Italy's tiny curling community rejoices at Olympic triumph

CANADA'S OTHER FAVORITE WINTER SPORT

Anthony LUCAS
Thu, February 10, 2022


Amos Mosaner (R) and Stefania Constantini took gold at the mixed doubles curling, 

Italy's first ever Olympic medal in the sport 

(AFP/Lillian SUWANRUMPHA)

Italy's curling heroics at the Winter Olympics has unearthed a sudden enthusiasm which the country's tiny curling community hopes will raise its profile enough to complete with more popular winter sports like alpine skiing.

Amos Mosaner and Stefania Constantini claimed the first curling title of the Beijing Games on Tuesday when they beat Norwegian husband-and-wife pairing of Kristin Skaslien and Magnus Nedregotten 8-5 to take gold in the mixed doubles.

The pair will defend Italy's first ever Olympic medal in the sport -- which is dominated by northern Europeans and North America -- on home soil in four years' time, bringing joy to the just 333 people who officially practise curling in the Mediterranean country.

"I cried with happiness, it's a victory for everyone in Italian curling," Angela Romei, a member of Italy's national team, told AFP.

Romei, 24, didn't manage to qualify for the Beijing Games but is convinced that her teammates' trumph "is a signal that we are on the right path".

Enthusiasts now hope the sport will get a huge boost as Italy prepares to host the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The Italian winter sports federation FISG says that the country's curlers are spread over 28 clubs, with only around 20 top-level players and half a dozen professionals.

Italy first competed in Olympic curling in 2006 as host nation for that year's Games in Turin but only qualified for the first time four years ago, with the men's team taking part in Pyeongchang.

Mosaner and Constantini are the first Italians to compete in the mixed event, which was introduced as an Olympic discipline in 2018.

"Until the last few days I was often asked 'but is it really a sport?', or 'do you really need to train?'... there was very little awareness or respect," says Romei, who discovered the sport herself via an episode of "The Simpsons".

"It's an Olympic sport! It requires physical and mental preparation. The matches are long and you have to know how to keep your head if you make a mistake."

While Italy has become a force in curling, it remains difficult to find a place to play the sport.

- 'Priceless for our sport' -

The three main training centres are all located in the far north of the country: Cortina D'Ampezzo, which is hosting the 2026 Games alongside Milan, Pinerolo at the foot of the Alps, and Trento.

The stated challenge for the FISG now is to increase the number of players and take the sport to the big cities like Milan and Rome.

"What happened is priceless for our sport," former Italian international Adriano Lorenzi told AFP.

Now 61, Lorenzi is a coach at Constantini's club Curling Club Dolomiti in Cortina, the heartland of Italian curling and where the country's first curling sheets appeared around 1930.

"We are trying to keep the tradition alive," says Lorenzi, who is expecting a big party when Constantini returns home at the weekend.

"We have a large pool of young people who we hope will be able to apply for the 2026 Games."

Her and Mosaner's coach Claudio Pescia is hoping for a windfall which will further help curling become a bigger sport in Italy.

"For the athletes, it's very important. Italy is very generous if you win a medal," he said.

"In general, you then have a programme for two years. Some kind of funding for the next two years, then an extra fee for the medal.

"But I really hope that not only athletes but the whole movement gets a little bit more funding to take advantage of this momentum we have."

alu/jr/nzg/td/gj

CANADIAN AUTHOR

Bitter row erupts over Anne Frank betrayal book


Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945 (AFP/Ronny Hartmann) (Ronny Hartmann)

Jan HENNOP
Thu, February 10, 2022

It was meant to put one of World War II's greatest mysteries to rest, but instead a new book about young diarist Anne Frank has stirred up ghosts from the past.

A heated debate has erupted over "The Betrayal of Anne Frank" by Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan after it named a Jewish notary as the prime suspect in giving up Anne and her family.

Dutch historians and Jewish groups have criticised the "sensationalist" book, the result of a six-year cold case investigation, while its local publisher has halted further reprints.

But the former FBI agent who led the probe, Vince Pankoke, angrily hit back this week alleging that the "venomous attack" may have been motivated by the book's controversial conclusion that a Jew was responsible.

The book caused an international storm when it was published on January 18 with its claims about the betrayal of Frank, a Jewish teen whose diary was published after her death in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

It identified Amsterdam notary Arnold van den Bergh, a Jew, as "most likely" the man who in 1944 gave up the location of the canalside annexe where Frank penned her diary during two years in hiding, most likely to save his own family from the Nazis.

Researchers said they used modern criminal investigative techniques, complex algorithms and witness statements -- and most tellingly a note given to Anne's father Otto shortly after the war which named Van den Bergh.

- 'Speculative' -

But there was a fierce reaction in the Netherlands, which is still haunted by guilt over the deportation of more than 100,000 Jews during the war.

The results were "extremely speculative and sensationalist", the Amsterdam-based Central Jewish Consultation (CJO) organisation said.

"There is no smoking gun or hard evidence. The findings are... mainly based on one note, written after the war," CJO chairman Ronny Naftaniel told AFP.

Van den Bergh died in 1950 and "cannot defend himself", Naftaniel said, adding that the investigation "would never stand up in a court of law".

Jewish organisations in the Netherlands have asked that the book be removed from local shelves, and the Swiss-based Anne Frank Fonds foundation president John Goldsmith told Swiss daily Blick the findings "bordered on a conspiracy theory".

The book's Dutch publisher Ambo Anthos last week said it was putting all reprints on ice and apologised "for not adopting a more critical stance", local media reported.

The publisher did not respond to a query from AFP.

Dutch holocaust historians also raised doubts.

"Although the research is impressive, the story simply has too many loose ends," Johannes Houwink ten Cate, professor of genocide and holocaust studies at the University of Amsterdam, told AFP.

Documents showed Van den Bergh and his family went underground by the beginning of 1944, months before the Nazis arrested the Franks, said Ten Cate.

"Why would Van den Bergh later risk giving up his own hiding place? It's beyond belief."

- 'Disparaging remarks' -

But those behind the book, published internationally by HarperCollins, struck back this week.

Author Sullivan said in a statement on Monday that the probe was "professional" and "thorough", adding that the book was a "compelling portrait" of a time when people faced impossible choices to save their families.

Pankoke meanwhile insisted that his team's theory remained the most plausible, in a statement on Wednesday.

"I was shocked at the disparaging remarks put forth by critics of our investigation," he said, adding that it was "now time for me to respond and set the record straight.

"At least in our theory, there is a pattern of evidence, backed by witness statements, and a copy of a piece of physical evidence presented... by Otto Frank himself," said Pankoke.

One of the main reasons for the furore was the contention that "Jews were forced to turn against one another", along with a misunderstanding about how criminal investigations are conducted, he said.

But he too stressed that by identifying a suspect, they were not necessarily condemning him.

"Our message from the very beginning of our investigation was, and always will be, had it not been for the Nazi occupiers, none of this would have happened," Pankoke said.

jhe/dk/har/ach

NIMBY

Turbine 'torture' for Greek islanders as wind farms proliferate

With its propensity for high winds, Evia is a natural location for wind farms, says Athanasios Dagoumas, chairman of Greece's power production watchdog

Another 18 turbines are to be installed near Agii Apostoli 

 (AFP/ARIS MESSINIS)

Hélène COLLIOPOULOUT
Fri, February 11, 2022

Until a few years ago, Agii Apostoli was a picturesque seaside village on the eastern coast of Evia, drawing a modest income from tourism and fishing.

Now it is ringed by towering wind turbines whose night lights and whirring sounds are tantamount to daily "torture", locals say.

"Longterm visitors ask us, why did you allow this crime to take place?" laments Stamatoula Karava, a local employee involved in a local cultural association.

With their aviation lights flashing through the night in the surrounding hills, the turbines "have completely ruined the view," she says.

Evia, 80 kilometres (50 miles) east of Athens and Greece's second largest island after Crete, was among the first of the country's regions to host wind farms some two decades ago.

But they have since mushroomed, mainly in the more sparsely populated south of the island, environment groups say.

The municipality of Karystos alone, with an area of 672 square kilometres, has more than 400 turbines, some of them along the area's main road.

The oldest ones have now fallen into disuse, yet there are no plans to remove them and recycle their parts, says Chryssoula Bereti, who chairs the Karystos anti-wind farm front.

"It's a scandal," she fumes.

In line with EU clean energy targets, Greece has reduced its once-overwhelming reliance on lignite for electricity production to around 10 percent currently.

Forty percent of Greek power plants are now gas-fired and 30 percent run on renewable resources, of which 18 percent are wind turbines.

Hydroelectric plants and imports account for the remainder.

According to the Regulatory Authority for Energy (RAE), Greece's power production watchdog, the maximum capacity of wind turbines in the country increased more than sixfold between 2019 and 2021 to 8,205 MW.

With its propensity for high winds, Evia is a natural location for wind farms, notes RAE chairman Athanasios Dagoumas.

But critics say that this expansion has gone too far.

"Wind turbines have been installed on mountain peaks, in forests, near archaeological sites, on islands, in protected habitats... it's as if energy production is the only possible activity in this country", says Dimitris Soufleris, a lawyer and spokesman of the environmental association of the Evia town of Kymi.

"We cannot have so many wind farms in Greece," he told AFP.

- 'We can't sleep' -

In past months, protests against wind farm development have been held in Agrafa, central Greece, as well as the islands of Andros, Skyros and Tinos.

Soufleris notes that another 18 turbines are scheduled to be installed near Agii Apostoli.

Nikos Balaskas, a local engineer whose house in Agii Apostoli is less than 400 metres (450 yards) from the nearest wind turbine, has sued the company.

"As an engineer, I'm not opposed to green energy. But there have to be standards. This is torture, we can no longer sleep for the noise," he said.

There are similar concerns in the nearby coastal town of Styra, where another 14 wind turbines are to be located.

"This is going to cause enormous damage to our region," says local hotel chairwoman Afroditi Lekka, noting that thousands of hikers visit the area annually.

In response to the mounting criticism, the conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis last month announced that six mountain ranges in central Greece, the Peloponnese, Crete and the island of Samothrace would be given additional protection status against future energy infrastructure development.

"Planned licences in these areas were withdrawn," says RAE's Dagoumas.

Similar steps have also been taken in the north of Evia, which was devastated by wildfires this summer, he adds.

RAE's Dagoumas notes in the past two years solar parks have overtaken wind farm investments owing mainly to "the implementation of a new automatic system" that facilitates the application for the investors and lower average cost.

"The wind farms cannot been implemented everywhere, it has to be high wind capacity, for the photovoltaics there is much more space for them", he says.

hec/jph/cdw-gd/ach

Elon Musk's Starship could change the space business forever

The SpaceX megarocket has yet to be tested in orbit, but some say Starship is the beginning of the end for space firms that fail to see its potential. An orbital test flight is slotted for March.


SpaceX's Starship rocket is scheduled to make its first orbital test flight in March

On Thursday night at a launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas, billionaire and SpaceX founder Elon Musk will give an update on Starship, a powerful rocket that some say will transform the space industry in ways that many can't yet imagine. And that lack of imagination could pose a problem for other industry players.

SpaceX will display the rocket at Starbase, its test facility, during Musk's speech. Sitting atop its giant booster, called Super Heavy, Starship measures just short of 400 feet (120 meters) tall. This makes it taller than Saturn V, the 363-foot-tall NASA rocket used for the Apollo moon missions in the 1960s and 1970s, currently the tallest operational rocket ever used. Starship is meant to be fully reusable and have the capacity to carry over 100 tons to Mars and the Moon.

"Fully reusable Starship and Super Heavy systems are expected to allow for space-based activities that have not been possible before," SpaceX writes in the Starship user guide.

Starship would be a major step toward SpaceX's goal of making life interplanetary. The rocket's massive payload capacity along with the reusability factor could drastically change the economics of launching people and things into space.

7 THINGS YOU'RE DYING TO KNOW ABOUT SPACE TRAVEL
Can astronauts get drunk in space?
In 1975, astronauts Thomas Stafford and Deke Slayton were given "vodka tubes" during an Apollo/Soyuz linkup. Although labeled with Russian vodka brands, the tubes contained borscht (beet soup). Drinking alcohol is prohibited on the ISS — it's main ingredient, ethanol, is a volatile compound that could damage equipment. Astronauts aren't even allowed mouthwash or aftershave containing alcohol.
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Explosions and crashes

Last year, the project received a major endorsement in the form of a $2.9 billion (€2.5 billion) contract from NASA to put its astronauts on the moon. This came after SpaceX became the first private corporation to shoot astronauts into space when in 2020 it ferried NASA astronauts to the International Space Station on Falcon 9, the world's first orbital-class, reusable rocket.

Thursday's update will be the first major news about Starship in over two years. The rocket had been slated to make its first-ever orbital test flight in January or February of this year, but was delayed by environmental assessment by the US Federal Aviation Administration.

It wasn't the first time that the project has experienced delays.

"This is going to sound totally nuts but I think we want to try to reach orbit in less than six months," Musk had said at the last Starship update, in 2019.

He was half right: The goal was unrealistic. In the two years that have passed, Starship prototypes have fallen victim to fiery crashes and explosions, but orbital flight has remained out of reach. Adding insult to injury, a solar storm over the weekend destroyed dozens of satellites SpaceX had launched just last week, meant to form part of a massive internet communications network called Starlink.

An elevator to space

Musk has earned himself a reputation for setting out overly ambitious timelines, and this could explain why much of the space sector might not yet be expecting the reality of a functional Starship and everything it would bring with it.

"A fully functional Starship would so thoroughly render all legacy launch systems obsolete that it may as well be that they had never even existed," Casey Handmer, physicist and founder of the carbon capture startup Terraform Industries, who blogs regularly about advances in space travel, told DW in an email.

Starship could "enable a conveyor belt logistical capacity to low Earth orbit," Handmer writes in his blog. Those positioned to exploit this major shift in capacity will prosper, while all others will fade rapidly into obscurity, he said.

The finance guys seem to agree. "We think of reusable rockets as an elevator to low Earth orbit," Morgan Stanley Equity Analyst Adam Jonas wrote in a note, reaching for another metaphor. "Just as further innovation in elevator construction was required before today's skyscrapers could dot the skyline, so too will opportunities in space mature because of access and falling launch costs."

Investors shoot for the moon

Morgan Stanley estimates that the global space industry could generate over $1 trillion in revenue by 2040, up from about $350 billion today. In the short and mid term, much of this is likely to come from satellite broadband internet access, part of the so-called space-to-Earth economy.

But consulting group McKinsey reported that investment in "lunar and beyond" projects has been increasing steadily. In a January note, the group said that such ventures were pulling in between 10% and 15% of all private investment in space-related companies, or about $1 billion. This is up from less than 5% a decade ago. A rocket like Starship would play a major role in this economic shift.

And, so far, there isn't much out there like Starship and its SpaceX predecessors. In December, the company was awarded three more NASA flights as aerospace giant Boeing continued struggling to address issues with its own Starliner spacecraft. Both companies have signed contracts with the space agency to transport its astronauts to the International Space Station.

European space company ArianeGroup is trying to play catch-up. The planned Maïa launch system is scheduled to open to the satellite launch market in 2026 and will be designed to be reusable. In size, however, it will be dwarfed by Starship, launching just 1 metric ton in reusable mode to low Earth orbit against Starship’s planned 100. Notably, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire called it "our Falcon 9," comparing it to a SpaceX product that will have long become redundant by 2026 if Musk's plans succeed.

"If you're not careful, SpaceX will be the only game in town," Fatih Ozmen, co-founder of Sierra Nevada Corp., a privately held American aerospace company, told the Financial Times in October.

This is big talk about a rocket that has yet to complete an orbital test flight. And if hiccups at Tesla, Musk's electric and self-driving car company, have shown us anything, it's that huge projects can take time. But Musk and his employees aren't eager to wait.

"SpaceX has a team of skilled, motivated, capable engineers and technicians at Boca Chica who work 24 hours a day to create this future," Handmer said. "They are well resourced and they are acting like they intend to prevail."

Edited by: Hardy Graupner

Abuse and poverty driving children to Uganda's streets

Thousands of children survive in the open in the Ugandan capital, Kampala by begging for money. Residents are fed up and city authorities are struggling to keep the youngest among them off the busy streets.



Thousands of Ugandan children roam the streets begging for money and handouts

It is rush hour in Uganda's capital, Kampala. Groups of young children linger on the streets, and as soon as they see a car slowing down, they quickly swarm around and beg for alms. Then, they move from car to car, hoping to get as many handouts from drivers as they can.

Peter Otai, a motorist, is used to these kids, some as young as four, crowding around him. However, he now seems overwhelmed and considers them a nuisance. "You could be walking on the street, and the street kid comes running after you asking for money," Otai says.

"They stick on you, and they are split at a distance of about five meters. Something is not adding up here. It's becoming too much, and the government has to do something," a visibly concerned Otai told DW.

16-year-old Richard Kawadwa, who has roamed the streets of Kampala with other children, told DW that he opted to flee his home out of fear. "I ran away from home because I lost my aunt's money when she sent me to the shop. So I became afraid," he said.

More than 15,000 children, aged between 7 and 14, live in Kampala's streets. According to city authorities, at least 100 children are taken off the roads every month.

President Yoweri Museveni's government plans to rehabilitate the street children and reintegrate them back into their family homes. But, that isn't happening anytime soon

Some children flee their homes due to physical or psychological abuse

Rehabilitating street children

In 2019, Kampala passed a law banning giving money or food to street children. City authorities said the law was aimed at curbing children's commercial and sexual exploitation. Offenders could face up to six months in prison or a fine of $11 (€7).

The high number of children leaving their homes for the streets has forced child support organizations to think of new strategies for interventions.

Jajja, 30, who used to live on the streets, has now been enlisted by one organization to help address the issue. "Organizations send me to talk to the children about how they are ready to take care of them," Jajja told DW.

"If they are willing to go back home or join technical schools to learn carpentry or even mechanical engineering. When we identify children who have struggled to survive, we take them to hope for justice."

Aunt Nabwire, a residential social worker who works at a child care organization based in the Kampala suburb of Kibuli, told DW that once the children are taken off the street, they are rehabilitated. Their addresses and families are traced, and then the young ones are resettled back to their homes.

"These children go through a lot," Nabwire said. "When they are on the streets, it's survival for the fittest. We have to show them love so that they know we are not like those who have been harassing them."

She said they teach them how to work and encourage them to work and not see it as a punishment. "Work is something you are supposed to do the whole of your life to keep your life going," Nabwire added.

Ugandan motorists are calling on their government to urgently address the street children issue

Punishing parents

Mondo Kyateka, Uganda's Commissioner for Youth and Children, said parents and guardians who have failed to fulfill their responsibilities were responsible for the current crisis. She warned that they would be punished for neglect when identified.

"We are doing everything possible to counsel the fathers and mothers of children not to let their children stray on to the streets," Kyateka told DW. "That's why we came up with parenting guidelines to guide anybody who decides to bring a soul into this world to know that before you call in government, it's your responsibility."

But not everyone blames poor parenting alone for the crisis. Child care organizations in Uganda have said the return of children to Kampala's busy streets is also because law enforcement officals often delay routine operations to round them up.

Frank Yiga in Kampala contributed to this article.

Edited by: Chrispin Mwakideu

Macron calls for 'French nuclear renaissance'

The French president announced a plan to build at least six new plants by 2050, despite enormous cost overruns and decade long delays in completing a prototype. He also touted massive investments in renewable energy.



France has been slow to invest in renewables, instead sticking with its ageing nuclear plants to generate 70% of its energy

President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday outlined his vision for France's energy future and announced a major plan for the construction of at least six new nuclear reactors by state-controlled energy giant Electricite de France (EDF) while on a campaign visit to a turbine factory in the eastern industrial city of Belfort, just weeks ahead of a presidential election in April.

The third-generation pressurized water reactors (EPR) facilities are to be completed by 2050. Macron also said he was looking into the possibility of building a further eight. The whole project is being pitched under the motto of reducing France's greenhouse gas emissions.

Beyond nuclear power plans, Macron said 50 offshore wind parks were slated for construction — France currently has none, despite an abundance of coastline — and that onshore solar capacity would double and hydroelectric facilities would also not be forgotten.

Macron's main emphasis, however, was on nuclear energy, a particular point of pride with the French, providing roughly 70% of the nation's energy.

Atom, mon amour

Macron strong-arms EDF into buying back facility he controversially helped sell

Despite concern about the enormous cost and complexity of building new nuclear power reactors, Macron showed his support for nuclear energy as ecologically friendly and economically viable option, saying: "The time has come for a French nuclear renaissance."

Along with announcing new construction, Macron said he wanted EDF to extend the lives of older nuclear plants from 40 years to 50: "I want no reactor that has the capability of producing (electricity) to be closed in the future ... unless obviously for safety reasons."

"We are fortunate in France to be able to count on a strong nuclear industry, rich in know-how and with hundreds of thousands of jobs," Macron said.

Belfort is home to a key manufacturing site that produces turbines to be used in future power plants. It is well-known to Macron, who, while serving as finance minister in 2015, was instrumental in facilitating its sale by French industrial giant Alstom to US rival General Electric (GE).

The deal was widely criticized at the time, with opponents saying it would jeopardize French energy independence and cost thousands of jobs.

On Thursday, under pressure from the French government, EDF announced that it had agreed to buy back GE's nuclear turbine branch for $200 million (€175 million euros).

EDF projects decades behind schedule, billions over budget

EDF, which is heavily indebted, has faced difficulties in trying to build its latest-generation EPR reactors in separate projects in France, Britain and Finland.

The company estimates that it can build six of its reactors for France within 15 years at a cost of €50 billion ($57 billion).

Currently, EDF's flagship French project in the northern city of Flamanville — a prototype for the plants Macron spoke of — is running four times over its €3.3 billion budget and 11 years behind schedule.

Though nuclear endeavors tend to be extremely costly, France is decidedly more relaxed about the prospects of financing such projects after it was recently able to convince the European Commission to classify nuclear power as "green" in its taxonomy guide for investors — meaning that it is considered environmentally friendly, and thus investment-worthy.

Never too old to go offline

Currently, more than a dozen of France's 56 aging nuclear reactors are offline — seven for maintenance and five for serious corrosion damage. Overall output has dropped to around 55% to 60% of capacity. France also lags behind the rest of Europe when it comes to investments into renewable energy sources.

In 2021, France's nuclear authority agreed to extend the operational lifetime of the country's 32 oldest reactors by a decade, to 50 years. Since most of France's reactors were built in the 1980s, they could be shut down in the 2030s.

Paris argues that the new plan will maintain energy supplies amid increasing demand, while at the same time allowing France to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and help reduce dependency on imported fossil fuels.

Nuclear energy produces far lower emissions than coal, oil or gas, but plants are expensive to build and produce radioactive waste that remains deadly for tens of thousands of years.

That is an issue that France has yet to come to grips with — its cooling pond at the La Hague reprocessing plant will be full by 2030 and the country has not established a permanent nuclear waste storage facility to replace it.

Latvia: Parliament passes Holocaust restitution law

The bill allows for payments of €40 million and was passed after nearly two decades of negotiations. It also maintains that the Latvian state is not responsible for actions taken when it was occupied by Nazi forces.

At the end of 1941, over 27 000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis in the Rumbula forest near Riga

Latvia's parliament on Thursday passed a Holocaust restitution bill to compensate the Jewish community for lost property more than 75 years after the end of World War II.

The 100-seat Saeima voted 64-21 to approve the "Law on the Compensation of Goodwill to the Latvian Jewish Community" following years of discussion on the issue.

"Finalizing this process demonstrates that even 77 years after the end of the Holocaust, it is never too late for justice," said Arkady Sukharenko, chairman of the Latvian Council of Jewish Communities, hailing the move as a "historic step."

The bill provides for compensation payments of €40 million ($45 million) over 10 years to remedy "the historical unjust consequences" and provide social and material assistance to Holocaust survivors. It also includes funding to revitalize the Lativa's Jewish community, including funding for Jewish schools, and to build restoration and cultural projects.

It was passed after lengthy negotiations that involved the World Jewish Restitution Organization, Latvian Jewish representatives and government authorities. The process, which started in 2005, also involved the United States and Israel.

Stolen assets and property

Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during World War II. During this period, close to 90% of the country's 95,000 Jews died.

Latvia passed laws on returning the property after independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, but there was no one left to claim the assets.

"We're not going to ask the properties to be returned," said Dmitry Krupnikov, head of the Latvian Jewish Community Restitution Fund.

"It is impossible to return them 25 years after privatization was finished. Somebody's been using them, somebody's been renovating them, somebody's been improving them. Taking that property from them would be incorrect."

Latvian state not responsible

The new legislation maintains that the Latvian state is not responsible for the Holocaust when the country was occupied by Nazi Germany.

However, it would be "ethical and fair" if the country compensated the Latvian Jewish community for the property losses it suffered, according to the bill.

Several European countries have taken steps to compensate the families that owned property before the war. However, the reparation laws have had mixed success. In Latvia, the law had been opposed by the national-conservative ruling party, National Alliance.

    

Australia lists koala as endangered in eastern states

The Australian government has listed the koala as endangered in huge swaths of the country, upping its conservation status from vulnerable.

Australian Environment Minister Sue Ley on Friday announced that the conservation status of koalas was being raised to endangered across much of the east of the country.

Devastating bushfires have exacerbated an already bleak situation, with animal numbers already plunging due to habitat loss through land-clearing, as well as drought and disease.

What does the status change mean?

Ley said the latest change would boost protection for the marsupials under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. 

"The new listing highlights the challenges the species is facing and ensures that all assessments under the act will be considered not only in terms of their local impacts but with regard to the wider koala population."

The new conservation status underlines a swift decline in numbers. It was only in 2012 that the animal — a globally recognized symbol of Australia and its unique wildlife — was deemed to be vulnerable.

Estimates by an independent government advisory body — the Threatened Species Scientific Committee — show koala numbers having slumped from 185,000 in 2001 to 92,000 in 2021.

The change in status applies in New South Wales, Queensland, and the Australian Capital Territory.

'A bittersweet outcome'

Three environmental organizations — the World Wide Fund For Nature, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and the Humane Society International — submitted a joint nomination for the upgrade.

WWF Australia welcomed the news, saying that koalas and their forest homes should be provided with greater legal protection as a result.

"This is a bittersweet outcome, but a critical step towards reversing the decline of koala populations," the organization said. 

Conservation group IFAW Australia greeted the decision similarly.

"This decision is a double-edged sword and we should never have allowed it to get to this point." 

The Australian Koala Foundation (AKF) in September said the koala population was in rapid decline, with a 30% drop in numbers nationwide over three years.

Figures from New South Wales were the worst, with a 41% decline. But a decline was noted across all parts of Australia, with no upward trends in that time.

Devastating bushfires in 2019 and 2020 were thought to have seriously contributed to the fall in numbers, though drought and heatwaves were also to blame.

However, the AKF also blamed huge land clearances for farming, housing developments and mining — particularly across New South Wales and Queensland.

Chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease that can be debilitating and lead to infertility, has also spread widely among Australian koalas, affecting half the animals in some areas.

Edited by: Farah Bahgat

Gladys and her joeys — rescued from an area where urban development is encroaching on koala habitat

Bangladesh: Murder of DW journalist shrouded in mystery 10 years on

Family members and critics are calling for justice, a decade after former DW journalist Sagar Sarowar and his wife, Meherun Runi, were killed in Bangladesh.


Sagar Sarowar's mother says she has lost hope of finding justice for Sarowar and his wife Meherun Runi


Ten years after the gruesome murder of Bangladeshi journalists Sagar Sarowar and Meherun Runi, police are still looking for the killers. Critics have said the case indicates a lack of willingness on the part of authorities to solve the case.

Sarowar, who was a former DW journalist, was found dead alongside his journalist wife Mehrun Runi, in the bedroom of their apartment in Bangladesh's capital city, Dhaka, on February 11, 2012.

Police said that Sarowar had been tied up, and he and his wife had been stabbed multiple times. Their bodies were discovered early in the morning by their then five-year-old son.

Sarowar had worked as a radio host and editor with DW's Bengali service for three years in Bonn, the former capital of Germany, before returning to his home country. While working with DW, he conducted several interviews with top political leaders of the South Asian country and covered political, social and environmental issues.

The murder, which shocked Bangladesh, took place just eight months after the couple's return to Dhaka. At the time of their deaths, Sarowar worked as the news chief of Maasranga TV, while Runi was a senior reporter for the ATN Bangla TV channel.
Why were they killed?

Right after the murder, Sahara Khatun, the home minister at the time, vowed to find the killers within 48 hours. However, 10 years have passed since the promise was made, and police are yet to discover the motive behind the murder.

Runi's brother Nowsher Roman, who filed the murder case, expressed shock and frustration over the authorities' failure to solve the issue.

"Bangladesh police have solved many mysterious cases in the past. It's hard to believe that they were not able to find a clue behind the couple's murder even after such a long time," Roman told DW.

"It seems like the killers are very powerful. And nobody wants to identify them. Even journalists haven't done any in-depth investigation into it," he added.

Roman recalled that just two laptops and a phone went missing from the apartment after the killing — the killers hadn't taken anything else from the apartment, which was in the middle of a busy neighborhood, and didn't search for anything in any other rooms. The couple's only son, who was sleeping in his room during the murder, remained unharmed.

"The killers took Sarowar's laptops and mobile phone with them after the murder. Mysteriously, they didn't take Runi's phone or any other valuable goods from the apartment," Roman said.

"Sarowar used those devices for his journalistic work," he added.

Daniel Bastard, head of the Paris-based rights organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF), believes the government of the Muslim-majority country hasn't done enough to solve the case.

"There are two non-conflicting hypotheses: On the one hand, there has clearly been some mismanagement by the police force, the prosecutor's office, and ultimately, by the government," he told DW.

"On the other hand, suspicions remain extremely high regarding the motives behind the murder, and the link with the two journalists' investigative work, starting with [their work on] high-level corruption," he added.
Heightened fear among journalists

Bangladesh's press freedom situation has changed significantly over the past decade following the couple's murder. A climate of fear has taken hold in the media sector as the murder remains unsolved, even after protests demanding justice for the pair. Many journalists have limited their investigative work and chosen self-censorship over the past few years.

BANGLADESH'S 'DEATH SQUAD' SECURITY AGENCY TO SCAN SOCIAL MEDIA
Tarnished reputation
The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) was formed in 2004 to battle growing Islamism in Bangladesh. It initially managed to arrest or kill some top terrorists. But it did not take long for RAB's good reputation to be tarnished as it slowly became a symbol of fear. It's now seen as an all-powerful "death squad" unit that acts on the fringes of the law and imposes its own brand of justice.
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"Authorities must provide an explanation as to why the investigation into the killing of Sagar Sarowar and Meherun Runi has taken so long and remains inconclusive even after more than a decade," Smriti Singh, Amnesty International's deputy regional director for South Asia, told DW.

"Repeat failures to identify those responsible not only erodes the faith of the people in the law enforcement and justice system, but also shows a lack of accountability on the part of authorities," said Singh.

"Such prolonged delays bolster fear among journalists for the work they do, and the lack of protection that they are afforded by the state," Singh added.

Bastard pointed out that Bangladesh has dropped eight positions in RSF's World Press Freedom Index since 2013, from 144 to 152.

"Of course, this cannot be explained only by the February 11, 2012 killing. But the ongoing impunity around this case must be understood as a symptom of a larger trend of deterioration of the level of press freedom in Bangladesh," said Bastard.
Journalists continue to demand justice

Local journalists have continued demanding justice for their colleagues. Farida Yasmin, president of Bangladesh's Press Club, blames what she sees as a culture of impunity on the negligence of authorities to find clues.

"Not only the couple's murder case, but many other incidents of attacks on journalists have also remained unsolved. Journalists often don't get justice," she told DW.

"Apart from the police, investigative journalists could have investigated the murder, but they didn't do that either,” Yasmin added.

After the police force failed to solve the case, the country's elite police force Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) has taken on the duty of investigating the murder. However, it missed 85 dates to produce an investigative report before the courts in Dhaka.

A spokesperson of the Legal and Media Wing of the force said it needs more time to solve the murder.

"We have interrogated around 160 people in connection with the murder in the past few years. We even took eight of them to remand. But the motive behind the killing is yet to be discovered,” the spokesperson told DW.

"Some DNA samples of the suspects were sent to a forensics lab in the US a few years ago. We are still waiting for the result,” the spokesperson added.

Meanwhile, Saleha Munir, the mother of Sagar Sarowar, says she's lost hope of getting justice for her son and daughter-in-law.

"I have been left clueless about the killing. I want to know the truth, whatever it is, before my death,” she said.

Edited by: Leah Carter

India hijab row: 'All I want to do is study'

Muskan Khan, a college student in Karnataka state, told DW that she is not afraid of the Hindu right-wing activists who want to enforce a veil ban in educational institutes. The row has now spread across the country.

Many rights activists have taken to the streets to protest the imposition of hijab ban in Karnataka state

Huge protests have erupted across Karnataka state following the government's decision to ban hijabs, or headscarves, in schools and colleges.

After six students were banned from entering a college in Karnataka's coastal Udupi district for wearing hijabs on January 1, the debate over the rights of Muslim women, pluralism and secularism has gripped the entire country.

Amid escalating communal tensions and sporadic violence, authorities have closed all high schools and colleges in the southern state for three days.

The Karnataka state is governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which many Muslims accuse of deviating from the country's secular ideology.

The state's High Court is hearing two petitions on the issue and will decide whether to keep the ban or discard it. One of the petitions argues that it is a citizen's fundamental right to choose the attire, and that is guaranteed by the country's constitution.

The other petition challenges the legality of the government's decision to enforce a dress code in educational institutes.

DW contacted several ruling party officials, who said they didn't want to comment as the matter is now in court.

The hijab row, however, was echoed in the national Parliament, with opposition parties staging a walkout.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi, who is a lawmaker from Karnataka, told reporters that "all students must follow the dress code prescribed by schools and their administration."

An unlikely 'hero'

The issue became more prominent when a video of a college student became viral on social media. It showed Muskan Khan, a second-year student of Mandya College, being heckled by Hindu right-wing activists. They were purportedly supporting the dress code in the college. Khan, a Muslim girl clad in a burqa (face veil), confronted them and shouted "Allah Akbar" (God is great in Arabic). She refused to remove her veil.

Khan is now being hailed by many Indian Muslims as a "hero" who stood for the rights of minorities.

"They were not allowing me to enter college because I was wearing the burqa. They started shouting Jai Shri Rama (Hail Lord Rama), so I started yelling Allah Akbar," Muskan told DW over the phone from Mandya.

"All I want to do is study, and these people are stopping us. But I am not afraid," she added.

'Objectification of women'

Supporters of the ban argue that it is the right of college authorities to decide what kind of attire the students are allowed to wear. But many Muslims, and India's secular sections, counter it by saying that it is every individual's basic right to exercise religious beliefs.

"The hijab is a part of cultural and religious identity of the Muslim women. It is like mangal sutra (necklace) for Hindus, the cross for Christians, and turbans for Sikhs," T N Prathapan, a lawmaker from the opposition Congress party, told DW.

Prathapan said the constitutional rights of all citizens must be protected.

Meanwhile, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai called on Indian authorities to take measures to "stop the marginalization of Muslim women."

"Refusing to let girls go to school in their hijabs is horrifying. The objectification of women persists, for wearing less or more," Yousafzai tweeted.

Political mileage

Some experts say the BJP is deliberately igniting the issue for political gains.

"What to eat and what to wear is a fundamental right. The BJP is trying to impose its choices on people. This is nothing but majoritarian politics at play," Nawab Malik of the Nationalist Congress Party told DW.

Activists say attacks on Muslims, who number about 200 million of India's 1.4 billion population, have increased since Modi took power in 2014.

Communal tensions are also on the rise in Karnataka, a state ruled by the BJP. According to the Karnataka Communal Harmony Forum, the state's coastal districts witnessed over 120 communal incidents last year, the highest number in the last four years.

A recent report by the joint initiative of the United Christians Forum, the Association for Protection of Civil Rights and United Against Hate revealed that at least 305 incidents of violence against Christians took place nationwide in the first nine months of 2021. This includes at least 32 incidents in Karnataka alone.

Cynthia Stephen, a social policy researcher in Karnataka, said the BJP "could have nipped the issue in the bud" much earlier.

Kavita Krishnan, of the All India Women's Progressive Association, told DW that the headscarf issue could easily be used as a justification for mob attacks on Muslims.

"Hijab is only the latest pretext to target Muslim women. It came after Hindu supremacists held multiple online auctions of Muslim women and made speeches calling for their sexual and reproductive enslavement," Krishnan said.