Down with the dictatorship," and "We're hungry."

One person has died and more than 100 have been arrested, including independent journalists and opposition activists, since the protests broke out over the worst economic crisis in decades.

There is an "overflowing hatred on social networks," the president insisted on Saturday.

Cuba cut off internet access on the island from Sunday for three days after the protests erupted last weekend.

It restored access on Wednesday, but social media and messaging apps such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter remained blocked on 3G and 4G networks.

Social media is the only way Cubans can reach independent news outlets while messaging apps are their main means of communicating among themselves.

US President Joe Biden has said Washington is considering ways to ease internet restrictions, though analysts have warned it could be tricky for technological and political reasons.

- 'Cold calculation' -

Diaz-Canel said the "lie" was not committed "by chance or mistake; all this is the cold calculation of an unconventional-war manual."#photo1

The rallies are the largest since the Cuban revolution of the 1950s and come as the country endures its worst economic crisis in 30 years, with chronic shortages of electricity, food and medicine, just as it records a spike in coronavirus infections.

Havana, under US sanctions since 1962, has blamed the show of discontent on Washington pursuing a "policy of economic suffocation to provoke social unrest."

Biden called Cuba a "failed state" on Thursday and said it is "repressing their citizens." He said the US was prepared to potentially send significant amounts of Covid vaccine to the island. Cuba has also been developing its own vaccines.

"Born to conquer and not to be conquered!" shouted the crowd at the rally, which had gathered at dawn on the Malecon, Havana's famed oceanfront boulevard.

Castro, 90, was drawn out of retirement by the gravity of the protests.

Shortly before the rally began, police arrested a man who shouted "Patria y Vida" ("Homeland and Life"), the title of a protest rap song which has become the anthem of anti-government demonstrators.

The official newspaper Granma said similar rallies were called in other cities including Santiago de Cuba, Bayamo, Camaguey and Santa Clara.

© 2021 AFP

Billionaires in space: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin touts rocket safety



Blue Origin launches its New Shepard rocket and capsule from the company's launch site in West Texas on January 23, 2019. Photo courtesy of Blue Origin

July 16 (UPI) -- As Jeff Bezos prepares to become the second billionaire to blast into space on his own company's rocket next week, his Blue Origin is touting the safety of its rocket system.

The New Shepard suborbital rocket is scheduled for liftoff at 9 a.m. EDT Tuesday from the company's Corn Ranch launch site 160 miles east of El Paso, Texas -- pending any weather or technical delays.

Blue Origin officials said New Shepard's safety is elevated by an abort method. At any point in the launch process, the capsule is capable of popping off the rocket and flying to a safe landing under its parachutes.

"Blue Origin has been flight-testing the New Shepard rocket and its redundant safety systems since 2012," Gary Lai, senior director of design for New Shepard, said in a video released by the company.

"The program has had 15 successful consecutive test missions, including three successful escape tests, showing the crew escape system can activate safely in any phase of flight," Lai said.

Blue Origin's method not only is safer, but also feels more like a true astronaut experience because it is a rocket with vertical liftoff, compared to Virgin Galactic, whose plane that launched last Sunday takes off on a runway, said John Spencer, a space architect and president of the non-profit Space Tourism Society.

"The Bezos approach is more into the ethos of spaceflight, you might say," Spencer said in an interview. "There's even a gantry tower and a walkway. There's a countdown, a liftoff."

The capsule has "the largest windows to have flown in space," according to a Blue Origins fact sheet.

Bezos' vision to build an infrastructure that will permanently enable space exploration is his ultimate goal, Spencer said.

Bezos has said he chose July 20 for the launch because it is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.

"Like Elon Musk, Bezos' long-term plan from Day 1 one was to inspire people and eventually build orbital rockets and facilities on the moon," Spencer said.

The Blue Origin trip, however, will be over quick, he noted. After reaching space, passengers will experience a few minutes of weightlessness and then return to Earth under parachutes. Most New Shepard flights last about 11 minutes.

British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic flights last about 90 minutes. The length of time spent in weightlessness is about the same for both.

Riding with Bezos will be his brother, Mark Bezos, 82-year-old aviator Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen of the Netherlands. They will become the oldest and youngest people to fly in space, respectively, doing so on Blue Origin's first crewed flight.

"I want to go on this flight because it's a thing I wanted to do all my life. It's an adventure. It's a big deal for me. I invited my brother to come ... because we're closest friends," Bezos said in a June video posted on Instagram.

Bezos, who amassed a fortune from e-commerce giant Amazon, which he founded, bought the remote, 165,000 acre Corn Ranch in 2004 to make it a spaceport. Blue Origin has built several launchpads and engine testing stands there.

The historic launch is planned just nine days after Branson flew into space aboard his company's VSS Unity spaceplane, marking the first time the founder of a commercial space company did so.


Blue Origin also made a point on social media that its 59-foot-tall rocket will go at least a dozen miles higher than Branson's vehicle -- to the 62-mile Kármán line that much of the world defines as true outer space.

Space industry analysts will be watching closely to see which the public prefers, said Dallas Kasaboski, senior analyst with Northern Sky Research.

"Going to space will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most passengers, so they're going to study the difference between a rocket and a spaceplane," Kasaboski said. "Blue Origin has some advantages, but some may want a more leisurely, longer trip."

The big unknown about Blue Origin is the cost of a ticket under normal operations, Kasaboski said. Regardless, both new space tourism companies have proved there is plenty of demand, he said.

Blue Origin held an auction to sell a seat on the trip, and the winning bid was $28 million. But the bidder, whose name was not released, could not fly because of what was described as a schedule conflict.

Daemen's father, the CEO of a private equity firm, put the teen on the trip when his bid, the second highest, was then selected for Tuesday's launch. The teenager has a pilot's license and plans to major in physics in college.


Bezos says he expects the space experience will be profound.

"To see the Earth from space, it changes you. It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity. It's one Earth," he said.

Cannabis first domesticated 12,000 years ago: study

Issued on: 17/07/2021 

Cannabis has been used for millennia for textiles (THAT'S HEMP) and for its medicinal and recreational properties Fabrice COFFRINI AFP/File

Geneva (AFP)

Cannabis was first domesticated around 12,000 years ago in China, researchers found, after analysing the genomes of plants from across the world.

The study, published in the journal Science Advances on Friday, said the genomic history of cannabis domestication had been under-studied compared to other crop species, largely due to legal restrictions.

The researchers compiled 110 whole genomes covering the full spectrum of wild-growing feral plants, landraces, historical cultivars, and modern hybrids of plants used for hemp and drug purposes.

The study said it identified "the time and origin of domestication, post-domestication divergence patterns and present-day genetic diversity".

"We show that cannabis sativa was first domesticated in early Neolithic times in East Asia and that all current hemp and drug cultivars diverged from an ancestral gene pool currently represented by feral plants and landraces in China," it said.

Cannabis has been used for millennia for textiles and for its medicinal and recreational properties.

The evolution of the cannabis genome suggests the plant was cultivated for multipurpose use over several millennia.

The current highly-specialised hemp and drug varieties are thought to come from selective cultures initiated about 4,000 years ago, optimised for the production of fibres or cannabinoids.

The selection led to unbranched, tall hemp plants with more fibre in the main stem, and well-branched, short marijuana plants with more flowers, maximising resin production.

- 'New insights' -

The study was led by Luca Fumagalli of the University of Lausanne and involved scientists from Britain, China, India, Pakistan, Qatar and Switzerland.

"Our genomic dating suggests that early domesticated ancestors of hemp and drug types diverged from Basal cannabis", around 12,000 years ago, "indicating that the species had already been domesticated by early Neolithic times", it said.

"Contrary to a widely-accepted view, which associates cannabis with a Central Asian centre of crop domestication, our results are consistent with a single domestication origin of cannabis sativa in East Asia, in line with early archaeological evidence."

It said that some of the wild plants currently found in China represent the closest descendants of the ancestral gene pool from which hemp and marijuana varieties have since derived.#photo1

"East Asia has been shown to be an important ancient hot spot of domestication for several crop species... our results thus add another line of evidence," the study said.

The researchers said their study offered an "unprecedented" base of genomic resources for ongoing molecular breeding and functional research, both in medicine and in agriculture.

The study, they said, also "provides new insights into the domestication and global spread of a plant with divergent structural and biochemical products at a time in which there is a resurgence of interest in its use, reflecting changing social attitudes and corresponding challenges to its legal status in many countries."

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