Bangui hails Russian 'saviours' of battered C. Africa




The 'Russian monument' in Bangui 

(AFP/Carol VALADE)

A man at the 'Russian Monument' offers his support to Vladimir Putin's policy in Ukraine (AFP/Carol VALADE)

Thu, February 24, 2022

Russia has been branded a pariah for invading Ukraine, but in the remote Central African Republic, the country has fans -- supporters who say its paramilitaries "saved" their war-torn country.

Beneath a statue of Russian fighters protecting a woman and her children, civilians joined a military tribute in Bangui on Wednesday to thank Russians who 14 months ago helped prevent a takeover by armed rebels.

The "Russian monument," as the people of the capital call it, stands in a square of reddish clay earth near the university.

About a hundred people of all ages waved Russian and CAR flags before troops from an elite unit and figures close to the government.

Some held up banners and signs proclaiming "Central Africans with Russia" and even "Russia will save the Donbass from war" -- a reference to the Ukrainian territory that President Vladimir Putin cited as justification for Thursday's attack.

In December 2020, as elections loomed, a coalition of armed groups advanced on Bangui, prompting President Faustin Archange Touadera to appeal to the Kremlin for help under bilateral accords.

Russia sent hundreds of paramilitaries to the deeply poor and landlocked country, where they joined others who had been present for three years. Rwanda also sent a military contingent.

In a few months, with Russian backing, the CAR's ill-equipped and poorly-trained army drove back rebels who had occupied two-thirds of the CAR's territory.

Today, government forces have regained control over the major cities -- the immediate crisis is over, although the threat of violence remains.

The rebels have scattered into the countryside, where they launch attacks on the security forces and civilians.

- 'Wagner' controversy -

Russia describes its personnel as "unarmed instructors," but the UN and France -- CAR's colonial power and traditional ally -- say they are from Wagner, a private and unaccountable security firm.

The help has come at a cost, for the operatives have been accused of extrajudicial killings and other abuses.

Last year, a group of UN experts denounced abuses committed against civilians by the CAR armed forces and their Russian allies.

And on Tuesday, France and the United States alleged at the UN Security Council on Tuesday that Wagner "mercenaries" killed dozens of civilians last month.

In July 2018, three Russian journalists investigating Wagner's activities in the CAR were ambushed and killed.

- 'Real peace' -

Inaugurated by Touadera with great fanfare in December as a "tribute to the Russian armed forces and fighters," the statue bears no inscription.

"The Russians have always been there on our side," claimed Yefi Kezza, a member of Touadera's United Hearts Movement (MCU) and also of the National Galaxy Platform, which organised the tribute and vilifies France and the UN.

"The Russians came and did a remarkable job to liberate the Central African people," added Blaise-Didacien Kossimatchi, another member of the National Galaxy Platform.

Several demonstrators sported T-shirts stamped "I am Wagner," identifying with the controversial security firm which supports the Kremlin's interests -- with deniability.

Soldiers of the 6th Territorial Infantry Battalion, an elite unit of the Central African Armed Forces (FACA), snapped to attention for the CAR national anthem.

Their commander laid a wreath at the foot of the statue in hommage to the "Defenders of the Fatherland."



None of the Russian paramilitaries or diplomats who usually attend such events was to be seen, however.

"The peace that the FACA and the Russians have brought us is truly the peace of God," announced one speaker at the microphone, rousing cheers from the crowd.

"What interests us is to have real peace," said Nelson Ezechiel Yangelema, a first-year student in the faculty of science.

"The Russians must still give the CAR a helping hand."

cv-dyg-gir/nb/bsp/ri

France violated rights of children held in 'inhuman' Syria camps, UN watchdog says

France has violated the rights of French children by leaving them for years in inhuman and life-threatening conditions in Syrian camps for family members of suspected jihadists, a UN watchdog said Thursday.

The UN child rights committee ruled that "France has the responsibility and power to protect the French children in the Syrian camps against an imminent risk to their lives by taking action to repatriate them."

It stressed in a statement that "the prolonged detention of the child victims in life-threatening conditions also amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment."

The committee, whose 18 independent experts are tasked with monitoring the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, issued its findings after considering three cases involving 49 French children held in Kurdish-controlled camps in Syria's northeast.

Relatives of suspected jihadists, including children, are kept in a number of camps in the region, the largest of which is Al-Hol with around 56,000 displaced people and refugees.

Repeated calls for Western countries to repatriate their nationals have largely fallen on deaf ears.

"The children are living in inhuman sanitary conditions, lacking basic necessities including water, food and health care, and facing an imminent risk of death," committee member Ann Skelton warned.

"The situation is therefore extremely urgent."

She pointed out that at least 62 children have reportedly died in the camps due to these conditions since the start of 2021.
'War-like zone'

The French cases were brought by a group of French nationals on behalf of their grandchildren, nieces and nephews -- some as young as five -- long stuck in the camps.

Some of the children were born in Syria, while others were brought there by their French parents at a very young age.

Their parents are alleged to have collaborated with the Islamic State group.

Since their relatives took their cases to the committee in 2019, the French government has repatriated 11 of the children.

The remaining 38 -- some as young as five years old -- are still being detained in the "closed camps in a war-like zone", the committee said.

Its statement said France had "not shown that it gave due consideration to the best interests of the child victims when assessing their relatives' requests for repatriation".

The committee urged France to take urgent action to repatriate the remaining 38 child victims.

In the meantime, it called on Paris to take additional measures to mitigate the risks faced by the children remaining in northeastern Syria.

"We call on France to take immediate action, as every day that passes there is a renewed possibility for further casualties," Skelton said.

(AFP)

France 24

Dogs show signs of mourning after loss of canine companions

Thu, 24 February 2022, 

Dogs exhibit behaviors consistent with grief after the death of a canine companion, a new study shows (AFP/TIMOTHY A. CLARY) (TIMOTHY A. CLARY)

Dogs are deeply affected by the deaths of canine companions, eating and playing less and seeking attention more following a loss, a large scientific study said Thursday.

Signs of grief have previously been reported across many species, including great apes, whales, dolphins, elephants and birds.

Among the canid family, there were some prior indications: some wild wolves have been reported burying the carcasses of two-week-old pups, and a dingo mother had been observed transporting its deceased pup to different locations in the days following its death.

But the evidence was overall sparse, and, when it came to domestic dogs, confined to anecdotal reports from owners, which run the risk of anthropomorphism and over-stating the case.

The new study, published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, involved a survey completed by 426 Italian adults who owned at least two dogs, one of whom had died while the other was alive.

Negative changes were reported by 86 percent of owners, with a quarter saying these lasted longer than six months.

These behaviors included more attention seeking (67 percent), reduced playfulness (57 percent), and reduced overall activity (46 percent).

Surviving dogs also slept more, became more fearful, ate less, and whined or barked more.

The researchers found that the length of time the two dogs had lived together was not an important factor in determining grief -- rather it was the quality of the relationship the pair had shared that mattered.

How much the owner felt the loss also played a significant role, suggesting that the surviving dog was also responding to the human's emotional cues.

"This is potentially a major welfare issue that has been overlooked," with better understanding of behavior patterns key to meeting the animals' emotional needs, concluded the authors.

ia/st

COVID: Is England scrapping self-isolation too soon?

England is ditching self-isolation for positive COVID-19 cases, leaving scientists concerned about variants, the spread of the coronavirus and sick people being forced to work.

Masks haven't been mandatory for a while, now England has scrapped mandatory self-isolation for positive COVID cases as well

The legal requirement to self-isolate after testing positive for COVID-19 has been lifted in England, and scientists are concerned that the changes will lead to more infections and potential new variants.

As of February 24, people no longer legally have to self-isolate, but the UK government says that, until April 1, it still advises people who test positive to stay home and avoid contact with others for five days and then test negative two days in a row.

Mask-wearing and social distancing have not been compulsory in England since late January.

Zoe Hyde, an epidemiologist at the University of Western Australia, told DW that, while easing quarantine requirements for contacts of cases could be justified if protocols such as testing negative were in place, this was not the case for positive cases.

"Ending the requirement for known cases to isolate is completely at odds with public health," Hyde said.

"It's a recipe for more transmission, more waves of disease, new variants, and sustained disruption to health systems and the economy," she added.

But Catherine Bennett, chair in epidemiology at Deakin University in Australia, told DW that the change in rules wouldn't result in all positive cases choosing not to self-isolate.

"This is part of the transition to living alongside the virus where we move away from rules that are increasingly difficult to enforce," Bennett said.

"Removing rules to self-isolate doesn't mean people must stop isolating, just as having rules doesn't mean everyone is following them. So, whilst there might be more people out mixing than there currently are, it won't be a step change from 0% to 100%," Bennett said.

Pressure to work

Sarah Pitt, a principal lecturer at the University of Brighton and fellow at the UK-based Institute of Biomedical Science, told DW that she worries that people who are ill with COVID-19 and should be resting would be under pressure to go to work once the isolation requirement falls.

"This might affect the time it takes for them to recover, might increase the risk of them developing long COVID, and they can also infect other people," Pitt said.

The loss of financial assistance for people who are too ill to work adds another layer of pressure.

From February 24, self-isolation support payments will end, along with national funding for practical support and the medicine delivery service.

"Removing the legal requirement to self-isolate means that people will not receive the same financial assistance that they had before, so some people will have to go to work when they really should be at home," Pitt said.
Concern over variants

Scientists have also expressed concern about the change to England's self-isolation rules and the potential for new variants.

"Variants can emerge anywhere in the course of viral replication, and, the higher the infection rates, the sooner we might see one," Bennett said.

A press statement about the government's "plan for living with COVID" says the United Kingdom will "begin to treat Covid as other infectious diseases such as flu."

But the coronavirus is more contagious than influenza.

Pitt said the coronavirus was very unpredictable and had not settled down yet.

"There is absolutely nothing in the virology which suggests that any new variants will be milder than omicron," Pitt said.

On Twitter, Deepti Gurdasani, a clinical epidemiologist at Queen Mary University of London, expressed concern about the omicron sublineage BA.2 as the UK government plans to end all self-isolation.

"In the midst of this, our govt appears to have made a decision to halt free testing for the majority, and self-isolation for all. It was never a question of *if a VOC emerges*. We have one now, and it is growing in the UK, and globally," Gurdasani wrote, referring to variants of concern.

In a statement on February 22, the World Health Organization (WHO) said studies had shown that BA.2 has a growth advantage over BA.1, and that initial data suggests that BA.2 is "inherently more transmissible" than BA.1, which is currently the most common omicron sublineage reported.
Living with the virus

Investment in public health messaging is important for creating behavioral change, Bennett said.

The epidemiologist said that, if the public understands that simpler measures such as mask wearing indoors helps reduce transmission risk when infection rates are rising, this will help reduce the need for more formal rules.

"Then we are moving into a more sustainable approach to infectious disease control," Bennett said.

Booster vaccinations could also help counterbalance the changes to England's self-isolation rules, she added.

"If increasing booster doses can reduce symptomatic infection from omicron by half for five months or more, then this could offset the changes to isolation rules if there was more effort to make the vaccines available globally," Bennet said.

But living with coronavirus means understanding the virus, Pitt said, including how infectious it is, how it spreads and how serious the disease can be ― even in vaccinated people.

A sensible precaution would be to continue to wear face coverings on public transport, Pitt said. As of February 24, masks will no longer be required on public transport in London. But Transport for London, the government body responsible for most of London's public transport, recommended that passengers who can wear a mask continue to do so.

"We do not complain when health care workers wear gloves to examine patients these days," Pitt said, "but that precaution only came in as a measure to protect against HIV in the 1980s and 1990s."

Wearing masks could become a part of life to protect people from the coronavirus and other airborne diseases, just like wearing surgical gloves did.

"It was controversial at the time, but it is normal practice now," Pitt said.

Edited by: Carla Bleiker

How the climate crisis is threatening our energy supply

Whether it's heat or heavy rain, the consequences of climate change are putting our energy security at risk. Oil, gas and nuclear energy are particularly vulnerable. So, what does that mean for our future?


More extreme weather will increasingly threaten energy infrastructure

At the end of January, torrential rains poured over parts of the South American state of Ecuador. As a result, an oil pipeline in the eastern province of Napo in the Amazon region was severely damaged — thousands of liters of oil began to leak out and contaminate the surrounding soil.

"The accident is a disaster for the environment," Hans-Joseph Fell, the founder of Energy Watch Group, which is investigating a global transition to renewable energies, told DW. "The consequences of climate change, such as heavy rainfall or drought, have a very strong influence on the availability of conventional energy."
Conventional energy: Low resilience in extreme weather

Oil is particularly at risk, as the recent string of oil accidents shows. But it's not the only energy source impacted by the increasing number of extreme weather events. During hotter months, nuclear power plants sometimes have to be shut down because rivers are too warm to be used as cooling water.

Around one million liters of oil leaked from a pipeline into the rainforest in Ecuador

During the hot European summer in 2018, for example, France was forced to shut down four reactors, and the Grohnde Nuclear Power Plant in Germany almost followed suit. Nuclear power plants by the sea do not have this problem, but they in turn could be threatened by rising sea levels.

Extremely low water levels in the Rhine in 2018 also caused the price of heating oil to rise sharply. Like many other goods, it was no longer possible to simply transport the oil across the entire river by ship.

Extreme drought also severely damages hydropower facilities. This has global consequences. Following long periods of extreme heat in the summer of 2021, numerous reservoirs in the US and many parts of Latin America almost dried up. The hydropower plant by Lake Mead near Las Vegas produced a quarter less electricity than usual in July.

According to an analysis by the Institute of Energy Economics at the University of Cologne (EWI), lower levels of electricity generation from hydropower in Latin America led to high demand for liquefied natural gas from the US in 2021. The gas was sold on the American continent instead of to Europe, impacting the volume of gas available in Europe this winter.

Meanwhile, heavy rain and flooding in Indonesia, severe storms in Australia and the US, as well as flooding in China, meant less coal was mined in 2021, according to the study. As a result, demand for gas — and gas prices — have risen even further.

Financial sector invests in wind and solar power

"In contrast to fossil fuels, using wind and solar power to generate electricity is more resilient to weather extremes, and therefore more crisis-proof," said Tim Bachmann, who manages the clean technology fund at asset management company, DWS Group.

The decentralized generation of wind and solar energy has proven to be an advantage in extreme weather conditions, according to Bachmann.

"That's why many large companies in the US, including internet companies, carmakers and others, have signed long-term power contracts with wind and solar farm operators," he said.

There are also far fewer logistical problems to contend with, because the electricity is directly generated from the wind and sun. Coal, oil, gas or uranium on the other hand must first be transported to power plants, where they are converted into energy. And there are various risks inherent in even just transporting the fuels.

How climate-proof is wind power?

But what about the risks posed by extreme weather when it comes to wind and solar power — for example, when hurricanes barrel into wind farms?

Martin Dörenkämper, of the Site Assessment Department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems (IWES), explained the importance of decentralized networks, so if turbines in the north have to go off the grid, those in other regions can compensate.

"Even in a strong winter storm, only the wind turbines at the heart of the storm need to be shut down, but not those at the edge of the wind field," he told DW, adding that modern wind turbines can withstand high speeds, and that engineers are currently working to equip them for winds of up to 200 kilometers per hour.

He says no other great climate change adaptation measures are necessary. In places where winters are becoming wetter as a result of global warming — such as in Scandinavia — the power plants must be heated to prevent ice from forming. During periods of heat, stronger cooling measures are necessary.

Wind power is inherently resilient to climate change

Solar panels vs hailstones

The risks posed by the climate crisis also seem manageable when it comes to solar power, according to the latest findings. In order to withstand stronger storms, the substructures and frames of future plants would need to be reinforced, as well as the glass of the solar modules. That's according to Harry Wirth, who is responsible for photovoltaic modules and power plants at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE). And it's all technically feasible.

Wirth says solar power systems are also being prepared for stronger hailstorms. According to insurance company Munich Re, this risk has already significantly increased in Europe due to climate change.

"For this purpose, the modules are bombarded with artificial hail in the laboratory," he told DW. "Hailstones between 2.5 and five centimeters in diameter are used."
Heat-resistant, high-voltage lines in the works

Whether conventional or renewable energy, it has to be transported to where it is needed — be that to private households, municipalities or industrial companies. And that means the entire power grid must be able to withstand the risks of the climate crisis.

Mathias Fischer is the press spokesperson for electricity grid operators Tennet. The group operates the entire Dutch high-voltage grid and is the largest grid operator in Germany.

"Due to rising temperatures, we are increasingly relying on so-called high-temperature conductor cables for electricity pylons," explained Fischer. "They can get hotter than conventional cables without bending."

The sticking point of renewables: Stability and storage

"The biggest challenge for the industry during the energy transition is to keep the frequency of the power grid constant at 50 Hertz," said Fischer.

This is easier with conventional power plants, because they can always power up when electricity is needed and pause when there is already enough in the grid. But it becomes more complicated when dealing with many decentralized systems that generate different amounts of energy, depending on how much wind and sun is available.

This means grid expansion is essential in order to transport large amounts of offshore wind power to regions with high electricity demand. Storage possibilities for renewable energy would also need to be realized and built quickly, for example in the form of green hydrogen.

This can be converted into energy whenever electricity is needed. However, renewable electricity stored in hydrogen is also more susceptible to the consequences of climate change, with storms, floods and heatwaves all posing a threat to hydrogen tanks or pipelines.

This article was orignally published in German.

DOUBLE HARVEST: SOLAR PANELS ON FARMS

Harvesting electricity — and berries

Fabian Karthaus is one of the first farmers in Germany to grow raspberries and blueberries under photovoltaic panels. His solar field near the city of Paderborn in northwestern Germany is 0.4 hectares (about 1 acre), but he would like to expand it to 10. He could then generate enough electricity for around 4,000 households — and provide more berries for supermarkets.

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Can cryptocurrency ever be environmentally friendly?

A Costa Rican hydropower plant has transformed into a green crypto-mining operation. But can energy-hungry cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin ever be compatible with climate targets?


Eduardo Kopper is happy about his decision to now be a Bitcoin miner

At the end of 2020, after 30 years in operation, Eduardo Kopper had to shut down the turbines of his hydroelectric plant, Poas I, located in Costa Rica's Central Valley region.

The Costa Rican Institute of Electricity — the country's public electricity distributor — rejected Kopper's bid to sell his energy because the country has a surplus of renewable power.

"Essentially, we couldn't do anything," Kopper said. "It was a worrisome situation. We were trying to at least sustain our workers."

It was then that he learned about bitcoin. The cryptocurrency is a huge energy consumer, with a carbon footprint comparable to Kuwait's, according to the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index.

The Poas I hydropower plant in Costa Rica became a crypto-mining operation

Dedicating his plant to Bitcoin mining struck Kopper as a way to convert his green energy directly into currency. By April 2021, after three months of inactivity, Poas I was back — as a renewables-powered cryptocurrency mining center.

And Kopper isn't the only one. Miners across the Americas, and particularly in the United States, are jumping on the "green Bitcoin" bandwagon.

Large US crypto mining companies — such as Bitfarms and Neptune Digital Assets — are now marketing their operations as "green." Legislators in Brazil, meanwhile, are debating a tax exemption for renewable-powered crypto mining.
A waste of precious energy?

Bitcoin's staggering energy consumption is central to how its blockchain technology functions. New bitcoins are "mined" by solving complex math puzzles, a feature called "proof of work." This ensures the blockchain network is decentralized. But it also demands a vast amount of processing power, as miners race to solve these problems first.

Cognizant of the environmental impact of the energy-hungry currency, more than 200 companies and individuals launched the Crypto Climate Accord last year, committing to net-zero operations by 2030, mainly by switching to renewable power sources.

BITCOIN EXPLAINED: HOW IT WORKS AND WHAT IT IS GOOD FOR
The cryptic token
Bitcoin is thought of as a digital currency because it exists only virtually, without any physical coins or notes. It resides in a decentralized, encrypted network that is independent of commercial or central banks. This allows Bitcoin to be exchanged under the same conditions all around the globe. It's also a cryptocurrency, because it uses encryption to conceal users' identities and activities.
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But not everyone sees green mining as a win-win solution to cleaning up the dirty currency. Economist and Bitcoin expert Alex de Vries said expending precious renewable power on "random computation," rather than sectors that provide jobs and other economic benefits to a national economy, can be problematic.

In fact, until recently, renewables already played a major role in crypto mining, as they're often the cheapest source of power. A study by cryptocurrency analysis firm CoinShares estimated that in 2019, at least 74% of Bitcoin's global energy consumption came from renewables, much of it cheap Chinese hydropower.

But, in 2021, the Chinese government banned all cryptocurrency-related activities, in part because of their huge energy consumption. Sweden, meanwhile, has called on the European Union to ban crypto mining, arguing that it diverts renewable power that could be used to decarbonize other sectors, putting climate targets in jeopardy.
The Costa Rican exception

Jose Daniel Lara, a Costa Rican energy researcher at UC Berkeley, concedes that in Costa Rica, which has an energy surplus, there's some logic to green cryptocurrency mining. Ideally, Costa Rica would export its surplus power. But that just isn't possible at the moment. As much as its energy-poor neighbor Nicaragua, for example, might benefit from Costa Rican energy, it doesn't have the infrastructure to import it.

A different kind of mine water: Poas I's storage basins are used to generate electricity to power more than 600 computers

Bitcoin mining has allowed Kopper to revive two of his shuttered 1 MW hydropower plants and convert the electricity into something that can be exported without the need for physical power grids. "Here we found a way to transform energy into a digital token," he said.

He installed a containerlike storage room for central processing units, sealed it against Costa Rica's abundant heat and moisture, and began by renting some of these CPUs to mining companies abroad. Now, he's also mining bitcoins himself. He's avoided laying off his staff of 25 employees, and is planning to reactivate a third plant in the coming months.

The Poas I crypto-mining center is the first of its kind in Costa Rica, but Kopper has had interest from other private energy providers in the country looking to join the business. And elsewhere, companies claim that crypto mining can actually help solve challenges inherent to renewable power production.
Crypto mining as grid-stabilizing technology

In Texas, the tech company Lancium is building bitcoin mines that will run on renewable energy. But instead of competing with traditional power consumption, it's marketing the project as a way to stabilize the grid.

The difficulty with renewables — such as Texas' growing wind capacity — is that electricity production fluctuates with the weather. An oversupply can cause grid congestion, and even result in blackouts, which is why fossil-fueled power stations that can be ramped up or down are often used to balance renewables-heavy power systems.

Lancium says its model allows bitcoin operations to provide this service instead, by simply ramping mining activity up or down according to how much excess power is available. Lara says in this way, projects like Lancium's could actually support the expansion of renewable power and reduce the need for fossil fuels.

Hydroelectric power drives the computers in Poas I, but is that enough to make bitcoin truly sustainable?

Miners migrate to fossil-fueled economies

Globally, de Vries said, the green cryptocurrency wave isn't having much of an impact on its colossal carbon footprint.

After China banned crypto mining, operations migrated west — in particular to fossil fuel-rich Kazakhstan, as well as the United States. "The new locations just don't offer the same amount of renewables," de Vries said.

In August 2020, the US was home to 5% of global bitcoin mining. A year later, that figure had risen to 35% according to data from the University of Cambridge. Texas in particular is positioning itself as a crypto capital, but despite projects like Lancium's, most of the state's power supply still comes from coal and gas.

Watch video01:35Bitcoin the power guzzler

A more energy-efficient crypto model

Kopper insists that, with a global shift toward renewables, green mining could clean up bitcoin's carbon footprint in the long run. "We're making an effort to differentiate dirty Bitcoin from clean Bitcoin," he said. "It might take some time for consumers to recognize this, but I think it's a matter of time."

But de Vries believes that making cryptocurrencies more energy-efficient would be a better solution. Some — like Cardano and Binance — are already using a different model called "proof of stake," by which miners put their own coins at stake to engage in transactions, instead of solving computations.

"If you're using proof of stake, you don't need a hardware competition anymore," de Vries said. "You just need a device with connection to the internet. Just the proof of work part increases the energy needed by a factor of 10,000."

Ethereum, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency, is planning to switch to proof of stake this year. The technology is still new, but de Vries says if it works for Ethereum, other currencies could follow.

For Kopper, however, proof of work is still essential to his successful new business model. And he has no plans to return Poas I to its former use.

"As we're learning how to optimize the mining process, we're achieving better profitability," he said. "Today, I'd think we're not going back. We've found a new market for our electricity."

Edited by: Ruby Russell

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What is cryptocurrency?

Terror threat morphs in Mozambique

The insurgency in Mozambique's Cabo Delgado province is spreading to neighboring regions, according to a new study. This comes despite the intervention of SADC and Rwandan troops.



Mozambican armed force are fighting Islamist insurgents in Cabo Delgado

Mozambique's al-Shabab militia, whose name comes from the Arabic for youth and which has no relation to Somalia's al-Shabab terrorist group, has been carrying out brutal attacks in the nation's most northern province, Cabo Delgado, since 2017.

The Islamic militants have now taken control of entire areas of Cabo Delgado and have expanded their operations inside and outside of Mozambique, according to a new joint study by the Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime and the Hanns Seidel Foundation in Germany.

This comes despite the deployment of troops from Rwanda and the Southern African regional bloc, SADC, to help Mozambique's military fight the armed uprising, Julian Rademeyer, one of the study's lead authors, told DW.

The study, "Insurgency, Illicit Markets and Corruption: The Cabo Delgado Conflict and Its Regional Implications" was published on Thursday.
Surge in attacks

In the past week alone, extremists have attacked at least eight villages in Cabo Delgado, completely burning down five of them on the border to Tanzania, the Catholic Denis Hurley Peace Institute told Germany's Catholic news agency, KNA.

According to Rademeyer, the study's authors are "already seeing some of the elements of al-Shabab scattering to other provinces and renewing attacks and violence."

The group is said to be responsible for recent attacks in Niassa province, which borders Cabo Delgado to the west, as well as in Nampula province to the south.

In addition, al-Shabab has strengthened its networks outside of Mozambique, said Rademeyer, , a organized crime expert at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime. He said this could have long-term consequences for other countries in southern African region.

The group has links to forces allied with the so-called Islamic State in the Democratic Republic of Congo and has also recruited fighters from neighbors Tanzania and South Africa, he said.

Allowing criminal groups to flourish

By increasing the general lawlessness of Cabo Delgado, al-Shabab's gains in the province have spurred the growth of illicit trafficking through northern Mozamique.

"Cabo Delgado province serves as a key economic corridor and has historically for hundreds of years," Rademeyer said.

"But it also serves as a key corridor for illicit trafficking flows," he said, especially for the smuggling of heroin and amphetamines.

Heroin comes from Afghanistan through Iran to northern Mozambique and onward to neighboring South Africa, the largest consumer market for heroin in the southern African region and a major transit point for trafficking to Europe and the United States.

Cocaine, primarily originating Brazil, also passes through northern Mozambique to Australia.

On top of this, people, illegally logged timber, wildlife products, precious stones and gold move through Cabo Delgado.
Robbery and extortion

According to study, al-Shabab itself only participates directly in a small way in the illegal trafficking.

Rather, the group finances itself by demanding protection money from local businesses and looting cash, weapons and goods during attacks. The terrorist group also raise funds through kidnapping and demanding ransoms for people's release.

Rumors abound that al-Shabab harvests organs from people it captures in attacks and then trades these on the international market.

The study found absolutely no evidence of this, Rademeyer said. Rather, he said, the rumors are probably an example of how disinformation spreads within the conflict zone and how this disinformation can be used as a propaganda tool by Mozambique's government.
Empowering the forgotten population

To create lasting peace, the government needs to invest in local development and strengthen the forgotten civilian population, the study recommends.

Martin Abang Ewi, from South Africa's Institute for Security Studies in South Africa, told DW that he agrees with the findings.

"The security situation in Cabo Delgado remains very fragile and dire," Ewi said.

About 734,000 people were internally displaced in Cabo Delgabo, Niassa and Nampula provinces as of December 2020, according to the UN's humanitarian affairs coordination agency, OCHA, and 1.1 million are severely food insecure.


Fights over water frequently break out among the internally displaced persons

"The humanitarian situation is ... getting worse, [and] the government is not capable of meeting the needs of people on the ground," Ewi said.

The World Food Program, which is the only agency providing food to people internally displaced in Cabo Delgado, is "overwhelmed," he said.

Another approach to solving the conflict is for the international community to make a greater contribution, particularly in the fight against terror, Ewi said.

Mozambique's government has too little capacity to do this on its own, he said.

This article was translated from German.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Switzerland extradites key figure of 'Cum-Ex' scandal to Germany

Swiss authorities handed over a German lawyer accused of scamming German and European governments in one of Germany's biggest tax fraud scams in recent memory. The elaborate scheme cost treasuries €55 billion.


The 'cum-ex' scandal was unearthed by investigative reporting, years after Germany had closed the legal loophole allowing the practice

Swiss authorities on Thursday extradited a German lawyer sought by Germany on account of being a key leader of a massive tax fraud scheme called "Cum-Ex."

Hanno Berger, 71, was handed over to German police officials in the city of Konstanz in southern Germany, prosecutors based in Frankfurt said.

The German states of Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia both sought his extradition. Berger was to appear immediately before a district court in Wiesbaden, the capital of Hesse, near Frankfurt, for a custody order.

Berger has been accused of being one of the main architects of a multibillion-euro tax fraud scheme that operated from 2005 until 2012.

Watch video  42:31 The Billion-Euro Heist - A state prosecutor hunts the tax mafia

How the situation evolved

Berger was arrested in Switzerland, where he lived in exile, in July. Switzerland's Federal Criminal Court ruled in favor of extraditing Berger to Germany last December.

Prosecutors accused Berger and others of promoting the tax fraud scheme. Berger, who helped represent himself, has always denied any wrongdoing, defending his activity as permissible by law.

Berger, a lawyer and tax consultant, cost German state governments billions of dollars. Other European states cumulatively lost more than €55 billion ($65 billion).

Even though Germany's top court has issued millions of dollars in fines on some individuals involved in the case, it is unlikely that governments will be able to make up for the loss.

Cum-Ex (Latin for "with-without") saw traders exploiting a loophole and making millions from state governments by filing bogus tax claims. They particularly profited in the wake of the 2008-09 financial crash. The practice involved participants' loaning each other shares in large companies so that it appeared to tax authorities that there were two owners of the shares, not one. Then both owners would report having paid taxes on share dividends, without it being done. This ultimately allowed traders to reclaim double the taxes they were owed.

Germany closed the loophole in 2012.

rm/msh (Reuters, dpa)

Actual greenhouse gas volumes exceed official reports
By the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism

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Flares burn on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota on Oct. 27, 2021. Over much of the last decade, oil and gas operators in Texas and a dozen other U.S. states have flared, or burned off, at least 3.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to an analysis of satellite data by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. 

(Isaac Stone Simonelli/The Howard Center for Investigation via AP)


AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Wayne Christian wanted to brag, he said, rocking in his burgundy leather chair atop the dais of the powerful Railroad Commission of Texas. Colleagues and staff were doing “a darn good job,” and people who “gripe about the environmental issues” were misinformed.

The self-congratulatory pause came during an October meeting of the agency that oversees a more than $400 billion oil and gas industry in the top-producing state of the top-producing country on a rapidly warming planet.

Christian, a former Grammy-nominated gospel singer, complained that negative media reports had obscured “the good job our staff and this industry has done for a cleaner environment, the cleanest industrialized nation on the planet.”

Then the chairman and his two fellow elected commissioners returned to their agenda and, without debate, approved 39 more requests from oil and gas companies seeking permission to burn off or vent natural gas that’s rich in methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

Over much of the last decade, oil and gas operators in Texas and a dozen other U.S. states have flared, or burned off, at least 3.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to an analysis of satellite data by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. That amount equals more than $10.6 billion in revenue based on the market value of natural gas from 2012-2020. The industry has also directly released unknown amounts of gas into the atmosphere through a process called venting. Between them, flaring and venting release a noxious cocktail of carbon dioxide, methane and other pollutants.

Climate scientists have warned that without steep, immediate reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, the world will miss its chance to avert the deadliest and most destructive effects of climate change, which is already contributing to unprecedented wildfires, floods and other natural disasters across the planet. Epidemiologists have also linked flaring emissions to preterm births.

Flaring has surged alongside the fracking boom that’s helped producers unlock previously unreachable fossil fuels and boosted local, state and national economies over the last decade and a half. The United States now produces enough oil and natural gas to be energy independent, its volumes surpassing Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Flaring occurs mostly at oil wells, but even companies that primarily produce and sell natural gas burn off some of it. Companies argue that they flare and vent for safety and maintenance and because selling or reusing the gas is not financially feasible. The industry and its regulators even refer to this gas as “waste.” But experts say a valuable resource is being squandered because of weak regulations, ineffective tracking of flaring and venting, and a lack of economic incentives to capture and sell the gas.

“The atmosphere is a free dumping place,” said Robert L. Kleinberg, senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. “It’s like throwing garbage out the window back in the Middle Ages.”

Regardless of the reasons, every act of flaring and venting releases methane, which traps heat 80 times more effectively than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, making methane reduction one of the fastest routes to reducing global warming, experts say.

During the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November, the Biden administration unveiled its proposal to slash methane emissions by the U.S. oil and gas industry, the country’s largest industrial source of methane. While plans for a methane fee died in Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new regulations to eliminate venting at both new and existing oil wells and require companies to capture and sell gas whenever possible.

Experts say eliminating routine flaring is technically and politically feasible, and some companies are already working toward that goal.

“No one has any reason to put methane into the air for beneficial purpose,” said Kleinberg.

But regulators are largely unaware of the amount of gas being flared and vented, the Howard Center found. It’s a blind spot that’s developed under limited federal oversight and a patchwork of state regulations, lax enforcement and inconsistent data collection.

For at least 17 years, government auditors have warned that bad data was blinding regulators to the amount of greenhouse gases being pushed into the atmosphere by the oil and gas industry’s flaring and venting. In 2004, the U.S. Government Accountability Office recommended improved data collection and oversight. Specifically, the GAO suggested standardized reporting for flaring and venting data across all states, and the use of satellite data to improve the accuracy of flaring information. As recently as 2016, the same office warned that natural gas emissions from oil and gas production on federal land weren’t being tracked consistently.

“You can’t regulate what you don’t measure,” said Gunnar Schade, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University who has used satellite data to study flaring in Texas. “We actually don’t have a good handle on what goes in the atmosphere for various reasons — some of them by design, some of them by negligence.”

The satellite flaring volumes calculated by the Howard Center, with the guidance of scientists who pioneered and used the methodology, far exceed the total reported to regulatory agencies in the 13 states designated by the U.S. Energy Department as having significant ongoing or potentially increasing flaring activity. They also far surpassed the total published by the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. Energy Department analytics agency that says it gets its data from the states.

Laws in those top-flaring states vary widely on when companies can flare or vent, whether they need prior approval, how much they can emit and if or how they’ll be penalized if they’re caught breaking the rules, the Howard Center found. All of the regulations — even the strictest — have myriad exceptions. The federal government doesn’t regulate flaring and venting except on federal and tribal lands and in federal waters.

Four of the states maintain little or no information on flaring and venting volumes, the Howard Center’s investigation found. In those that do keep volume data, it’s based on self-reported information from oil and gas operators, some using estimations rather than metered measurements. There are few regular audits for accuracy or completeness.

“You’re totally at the whim of what the self-reporting is,” said Tim Doty, a former senior technical adviser at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which is charged with maintaining air quality in what satellite data shows is the nation’s top-flaring state. “Some of the companies are trying to do the right thing, but not all the companies are trying to do the right thing.”

Satellite technology offers a way to gauge the accuracy of self-reported flaring volumes. While it comes with limitations, the technology is generally regarded as the best available, independent tool for measuring flaring volumes, though not one that state and federal regulators have adopted.

The methodology was pioneered in 2012 by Christopher Elvidge, a scientist then working at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It uses satellites equipped with Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite instruments to detect flares from oil and gas operations and estimate the volumes of gas they burn, based on the infrared light they give off. When Elvidge later moved to the Colorado School of Mines’ Earth Observation Group, the program went with him.

Reporters at the Howard Center gathered and analyzed the satellite data for the top-flaring states from 2012 through 2020. They then compared those totals to company-reported flaring volumes collected by regulators in the same states.

The satellite data showed Texas, North Dakota and New Mexico were the top-flaring states, by large margins. It also revealed vast discrepancies compared to state-reported volumes.

Some states allow companies to report combined totals for their flaring and venting volumes, making it impossible to draw a meaningful comparison with the flaring-only volumes picked up by satellites. But in Texas, for example, satellite data indicated the volume of flared gas alone was almost double the amount reported for both flared and vented gas — raising questions about underreporting. And in Montana, the companies’ combined flaring and venting volume reports were nearly 150% higher than the flaring-only volumes detected by satellites — highlighting the unknowns surrounding venting.

The disparities persisted even in states that require oil and gas operators to separately report flaring and venting volumes, which should allow for a fair comparison against the satellite data. In North Dakota, for instance, satellites detected 25% more flaring than was reported by companies. In Wyoming, the discrepancy was roughly the same — but in the opposite direction.

Some of the discrepancies, scientists say, may result from the fact that some states don’t require companies to report every instance of flaring, and that the roving satellites don’t catch every flare, especially small or intermittent ones.

But the fact that company-reported volumes differed dramatically from those of an empirical check indicates that government data is inaccurate or incomplete and that policymakers don’t know the extent of the greenhouse gases resulting from flaring and venting, even as they attempt to craft climate change legislation.

“There’s almost been a kind of tacit agreement that we’ll accept the estimates,” said Barry Rabe, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies public and environmental policy. “Until such time that there’s political or public pressure to make those numbers more accurate, it’s easier just to look the other way.”

___

Reporters Aydali Campa, Jimmy Cloutier, Sarah Hunt, Mollie Jamison, Laura Kraegel, Isabel Koyama, Maya Leachman, Michael McDaniel, Andrew Onodera, Kenneth Quayle, Nicole Sadek, Isaac Stone Simonelli, Rachel Stapholz, Sarah Suwalsky, Zoha Tunio, Zach Van Arsdale and Alexis Young contributed to this story. It was produced by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, an initiative of the Scripps Howard Foundation in honor of the late news industry executive and pioneer Roy W. Howard. For more see https://azpbs.org/gaslit. Contact us at howardcenter@asu.edu or on Twitter @HowardCenterASU.

BLACK VOICES AGAINST ARYAN NATION

Abolition newspaper revived for nation grappling with racism

By PHILIP MARCELO

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Amber Payne, left, and Deborah Douglas co-editors-in-chief of the new online publication of "The Emancipator" pose at their office inside the Boston Globe, Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022, in Boston. Boston University's Center for Antiracist Research and The Boston Globe's Opinion team are collaborating to resurrect and reimagine The Emancipator, the first abolitionist newspaper in the United States, which was founded more than 200 years ago. The new incarnation of The Emancipator will explore ways to reframe the national conversation around racial injustice. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

BOSTON (AP) — America’s first newspaper dedicated to ending slavery is being resurrected and reimagined more than two centuries later as the nation continues to grapple with its legacy of racism.

The revived version of The Emancipator is a joint effort by Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research and The Boston Globe’s Opinion team that’s expected to launch in the coming months.

Deborah Douglas and Amber Payne, co-editors-in-chief of the new online publication, say it will feature written and video opinion pieces, multimedia series, virtual talks and other content by respected scholars and seasoned journalists. The goal, they say, is to “reframe” the national conversation around racial injustice.

“I like to say it’s anti-racism, every day, on purpose,” said Douglas, who joined the project after working as a journalism professor at DePauw University in Indiana. “We are targeting anyone who wants to be a part of the solution to creating an anti-racist society because we think that leads us to our true north, which is democracy.”

The original Emancipator was founded in 1820 in Jonesborough, Tennessee, by iron manufacturer Elihu Embree, with the stated purpose to “advocate the abolition of slavery and to be a repository of tracts on that interesting and important subject,” according to a digital collection of the monthly newsletter at the University of Tennessee library.



Before Embree’s untimely death from a fever ended its brief run later that year, The Emancipator reached a circulation of more than 2,000, with copies distributed throughout the South and in northern cities like Boston and Philadelphia that were centers of the abolition movement.

Douglas and Payne say drawing on the paper’s legacy is appropriate now because it was likely difficult for Americans to envision a country without slavery back then, just as many people today likely can’t imagine a nation without racism. The new Emancipator was announced last March, nearly a year after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May 2020 sparked social justice movements worldwide.

“Those abolitionists were considered radical and extreme,” Douglas said. “But that’s part of our job as journalists — providing those tools, those perspectives that can help them imagine a different world.”

Other projects have also recently come online taking the mantle of abolitionist newspapers, including The North Star, a media site launched in 2019 by civil rights activist Shaun King and journalist Benjamin Dixon that’s billed as a revival of Frederick Douglass’ influential anti-slavery newspaper.

Douglas said The Emancipator, which is free to the public and primarily funded through philanthropic donations, will stand out because of its focus on incisive commentary and rigorous academic work. The publication’s staff, once it’s ramped up, will largely eschew the typical quick turnaround, breaking news coverage, she said.

“This is really deep reporting, deep research and deep analysis that’s scholarly driven but written at a level that everyone can understand,” Douglas said. “Everybody is invited to this conversation. We want it to be accessible, digestible and, hopefully, actionable.”

The publication also hopes to serve as a bulwark against racist misinformation, with truth-telling explanatory videos and articles, she added. It’ll take a critical look at popular culture, film, music and television and, as the pandemic eases, look to host live events around Boston.

“Every time someone twists words, issues, situations or experiences, we want to be there like whack-a-mole, whacking it down with the facts and the context,” Douglas said.

Another critical focus of the publication will be spotlighting solutions to some of the nation’s most intractable racial problems, added Payne, who joined the project after working as a managing editor at BET.com and an executive producer at Teen Vogue.

“There are community groups, advocates and legislators who are really taking matters into their own hands so how do we amplify those solutions and get those stories told?” she said. “At the academic level, there’s so much scholarly research that just doesn’t fit into a neat, 800-word Washington Post op-ed. It requires more excavation. It requires maybe a multimedia series. Maybe it needs a video. So we think that we are really uniquely positioned.”

The project has already posted a couple of representative pieces. To mark the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building, The Emancipator published an interview with a Harvard social justice professor and commentary from a Boston College poetry professor.

It also posted on social media a video featuring Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of BU’s anti-racism center and author of “How to be an Antiracist,” reflecting on white supremacy. Kendi co-founded the project with Bina Venkataraman, editor-at-large at The Boston Globe.

And while the new Emancipator is primarily focused on the Black community, Douglas and Payne stress it will also tackle issues facing other communities of color, such as the rise in anti-Asian hate during the global coronavirus pandemic.

They argue The Emancipator’s mission is all the more critical now as the debate over how racism is taught has made schools the latest political battleground.

“Our country is so polarized that partisanship is trumping science and trumping historical records,” Payne said. “These ongoing crusades against affirmative action, against critical race theory are not going away. That drumbeat is continuing and so therefore our drumbeat needs to continue.”