REST IN POWER

Miss.Tic, renowned pioneer of French street art, dies aged 66

FRANCE 24 

Miss.Tic, a pioneer of French street art whose provocative work began to appear in Paris's Montmartre neighbourhood in the mid-1980s, died on Sunday aged 66, her family said.

© Bertrand Guay, AFP

 MIS. TIC AND MODESTE BLAZE

Radhia Novat – the daughter of a Tunisian father and a mother from Normandy in western France – grew up in the narrow streets of Montmartre in the shadow of Sacre-Coeur basilica in Paris, where she first began stencilling sly and emancipatory slogans.

Her family said she had died of an unspecified illness.

One of the founders of stencil art, she was known for her graffiti of enigmatic female figures, particularly a character with flowing black hair resembling the artist herself.

As news of her death spread, French street artists and other cultural figures paid tribute to her work.

On Twitter, street artist Christian Guemy, alias C215, hailed "one of the founders of stencil art". The walls of the 13th arrondissement of Paris – where her images are a common sight – "will never be the same again", he wrote.

Another colleague known as Jef Aerosol said she had fought her final illness with courage in a tribute posted on Instagram.

And France's newly appointed Culture Minister, Rima Abdul Malak, saluted her "iconic, resolutely feminist" work.

Miss.Tic's work often included clever wordplay which is almost always lost in translation. Her art became a fixture of walls across the capital.

"I had a background in street theatre, and I liked this idea of street art," Miss.Tic said in a 2011 interview.

"At first I thought, 'I'm going to write poems'. And then, 'we need images' with these poems. I started with self-portraits and then turned towards other women," she said.

Miss.Tic also drew the attention of law enforcement over complaints of defacing public property, leading to an arrest in 1997.

But her work came to be shown in galleries in France and abroad, with some acquired by the Paris modern art fund of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, according to her website.

And cinema buffs will recognise her work on the poster for Claude Chabrol's 2007 film "La fille coupee en deux" ("A Girl Cut in Two").

For a spell she was a favourite of fashion brands such as Kenzo and Louis Vuitton.

"So often it's not understood that you can be young and beautiful and have things to say," she told AFP in 2011.

"But it's true that they sell us what they want with beautiful women. So I thought, I'm going to use these women to sell them poetry."

Her funeral, the date of which is still to be announced, will be open to the public, said her family.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Palestinian wins world weightlifting championship in Greece

In a first, Palestine wins gold and bronze medals at the weightlifting world championships despite the great challenges facing the sports sector in the Gaza Strip.

Mohammed Hamada of Team Palestine competes during the Weightlifting - Men's 81 kg Group B on day eight of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Tokyo International Forum on July 31, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan. - Chris Graythen/Getty Images

Hadeel Al Gherbaw
May 21, 2022

Mohammed Hamada, a 20-year-old weightlifter from the Gaza Strip, is the first Palestinian athlete to represent Palestine globally during his participation in the 2022 IWF Weightlifting Junior World Championships held in Heraklion, Greece, during the first two weeks of May.

The sports field in Gaza faces many challenges, including the lack of large sports clubs that provide the necessary training for such individual Olympic sports, the lack of freedom of movement to and from Palestine, and the difficulty of obtaining visas for travel to some European countries.

Hamada, who returned from Greece on May 13, told Al-Monitor, “I started weightlifting when I was 12 years old, and my brother Hussam is the one who supported me to pursue this sport since he is the head and coach of the Palestine national weightlifting team of the Gaza Sports Club. I participated in many Arab and international tournaments, namely in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.”

He added, “Everyone suffers in the Gaza Strip, not just athletes. I faced many challenges, including the lack of many sports clubs and the lack of opportunities in the Gaza Strip. Athletes need a special diet, vitamins and nutritional supplements to help them build their bodies, and I am still a student; I do not work, and I rely on my father for all these costs. My father is a government employee, and his monthly salary is not enough to support nine people. Three of my brothers are also involved in bodybuilding and weightlifting and need nutritional supplements. Sometimes we would borrow money to buy supplements and vitamins.”

Hamada continued, “The club and the Palestinian Olympic Committee have refined my skills and motivated me to represent Palestine in world championships. [Before participating in the championship in Greece,] I traveled to the United Arab Emirates and Russia and partook in a 45-day intense training in boot camps. I underwent a general training period from January to March in Ras al-Khaimah in the UAE, and then we moved to Russia to the cities of Sochi and Chekhov from April until the competition in May.”

“This training greatly helped refine my skills, although we faced great challenges in obtaining visas for these countries, especially amid the war between Russia and Ukraine. But we were able to coordinate with the Palestinian Foreign Ministry and managed to succeed,” he said.

Hamda added, “I was going there (Greece) to win the gold medal and nothing else. When I told my friends about the championship, they were very worried because of the war in Russia, but I told them that we in Gaza are always accustomed to war and must travel to win and represent Palestine in such a world championship. And although I was fasting during Ramadan, I managed to win.”

Hamada explained the competition: “We started off as eight competitors from different countries in the 102 kg weight category; each of us had only three attempts. My first attempt was 156 kg and the second was 160 kg, which put me in fourth place. I only had one more shot, and the numbers close to the 160 kg category were taken by my fellow competitors. I had never lifted more than 165 kg, so this was a big risk for me. But I trained a lot to reach this competition and championship, so I had to take a chance and raise the weight to 168 kg.”

“I was very confident that I was going to win. When they called out my name, my coach and brother Hussam told me, ‘Mohammed, Palestine is waiting for you.’ This phrase pushed me to lift a weight of 168 kg, and I snatched the gold in weightlifting and the bronze in the clean and jerk competition after lifting 193 kg," he added.

Hamada dedicates his wins to Palestine and the spirit of the Palestinian martyrs and to Awad al-Aboudi, the Jordanian weightlifting champion who died last year.

Hamada’s brother Hussam told Al-Monitor, “Participating in this championship was a great responsibility for me because he is both my brother and my trainee. This was a national mission for us. Palestine should win in a global Olympic sports competition.”

“The International Olympic Committee has set the qualification system for the Olympic Games, which will be held in Paris in 2024, and this means that I will now be training my brother to qualify to participate in this very important competition for us. However, we have several competitions in the meantime, including the Arab Championship in Bahrain in October, the Asian Championship for juniors in Uzbekistan in July, the Islamic World Championship in Turkey in August and the Qatar Championship with the Asian Cup in December,” he said.

Hamada’s father, Khamis, told Al-Monitor, “I was watching the competition, and when they announced that my son had won, I started dancing and crying tears of joy. I never expected this to happen and for my son to win this world championship. Our family is very proud that our son is a Palestinian hero.”

Vice president of the Palestinian Olympic Committee Asaad al-Majdalawi told Al-Monitor, “Palestine has never won such a championship. This is Palestine’s first victory with a gold and bronze medal. Of course, I expected Hamada to win because his victory did not come by chance. Rather, it was proceeding according to a sports plan that we set in the Olympic Committee in coordination with the Palestinian Weightlifting Federation. For many years, we had been planning to prepare an Olympic champion, and his victory came through a cumulative process through previous participation and intense training.”

Majdalawi added, “All of us in Palestine feel proud despite the great challenges that the sports sector faces in the Gaza Strip due to the lack of freedom of movement to and from Palestine. But we and our youth were able to reach a global rank that will be a major addition to the history of Palestinian sports.”

How robots can help build offshore wind turbines more quickly
Bloomberg News | May 22, 2022 

(Reference image by Bautsch, Wikimedia Commons).

Trying to attach a million-dollar, 60-ton wind turbine blade to its base is challenging in any circumstance — getting the angle wrong by even a fraction of a degree could affect the machine’s ability to generate power. Now imagine trying to do it in the middle of the North Sea, one of the world’s windiest spots, with waves swelling around you. It’s like tying a thread to a kite at the beach and then trying to put it through the eye of a needle.


That’s the challenge confronting Western leaders who want to wean their economies off Russian fossil fuels. Building more offshore wind is one of the more efficient ways for some countries to replace that dirty energy. Turbines built at sea benefit from stronger and more consistent wind speeds. They also avoid one of the biggest hurdles to constructing a wind farm: neighbours who don’t want windmills ruining their view.

The UK in particular has supported the industry by allocating vast tracts of seabed to developers and doling out generous subsidies, helping improve the technology and lower costs. Since the first British project was completed in 2000, turbines have become more than five times as powerful and the price of wind-generated electricity has fallen below power from fossil fuel or nuclear plants. By the end of the decade, Prime Minister Boris Johnson aims to boost the UK’s offshore wind capacity to 50 gigawatts, more than triple the current fleet.

Achieving that goal will require speeding up development of the $33 billion industry. It currently takes as long as 15 years to complete a major offshore wind project in the UK, according to Aurora Energy Research. Some of that time could be cut by simplifying the permitting process, but even then it may still take a decade.

The real timesaver would be installing turbines more quickly. Erecting the giant structures requires highly specialized and expensive ships known as jack-up vessels. When they get to the site of a new wind turbine, a moveable foundation descends to the seabed to hoist the vessel out of the waves so it can work without being pushed back and forth. Under ideal conditions, this can take as little as three hours, but that can also drag to 20 hours if the currents are strong.

Floating vessels that don’t have to be lifted up can complete work 50% faster than those commonly used today, according to clean energy research group BloombergNEF. “You can make installations more efficient,” said Amanda Ahl, a BloombergNEF analyst. Because ships don’t have to haul the heavy structures used to tie them to the seabed, they can carry materials for more turbines at a time. That means fewer voyages back and forth to shore that can sometimes take up to 10 hours.

The catch is that using ships that float makes the precise work of assembling wind turbines much more difficult. That’s where the robots come in.

X-Laboratory, a company founded by former European Space Agency researcher André Schiele, sells software and robotics systems to wind turbine construction companies that allows the giant cranes on their ships to be controlled remotely. The technology that Schiele helped develop — initially intended to help conduct research on other planets from Earth — may shave years off the time needed to put up a wind farm in the ocean.

One of the world’s biggest installers of offshore wind, Jan De Nul Group, is starting to adopt the technology. The company has moved some of its operations to ships that float while they work. The first vessel, named Les Alizes, will get to work later this year and be able to carry three times more weight than a similar vessel that also has to haul equipment to attach it to the ground.

As a start, Jan De Nul’s new ships will use X-Laboratory’s system to control a giant claw that will help compensate for any unexpected movements in the water. The technology could cut the total time to install a wind farm by more than 25% due to its ability to work in windier conditions. For now, the claw will only be used to install the foundations for wind turbines, not the more sensitive work of attaching blades.

The company is optimistic that the robotic technology will counter the challenges of working out at sea on floating vessels. A “few years ago it was thought this was too difficult to overcome,” said Geert Weymeis, the company’s head of offshore installation analysis. The claw “could be a game changer.”

Schiele recalls celebrating in 2015 as an astronaut held a joystick on the International Space Station and moved a four-wheeled robot in a lab in the Netherlands. It was a breakthrough for space research. But he quickly started thinking about other applications, which led to X-Laboratory and the wind turbine construction system.

“It’s nice to solve challenges like ‘How can we go to Mars?’” he said. “But the climate question is a much bigger challenge.”

(By Will Mathis)

Americas’ oldest red ocher mine now identified

Valentina Ruiz Leotaud | May 22, 2022 

This complete Clovis point was recovered from the Powars II site.

 (Image by Spencer Pelton, courtesy of the University of Wyoming).

Recent archaeological excavations have confirmed that an ancient mine in eastern Wyoming was used by humans to produce red ocher starting nearly 13,000 years ago.


According to the researchers behind the discovery, this makes the Powars II site at Sunrise in Platte County the oldest documented red ocher mine—and likely the oldest known mine of any sort—in all of North and South America.

The excavations confirmed theories advanced by famed University of Wyoming archaeologist George Frison, which stem from research he began at the site in 1986.

“We have unequivocal evidence for use of this site by early Paleoindians as long as 12,840 years ago and continuing by early Americans for about 1,000 years,” Spencer Pelton, lead author of the paper that documents these findings, said in a media statement. “It’s gratifying that we were finally able to confirm the significance of the Powars II site after decades of work by so many, including Dr. Frison, who learned of the site in the early 1980s and was involved in the research until his death.”

Red ocher, also known as hematite, fulfilled a wide range of functions in Paleoindian societies, including as a pigment in rituals. It has been found at ancient graves, caches, campsites and kill sites in the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains and beyond. The Powars II site is the only red ocher quarry identified in the North American archaeological record north of southern Mexico—and one of only five such quarries identified in all of the Americas.

Among the artifacts previously discovered at the Powars II site are Clovis points—believed to be from the first inhabitants of North America—along with other projectile points, tools and shell beads.

Ocher was likely exported

The 2017-2020 excavation led by Pelton—a 6- by 1-meter trench bisecting a previously undocumented quarry feature—yielded several thousand more Paleoindian artifacts, along with many well-preserved animal bones and antlers, the latter used to extract the red ocher in the quarry.

The projectile points come from numerous locations in the region, including from as far away as the Edwards Plateau in Texas. That makes it likely that the red ocher found at archaeological sites throughout the American midcontinent came from the Powars II quarry.

“Beyond its status as a quarry, the Powars II artifact assemblage is itself one of the densest and most diverse of any thus far discovered in the early Paleoindian record of the Americas,” Pelton said.

The researcher and his colleagues said the evidence discovered so far indicates the quarry was used in two primary periods. During the first, dating to as long as 12,840 years ago and lasting several hundred years, people not only quarried red ocher—using bones and antlers as tools—but also produced and repaired weapons, along with other activities. After a hiatus of a century or more, the site was occupied by humans who mined red ocher and deposited artifacts in piles in a quarry pit.

“Further excavation of the estimated 800-square-meter remainder of the site will certainly reveal complexity not captured by our sample,” the scientists said.

Work suspended at Botswana’s Khoemacau copper mine after accident kills two

Reuters | May 21, 2022 |

Khoemacau Zone 5 copper and silver mine. (Image by Khoemacau).

Operations have been suspended at Khoemacau Zone 5 copper and silver mine in Botswana after an underground accident killed two people on Friday, the company said on Saturday.


Situated in the Kalahari Copperbelt, which stretches from north east Botswana to western Namibia, the Khoemacau mine is the only operational copper mine in the diamond-rich country after two others were placed under liquidation.


The two were employees of an Australian-based contractor to the mine, Barminco, a subsidiary of Perenti Global.

“Investigations into the cause of the accident are ongoing. It appears that the two, both blasting crew members, had proceeded underground to perform tasks at the Tshukudu section 140 metres below surface,” said Khoemacau Chief Executive Officer Johan Ferreira.

Khoemacau produced its first copper-silver concentrate in June last year and the mine has been gradually ramping up output with a target to reach full production of between 60,000 and 65,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) copper and 1.8 to 2 million ounces per annum (ozpa) of silver by the fourth quarter of 2022.

“Operations at the Zone 5 have been temporarily suspended. We will provide further updates as appropriate,” Perenti Managing Director, Mark Norwell said.

In February, Khoemacau said it was pleased with its safety performance having recoded a total recordable injury frequency rate of 0.39 per 200,000-man hours from the commencement of construction at the start of January 2019 through the end of January 2022.

(By Brian Benza; Editing by David Evans)

INTER-IMPERIALIST RIVALRIES
Tokyo Protests to Beijing Over East China Sea Construction

May 21, 2022 
Agence France-Presse

This handout released on May 21, 2022, from Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs taken on June 2014 shows a platform for gas extraction in disputed waters in the China East Sea.

TOKYO —

Japan has lodged an official protest with China after discovering what it claimed were efforts by Beijing to develop gas fields in disputed waters in the East China Sea.

Tokyo's foreign ministry said Friday it had confirmed that Beijing was building in the area -- where the two countries' exclusive economic zones (EEZ) overlap -- and submitted a complaint to the Chinese Embassy.

Japan "strongly urged an early resumption of negotiations over the implementation" of a 2008 bilateral agreement regarding the development of resources in the East China Sea, it added.

That agreement saw Japan and China agree to jointly develop undersea gas reserves in the disputed area, with a ban on independent drilling by either country.

But negotiations over how to implement the deal were suspended in 2010.

"It's extremely regrettable that the Chinese side is unilaterally proceeding with development in the waters," the ministry said.

"The borders of the economic exclusive zones and the continental shelf are yet to be settled in the East China Sea," it added.

Japan has long insisted the median line between the two nations should mark the limits of their respective EEZs.

But China insists the border should be drawn closer to Japan, taking into account the continental shelf and other features of the ocean.

Tokyo has accused China of positioning 17 suspected drilling rigs close to its de facto maritime border with Japan.

The rigs are on China's side of the border, but Tokyo fears gas on the Japanese side can also be extracted.

The two countries are embroiled in a separate row over disputed islands elsewhere in the East China Sea.

China claims the string of islands -- which Japan refers to as the Senkakus -- as its own, and regularly sends ships and aircraft into the area to test Tokyo's response times.

China also has disputes with several other nations in the South China Sea, which it claims in its entirety.

Sicily judge to weigh trial of migrant rescue NGOs

ByAFP
Published May 21, 2022

The charities are accused of coordinating their actions with smugglers just off Libya - 

Charities running migrant rescue ships in the Mediterranean face a pre-trial hearing in Sicily Saturday over alleged collusion with people traffickers after a controversial probe that involved mass wiretapping.

Twenty-one suspects, including crew members of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Save the Children and German NGO Jugend Rettet rescue ships, are accused of “aiding and abetting unauthorised entry into Italy” in 2016 and 2017.

“Our crews rescued over 14,000 people in distress from unseaworthy and overcrowded boats… and are now facing 20 years in prison,” Kathrin Schmidt, who sailed with Jugend Rettet’s ship Iuventa, said ahead of the hearing.

Trapani judge Samuele Corso must rule whether or not to proceed to trial after a five-year investigation mired in controversy for the mass wiretapping of charity workers, lawyers and journalists in what critics say is a politically-motivated bid to stop sea rescues.

Italy has long been on the front line of seaborne migration from Africa to Europe, with a record 180,000 arrivals in 2016, dropping to 120,000 in 2017.

It has registered some 17,000 arrivals so far this year, according to the interior ministry.

Prosecutor Brunella Sardoni told AFP she expected the preliminary hearings process to last “several months, considering the complexity” of a case file with some 30,000 pages and hundreds of CDs.

The charities are accused of coordinating their actions with smugglers just off Libya, returning inflatable dinghies and boats to them to be reused, and picking up people whose lives had not been in danger.

– ‘World’s deadliest’ crossing –

The rescuers say anyone attempting the Central Mediterranean crossing to Europe — the “world’s deadliest” according to the UN — on rickety boats or unseaworthy dinghies is at risk, and should be saved.

At least 12,000 people have drowned on this route since 2014. Many shipwrecks go unrecorded.

The charities also deny ever communicating with smugglers, who are sometimes armed and can be spotted loitering near rescues in the hope of retrieving valuable engines from migrant boats.

Save the Children told AFP it “strongly rejects” the accusations, as did MSF, which slammed a “period of criminalisation of humanitarian aid” it hoped would soon end.

The Iuventa was impounded in 2017 shortly after Jugend Rettet and others refused to sign a new and contentious interior ministry “code of conduct” accord, and as the European Union scaled up surveillance and policing in the Mediterranean.

“Despite the fact that mobile phones and computers were seized and analysed, not a single contact with Libyan smugglers… has been found,” said Nicola Canestrini, lawyer for the Iuventa crew members.

Pre-trial hearings are held behind closed doors, but representatives from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and Amnesty International have requested the judge allow them to sit in for transparency.

ECHR senior legal advisor Allison West has condemned “improper investigative practices” in the investigation, led by a prosecutors’ office more used to exposing Mafia crimes.

– Ex-cop sent allegations –

The probe was launched after ex-policeman Pietro Gallo, working as a security contractor on Save the Children’s Vos Hestia ship, sent allegations against the charities in October 2016 to Italy’s secret services, Canestrini told AFP.

He and a fellow ex-policeman also sent them to the head of the anti-immigration League party, Matteo Salvini, before reporting their suspicions to the police.

Gallo has since said in an interview that he regrets it. Asked if he ever saw any contact between the charities and traffickers, he replied “no, never”.

The damage was done. Police placed an undercover agent on the Vos Hestia in May 2017, who would provide information including elements used to charge the four Iuventa crew members, Canestrini said. Those included alleged hand signals between the crew and smugglers.

Iuventa’s case has been studied by Forensic Architecture, an agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, which uses advanced reconstruction techniques to investigate police, military and state facts.

It discredited the police theories for all three Iuventa rescues in question

Rights Groups Decry Taliban Shuttering of Human Rights Commission

 
May 21, 2022 

VOA Afghan Service

“I am dismayed at the reported decision of the Taliban to dissolve the country’s Independent Human Rights Commission,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, shown on Feb. 28, 2022 delivering opening remarks in Geneva.

WASHINGTON —

The Taliban’s decision to dissolve Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission is a major setback for the country, say human rights groups and defenders.

Criticism came swiftly after Taliban authorities on Tuesday said the AIHRC and four other “unnecessary” departments had been axed in the face of a $500 million annual budget shortfall.

"Because these departments were not deemed necessary and were not included in the budget, they have been dissolved," Innamullah Samangani, the Taliban government's deputy spokesman, told Reuters.

“Nothing more than that can be expected” from the Taliban, which has a poor human rights record, said Mohammad Naim Nazari, former deputy head of the AIHRC.

“The Taliban do not recognize the rights of women, who constitute half of the population," he told VOA's Pashto Service. "They do not believe in freedom of speech and have imposed restrictions on media. … The Taliban do not recognize the rights of minorities.”

Calling Afghanistan's ruling Taliban “afraid” of human rights groups, Nazari described their style of governance as incompatible with formal humanitarian oversight.

The Taliban, however, defended Tuesday's decision, calling the department closures in keeping with a national budget "based on objective facts" and intended only for departments that had been active and productive.

Samangani, the Taliban spokesperson, also said the departments could be reactivated in the future "if needed."

But human rights advocates aren't optimistic. Many of them view Tuesday's announcement as a tragic reversal after 20 years of key improvements for human rights in the country.

“I am dismayed at the reported decision of the Taliban to dissolve the country’s Independent Human Rights Commission,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in a prepared statement.

Calling it “a massive setback,” Richard Bennett, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, described the commission's role as an independent, domestic mechanism for documenting and monitoring complaints "critical for human rights protection in #Afghanistan.”



Andreas Von Brandt, the EU ambassador for Afghanistan, called the Taliban’s decision “a step in the wrong direction” for national institutions that serve as vital points of connectivity with the outside world.

"Those bridges are being increasingly destroyed,” he tweeted. Their dissolution, he said, “excludes #Afghanistan from universally agreed rights and principles and is also strange for a country which relies heavily on international #foodaid and support.”





Also dissolved was the High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR), the once high-powered National Security Council, and the commission for overseeing the implementation of the Afghan constitution.

The HCNR was last headed by the country’s one-time second-ranking government official Abdullah Abdullah, and was working to negotiate a peace between the U.S.-backed government of former President Ashraf Ghani and the then-insurgent Taliban.

Dissolving the institutions mean that thousands of professional Afghans have lost their jobs, said Abdul Qadir Zazai, a former member of the Afghan parliament, adding that “these people were trained for their jobs over the last 20 years.”

Founded in 2002 to document and report on human rights abuses throughout the country, the AIHRC lost seven of its employees “to violence and terrorism [most directly attributed to the Taliban] since its establishment,” tweeted former AIHRC chairperson Shaharzad Akbar.



The commission halted its activities after the Taliban regained power in 2021, and all its nine commissioners escaped the country fearing Taliban reprisals.

SEE ALSO:
Taliban Uncertainty Prompts Bid for Afghan Rights Body in Exile

Former AIHRC commissioner Shabnam Salihi told VOA that although human rights violations continue to be reported via foreign groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the dissolution of Afghanistan’s only independent rights commission means many more violations are now expected to be overlooked.

“We hear people are tortured and killed. We hear about war crimes. At such a time, there is no organization to watch on the [Taliban] government,” Salihi told VOA.

Although AIHRC was unable to work under the Taliban, “it was an important institution for Afghanistan,” Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch told VOA.

“The Taliban, by abolishing this office, are saying very openly that they don't intend to comply with human rights," she added. "They're not interested in respecting Afghanistan's obligations under international law. And they don't care if people whose rights are violated have nowhere to go for help.”

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 with an iron fist and implemented a harsh version of Islamic rule, including banning women from education and work. After taking over last year, the Taliban assured the world they would be more moderate.

However, they have yet to allow girls to restart secondary school education and have also introduced rules that mandate that women and girls wear veils and require them to have male relatives accompany them in public places.

This story originated in VOA's Pashto Service. Some information is from Reuters.

Police attack "No war – peace right now" demo in Istanbul


Under the slogan "No war - peace right now", a demonstration was staged in Istanbul on Sunday against the Turkish invasion of Southern Kurdistan. Several people were detained on the fringes of the demonstration.

ANF
ISTANBUL
Sunday, 22 May 2022,

In the western Turkish metropolis of Istanbul, hundreds of people took to the streets on Sunday in protest against the invasion of southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq). The demonstration was called by an alliance of women's groups and various parties united under the umbrella of the HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party).

"No war - peace now" was the slogan of the event, which began at the Tünel funicular stop in the central Beyoğlu district and continued along the Istiklal Avenue. Among the participants were especially many activists of the Free Women's Movement (TJA) and the Peace Mothers Initiative, as well as HDP deputies Sezai Temelli and Nejdet İpekyüz, DBP co-chair Keskin Bayındır, ESP leader Şahin Tümüklü and the HDK spokesman Cengiz Çiçek.

Police forces stopped the demonstration in front of the Russian Embassy. "War means death and leads to the impoverishment of entire societies. We call on the public and especially the political leadership in South Kurdistan to stand on the side of peace," Sezai Temelli said in the police encirclement. The crowd responded to attempts by security forces to stop the deputy's speech with slogans. Among other things, they shouted: "The tide will turn - The AKP will be accountable".

The activists demonstrated their solidarity with the Kurdish guerrillas by chanting "Long live the resistance in the Zap" or "Long live the struggle in Avaşîn" and dispersed in groups to several side streets, where the protest continued. Police assaults occurred at several points, and an unknown number of activists were taken into custody. Police detained some other people on İstiklal Avenue as well. Among those taken into custody are ESP Chairman Şahin Tümüklü and lawyer Veysi Eski, who is organized in the Libertarian Lawyers' Association (ÖHD). Meanwhile, the nearby headquarters of the Istanbul provincial association of the HDP is under siege by police.

Cambridge University astrophysicist loses space project role amid Brexit row


Nicholas Walton gives up leadership of €2.8m pan-European research after dispute over Northern Ireland protocol

Walton was to have led a doctoral network related to Esa’s Gaia mission that is mapping nearly 2bn stars in the Milky Way. 

Photograph: Chrispo/Alamy

Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent
THE GUARDIAN

Sat 21 May 2022 

A Cambridge University astrophysicist studying the Milky Way and hoping to play a major part in the European Space Agency’s (Esa) next big project has been forced to hand over his coordinating role on the scheme after the row over Northern Ireland’s Brexit arrangements put science in the firing line.

Nicholas Walton, a research fellow at the Institute of Astronomy, reluctantly passed his leadership role in the €2.8m pan-European Marie Curie Network research project to a colleague in the Netherlands on Friday.

The European Commission had written notifying him UK scientists cannot hold leadership roles because the UK’s membership of the flagship £80bn Horizon Europe (HE) funding network has not been ratified.
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Walton was to have led a doctoral network related to Esa’s Gaia mission that is mapping nearly 2bn stars in the Milky Way.

He is one just one of a handful of British physicists approved for a HE grant but must now take a passenger seat in his own project.


Brexit row threatens £250m in UK research funding from EU

Carsten Welsch, a physicist at Liverpool University, who has won €2.6m in funding, also from the Marie Curie network, for long term research on a novel plasma generator, is also facing the same dilemma – move to the EU or hand over leadership to an EU institution to secure the research role.

“As the UK’s association to Horizon Europe isn’t completed, we are now at real risk of losing our leadership in this consortium and to be marginalised.

“This is really heartbreaking, given the long and extremely successful track record in scientific collaboration between the UK and EU,” he said.

Both Welsch and Walton say the loss of their roles in the research networks is only part of the picture. With Horizon Europe comes a ringside seat in bigger projects worth billions of euros involving networks of academia and industry.

“The damage is already being done … our influence is eroding,” said Welsch.

Walton’s coordinating role came with the opportunity to be part of the European team defining the science case for the €1bn successor to Gaia, Esa’s Voyage 2050 programme and to train a new cohort of astronomers.

“It is about jobs and the economy and ultimately this makes the UK a wealthier society,” he said.

Last week the EU’s ambassador to the UK, João Vale de Almeida admitted that British science could be a “victim of the political impasse”.

Sir Adrian Smith, president of the Royal Society said: “The window for association is closing fast, and we need to ensure that political issues do not get in the way of a sensible solution. We have always been very clear that association is the preferred outcome for protecting decades of collaborative research, and the benefits this has brought to people’s lives across the continent and beyond.”

Welsch is considering his options and said an offer by the UK to step in with alternate funding is “fantastic in principle”.

But he says it is not a replacement.

“While the UK Research and Innovation guarantee fund provides vital financial support and allows UK institutions to contribute as Associated Partners (without EU funding), it means that UK institutions can no longer lead projects, can no longer be in charge of project milestones, and overall it feels as if the UK is losing important leadership.”