Cuban street protester sentenced to 10 years in prison: family and NGO

This file photo from July 11, 2021 shows an anti-goverment 

rally in Havana, one of many that rocked Cuba that day 

YAMIL LAGE AFP

Issued on: 23/10/2021

Havana (AFP)

The sentence against Roberto Perez Fonseca, age 38, was handed down by a court in San Jose de las Lajas, a town 35 kilometers (20 miles) from Havana.

On July 11 and 12 thousands of Cubans screaming "freedom" and "we are hungry" took to the streets in some 50 cities and towns to protest harsh living conditions and government repression.

The rallies, which had no precedent since the Cuban revolution of 1959, left at least one person dead and dozens injured as security forces cracked down.

Around 1,130 people were arrested, and more than half of them remain in jail, says the Miami-based human rights group Cubalex.

The court said Perez Fonseca was guilty of contempt, public disorder and instigation to commit a crime.

The sentence, dated October 6, was seen by AFP after Perez Fonseca's family was notified this week.

Three judges at the court heard from a sole witness, Jorge Luis Garcia Montero, a local policeman in San Jose de las Lajas. Two people who wanted to testify for the defense -- a relative and a friend of Perez Fonseca -- were barred as being partial.

On the day of the protests Perez Fonseca incited other people to throw rocks and bottles, the police officer said. He said the defendant threw a rock that hit him in the wrist and another that struck a police car, the sentencing document reads.

Perez Fonseca, a father of two, was arrested at his mother's home on July 16.

The sentence "is excessive and violates all guarantees of due process," said Laritza Diversent, head of Cubalex.

She said the jail term -- the longest handed out against anyone for taking part in the July protests -- seemed intended to scare people into refraining from future demonstrations.

Another protest rally has been called for November 15. The government has banned it and warned people of criminal consequences if they take part.

Cuba's government says the July protests were part of a US-backed strategy to topple the Havana regime.

Perez Fonseca's mother, Liset Fonseca, said she thinks the real reason for her son's long prison term is that at the protest he tore up a picture of communist icon Fidel Castro and challenged the police officer Garcia Montero as he arrested another man.

"They had to do something to make an example of him," she said.

John Deere union employees will continue to receive health insurance and bonuses after strike

Tyler Jett, Des Moines Register
Sat, October 23, 2021

Deere & Co. will continue to provide health insurance and pay performance bonuses to striking employees.

The ag and construction machine maker based in Moline, Illinois, announced in a statement Friday that the 10,100 United Auto Workers members on strike will continue to receive their benefits. They will also receive the performance bonuses they earned for exceeding target production goals before the union went on strike Oct. 14.

"John Deere’s healthcare and (performance) incentives are critical aspects of John Deere’s industry-leading wages and benefits," company spokesperson Jennifer Hartmann said in a statement. "We are taking these steps to demonstrate our commitment to doing what’s right by our employees and focusing on all that we can achieve together."

► John Deere strike: Farmers and John Deere suppliers worry about strike's impact

UAW picketers march across the street outside of Deere & Co., makers of John Deere products, in support of employees on strike, on Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021, in Ankeny.

The company and union agreed to a performance bonus system in their 2015 contract, which expired last week. Deere gives different teams performance targets, and those that exceed targets receive bonuses every 13 weeks.

The company pays those bonuses out at different times for each team. But some employees posted online this week that they did not receive the payments they thought were due to them this week, based off work they did before going on strike.

If Deere did not continue to provide health insurance for the striking employees, UAW International would have covered payments to keep workers on their current plans. However, the union would not have provided dental or vision insurance.

It would have covered insurance expenses with its strike fund, which it is using to pay the striking workers $275 a week. Members are required to show up for their designated "picket shifts" every week to receive payment.

► John Deere strike: United Auto Workers on strike at John Deere for first time in 35 years after rejecting proposed contract

Some community groups have provided food donations to employees. A group of UAW members in other parts of the country started a GoFundMe for strikers that, as of Friday afternoon, had raised about $102,000.

On Oct. 10, about 90% of UAW members in Illinois, Iowa and Kansas rejected the initial contract that the union and Deere negotiated. The proposal would have raised wages by 5% or 6% and given workers more money when they retired. But the contract also would have ended the company's pension plan for new hires.

After going on strike Oct. 14, the UAW's bargaining team returned to Moline, Illinois, on Monday to resume negotiating a new contract. Neither side has offered any update on how the negotiations are going.

As of last year, the UAW represented about 6,700 Deere workers in Ankeny, Davenport, Dubuque, Ottumwa and Waterloo. The Waterloo plant is the company's largest.

Tyler Jett covers jobs and the economy for the Des Moines Register. Reach him at tjett@registermedia.com, 515-284-8215, or on Twitter at @LetsJett.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: John Deere will continue to give employees health insurance, bonuses

STATE CAPITALI$M IS STILL CAPITALI$M
China to pilot property tax scheme in some regions -Xinhua


A man rides a scooter past apartment highrises that are under construction near the new stadium in Zhengzhou


Sat, October 23, 2021

SHANGHAI (Reuters) -The top decision-making body of the Chinese parliament said on Saturday it will roll out a pilot real estate tax in some regions, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The State Council, or Cabinet, will determine which regions will be involved and other details, Xinhua added.

The long-mooted and long-resisted property tax has gained new momentum since President Xi Jinping threw his support behind what experts describe as one of the most profound changes to China's real estate policies in a generation.

A tax could help red-hot home prices that have soared more than more than 2,000% since the privatisation of the housing market in the 1990s and created an affordability crisis in recent years.

But talk of the plan is coming at a sensitive time, as the property market is showing significant signs of stress and home prices have started falling in tens of cities.

The tax will apply to residential and non-residential property as well as land and property owners, but does not apply to legally owned rural land or where residences are built on it, Xinhua said.

The pilot schemes will last five years from the issue of the details from the State Council.

The idea of a levy on home owners first surfaced in 2003 but has failed to take off due to concerns that it would damage property demand, home prices, household wealth and future real estate projects.

It has faced resistance from stakeholders including local governments, who fear it would erode property values or trigger a market sell-off.

Over 90% of households own at least one home, the central bank said last year.

But analysts say the tax will bring in much needed revenue.

"Land sales are not a sustainable source of government revenue any more," Capital Economics said in a note on Friday. "Gradual implementation should also mitigate fears that a tax could cause prices to crash."

In pilot programmes rolled out in 2011, the megacities of Shanghai and Chongqing taxed homeowners, albeit just those possessing higher-end housing and second homes, at rates from 0.4% to 1.2%.

But until now the pilot programmes have not been widened to more cities.

Analysts expect a wider pilot to first include wealthier and economically more diversified regions in eastern and southern China such as the provinces of Zhejiang and Guangdong.

"It is expected that Zhejiang is likely to be included in the reform, especially Hangzhou," said Yan Yuejin, director of Shanghai-based E-house China Research and Development Institution.

Hangzhou, the base of e-commerce giant Alibaba, is China's eighth-richest city, with economic output reaching 1.61 trillion yuan ($252 billion) last year, about 70% of Hong Kong's gross domestic product.

($1 = 6.3839 Chinese yuan renminbi)

<^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Mainland China's Reliance on Land Sales (by province) https://tmsnrt.rs/3lyvluJ

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>

(Reporting by Steven Bian and Engen Tham in Shanghai; Additional reporting by Ryan Woo and Liangping Gao in Beijing; editing by Kim Coghill and Jason Neely)

Under Israel's blockade, Gaza's fishermen struggle for a catch

For Gaza, fenced in from three sides by Israel since Hamas Islamists took power in 2007, the open sea seems to offer the promise of freedom -- but it is deceptive

 MAHMUD HAMS AFP

Issued on: 24/10/2021 -

Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP)

Forced to stay close to shore due to Israeli restrictions on powerful engines, the men complain they must seek a catch from overfished shallow waters with declining stocks.

"If we catch 200 kilos (450 pounds) of sardines, that would be great," Nahal says. "But we can also come back empty-handed."

High prices of fuel in the enclave means that fishing operating costs are crippling, making them stay closer inshore.

"The further we go, the more we pay for fuel without guarantees about the catch," Nahal says, leading a line of five boats, the air heavy with the stench of diesel and sardines.

For Gaza, fenced in from three sides by Israel since Hamas Islamists took power in 2007, the open sea seems to offer the promise of freedom -- but it is deceptive.

Israel's navy fully controls the waters off Gaza's 40-kilometre (25-mile) long coastline, and regularly restricts or expands the size of the fishing zone in response to security conditions.

Israel's navy fully controls the waters off Gaza's coastline, and regularly restricts or expands the size of the fishing zone in response to security conditions

 MAHMUD HAMS AFP

After months of relative calm following an 11-day conflict between Israel and Hamas in May, the permitted fishing zone was expanded last month to 15 nautical miles, its maximum under the blockade, including deep water with richer fish stocks.
A 'Volvo' at sea

But Nahal's crew does not venture that far. Six miles is their outer limit, good for sardines, but too close to shore for the bigger value fish such as tuna.

"We fishermen do not have appropriate engines to reach a distance of 15 miles," Nahal says. "Currently, we are not allowed to enter Gaza with these modern engines."

Some Palestinian fishermen are fearful of heading out too far to sea. In the past, Israeli gunboats have opened fire and damaged nets to enforce access restrictions 

MAHMUD HAMS AFP

Some Palestinian fishermen are also fearful of heading out too far to sea. In the past, Israeli gunboats have opened fire and damaged nets to enforce access restrictions.

Making a living requires resourcefulness, and Nahal has repurposed a Volvo car engine to power the boat and run the powerful lights -- which the fishermen shine into the night waters to attract the sardines.

Due to the blockade's import restrictions, Israel also limits access to other key kit such as sonar devices to find fish shoals.

Israel restricts such items citing their "duel use", saying they could either aid Hamas weapons production, or the powerful engines could be used by smugglers.

It says the blockade is necessary to protect Israeli civilians who have been targeted with thousands of rockets fired by militants in the enclave since the Hamas takeover.

But Yussef, 22, keeping watch on Nahal's boat, complains that with all Gaza's fishermen forced into the same small area, they struggle to catch enough to turn a profit.

High prices of fuel in the Palestinian enclave means that fishing operating costs are crippling, making fishermen stay closer inshore 

MAHMUD HAMS AFP

"There's not enough fish," he says. "I've lived off of fishing since I was 14. Every day, when the water is open, I go out. It's the only thing I know how to do in life."
'Overexploited'

For Gaza, home to some two million Palestinians -- roughly half of whom are unemployed -- fish from the sea offer a critical source of protein.

But as well as overfishing, the industry faces multiple challenges.

For Gaza, home to some two million Palestinians -- roughly half of whom are unemployed -- fish from the sea offer a critical source of protein 

MAHMUD HAMS AFP

They include poorly treated sewage pumped into the sea from the tightly packed city, "affecting the entire marine environment and public health", according to a 2020 World Bank report.

"Many of the fish that people depend on are already overexploited," the World Bank adds.

This time, for Nahal, there is moderate success.

After hours shining bright lights into the waters, the boats encircle the area and cast their nets.

"Here are the fish, catch them, for it is my fish that I love," the men sing as the catch is hauled up.

Exhausted and back in port, the fishermen sell the catch in the busy port, where auctioneers shout prices to waiting wholesalers.

The fishing industry in Gaza faces multiple challenges, including overfishing and pollution 

MAHMUD HAMS AFP

For Nahal, the half-tonne sells within 90 seconds for 3,000 Israeli shekels ($935).

It is more than he had hoped for, but is barely a profitable night once his costs and crew's wages are deducted.

© 2021 AFP

UKRAINE BABYN YAR MASSACRE

A Massacre in a Park, a Miracle Survivor, and a Stash of Hidden Letters

Noga Tarnopolsky
Sat, October 23, 2021

NurPhoto

KYIV—Barely anyone made it out of Babyn Yar alive. Out of the estimated 33, 771 local Jews taken to this park to be shot and discarded, maybe a handful survived. One of those was Nadia Elgart, and her survival was considered so remarkable that it was recorded on her gravestone in 1978: “Nadia Elgart, the woman who escaped from Babyn Yar on September 29, 1941 with her 6-year-old son.”

Babyn Yar is the Russian name imposed during Soviet times on the local park which the Nazis, who invaded Ukraine in June, 1941, turned into the site of an urban massacre.

It is estimated that some 15,000 additional Jews were captured and killed in other places around Ukraine’s capital city during those fateful September days. But by the end of the war, the Nazis had murdered about 100,000 people in Babyn Yar alone. Father Patrick Desbois, an expert on the genocide that occurred outside of concentration camps, called the massacre “Holocaust by bullets,” the opening volley of the German plan to exterminate Jews.

Nazi Salutes and Fascist Chic Put Ukraine’s Jews on Edge

Today, as until the spring and early summer of 1941, grandparents amble about pushing strollers. Teenagers make out on cement benches. Youngsters slurp ice-cream cones. Some adventurers like to climb up and down the jagged, unkempt gullies which give the park an air of wilderness. Stately residential high-rises surround the green space.

Nadia lost 26 members of her immediate family in that park, including her parents, her sisters and her nieces and nephews. After their escape, her son Ilyusha was sent to an orphanage, and Nadia joined the Ukrainian partisans and fought the Nazis. She reunited with her son when he was 10, the family returned to Kyiv, and no one spoke of the war.

In 2017, Marina Vorobeichik, Nadia’s 48-year-old granddaughter, stumbled upon a stash of letters written by her grandmother, who passed away when Marina was only five years old. The Daily Beast is publishing excerpts from the letters for the first time in English here.

After the liberation of Kyiv, Nadia wrote to local authorities to denounce a maintenance man who had betrayed the surviving members of her family. She wrote that she had seen him walking around the neighborhood, wearing a suit that belonged to her husband, Lazar, who was serving in the Red Army. In the letter, written in February of 1945, Nadia described returning to her sister’s house to get some clothes after the massacre and how, in a desperate attempt to save what was left of her family, she bribed the maintenance worker “with all my property” only to see him walk over to a German officer two days later, and hand over a disabled relative who lived in the same home.


SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images

“My neighbor Zelensky, who lives in this building even today, had warned me to leave because they were looking for me,” she wrote. “Zelensky's wife told me that my 12-year-old nephew, who she'd seen me walking around with, was alive in Kyiv, in Stalinka. During daylight I was afraid to go out, but in the evening I went out and found others alive who told me he'd crawled out of the dead and fled…”

Nadia had decided to go looking for her nephew—and leave Kyiv. “On our way, I gathered my courage and went to the maintenance man and said we had no clothes, and, knowing he had a lot of belongings, I said, uncle Pablo, give [my nephew] something to wear, a 12-year-old boy who was born and raised in this building… I said, uncle Pablo, please preserve the pictures of my mother and sister.”

Instead of helping her, Nadia wrote that Pablo had turned her into the building’s coop board, whose chair tried, and failed, to hand her over to the Germans before she could escape. Her nephew’s fate remains unknown till today, and whether Pablo was ever prosecuted was lost to history.

In another of the secret letters, written in 1944 by a truck driver named Ivan Nikolaevich Kazakov, he describes three years of agonizing self-recrimination because he’d transported Nadia back to Kyiv from the city of Lvov before either knew that the Germans had already taken the city. Only after dropping her off did he learn the fate of Kyiv’s Jews. He wrote to ask whether Nadia and her mother had survived.

In 1946, a woman named Sofia Markovna Litvinova wrote to Nadia that she had lost her entire family at Babyn Yar, and had been injured, but “miraculously” survived. She asked to meet Nadia and exchange notes. “I have no idea if the encounter took place,” Vorobeichick says.

How Nadia Elgart managed to extricate herself from Babyn Yar’s canyon of death was never made clear. The experience was so harrowing that she herself never understood how she made it out alive.

One reason Babyn Yar was never spoken about was that the Soviets, who invaded Ukraine after the defeat of the Nazis, prohibited it. Any mention of the mass murder of Jews was considered an affront to the notion of the non-ethnic Soviet man. “We didn’t talk about Babyn Yar when I was a child,” Vorobeichik, head nurse at Rambam Hospital’s oncological ward in Haifa, says. “But we all knew about it. For example, when there were important family events... I have a picture of my older sister Sophie’s wedding day—we went there and took family pictures of her in her dress. It symbolized the family’s victory over the Nazis.”

In Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman’s comprehensive history of the inferno, The Black Book of Soviet Jewry, Nadia, whose real name was Nadezhda, but was nicknamed Nessia by her family, is described “walking to the ravine, clutching her trembling son Ilyusha to her naked body.” Jews were forced to strip naked and abandon their possessions as they lined up to be shot.

“With her son in her arms, she came up to the very edge of the ravine. Half out of her mind, she heard the shots and the cries of the dying, and she fell,” Grossman and Ehrenburg wrote. “The bullets missed her. Warm bodies covered in blood were lying on top of her.”

SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images

“It is now difficult for me to comprehend how I got out of that pit of death,” she told the two, “but obviously I crawled out driven by an instinct for self- preservation… I truly cannot understand by what miracle my son was also saved. It was as though he had become part of me, and he did not leave me for a single second.” She said a Russian woman took them in for the night.

Nadia’s son, Vorobeichik’s father, refused to ever leave the city. Vorobeichik remembers him saying that he’d never abandon Kyiv, “even if I am the last Jew alive here,” Ilyusha died in Kyiv, of a stroke, in 1984, only six years after his mother’s death. Three years later, his surviving family left Ukraine for Israel.

Vyacheslav Braginsa, 59, a retired clown, grew up near the site of the massacre in Kyiv. He remembers that when he was a child, “everything was abandoned here, just sand, nothing at all.” But he also remembers, as a kid, digging around the place with friends and finding human bones and pistols. Officially, no one said a word about Babyn Yar, but Braginsa said his father spoke to him about “a tragedy.”

“No one talked about it, but everybody knew something had happened,” he said at the park one day before the inauguration of a memorial to the murdered Jews by conceptual artist Marina Abramovic, which was erected to mark the 80th anniversary of the massacre.

Ukraine’s Anti-Russia Azov Battalion: ‘Minutemen’ or Neo-Nazi Terrorists?

Earlier this month, Ruslan Kavatsiuk, deputy chairman of the newly conformed Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, dodged kids playing ball and skateboarding teens to point out sites of mass shootings, before finally standing still for photos by the famous ravine in which tens of thousands of Jews were shot, layer by layer, and left to fester.

Given under an hour for the grim tour, Kavatsiuk, an intense former top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, says “you ain’t seen nothing.”

For Vorobeichik, official recognition of the mass murder feels like “closure of some sort, closing a circle.” She accompanied an official delegation including Israeli president Isaac Herzog to the ceremony.

Accompanying her to Kyiv was her cousin, Ilana Shtotland, a journalist for the Israeli newspaper Maariv, who asked her how she felt upon finding the few shards of documentation preserved in her mother’s stash. “I felt a very strong pain as I read the letters,” she said, “sadness, a sort of helplessness. I wish I could have been able to exchange a few words with grandma.”

Buzzards that vomit when threatened and leave piles of acidic dropping have invaded a small town and nobody knows why

Alia Shoaib

Sat, October 23, 2021, 

Roosting black vultures. Getty Images

• Residents of Bunn, North Carolina, are puzzled why buzzards have been invading their town.

• Dozens of birds have congregated in the town, and attempts to scare them off using cannons and horns have failed.

• Buzzards, which are black or turkey vultures, have a bad reputation but are generally harmless to humans.

Buzzards have descended on a town in North Carolina, and attempts to scare them off with loud cannons and fake effigies have failed, reports say.

Over the past year, the birds of prey have converged in Bunn, North Carolina, The News & Observer of Raleigh said.

Local resident Ally Leggett told the paper that at the height of the invasion, she counted 58 buzzards perched around her house.

"This weekend, they were up there swarming," she told the paper, gesturing to the roof. "It makes my dogs insane."

She said the unwelcome visitors would perch on her chimney leaving a trail of destruction due to their habit of pecking at the bricks, pulling them down.

On Wednesday, 28 buzzards sat on a cellular tower along Main Street, and another 21 gatheed at Bunn High School across the street, the paper said.

Bunn residents are puzzled over why the birds' attraction to their town, and have tried to scare them away with various tactics.

In December, the town began firing a propane cannon off the roof of the local high school at regular intervals, day or night, hoping the shotgun-like sound would scare off the birds.

"That worked for a while," police chief Steve Massey told the local newspaper. "It seems they're back."

Massey added that he often goes by the birds to blow his horn at them.

The town also tried hanging "effigies" around the rooftop of the high school to keep the birds away, but the 2-foot tall black birds remained undeterred.

Although called buzzards, the birds are either black or turkey vultures, both of which are protected species. Federal and state law outlaws killing, hurting, or harassing the birds.

The turkey vulture has a five-foot wingspan and the black vultures are six-foot, according to NC Wildlife Resources Commission.

Vultures are often disliked because they feed primarily on carrion, and are often depicted as harbingers of doom and death in popular culture.

The birds' habit of vomiting when threatened adds to the revulsion people feel towards them. Their droppings are acidic and can eat through the paint on a car, according to the News & Record of Greensboro.

Despite their reputation, they are mostly harmless to humans.

#CRYPTID   #CRYPTOZOOLOGY

Elusive Owl Caught On Camera After Flying Under Radar For 150 Years

Shelley's eagle owl had never been clearly photographed in the wild — until now.

By Hilary Hanson
10/23/2021 

WHOOOOOO is that beautiful bird?

An elusive owl has been definitively photographed in the wild for the first time in a rainforest of Ghana.

British ecologist Dr. Robert Williams snapped the monumental photo of Shelley’s eagle owl while in Ghana’s Atewa Range Forest Reserve with Dr. Joseph Tobias, a biologist with Imperial College London, according to a release from the university published Thursday.

Shelley's eagle owl, folks.
DR ROBERT WILLIAMS


Not a lot is known about Shelley’s eagle owls, which at around 2 feet in length, are the largest owls in the rainforests of the African continent. They’ve been seen in forests in Central and Western Africa, and, prior to this sighting in the hilly Atewa forest, have been known to inhabit lowland areas.

“This is a sensational discovery,” Dr. Nathaniel Annorbah of Ghana’s University of Environment and Sustainable Development said in the statement. “This is a sensational discovery. We’ve been searching for this mysterious bird for years in the western lowlands, so to find it here in ridgetop forests of Eastern Region is a huge surprise.”

Western scientists first learned about the bird in 1872. Since then, there have been scattered sightings of the bird, but no photographs besides one of a captive owl at a Belgian zoo in 1975, and one image ― described by Thursday’s release as a “pixelated blob” ― from 2005 that was too blurry for anyone to confirm it’s the right species.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the birds as “vulnerable,” with threats including logging, habitat destruction, and hunting that reduces available prey for the owls.

The Atewa Range Forest Reserve, where the owl was just photographed, faces multiple threats, including commercial mining for bauxite (a substance is used to produce aluminum) and illegal logging, according to conservation organization A Rocha Ghana.

The group, which wants to make the Atewa forest a national park, cited the owl on Twitter as yet “another reason” to protect the forest.

ONLY NUKE PWR CAN MAKE GREEN H2

The Dutch Government Is Gambling Billions On Green Hydrogen

Editor OilPrice.com
Sat, October 23, 2021

The future of green hydrogen looks very bright, with the renewable energy source becoming something of a media darling in recent months. The global drive to invest in green or blue hydrogen is picking up steam and investment levels are staggering. Realism and economics, however, seem to be lacking when it comes to planning new green hydrogen projects in NW Europe, the USA, and Australia. At the same time, blue hydrogen, potentially an important bridge fuel, is being largely overlooked. The Netherlands, formerly a leading natural gas producer and NW-European gas trade and transportation hub, is attempting to establish itself as a main pillar of the European hydrogen economy. According to the Dutch government, the Netherlands is ready to provide whatever is needed to support the set-up of a new green hydrogen hub and transportation network. During the presentation of the 2021-2022 government plans in September (Prinsjesdag), Dutch PM Mark Rutte committed himself to this green hydrogen future. Without any real assessments of the risks and potential economic threats, plans are being discussed and implemented for a multibillion spending spree on green hydrogen, involving not only the refurbishment of the Dutch natural gas pipeline infrastructure but also the building of major new offshore wind parks, targeting the construction of hundreds of additional windmills. These wind parks are going to be set up and owned by international consortia, such as the NorthH2, involving Royal Dutch Shell, Gasunie (owned by the government), and others. The optimism about these projects is now being questioned, not only by skeptics but increasingly by parties, such as Gasunie, that are part of the deals.

Dutch public broadcaster NOS reported yesterday that questions are popping up about the feasibility and commercial aspects of these large-scale plans as well as the potential risks of a new “cartel” of offshore wind producers. The multibillion-dollar investment plans, supported by the government, are even being questioned by experts of the Dutch ministry of economy, as it is not clear at all if green hydrogen production in the Netherlands, such as the NorthH2 project in Groningen (formerly known as the Dutch natural gas province), will ever be feasible or take-off. The commercial viability of green hydrogen is a major issue as it still needs large-scale technical innovation and scaling up of electrolyzers. At the same time, there is uncertainty over demand as industry (the main client) does not appear to be interested at present. Dutch parties are also asking themselves if the current set up of the planned offshore wind parks are not a precursor to a new wind-energy cartel in the making. Some Dutch political parties and even insiders from Gasunie are worried about a monopoly position of the likes of Shell in the future.

Still, the main underlying issue is the financial risks being taken by the government in the coming years. As Dutch professor Paul Bovend’Eert stated to the news “plans are being developed, but financial risks are not addressed”. He also reiterated that the Dutch parliament has often been left out of the loop or not simply addressed at all. Several analysts have already warned that the current pro-green hydrogen strategy of the government is ‘gambling with billions”. Some have even warned that the projections about needed investments could be much higher than already is expected. The EU already stated that between EUR240-380 billion is needed to set up European-wide 40GW of hydrogen production. The Dutch government plans indicate a production capacity of 3-4GW by 2030 or an investment of tens of billions. To become a real NW-European hydrogen hub, investments will have to be even higher. While optimism is there, no real regulation and control mechanisms are in place to structure these government investments or subsidies to commercial parties. Gasunie board members indicated that more conditions and legal structures need to be put in place to control where the money is going. The current energy, oil, and gas markets in the Netherlands and EU are already liberalized. Ownership and investment or production strategies are not being set up by governments or the EU but by companies themselves. Nothing, in reality, would change dramatically, comparisons between hydrogen and natural gas markets are large.

The increased criticism by some, such as Gasunie and political parties, with regards to the power position of commercial parties, is also very strange. Some could argue that the current hydrogen strategy of Shell and others is what society and Dutch judges have forced them to do. Shell could and should argue a very simple position “we are doing what the Dutch legal system is forcing us to do”. For parties such as Shell, at least in the Netherlands or the EU, taking up green hydrogen strategies is a new License to Operate. International energy giants such as Shell do not want to be minor players in this market. For an international player, a pivotal position in any market is a must.

In the coming weeks, especially after COP26, as criticism is now being muted by most, a potential storm could be brewing. If assessments are pointing out that the risks being taken by the Dutch government are too high in light of the benefits, and potential higher bills for customers, potential opposition to green hydrogen plans could be growing. At the same time, the Dutch hydrogen plans are seen by most as pivotal, even in light of the EU Commission’s Green Deal plans. A full-scale backlash to hydrogen could be a reality if Dutch political parties are going to constrain implementation, while other European countries will be more skeptical about their own plans. Billions, or potentially trillions, of euros will be at risk if this new hydrogen infrastructure turns out not to be economically viable. Without the power and technology of existing energy players, especially Shell, Total, BP, or ENI, behind the set-up, the future of this new power source will remain uncertain.

By Cyril Widdershoven for Oilprice.com

REVENGE FOR WUHAN ATTACKS

Researchers Found Chinese Twitter Accounts Lied About COVID-19 Coming From Maine Lobsters


Tara C. Mahadevan
Fri, October 22, 2021

Image via Getty/Justin Sullivan

A researcher found that Chinese Twitter accounts were spreading disinformation about COVID-19 being linked to Maine lobsters.

According to USA Today, Chinese diplomats and state media were spearheading the Twitter campaign for 18 months. Oxford researcher Marcel Schliebs discovered the virus origin story via a tweet from Kolkata, India Chinese consul general Zha Liyou, which said that the virus emerged from a contaminated shipment of Maine lobsters that were sent to Wuhan in November 2019.

“Major suspect of COVID via cold chain identified: A MU298 of Nov. 11, 2019 carrying food from Maine, US to Huanan Seafood Market, Wuhan, Hubei via Shanghai,” the tweet reportedly read. “During the next few weeks, many workers around moving this batch of seafood got infected.”


Schliebs then uncovered over 550 Twitter accounts—some real and some not—that were spreading similar pro-China messages, in a number of languages, including Spanish, English, Korean, French, and Latin.

“Almost since the beginning of the outbreak, the question of the origin of COVID has been of core importance to the Chinese propaganda apparatus,” Schliebs said. “This coordinated operation was clearly trying to promote narratives in line with Beijing’s general propaganda strategy and geopolitical objectives.”

He told the outlet that Twitter was notified last week and “they were very responsive and suspended the accounts very rapidly within a few hours. Fortunately, we detected the campaign as it was still in its early growth phase and before it could really start to reach and impact real genuine audiences.”

New infant planet discovered by researchers in Hawaii

Alexandra Larkin
Sat, October 23, 2021,

An international research team led by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa has discovered one of the youngest planets ever observed. The findings, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, estimate the planet is a "few times more massive" than Jupiter.

The new planet was found in a "stellar nursery" and formed approximately several million years ago — around the same time that the main Hawaiian islands emerged from the ocean. Named 2M0437b, researchers first spotted the planet orbiting a remote, infant star in 2018.

Since 2M0437b is so young, it is still hot from the energy created during its formation — the scientists said in a press release that its temperature is similar to "the lava erupting from Kīlauea Volcano."

Credit: Subaru Telescope and Gaidos, et al. (2021)

The Keck Observatory on Maunakea was used to track the star that 2M0437b orbits to confirm that it was actually a planet of that star and not an object that was farther away. It took researchers three years to confirm since the star moved so slowly across the sky.

2M0437b and its parent star reside in the Taurus Cloud, a well-known "nursery" for planets, but since the planet has a much wider orbit than many others in its solar system — it's almost 100 times farther away from its sun than Earth is from its sun — it was harder to observe without new adaptive optic technology.

The planet's discovery is especially exciting for astronomers because it is easy to see and it is so young, meaning scientists will be able to observe it for many years and learn more about how planets, including Earth, age.

"This serendipitous discovery adds to an elite list of planets that we can directly observe with our telescopes," said head author and professor at UH Mānoa Eric Gaidos.