| "The Far-Right Ukrainian Diaspora's Policing of History," Ninna Mörner (ed.), The Many Faces of the Far Right in the Post-Communist Space: A Comparative Study of Far-Right Movements and Identity in the Region (=CBEES... | |||
 |
| ||
Monday, June 27, 2022
Per Anders Rudling
PRISON NATION USA
Updated charts provide insights on racial disparities, correctional control, jail suicides, and more
New data visualizations expose the harms of mass incarceration
by Mike Wessler,
May 19, 2022
Here at the Prison Policy Initiative, we know a strong visual can drive home a point, change someone’s mind, or spur a person to action. It is why data visualizations are a core part of our research and communications strategy.
We usually only update our data visualizations about mass incarceration when a new report or briefing requires it. However, some graphs are so powerful that they warrant special treatment. In recent months, new data has been released about jail suicides, racial disparities, probation, and state incarceration rates. So we’ve updated a few of our most impactful charts with this new data to equip advocates, lawmakers, and journalists with the most up-to-date information available.
Racial disparities in the criminal legal system
From arrest to sentencing, racial and ethnic disparities are a defining characteristic of our country’s criminal legal system. The system of mass incarceration particularly targets Black people, who are 13 percent of the U.S. population but are 38 percent of the people in jails and prisons.
These updated charts show how people of color, particularly Black and Native American people, are disproportionately incarcerated in the United States.
The original version of the charts showing racial disparities in incarceration rates was published in The U.S. criminal justice system disproportionately hurts Native people: the data visualized. The original version of the charts showing racial disparities in prison incarceration rates by sex was published in Visualizing the racial disparities in mass incarceration.
Visit our Racial Justice page for more reports, briefings, research, and visualizations focused on the intersection of race and mass incarceration.
State policies drive mass incarceration
While the activities of Congress often grab headlines, it’s state legislatures that have a chance to make the most progress toward ending mass incarceration.
That’s because, as these charts make clear, state governments and their policies are responsible for the vast majority of people incarcerated in this country. And while the COVID pandemic has led to recent drops in incarceration rates, without intentional action from the states, these reductions will almost certainly be short-lived.
The original version of the charts showing how state policy drives mass incarceration was published in Tracking State Prison Growth in 50 States. The origina version of the charts showing how state policy drives women’s incarceration growth was published in The Gender Divide: Tracking Women’s State Prison Growth. The chart “Long sentences” was originally published in Eight Keys to Mercy: How to shorten excessive prison sentences.
Suicide is the leading cause of death in jails
Suicide is the single leading cause of death for people in jail, a fact that isn’t surprising considering the mountains of research that shows incarceration is inherently bad for a person’s mental health. As this updated chart shows, someone in jail is more than three times as likely to die from suicide as someone in the general U.S. population.
The original version of this chart was published in The life-threatening reality of short jail stays
The long arms of mass incarceration
For many people, their prison sentence tells only part of the story of their involvement with the criminal legal system. As a result of prohibitively high cash bail, they are often held in a local jail for weeks, months, or even years before they are convicted of a crime. And then, once they’re released from prison, they often remain under state supervision through parole for years, living with the constant threat of being jailed for a technical violation.
As these updated charts show, pretrial detention is the driver of jail population growth over the last 20 years, and roughly half of all people under correctional control are on probation. And despite recent pandemic-related reductions in these numbers, they’re still too high and likely to increase as pandemic slowdowns ease.
The chart “Probation Leading form of Correctional Control” was originally published in Probation: The nicest sounding way to grease the skids of mass incarceration. The chart “Pretrial policies drive jail growth” was originally published in Era of Mass Expansion: Why State Officials Should Fight Jail Growth.
Visit our Probation and Parole page for more reports, briefings, and visualizations that show that someone isn’t free just because they’re not behind bars. And check out our Jails and Bail page for more research on these institutions’ roles in the carceral system.
We’ve also updated the underlying data behind some of these charts in our data toolbox to empower advocates, lawmakers, and journalists to show the consequences of mass incarceration in their communities. If you’re using this data in your work, we want to know about it.
Related briefings:
The long arms of mass incarceration
For many people, their prison sentence tells only part of the story of their involvement with the criminal legal system. As a result of prohibitively high cash bail, they are often held in a local jail for weeks, months, or even years before they are convicted of a crime. And then, once they’re released from prison, they often remain under state supervision through parole for years, living with the constant threat of being jailed for a technical violation.
As these updated charts show, pretrial detention is the driver of jail population growth over the last 20 years, and roughly half of all people under correctional control are on probation. And despite recent pandemic-related reductions in these numbers, they’re still too high and likely to increase as pandemic slowdowns ease.
The chart “Probation Leading form of Correctional Control” was originally published in Probation: The nicest sounding way to grease the skids of mass incarceration. The chart “Pretrial policies drive jail growth” was originally published in Era of Mass Expansion: Why State Officials Should Fight Jail Growth.
Visit our Probation and Parole page for more reports, briefings, and visualizations that show that someone isn’t free just because they’re not behind bars. And check out our Jails and Bail page for more research on these institutions’ roles in the carceral system.
We’ve also updated the underlying data behind some of these charts in our data toolbox to empower advocates, lawmakers, and journalists to show the consequences of mass incarceration in their communities. If you’re using this data in your work, we want to know about it.
Related briefings:
PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRAT FOR KENTUCKY
US Congress candidate Geoff Young: Abolish CIA, stop arming Nazis, end drug warUS Congress candidate Geoff Young, who is running in Kentucky on an anti-war platform, explains why he wants to abolish the CIA, dismantle AFRICOM, end the war on drugs, and stop arming Nazis in Ukraine.
By Benjamin Norton
Published 2022-06-04
Multipolarista host Benjamin Norton interviewed US Congress candidate Geoff Young, who is running in Kentucky’s 6th district on an anti-war platform calling for abolishing the CIA.
We discussed Young’s 12-point program, which also seeks to “End the failed ‘War on Drugs,'” prevent nuclear war, establish a Medicare-for-All system of universal healthcare, dismantle the US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM), increase taxes on billionaires and millionaires, and “Get Big Money out of politics.”
Young won Kentucky’s Democratic primary election on May 17. But he explained that the state’s Democratic Party branch has refused to support him against incumbent Republican Congressman Andy Barr.
Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, has in fact publicly criticized Young over his opposition to the proxy war in Ukraine.
Young said he is “probably the only anti-war Democrat” running for Congress.
Preventing nuclear war “is my main concern. That’s been my main concern for 40, 45 years,” he explained.
And “it’s most likely to happen, looking at today’s situation, when there is a tense, perhaps a war going on, such as Ukraine. And that’s where the chances of an accidental nuclear war are the highest,” he warned.
Young criticized the US government for sending weapons to Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Avoz Regiment, which has officially been part of the country’s National Guard since a 2014 Washington-sponsored coup.
At the top of his campaign website, young4ky.com, Young has a promise: “Unlike Andy Barr, I will never vote to send weapons to Nazis.”
In the interview with Multipolarista, Young stressed that Nazis “are enemies of humanity.”
“I thought Americans were against Nazis in general, you know, since World War II,” he added.
Young noted that sitting congressmen like Barr “can’t acknowledge the fact that the federal government, both parties, have been sending weapons to Nazis since 2014, in Ukraine.”
“One of my objectives during the next five months is to inform every voter in the sixth district, regardless of what party they are registered as, that Andy Barr knew about it since 2014 or 2015, and he never objected, and now he wants President Biden to do it even more,” Young explained.
When asked why he wants to abolish the CIA, Young said, “Since it was founded in 1947, right after World War II, the CIA has been the worst, most well-funded, most powerful, most dangerous, most deadly terrorist organization in the world. It still is today.”
“We’ve got 16 other intelligence agencies. Let’s get rid of the worst one and save some money,” he added.
Young also condemned the US government’s so-called war on drugs, arguing “it has never been effective at fighting addiction. It has always been a bonanza for drug smuggling, you know, organized crime. The CIA has made a whole lot, billions of dollars on the Afghan opium and heroin trade, for example.”
“The war on drugs is just wrong-headed from the start,” he continued. “It should be treated as a public health issue, as an addiction treatment issue, and not as a criminal issue, where people get thrown in prison.”
Young stressed that the drug war has hurt his state in particular. “The overdose problem in Kentucky has been horrible for years. We’ve been losing thousands of people a year, because they get poisoned by the stuff they buy on the street.”
“And the harm reduction approach, the public health approach, would reduce all of that,” he argued.
Long road ahead to hammer out UN biodiversity blueprint
Laure FILLON
Sun, June 26, 2022
Delegates from almost 200 nations have made little progress towards hammering out a blueprint for a global pact to protect nature from human activity, after almost a week of difficult talks in Nairobi.
The meetings wrapping up Sunday were aimed at ironing out differences among the UN Convention of Biological Diversity's 196 members, with barely six months before a crucial COP15 summit in December.
The ambitious goal is to draw up a draft text outlining a global framework to "live in harmony with nature" by 2050, with key targets to be met by 2030.
Many hope the landmark deal, when finalised, will be as ambitious in its goals to protect life on Earth as the Paris agreement was for climate change.
But progress at the talks in the Kenyan capital was slow.
"Most of the time was spent on technical bickering, with major decisions left unresolved and postponed for the COP," said Brian O’Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature.
"It is now critically important that environment ministers and heads of state engage, take ownership and rescue this process," he told AFP.
Delegates in Nairobi spent hours discussing formulations or seeking to introduce new elements, instead of reconciling differing viewpoints and refining rather than overhauling the text.
- 'Security issue for humanity' -
One delegate on Saturday night spoke of feeling "desperate". Another described the Nairobi round as "a step" and voiced hope for further informal meetings before December.
"We need to continue with the dialogue with the intention to simplify and reduce the brackets (on the disputed issues) and alternatives," said Vinod Mathur, head of India's National Biodiversity Authority.
For that to happen, warned Francis Ogwal of Uganda, one of the two co-chairs of the Kenya negotiations, "there has to be a very big shift of mind in the way we are negotiating".
Proposals include a global commitment to set aside at least 30 percent of both land and oceans as protected zones by the end of the decade, as well as efforts to cut plastic and agricultural pollution.
But time is running out, with one million species threatened with extinction and tropical forests disappearing, while intensive agriculture is depleting the soil and pollution is affecting even the most remote areas of the planet.
"It's not any longer an ecological issue only... It is increasingly an issue that affects our economy, our society, our health, our wellbeing," Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International, told a press conference.
"It is a security issue for humanity."
- 'Crucial' to fix food system -
Lambertini accused some countries of using a "delaying tactic", pointing the finger at Brazil in particular. Behind the scenes, Argentina and South Africa were also getting the blame.
One of the main stumbling blocks concerns agriculture, particularly targets for a reduction in pesticides and fertilisers.
The European Union wants to see the pesticide issue specifically mentioned in the text, but "there is little support" for that position, according to one delegate.
Delegates from the Global South have highlighted the need to produce more, with much of the planet undergoing a major food security crisis, and reject any reference to agroecology, the use of ecological principles in farming.
"Agriculture is currently responsible for 70 percent of biodiversity loss," said Guido Broekhoven of WWF International, adding that it was "absolutely crucial" to fix a system where 30 percent of food goes to waste.
Countries are also divided on the issue of the funding needed to implement the biodiversity goals.
Brazil, backed by 22 countries including Argentina, South Africa, Cameroon, Egypt and Indonesia, renewed calls for rich countries to provide at least $100 billion a year until 2030 to help developing countries preserve their rich biodiversity.
The African bloc is also asking for a fund dedicated to biodiversity, according to one country delegate.
Although leaders of 93 countries committed in September 2020 to ending the biodiversity crisis, the issue is struggling to gain as much traction on the international political agenda as climate change.
"There is also a need to see where our political leaders want us to be," said Canada's Basile van Havre, co-chair of the Kenyan talks.
"We're looking to see who’s going to step up to pick up that ball."
laf/txw/yad
Laure FILLON
Sun, June 26, 2022
Delegates from almost 200 nations have made little progress towards hammering out a blueprint for a global pact to protect nature from human activity, after almost a week of difficult talks in Nairobi.
The meetings wrapping up Sunday were aimed at ironing out differences among the UN Convention of Biological Diversity's 196 members, with barely six months before a crucial COP15 summit in December.
The ambitious goal is to draw up a draft text outlining a global framework to "live in harmony with nature" by 2050, with key targets to be met by 2030.
Many hope the landmark deal, when finalised, will be as ambitious in its goals to protect life on Earth as the Paris agreement was for climate change.
But progress at the talks in the Kenyan capital was slow.
"Most of the time was spent on technical bickering, with major decisions left unresolved and postponed for the COP," said Brian O’Donnell, director of the Campaign for Nature.
"It is now critically important that environment ministers and heads of state engage, take ownership and rescue this process," he told AFP.
Delegates in Nairobi spent hours discussing formulations or seeking to introduce new elements, instead of reconciling differing viewpoints and refining rather than overhauling the text.
- 'Security issue for humanity' -
One delegate on Saturday night spoke of feeling "desperate". Another described the Nairobi round as "a step" and voiced hope for further informal meetings before December.
"We need to continue with the dialogue with the intention to simplify and reduce the brackets (on the disputed issues) and alternatives," said Vinod Mathur, head of India's National Biodiversity Authority.
For that to happen, warned Francis Ogwal of Uganda, one of the two co-chairs of the Kenya negotiations, "there has to be a very big shift of mind in the way we are negotiating".
Proposals include a global commitment to set aside at least 30 percent of both land and oceans as protected zones by the end of the decade, as well as efforts to cut plastic and agricultural pollution.
But time is running out, with one million species threatened with extinction and tropical forests disappearing, while intensive agriculture is depleting the soil and pollution is affecting even the most remote areas of the planet.
"It's not any longer an ecological issue only... It is increasingly an issue that affects our economy, our society, our health, our wellbeing," Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International, told a press conference.
"It is a security issue for humanity."
- 'Crucial' to fix food system -
Lambertini accused some countries of using a "delaying tactic", pointing the finger at Brazil in particular. Behind the scenes, Argentina and South Africa were also getting the blame.
One of the main stumbling blocks concerns agriculture, particularly targets for a reduction in pesticides and fertilisers.
The European Union wants to see the pesticide issue specifically mentioned in the text, but "there is little support" for that position, according to one delegate.
Delegates from the Global South have highlighted the need to produce more, with much of the planet undergoing a major food security crisis, and reject any reference to agroecology, the use of ecological principles in farming.
"Agriculture is currently responsible for 70 percent of biodiversity loss," said Guido Broekhoven of WWF International, adding that it was "absolutely crucial" to fix a system where 30 percent of food goes to waste.
Countries are also divided on the issue of the funding needed to implement the biodiversity goals.
Brazil, backed by 22 countries including Argentina, South Africa, Cameroon, Egypt and Indonesia, renewed calls for rich countries to provide at least $100 billion a year until 2030 to help developing countries preserve their rich biodiversity.
The African bloc is also asking for a fund dedicated to biodiversity, according to one country delegate.
Although leaders of 93 countries committed in September 2020 to ending the biodiversity crisis, the issue is struggling to gain as much traction on the international political agenda as climate change.
"There is also a need to see where our political leaders want us to be," said Canada's Basile van Havre, co-chair of the Kenyan talks.
"We're looking to see who’s going to step up to pick up that ball."
laf/txw/yad
Ailing oceans in state of 'emergency', says UN chief
Marlowe HOOD
Mon, 27 June 2022
A long-delayed conference on how to restore the faltering health of global oceans kicked off in Lisbon on Monday, with the head of the UN saying the world's seas are in crisis.
"Today we face what I would call an ocean emergency," UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told thousands of policymakers, experts and advocates at the opening plenary, describing how seas have been hammered by climate change and pollution.
Humanity depends on healthy oceans.
They generate 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe and provide essential protein and nutrients to billions of people every day.
Covering 70 percent of Earth's surface, oceans have also softened the impact of climate change for life on land.
But at a terrible cost.
Absorbing around a quarter of CO2 pollution -- even as emissions increased by half over the last 60 years -- has turned sea water acidic, threatening aquatic food chains and the ocean's capacity to absorb carbon.
And soaking up more than 90 percent of the excess heat from global warming has spawned massive marine heatwaves that are killing off precious coral reefs and expanding dead zones bereft of oxygen.
"We have only begun to understand the extent to which climate change is going to wreak havoc on ocean health," said Charlotte de Fontaubert, the World Bank's global lead for the blue economy.
Making things worse is an unending torrent of pollution, including a garbage truck's worth of plastic every minute, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
On current trends, yearly plastic waste will nearly triple to one billion tonnes by 2060, according to a recent report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
- Wild fish stocks -
Microplastics -- now found inside Arctic ice and fish in the ocean's deepest trenches -- are estimated to kill more than a million seabirds and over 100,000 marine mammals each year.
Solutions on the table range from recycling to global caps on plastic production.
Global fisheries will also be in the spotlight during the five-day UN Ocean Conference, originally slated for April 2020 and jointly hosted by Portugal and Kenya.
"At least one-third of wild fish stocks are overfished and less than 10 percent of the ocean is protected," Kathryn Matthews, chief scientist for US-based NGO Oceana, told AFP.
"Destructive and illegal fishing vessels operate with impunity in many coastal waters and on the high seas."
One culprit is nearly $35 billion in subsidies. Baby steps taken last week by the World Trade Organization (WTO) to reduce handouts to industry will hardly make a dent, experts said.
The conference will also see a push for a moratorium on deep-sea mining of rare metals needed for a boom in electric vehicle battery construction.
Scientists say poorly understood seabed ecosystems are fragile and could take decades or longer to heal once disrupted.
Another major focus will be "blue food", the new watchword for ensuring that marine harvests from all sources -- wild caught and farmed -- are sustainable and socially responsible.
- Protected areas -
Aquaculture yields -- from salmon and tuna to shellfish and algae -- have grown by three percent a year for decades and are on track to overtake wild marine harvests that peaked in the 1990s, with each producing roughly 100 million tonnes per year.
The Lisbon meeting will be attended by ministers and even a few heads of state, including French President Emmanuel Macron, but is not a formal negotiating session.
But participants will push for a strong oceans agenda at two critical summits later this year -- the COP27 UN climate talks in November, hosted by Egypt, followed by the long-delayed COP15 UN biodiversity negotiations, recently moved from China to Montreal.
Oceans are already at the heart of a draft treaty tasked with halting what many scientists fear is the first "mass extinction" event in 65 million years. A cornerstone provision would designate 30 percent of the planet's land and ocean as protected areas.
But preparatory negotiations in Nairobi ended on Sunday in deadlock.
"The agreement is at risk of collapsing on the question of finance," the environmental diplomacy lead for WWF France told AFP.
For climate change, the focus will be on carbon sequestration -- boosting the ocean's capacity to soak up CO2, whether by enhancing natural sinks such as mangroves or through geoengineering schemes.
At the same time, scientists warn, a drastic reduction in greenhouse gases is needed to restore ocean health.
mh/gil
Vietnam halts scuba diving off popular Hon Mun island to protect coral
The waters off Hon Mun island are a popular diving spot in Vietnam.
The waters off Hon Mun island are a popular diving spot in Vietnam.
(Photo: AFP/Quang Duc)
27 Jun 2022
HANOI: Vietnam has banned swimming and scuba diving at a popular central tourist spot in an attempt to revive its damaged coral reef, officials said Monday (Jun 27).
The communist nation boasts more than 3,200km of coastline with crystal clear waters, vibrant sea life and sandy beaches that are a huge tourism draw.
Coral reefs across Southeast Asia have been badly hit by global warming, with scientists warning their degradation could have devasting environmental and economic knock-on effects.
Recent photos taken off Hon Mun island - about 14km from the city of Nha Trang and popular with divers thanks to its diverse ecosystem - showed the reef bleached and damaged.
"The Nha Trang bay management authority decided to halt swimming and scuba diving activities in areas around Hon Mun island," officials said.
In a statement they said the ban was to "evaluate the condition of sensitive area so that an appropriate plan to enact the sea conservation area" could be made.
Effective from Monday, the ban would last "until further notice", they added.
About 60 per cent of the coastal bed in the area was covered by living coral in 2020, according to state media, but more recent findings showed that had shrunk to less than 50 per cent.
Previously local authorities blamed the shrinking ecosystem on climate change, noting that powerful storms in 2019 and 2021 had damaged the coral.
They also blamed illegal fishing, dredging, construction of industrial parks and waste disposal.
Divers expressed anger over the decision to close the waters.
"Swimming and diving activities were the least influence on the coral reefs, compared to other activities," diver Nguyen Son, from Ho Chi Minh City, told AFP.
"The ecosystem (around Hon Mun) should have recovered after two years of pandemic," said diver Trinh Ngoc Sang.
"Without proper management, the fishing vessels came in and destroyed the sea bed," he told AFP, recalling the sight of rubbish and dead coral during a recent dive.
"It would take dozens of years for the coral reefs to be restored, so they want to close it throughout?"
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that 4.5 million people in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region could be affected by damaged coral reefs.
The reefs support about 25 per cent of marine biodiversity.
Vietnam's decision follows a similar move in Thailand, which restricted access to Maya Bay - immortalised in the Leonardo DiCaprio film The Beach - to give the local ecosystem a chance to recover.
27 Jun 2022
HANOI: Vietnam has banned swimming and scuba diving at a popular central tourist spot in an attempt to revive its damaged coral reef, officials said Monday (Jun 27).
The communist nation boasts more than 3,200km of coastline with crystal clear waters, vibrant sea life and sandy beaches that are a huge tourism draw.
Coral reefs across Southeast Asia have been badly hit by global warming, with scientists warning their degradation could have devasting environmental and economic knock-on effects.
Recent photos taken off Hon Mun island - about 14km from the city of Nha Trang and popular with divers thanks to its diverse ecosystem - showed the reef bleached and damaged.
"The Nha Trang bay management authority decided to halt swimming and scuba diving activities in areas around Hon Mun island," officials said.
In a statement they said the ban was to "evaluate the condition of sensitive area so that an appropriate plan to enact the sea conservation area" could be made.
Effective from Monday, the ban would last "until further notice", they added.
About 60 per cent of the coastal bed in the area was covered by living coral in 2020, according to state media, but more recent findings showed that had shrunk to less than 50 per cent.
Previously local authorities blamed the shrinking ecosystem on climate change, noting that powerful storms in 2019 and 2021 had damaged the coral.
They also blamed illegal fishing, dredging, construction of industrial parks and waste disposal.
Divers expressed anger over the decision to close the waters.
"Swimming and diving activities were the least influence on the coral reefs, compared to other activities," diver Nguyen Son, from Ho Chi Minh City, told AFP.
"The ecosystem (around Hon Mun) should have recovered after two years of pandemic," said diver Trinh Ngoc Sang.
"Without proper management, the fishing vessels came in and destroyed the sea bed," he told AFP, recalling the sight of rubbish and dead coral during a recent dive.
"It would take dozens of years for the coral reefs to be restored, so they want to close it throughout?"
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that 4.5 million people in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region could be affected by damaged coral reefs.
The reefs support about 25 per cent of marine biodiversity.
Vietnam's decision follows a similar move in Thailand, which restricted access to Maya Bay - immortalised in the Leonardo DiCaprio film The Beach - to give the local ecosystem a chance to recover.
Why women use baby formula instead of breast milk
Breastfeeding is the healthiest option to feed your baby, experts say. However, breastfeeding rates have stagnated in the last decades while formula sales have doubled. Why?
More and more parents around the world feed their children with baby formula
This is the first piece in a two-part article series about some of the reasons why some mothers opt for formula instead of breastfeeding. We have attempted to cover as many of the deciding factors across these two articles, but this is at heart a very personal, individual decision for every new mother. Click here to read the second part of the series.
Most of the world's women start breastfeeding after giving birth, but only 44% exclusively breastfeed to the sixth month, according to the World Health Organization.
Infants can't eat solid food in the first half-year of their lives, leaving them reliant on either breast milk or baby formula. This fact makes the current formula shortage in the US, where only one in four babies are exclusively breastfed to six months, dire.
The baby formula shortage was caused by production and supply-chain issues and an investigation by the US Food and Drug Administration at factory run by a major producer of baby formula, Abbott Nutrition. The company is one of four that together produce about 90% of formula on the US market. Although production had been getting back on track, Abbott Nutrition had to pause production yet again at the factory when a storm hit the site in Michigan on June 13.
Women in rich, developed countries are the least likely to exclusively breastfeed their children to six months
Research suggests that exclusively breastfeeding is a healthy, natural way for women to nourish their newborns. It's good for the mother-infant relationship and cheaper than formula. So, why do so few women stick with it?
In this two-part series, we want to explain some of the structural and medical reasons why some women use formula and how the importance of breastfeeding may be different depending on where you live. In part one, we're asking why so many women use baby formula instead of breast milk.
It starts at the hospital
There are various reasons why women opt against breastfeeding. But a lot of experts say that a woman's experience at the hospital after birth plays a decisive role.
For decades, the WHO has been pushing hospitals to implement "baby friendly" measures to promote breastfeeding at birth. Those first 24 hours are crucial for a baby to learn how to feed directly from its mother.
Most hospitals in the US and Europe are "baby friendly." But in other parts of the world, that's not always the case.
Antonina Mutoro, a maternal and child well-being researcher for the African Population and Health Research Center in Nairobi, Kenya, helped conduct a survey in the informal settlements of Nairobi, which a recent UN report called "some of the most dense, unsanitary and insecure slums in the world."
Of the new mothers surveyed, only 2% were exclusively breastfeeding their babies and not bottle feeding.
That's despite the fact that many of the women Mutoro encountered could not afford a regular supply of formula. They were using cow's milk or foods like porridge to feed their babies before the age of six months, she said.
Mutoro said the lack of breastfeeding in the settlements was due in part to the fact that the women probably didn't learn about breastfeeding at the hospital after giving birth.
In many developing countries where clean water is scarce, lack of education
about breastfeeding can cause infant malnutrition
"If it's not a baby friendly facility, at times, health workers offer to take the child and give it formula. That sets the precedent," Mutoro said.
Other times, women were told by doctors that they don't have enough milk. Mutoro said a woman's ability to produce breast milk typically depends on demand. Shortly after birth, that demand is created by placing the baby on the mother's breasts, which helps stimulate milk production.
"But you find that the narrative is usually, 'Oh, I do not have enough milk.' So, the solution is to look for other options and formula is usually the fastest option," said Mutoro.
It is not due to ignorance, said Mutoro — most staff who work in pediatrics or gynecology know that breastfeeding is good for the baby, she said. But the structures aren't in place to promote it, and when the workload becomes overwhelming, some doctors and nurses don't take the time to train new mothers if they can offer baby formula instead.
Impact of formula producers
Then there's the baby formula industry.
In 1981, the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the WHO, adopted an international marketing code for breast-milk substitutes. The code banned the marketing of formula, with an aim to prevent women from being discouraged from breastfeeding.
But a WHO report published in February shows companies have continued to aggressively market their products online through methods that didn't exist when the code was adopted, like advertising algorithms tailored to reach new moms and parenting apps.
The report says that while breastfeeding rates have largely stagnated in the four decades since the code's implementation, formula sales have doubled.
In China, only around 1 in 5 babies are exclusively breastfed to 6 months
Lack of hands-on training
Rafael Perez Escamilla, one of the authors of the WHO report, said that even at baby friendly hospitals, women did not always receive the support they need to understand how to breastfeed once they got home.
Perez Escamilla said there were two reasons for that. In most medical nursing schools, students may only receive a couple of hours of breastfeeding training throughout their education.
"I'm at a great institution, Yale University, and I'm in charge of [teaching] breastfeeding, a component of the training of medical school students, and it's like two hours," Perez Escamilla said.
Without sufficient hands-on training, health care providers lack the skills to teach women how to nurse their own babies. That work is often passed onto breastfeeding peer counselors or lactation consultants, Perez Escamilla said.
But in many countries, lactation consultants aren't paid for by public health systems, making their services available only to women who can pay for them privately.
And sometimes providers may understand the benefits of breastfeeding but do not promote it because they're being courted by the formula industry, Perez Escamilla said.
"Many of them get invited to dinners, they get their conferences paid, they get books, some of them may even get a kickback if they prescribe a minimum of X number of products," he said.
Not all women receive proper training about how to breastfeed at the hospital
Breastfeeding is a full-time job
If a woman is breastfeeding, her breasts will fill with milk every few hours. That milk needs to leave her body in some way — either by feeding a baby or by pumping — or it will cause her pain.
In Germany and many other European countries, women are allowed to take up to a paid year off work after giving birth, making the question of pumping less of a problem.
In other countries, like the US or Kenya, that is not the case. Women are not granted any paid time off work by law after a pregnancy.
If a woman cannot afford to leave work for six months, she will need to pump on the job. That is possible in the US and protected by law — women must be granted a place where they can pump their breast milk at work.
For women who work in the knowledge industry and have their own office, this may be OK, said Kailey Snyder, a professor at the Creighton University School of Pharmacy and Health Professions in Omaha, Nebraska. But not all women have access to a personal office.
Some countries lack legal protections for mothers, making breastfeeding difficult when
they have to go back to work
"It's a completely different story if you're asking a young woman that works in a fast food industry to ask her manager to give her space to pump, and maybe the only ample space is his office," said Snyder. "That's not feasible and doesn't often happen even if she's legally protected to pump."
In situations like this, formula may present itself as the only feasible option, even if the woman might theoretically be more interested in exclusive breastfeeding.
The reasons why some women use formula aren't just structural — some women want to nurse their babies, but can't. We explore some of the reasons in the second part of this series here.
Edited by: Zulfikar Abbany, Carla Bleiker
How corporate food monopolies caused the baby formula scandal
The fact that a handful of companies produce the majority of our food means that small disruptions will have big impacts. This time the impacts are borne by American babies.
By Sonali Kolhatkar
-June 23, 2022
SOURCE
The fact that a handful of companies produce the majority of our food means that small disruptions will have big impacts. This time the impacts are borne by American babies.
By Sonali Kolhatkar
-June 23, 2022
SOURCE
NationofChange
It’s a tough time to be the parent of a newborn in the United States today. Not only is child care prohibitively expensive, but the cost of all things including baby products is rising, COVID-19 poses a threat to children too young to be vaccinated—and there has been a months-long shortage of baby formula.
The formula scarcity began when the COVID-19 pandemic led to a disruption of ingredient supply chains and transportation delays. Then, this past February, the Food and Drug Administration found that several leading brands produced by Abbott Laboratories were contaminated with dangerous bacteria leading to a recall and a temporary closure of Abbott’s main Michigan factory where government inspectors found “shocking” conditions. Then, just as the Michigan plant reopened, torrential flooding forced it to shut down again.
There is nothing more important to a parent than providing for their child, especially during the most vulnerable, early years of their child’s life. As a mother who was unable to breastfeed when my children were newborns, I relied on formula and remember once having to drive quite far to a store in a neighboring town because my local store was out of the brand I relied on and that my child was used to. It was a stressful experience, one that is a mild example of what millions of parents are feeling right now as they face store shelves emptied of formula.
The shortage has driven prices up—yay, capitalism! For a variety of systemic reasons that include economics, geography, and health, Black and Latino parents are disproportionately more likely to rely on formula feeding. To add to that, low-income parents of color are also disproportionately impacted by the formula shortage, as they may live in food deserts with fewer options for formula, and they may be unable to drive long distances to search other stores or pay premium prices for online shipping.
There is a simple reason why such a shortage has transpired: global capitalism and the food monopolies it has fostered. Although store shelves (when fully stocked) appear to offer a wide variety of baby formula products, some with different name brands, only two companies produce more than 70 percent of these products, at a small handful of factories: Abbott and Mead Johnson. A third company, Nestlé, produces about 12 percent.
Therefore, when Abbott shuttered its Michigan plant, that single closure affected a very significant portion of the nation’s stock of formula.
The U.S. government has encouraged this monopoly by choosing to buy formula for the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program from Abbott alone.
It’s the definition of putting all of one’s eggs in one basket. If that basket breaks, a shortage of eggs is inevitable.
And it’s not just baby formula. In the U.S. market, only three companies produce 81.7 percent of all baby food products; four companies produce 85.4 percent of all canned tuna; three companies make 80.3 percent of all chocolate; three companies make 78.5 percent of all pasta products; and so on.
Now, food prices overall are sharply rising this year as inflation hits grocery suppliers. In response, manufacturers are engaging in “shrinkflation,” a form of theft: shrinking their package sizes while maintaining the same price so as to dupe customers into believing they’re paying the same amount.
Meanwhile, big food manufacturers are reaping record profits, undermining claims that they’re simply passing on their higher costs to customers.
Decades ago, food policy analysts warned of the pitfalls of food monopolies, such as Vandana Shiva, author of the 2000 book Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply, and Raj Patel, author of the 2007 book Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System.
Both Shiva and Patel linked the profits of the world’s wealthiest food corporations to the plight of the world’s poorest farmers, and pointed out that in the relentless corporate drive to lower costs and maximize profits, food supply chains were consolidating and becoming more vulnerable to disruptions.
They also highlighted the folly of a global food supply chain relying on subsidized fossil-fuel-based global transportation systems that exacerbate climate change. The extreme flooding in Michigan that led to the closure of Abbott’s formula factory only two weeks after it reopened is a consequence of the carbon dioxide we’ve been pumping into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Advocacy organizations like Farm Action and Food and Water Watch have likewise been sounding the alarm about food monopolies for years. In late 2020, Farm Action released a report titled “The Food System: Concentration and Its Impacts” in which it drew attention to the growing monopoly power of food corporations. The report’s authors warned against the “concentration of ownership, wealth and power” in our food system, where “just a few companies dominate almost all aspects of food production.”
A year ago, Food and Water Watch did the same, warning the federal government in a report titled “Well-Fed: A Roadmap to a Sustainable Food System That Works For All” of the looming food crisis in the U.S., and saying that the only solution to creating a sustainable food future was to break up the corporate food monopolies. The organization recommended that the federal government ban the expansion of factory farms, place a moratorium on food corporate mergers, and invest in small, organic and sustainable farming systems.
On one end of the food chain there are starving farmers, and on the other end there are starving families—including babies. In the middle are a handful of fat cats—massive corporations like Abbott and Cargill—that keep getting fatter.
As is the case with most economic problems that can be traced back to corporate greed, the solutions are simple, and can be easily enacted if there is a political will to do so.
The Biden-Harris administration claims to understand the problem and the solution. For example, in a January 2022 fact sheet about the meat industry, the White House released its plan for “a Fairer, More Competitive, and More Resilient Meat and Poultry Supply Chain,” in which it acknowledged problems such as how “[f]our large meat-packing companies control 85 percent of the beef market.”
But the administration’s solutions to the problem of food monopolies did not even touch upon preventing mergers. Instead, it announced a toothless “portal” for “reporting concerns about potential violations of the competition laws.”
Representative Mark Pocan of Wisconsin has gone further than Biden, however, in sponsoring a new bill called the Food and Agribusiness Merger Moratorium and Antitrust Review Act of 2022, which would enact a moratorium on food industry mergers.
In the meantime, what are formula-feeding parents to do in order to feed their babies? Baby formula is a product that can be neither made at home nor watered down. Parents often search for the product that best suits their newborn’s sensitive digestive systems.
One mother, Laura Stewart, told the Associated Press how difficult it has been for her 10-month-old daughter to deal with switching to whatever brands are available: “She spits up more. She’s just more cranky. She is typically a very happy girl,” said Stewart. “When she has the right formula, she doesn’t spit up. She’s perfectly fine.”
Now that corporate food monopolies are impacting the most vulnerable human beings in our society—babies—will government take drastic measures to break them up?
Sonali Kolhatkar is a columnist for Truthdig. She also is the founder, host and producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a radio and television show that airs on Pacifica stations KPFK and KPFA and will begin airing on Free Speech TV. She is the former founder, host and producer of KPFK Pacifica’s popular morning drive-time program “Rising Up With Sonali,” based in Los Angeles. She is also the co-director of the Afghan Women’s Mission, a U.S.-based non-profit solidarity organization that funds the social, political, and humanitarian projects of RAWA.
It’s a tough time to be the parent of a newborn in the United States today. Not only is child care prohibitively expensive, but the cost of all things including baby products is rising, COVID-19 poses a threat to children too young to be vaccinated—and there has been a months-long shortage of baby formula.
The formula scarcity began when the COVID-19 pandemic led to a disruption of ingredient supply chains and transportation delays. Then, this past February, the Food and Drug Administration found that several leading brands produced by Abbott Laboratories were contaminated with dangerous bacteria leading to a recall and a temporary closure of Abbott’s main Michigan factory where government inspectors found “shocking” conditions. Then, just as the Michigan plant reopened, torrential flooding forced it to shut down again.
There is nothing more important to a parent than providing for their child, especially during the most vulnerable, early years of their child’s life. As a mother who was unable to breastfeed when my children were newborns, I relied on formula and remember once having to drive quite far to a store in a neighboring town because my local store was out of the brand I relied on and that my child was used to. It was a stressful experience, one that is a mild example of what millions of parents are feeling right now as they face store shelves emptied of formula.
The shortage has driven prices up—yay, capitalism! For a variety of systemic reasons that include economics, geography, and health, Black and Latino parents are disproportionately more likely to rely on formula feeding. To add to that, low-income parents of color are also disproportionately impacted by the formula shortage, as they may live in food deserts with fewer options for formula, and they may be unable to drive long distances to search other stores or pay premium prices for online shipping.
There is a simple reason why such a shortage has transpired: global capitalism and the food monopolies it has fostered. Although store shelves (when fully stocked) appear to offer a wide variety of baby formula products, some with different name brands, only two companies produce more than 70 percent of these products, at a small handful of factories: Abbott and Mead Johnson. A third company, Nestlé, produces about 12 percent.
Therefore, when Abbott shuttered its Michigan plant, that single closure affected a very significant portion of the nation’s stock of formula.
The U.S. government has encouraged this monopoly by choosing to buy formula for the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program from Abbott alone.
It’s the definition of putting all of one’s eggs in one basket. If that basket breaks, a shortage of eggs is inevitable.
And it’s not just baby formula. In the U.S. market, only three companies produce 81.7 percent of all baby food products; four companies produce 85.4 percent of all canned tuna; three companies make 80.3 percent of all chocolate; three companies make 78.5 percent of all pasta products; and so on.
Now, food prices overall are sharply rising this year as inflation hits grocery suppliers. In response, manufacturers are engaging in “shrinkflation,” a form of theft: shrinking their package sizes while maintaining the same price so as to dupe customers into believing they’re paying the same amount.
Meanwhile, big food manufacturers are reaping record profits, undermining claims that they’re simply passing on their higher costs to customers.
Decades ago, food policy analysts warned of the pitfalls of food monopolies, such as Vandana Shiva, author of the 2000 book Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply, and Raj Patel, author of the 2007 book Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System.
Both Shiva and Patel linked the profits of the world’s wealthiest food corporations to the plight of the world’s poorest farmers, and pointed out that in the relentless corporate drive to lower costs and maximize profits, food supply chains were consolidating and becoming more vulnerable to disruptions.
They also highlighted the folly of a global food supply chain relying on subsidized fossil-fuel-based global transportation systems that exacerbate climate change. The extreme flooding in Michigan that led to the closure of Abbott’s formula factory only two weeks after it reopened is a consequence of the carbon dioxide we’ve been pumping into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Advocacy organizations like Farm Action and Food and Water Watch have likewise been sounding the alarm about food monopolies for years. In late 2020, Farm Action released a report titled “The Food System: Concentration and Its Impacts” in which it drew attention to the growing monopoly power of food corporations. The report’s authors warned against the “concentration of ownership, wealth and power” in our food system, where “just a few companies dominate almost all aspects of food production.”
A year ago, Food and Water Watch did the same, warning the federal government in a report titled “Well-Fed: A Roadmap to a Sustainable Food System That Works For All” of the looming food crisis in the U.S., and saying that the only solution to creating a sustainable food future was to break up the corporate food monopolies. The organization recommended that the federal government ban the expansion of factory farms, place a moratorium on food corporate mergers, and invest in small, organic and sustainable farming systems.
On one end of the food chain there are starving farmers, and on the other end there are starving families—including babies. In the middle are a handful of fat cats—massive corporations like Abbott and Cargill—that keep getting fatter.
As is the case with most economic problems that can be traced back to corporate greed, the solutions are simple, and can be easily enacted if there is a political will to do so.
The Biden-Harris administration claims to understand the problem and the solution. For example, in a January 2022 fact sheet about the meat industry, the White House released its plan for “a Fairer, More Competitive, and More Resilient Meat and Poultry Supply Chain,” in which it acknowledged problems such as how “[f]our large meat-packing companies control 85 percent of the beef market.”
But the administration’s solutions to the problem of food monopolies did not even touch upon preventing mergers. Instead, it announced a toothless “portal” for “reporting concerns about potential violations of the competition laws.”
Representative Mark Pocan of Wisconsin has gone further than Biden, however, in sponsoring a new bill called the Food and Agribusiness Merger Moratorium and Antitrust Review Act of 2022, which would enact a moratorium on food industry mergers.
In the meantime, what are formula-feeding parents to do in order to feed their babies? Baby formula is a product that can be neither made at home nor watered down. Parents often search for the product that best suits their newborn’s sensitive digestive systems.
One mother, Laura Stewart, told the Associated Press how difficult it has been for her 10-month-old daughter to deal with switching to whatever brands are available: “She spits up more. She’s just more cranky. She is typically a very happy girl,” said Stewart. “When she has the right formula, she doesn’t spit up. She’s perfectly fine.”
Now that corporate food monopolies are impacting the most vulnerable human beings in our society—babies—will government take drastic measures to break them up?
Sonali Kolhatkar is a columnist for Truthdig. She also is the founder, host and producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a radio and television show that airs on Pacifica stations KPFK and KPFA and will begin airing on Free Speech TV. She is the former founder, host and producer of KPFK Pacifica’s popular morning drive-time program “Rising Up With Sonali,” based in Los Angeles. She is also the co-director of the Afghan Women’s Mission, a U.S.-based non-profit solidarity organization that funds the social, political, and humanitarian projects of RAWA.
US basketball star Griner appears in Russian court
By JIM HEINTZ
1 of 6
WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner is escorted to a courtroom for a hearing, in Khimki just outside Moscow, Russia, Monday, June 27, 2022. More than four months after she was arrested at a Moscow airport for cannabis possession, American basketball star Brittney Griner is to appear in court Monday for a preliminary hearing ahead of her trial.
By JIM HEINTZ
1 of 6
WNBA star and two-time Olympic gold medalist Brittney Griner is escorted to a courtroom for a hearing, in Khimki just outside Moscow, Russia, Monday, June 27, 2022. More than four months after she was arrested at a Moscow airport for cannabis possession, American basketball star Brittney Griner is to appear in court Monday for a preliminary hearing ahead of her trial.
CBD IS NOT THC
(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
MOSCOW (AP) — More than four months after she was arrested at a Moscow airport for cannabis possession, a Russian court has set the start date of the criminal trial of U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner for July 1.
The Phoenix Mercury star was also ordered to remain in custody for the duration of her criminal trial. She could face 10 years in prison if convicted on charges of large-scale transportation of drugs. Fewer than 1% of defendants in Russian criminal cases are acquitted, and unlike in the U.S., acquittals can be overturned.
On Monday, the court in the Moscow suburb of Khimki extended Griner’s detention for another six months after she appeared for a preliminary hearing held behind closed doors. Photos obtained by the AP showed her appearing in handcuffs. Griner had previously been ordered to remain in pretrial detention until July 2.
Griner’s detention and trial come at an extraordinarily low point in Moscow-Washington relations. She was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport less than a week before Russia sent troops into Ukraine, which aggravated already-high tensions with sweeping sanctions by the United States and Russia’s denunciation of U.S. weapon supplies to Ukraine.
Amid the tensions, Griner’s supporters had taken a low profile in hopes of a quiet resolution, until May, when the State Department reclassified her as wrongfully detained and shifted oversight of her case to its special presidential envoy for hostage affairs — effectively the U.S. government’s chief negotiator.
That move has drawn additional attention to Griner’s case, with supporters encouraging a prisoner swap like the one in April that brought home Marine veteran Trevor Reed in exchange for a Russian pilot convicted of drug trafficking conspiracy.
Russian news media have repeatedly raised speculation that she could be swapped for Russian arms trader Viktor Bout, nicknamed “The Merchant of Death,” who is serving a 25-year sentence on conviction of conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens and providing aid to a terrorist organization.
Russia has agitated for Bout’s release for years. But the discrepancy between Griner’s case — she allegedly was found in possession of vape cartridges containing cannabis oil — and Bout’s global dealings in deadly weapons could make such a swap unpalatable to the U.S.
Others have suggested that she could be traded in tandem with Paul Whelan, a former Marine and security director serving a 16-year sentence on an espionage conviction that the United States has repeatedly described as a set-up.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, asked Sunday on CNN whether a joint swap of Griner and Whelan for Bout was being considered, sidestepped the question.
“As a general proposition ... I have got no higher priority than making sure that Americans who are being illegally detained in one way or another around the world come home,” he said. But “I can’t comment in any detail on what we’re doing, except to say this is an absolute priority.”
Any swap would apparently require Griner to first be convicted and sentenced, then apply for a presidential pardon, Maria Yarmush, a lawyer specializing in international civil affairs, told Kremlin-funded TV channel RT.
MOSCOW (AP) — More than four months after she was arrested at a Moscow airport for cannabis possession, a Russian court has set the start date of the criminal trial of U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner for July 1.
The Phoenix Mercury star was also ordered to remain in custody for the duration of her criminal trial. She could face 10 years in prison if convicted on charges of large-scale transportation of drugs. Fewer than 1% of defendants in Russian criminal cases are acquitted, and unlike in the U.S., acquittals can be overturned.
On Monday, the court in the Moscow suburb of Khimki extended Griner’s detention for another six months after she appeared for a preliminary hearing held behind closed doors. Photos obtained by the AP showed her appearing in handcuffs. Griner had previously been ordered to remain in pretrial detention until July 2.
Griner’s detention and trial come at an extraordinarily low point in Moscow-Washington relations. She was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport less than a week before Russia sent troops into Ukraine, which aggravated already-high tensions with sweeping sanctions by the United States and Russia’s denunciation of U.S. weapon supplies to Ukraine.
Amid the tensions, Griner’s supporters had taken a low profile in hopes of a quiet resolution, until May, when the State Department reclassified her as wrongfully detained and shifted oversight of her case to its special presidential envoy for hostage affairs — effectively the U.S. government’s chief negotiator.
That move has drawn additional attention to Griner’s case, with supporters encouraging a prisoner swap like the one in April that brought home Marine veteran Trevor Reed in exchange for a Russian pilot convicted of drug trafficking conspiracy.
Russian news media have repeatedly raised speculation that she could be swapped for Russian arms trader Viktor Bout, nicknamed “The Merchant of Death,” who is serving a 25-year sentence on conviction of conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens and providing aid to a terrorist organization.
Russia has agitated for Bout’s release for years. But the discrepancy between Griner’s case — she allegedly was found in possession of vape cartridges containing cannabis oil — and Bout’s global dealings in deadly weapons could make such a swap unpalatable to the U.S.
Others have suggested that she could be traded in tandem with Paul Whelan, a former Marine and security director serving a 16-year sentence on an espionage conviction that the United States has repeatedly described as a set-up.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, asked Sunday on CNN whether a joint swap of Griner and Whelan for Bout was being considered, sidestepped the question.
“As a general proposition ... I have got no higher priority than making sure that Americans who are being illegally detained in one way or another around the world come home,” he said. But “I can’t comment in any detail on what we’re doing, except to say this is an absolute priority.”
Any swap would apparently require Griner to first be convicted and sentenced, then apply for a presidential pardon, Maria Yarmush, a lawyer specializing in international civil affairs, told Kremlin-funded TV channel RT.
French athlete assaulted just before race, still wins in eyepatch
Mon, June 27, 2022
French hurdler Wilfried Happio won the national title at the weekend despite running with an eyepatch after he was assaulted 20 minutes before his race.
Happio, 23, was warming up for the men's 400m hurdles final at the national championships in Caen, northern France, on Saturday when he was attacked, taking several punches to the face.
"There was a big incident in the warm-up. Someone jumped on him and hit him," Happio's coach Olivier Vallaeys said.
"Some guy came out of nowhere and asked him if he was Wilfried Happio and then jumped on him. I managed to hold him back.
"It was 20 minutes before the race, we were ready to go to the call area.
"We're shocked. The guy was arrested and Wilfried is fine. But I'm speechless, it was pure aggression, it's scandalous. These are the methods of a savage."
After Happio crossed the line in a new personal best time of 48.57sec to book his place in the French team for next month's world championships in Oregon, blood was streaming from his nose.
"I don't want to say any more about the (assault)," he said. "The race was more complicated than normal because I only had one eye."
The French Athletics Federation said a man had been arrested in connection with the attack and an investigation had begun.
rg-es-lg/gj/jc
Mon, June 27, 2022
French hurdler Wilfried Happio won the national title at the weekend despite running with an eyepatch after he was assaulted 20 minutes before his race.
Happio, 23, was warming up for the men's 400m hurdles final at the national championships in Caen, northern France, on Saturday when he was attacked, taking several punches to the face.
"There was a big incident in the warm-up. Someone jumped on him and hit him," Happio's coach Olivier Vallaeys said.
"Some guy came out of nowhere and asked him if he was Wilfried Happio and then jumped on him. I managed to hold him back.
"It was 20 minutes before the race, we were ready to go to the call area.
"We're shocked. The guy was arrested and Wilfried is fine. But I'm speechless, it was pure aggression, it's scandalous. These are the methods of a savage."
After Happio crossed the line in a new personal best time of 48.57sec to book his place in the French team for next month's world championships in Oregon, blood was streaming from his nose.
"I don't want to say any more about the (assault)," he said. "The race was more complicated than normal because I only had one eye."
The French Athletics Federation said a man had been arrested in connection with the attack and an investigation had begun.
rg-es-lg/gj/jc
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)