Brazilian President Lula da Silva Calls For Freedom For Julian Assange

'The press, which defends freedom of the press, does nothing to free this citizen.'

First Lady of Brazil, Rosângela Lula da Silva “Janja” and Brazilian President Lula da Silva (R) leave Downing Street after meeting British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on May 05, 2023 in London, England. Lula was in town for the coronation of King Charles III.
(Photo by Hollie Adams/Getty Images)

COMMON DREAMS STAFF
May 07, 2023

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva has called for freedom for Julian Assange and denounced the lack of concerted efforts to free the journalist.

Lula spoke to a group of reporters in London Saturday while in town to attend the coronation of King Charles III.

Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has spent four years in Britain’s Belmarsh Prison while fighting extradition to the United States.

“It is an embarrassment that a journalist who denounced trickery by one state against another is arrested, condemned to die in jail and we do nothing to free him. It’s a crazy thing,” Lula told reporters. “We talk about freedom of expression; the guy is in prison because he denounced wrongdoing. And the press doesn’t do anything in defense of this journalist. I can’t understand it.”

“I think there must be a movement of world press in his defense. Not in regard to his person, but to defend the right to denounce,” Lula told the reporters. “The guy didn’t denounce anything vulgar. He denounced that a state was spying on others, and that became a crime against the journalist. The press, which defends freedom of the press, does nothing to free this citizen. It’s sad, but it’s true.”

Also, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Friday he too was frustrated over the continued detention of Julian Assange: "enough is enough."

"I know it's frustrating, I share the frustration," Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. from London for the coronation of King Charles III.

"I can't do more than make very clear what my position is, and the U.S. administration is certainly very aware of what the Australian government's position is. There is nothing to be served by his ongoing incarceration."

"Enough is enough, this needs to be brought to a conclusion, it needs to be worked through," said Albanese.

Assange has battled for years to avoid being sent to the U.S., where the journalist faces 17 charges of espionage because of WikiLeaks’ publication of a trove of classified documents in 2010.

US prosecutors allege he published 700,000 secret classified documents which exposed the United States government and its wrongdoings in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wikileaks received the documents from Chelsea Manning.

Albanese said Australians cannot understand why the US would free the source who leaked the documents, Chelsea Manning, while Assange still faces life in prison.

President Joe Biden has been accused of hypocrisy for demanding the release of journalists around the world, while he actively seeks the extradition of Assange to face American espionage charges.

Assange faces a sentence of up to 175 years in a maximum security prison if extradited to the United States.

 

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'Mad Panic' Near Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant Leads IAEA to Sound Alarm

The situation is 'becoming increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous'


International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Saturday “We must act now to prevent the threat of a severe nuclear accident and its associated consequences for the population and the environment."
(Photo by Thomas Kronsteiner/Getty Images)

COMMON DREAMS STAFF
May 07, 2023

The situation Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has taken a turn for the worse as Russia has begun evacuating 18 settlements in the Zaporizhzhia region, including Enerhodar.

The BBC has cited as Ukrainian official as saying this has sparked a "mad panic" - and traffic jams have been observed as thousands of people pack up and head out of the city.

The exiled mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, wrote on Telegram that shops in the evacuated areas had run out of goods and medicine. He also said hospitals were discharging patients into the street amid fears that electricity and water supplies could be suspended.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA ) experts still at the plant site are continuing to hear shelling on a regular basis, including Friday night. Ukrainian authorities on Sunday said that a 72-year-old woman was killed and three others were wounded when Russian forces fired more than 30 shells at Nikopol, a Ukrainian-held town neighboring the nuclear plant.

The situation is “becoming increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous,” the head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said Saturday.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement :



“The general situation in the area near the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant is becoming increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous."

"I’m extremely concerned about the very real nuclear safety and security risks facing the plant."

"We must act now to prevent the threat of a severe nuclear accident and its associated consequences for the population and the environment. This major nuclear facility must be protected."

"I will continue to press for a commitment by all sides to achieve this vital objective, and the IAEA will continue to do everything it can to help ensure nuclear safety and security at the plant,” he said.



The expected Ukrainian spring counter-offensive is viewed as likely to take in the Zaporizhzhia region, around 80% of which is controlled by Russian forces.

Ukraine war: Situation around Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant ‘potentially dangerous’, says IAEA

Updated: 07 May 2023

A Russian serviceman in an area of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in territory under Russian military control, southeastern Ukraine. (AP file photo)

Rafael Grossi, director general of IAEA, calls for measures to ensure the safe operation of Europe's largest nuclear plant as evacuations were under way in the nearby town of Enerhodar

The head of the U.N.'s nuclear power watchdog warned on Saturday that the situation around the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear station has become "potentially dangerous" as Moscow-installed officials began evacuating people from nearby areas.

Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), called for measures to ensure the safe operation of Europe's largest nuclear plant as evacuations were under way in the nearby town of Enerhodar.

"The general situation in the area near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is becoming increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous," Grossi said on the agency's website.

"I'm extremely concerned about the very real nuclear safety and security risks facing the plant. We must act now to prevent the threat of a severe nuclear accident and its associated consequences for the population and the environment."

Grossi said that while the operating staff of the plant remain at the site, the conditions for the personnel and their families are "increasingly tense."

The Russian-installed governor of the Moscow-controlled part of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region said on Friday that he had ordered the evacuation of villages close to the front line as shelling had intensified in the area in recent days.

A widely expected Ukrainian spring counter-offensive against Russian forces is viewed as likely to take in the Zaporizhzhia region, around 80% of which is held by Moscow.

The General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said on Sunday that the residents are being evacuated in the direction of Berdiansk and Prymorsk on the coast of the Sea of Azov.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports.

Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia plant days after President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of his neighbour in February 2022. Exchanges of fire have frequently occurred near the facility, with each side blaming the other.

Grossi last visited the Zaporizhzhia station, Europe's largest nuclear power installation, in March, as part of efforts to speak to both sides to secure an agreement on safeguards to ensure the plant's safe operation.

He has repeatedly warned of the dangers of military operations around the plant.

The plant is located in the part of that region under Russian control, with many of the staff operating it living in Enerhodar on the south bank of the Dnipro River.

Arab League readmits Syria as relations with Assad normalise

2023/05/07


By Aidan Lewis and Sarah El Safty

CAIRO (Reuters) -The Arab League readmitted Syria after more than a decade of suspension on Sunday, consolidating a regional push to normalise ties with President Bashar al-Assad.

The decision said Syria could resume its participation in Arab League meetings immediately, while calling for a resolution of the crisis resulting from Syria's civil war, including the flight of refugees to neighbouring countries and drug smuggling across the region.

While Arab states including the United Arab Emirates have pushed for Syria and Assad's rehabilitation, others, including Qatar, have remained opposed to full normalisation without a political solution to the Syrian conflict.

Some have been keen to set conditions for Syria's return, with Jordan's foreign minister saying last week that the Arab League's reacceptance of Syria, which remains under Western sanctions, would only be the start of "a very long and difficult and challenging process".

"The reinstatement of Syria does not mean normalisation of relations between Arab countries and Syria," Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit told a press conference in Cairo on Sunday. "This is a sovereign decision for each country to make."

A Jordanian official said Syria would need to show it was serious about reaching a political solution, since this would be a pre-condition to lobbying for any lifting of Western sanctions, a crucial step for funding reconstruction.

CAPTAGON

Sunday's decision said Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and the Arab League's Secretary General would form a ministerial group to liaise with the Syrian government and seek solutions to the crisis through recipocral steps.

Practical measures included continuing efforts to facilitate the delivery of aid in Syria, according to a copy of the decision seen by Reuters.

Syria's readmission follows a Jordanian initiative laying out a roadmap for ending Syria's conflict that includes addressing the issues of refugees, missing detainees, drug smuggling and Iranian militias in Syria.

Jordan is both a destination and a main transit route to the oil-rich Gulf countries for captagon, a highly-addictive amphetamine produced in Syria.

Syria's membership of the Arab League was suspended in 2011 after the crackdown on street protests against Assad that led to the civil war. Several Gulf states including Saudi Arabia began backing rebel groups fighting to oust Assad from power.

Assad later regained control over much of Syria with the help of his main allies Iran and Russia, but the war cost hundreds of thousands of lives and led millions to flee the country. Syria remains splintered with its economy in ruins.

Recently, Arab states have been trying to reach consensus on whether to invite Assad to an Arab League summit on May 19 in Riyadh to discuss the pace and conditions for normalising ties.

Responding to a question over whether Assad could participate, Aboul Gheit told reporters: "If he wishes, because Syria, starting from this evening, is a full member of the Arab League."

"When the invitation is sent by the host country, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and if he wishes to participate, he will participate," he added.

Saudi Arabia long resisted restoring relations with Assad but said after its recent rapprochement with Iran - Syria's key regional ally - that a new approach was needed with Damascus.

Washington, which terms Assad's Syria a "rogue" state, has urged Arab states to get something in return for engaging with Assad.

(Additional reporting by Hatem Maher and Nayera Abdallah in Cairo and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman Editing by Mike Harrison, Frances Kerry and Angus MacSwan)









© Reuters

Arab League Votes to Readmit Syria, Ending a Nearly 12-Year Suspension

The country is poised for a triumphant return this month at the league’s next summit — perhaps represented by President Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian leader accused of committing war crimes against his own people.

Foreign ministers of the Arab League meeting on Sunday in Cairo

.Credit...Khaled Elfiqi/EPA, via Shutterstock

By Vivian Yee

Reporting from Cairo

The New York Times
May 7, 2023

Arab nations agreed on Sunday to allow Syria to rejoin the Arab League, taking a crucial step toward ending the country’s international ostracism more than a decade after it was suspended from the group over its use of ruthless force against its own people.

When Syria’s neighbors and peers ejected it from the 22-member league in November 2011, months after its Arab Spring uprising began, the move was seen as a key condemnation of a government that had bombed, gassed and tortured protesters and others in a conflict that metastasized into a long civil war.

Now, the region is normalizing relations, increasingly convinced that Arab countries are gaining little from isolating Syria, as the United States has urged them to. Refusing to deal with Syria means ignoring the reality that its government has all but won the war, proponents of engagement argue.

That leaves Syria poised for a triumphant return this month in Saudi Arabia at the Arab League’s next summit — perhaps represented by President Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian leader accused of committing war crimes against his own people over the past decade. Syria’s rehabilitation could unlock billions of dollars in reconstruction projects and other investments for its tottering economy, further propping up Mr. al-Assad

The circumstances that led to Syria’s suspension have not changed; if anything, the bloodshed has only grown during the civil war that has consumed the country for the past 12 years, leaving Mr. al-Assad in power at home but a pariah nearly everywhere else.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have died since the fighting broke out, and more than 14 million have fled their homes for other parts of Syria, neighboring countries or beyond, according to United Nations estimates.

“Today, Arab states have put their own cynical realpolitik and diplomatic agendas above basic humanity,” said Laila Kiki, the executive director of the Syria Campaign, a nonprofit organization that supports Syrian civil society groups.

“By choosing to restore the Syrian regime’s membership of the Arab League, member states have cruelly betrayed tens of thousands of victims of the regime’s war crimes and granted Assad a green light to continue committing horrific crimes with impunity.”

A photograph released by the Iranian presidential office showing Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, center right, and Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, center left, this month in Damascus, Syria.

Credit.../EPA, via Shutterstock

Revulsion at Mr. al-Assad’s actions, along with pressure from the United States, had left most of Syria’s Arab neighbors reluctant to engage with the government over the past decade. A few had openly supported the opposition fighting to topple Mr. al-Assad, and some remain loath to embrace him.

But the regional calculus has shifted. With the Syrian government in Damascus having retaken most of the country from opposition forces, it has been obvious for years that Mr. al-Assad is here to stay.

Deadly Quake in Turkey and Syria

A 7.8-magnitude earthquake on Feb. 6, with its epicenter in Gaziantep, Turkey, has become one of the deadliest natural disasters of the century.Families of the Missing: In the aftermath of the tragedy, with many victims still unaccounted for, the Turkish authorities turned to fingerprints, DNA tests and photographs to link unidentified bodies with their next of kin.

In Antakya: About 3,100 buildings collapsed in the city, killing more than 20,000 people. The damage is so profound that 80 percent of the structures still standing may need to be demolished.

Builders Under Scrutiny: The deadly quake has raised painful questions over who is to blame for shoddy construction and whether better building standards could have saved lives.

Needless Deaths: Middle-class landowners in Turkey got wealthy off a construction system rife with patronage. Our investigation reveals just how fatally shaky that system was.

Neighboring countries including Lebanon and Jordan have been eager to work with Syria on sending refugees who fled there back home, while others hope to cooperate on efforts to stop the trade of Captagon, an illegal, addictive drug that the Syrian government has produced and sold as sanctions have bitten and its economy has cratered.

The leading Middle Eastern power brokers, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, were also looking for a new approach to dealing with Iran, which wields deep influence in Syria after sending fighters and other aid to help Mr. al-Assad cling to power. Deciding that regional isolation had only driven Syria into the arms of Iran, the Gulf monarchies now hope to peel Mr. al-Assad away from Tehran by engaging with him.

An early sign of where things were heading came when the Emirates normalized relations with Damascus in 2018. But the slow-burn movement to restore diplomatic and economic relations with Mr. al-Assad gathered momentum in recent months, after a major earthquake in February killed more than 8,000 people in northern Syria, opening the door for Arab countries to reach out.

Syrians in Atarib protesting a lack of international aid in February, after the earthquake.

Credit...Emily Garthwaite for The New York Times

Soon, planeloads of aid from Syria’s Arab brethren were landing in quake-affected areas, and Egypt dispatched its foreign minister to meet with Mr. al-Assad in Damascus. By mid-April, Tunisia had re-established diplomatic relations with Syria and Saudi Arabia had welcomed Syria’s foreign minister to Jeddah to discuss restoring ties.

After years of deep freeze, the Saudi-Syrian relationship has moved quickly in recent months as Saudi Arabia, wielding its regional clout, pushed other Arab countries toward normalization, as well. It appeared to be the main player fast-tracking Syria’s rehabilitation ahead of the Arab League summit in Jeddah on May 19, though Oman and the U.A.E. had been advocating the same for years, diplomats said.

The Arab rush to welcome Damascus back into the fold happened despite public objections from the United States, which imposed strong sanctions on Syria after its civil war began and has shown no inclination to lift them, still hoping to isolate Syria over its government’s brutality. But American efforts at easing Mr. al-Assad out and replacing him with an inclusive, democratic government have gone nowhere, leaving American officials on the sidelines.

On Twitter on Friday, two days before the Arab League meeting, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken reiterated that the United States continued to oppose normalization with Syria. A peaceful political transition that would eventually replace Mr. al-Assad through elections was “the only viable solution to ending the conflict,” he said.

Realizing they cannot stop Arab allies from restoring ties, U.S. officials have urged them to try to exact a price from Mr. al-Assad in exchange, whether it is guaranteeing the safe return of Syrian refugees, cracking down on the Captagon trade or reducing Iran’s military presence in Syria. The Arab League’s assistant secretary general, Hossam Zaki, said on Sunday that the league had formed a committee to discuss such conditions.

But renewed membership in the group, at least, was a done deal.

A poster of Mr. al-Assad on a destroyed shopping mall in Homs, Syria, in 2014.

Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

“Having Syria out of the league wasn’t useful, either to Syria or to the Arabs,” Bassam Abu Abdallah, a Damascus-based political analyst, said on Sunday, describing the decision as “very positive.”

American efforts to drive Mr. al-Assad from power had failed, he said, adding, “The U.S. political elite should abandon the mentality of regime change.”

Many of the countries in the Arab League have not yet formally re-established diplomatic relations with Syria and could still put further conditions on doing so. They include Egypt, a traditional Arab heavyweight that remains more hesitant about embracing Mr. al-Assad than its Gulf allies.

But readmitting Syria to the Arab League is a powerful statement, setting the stage for individual members to restore ties.

Even if some members were steaming ahead on their own, “normalization isn’t complete until they come to this building,” Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Arab League’s secretary general, said in a recent interview.

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, and Vivian Nereim from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

After Shunning Assad for Years, the Arab World Is Returning Him to the Fold
April 13, 2023

Syria’s Assad Uses Disaster Diplomacy to Inch Back Onto World Stage
Feb. 16, 2023

Vivian Yee is the Cairo bureau chief, covering politics, society and culture in the Middle East and North Africa. She was previously based in Beirut, Lebanon, and in New York, where she wrote about New York City, New York politics and immigration. @VivianHYee

Peanut butter is a liquid – the physics of this and other unexpected fluids

The Conversation
May 5, 2023,

Girl spreads peanut butter on bread (Shutterstock)

Those Transportation Security Administration requirements are drilled into every frequent flyer’s head: You can carry on liquids that are only less than 3.4 ounces (100 milliliters) in volume each.

But when the TSA recently confiscated a jar of Jif under this rule, peanut butter lovers were up in arms. Some skeptics of security may suspect hungry officers just wanted to make their own PB&Js. TSA, however, contends that peanut butter is a liquid – and a full-size jar of Jif is over the 3.4-ounce limit.

Just like Americans’ favorite legume-based sandwich ingredient, the story – and the outrage it inspired – began to spread. However, I’m a mechanical engineer who studies fluid flows, and the TSA action made sense to me. By the scientific definition, peanut butter is indeed a liquid.
First consider fluids

To define a liquid, we must first define a fluid. Any material that flows continuously when a shearing force is applied is a fluid. Think of a shearing force as a cutting action through a substance that causes it to flow continuously. For example, moving your arm causes the surrounding air to change shape – or deform, to use the physics term – and flow out of the way. The same thing happens to water when your arm takes a swim stroke.

There are many kinds of fluids. Some act very predictably and move smoothly, as air or water do. These are called Newtonian fluids, named after Sir Isaac Newton. Scientifically, a Newtonian fluid is one in which the shear force varies in direct proportion with the stress it puts on the material, known as the shearing strain. For a Newtonian fluid, the resistance to fluid flow – that is, its viscosity – is constant at a given temperature.



Shearing forces push a material in opposite directions, producing shearing strain. Designing Buildings

Other types of fluids do not move quite as smoothly and easily. For some, like peanut butter, a minimum shearing or cutting force may be needed to get it flowing, and it may vary nonlinearly with shearing strain. Imagine you’re stirring a jar of peanut butter. If you stir really fast, with more shearing force, the PB gets runnier, while if you stir slowly the PB remains stiff. These types of fluids are called non-Newtonian fluids. Peanut butter may stick more than flow – maybe you could consider this movement more chunky-style.

Peanut butter is actually a great example of a non-Newtonian fluid because it doesn’t flow as easily as air or water but will flow if sufficient force is applied, such as when a knife spreads it on bread. How easily it flows will also depend on temperature – you may have experienced peanut butter drips after slathering it on warm toast.

Strange fluids are all around us

Our everyday lives – but not our airplane carry-ons – are filled with substances that are unexpected fluids. In general, if it can flow, it’s a fluid. And it will eventually take the shape of its container.

Some surprising fluids are peanut butter’s kitchen neighbors, like whipped cream, mayonnaise and cookie batter. You’ll find others in the bathroom, like toothpaste. The natural world is home to other strange fluids, like lava, mudslides, avalanches and quicksand.

Gravel can be considered fluidlike. The individual particles are solids, but a collection of gravel particles can be poured and fill a container – its what’s called a granular fluid, because it has fluidlike properties. The same can be said for cereal poured out of a box or sugar into a bowl.


The body of a fully relaxed squirrel counts as a fluid, flowing to fill its container. 

Ted Heindel, CC BY-ND

Traffic floes on a busy highway, and people flow out of a crowded sporting venue.

You could even consider a cat lying in the sun to be a fluid when it has flattened out and fills its containerlike skin. Sleepy, relaxed dogs, squirrels and even zonked-out babies can meet the definition of a fluid.

Liquids are one type of fluid

Now, you might be objecting: But, the TSA didn’t call peanut butter a fluid, they said it’s a liquid!

Fluids are divided into two general categories: gases and liquids. Both gases and liquids can be deformed and poured into containers and will take the shape of their container. But gases can be compressed, while liquids cannot, at least not easily.

Peanut butter can be poured into its container and then it deforms, or takes the shape of that container. And every 5-year-old knows that peanut butter does not compress. When they squish their PB&J or peanut butter crackers together, the peanut butter does not smoosh into a smaller volume. No – it squirts out the sides and onto their hands.

So, the verdict on peanut butter: delicious liquid.

If you plan to make a PB&J sandwich midflight, count on bringing less than 3.4 ounces of liquid peanut butter. And the same goes for its liquid cousin, jelly.

Ted Heindel, University Professor, Bergles Professor of Thermal Science, and Director of the Center for Multiphase Flow Research and Education, Iowa State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Migrating birds set to risk their lives flying over Chicago, most dangerous city for migratory birds in North America

2023/05/06

Annette Prince holds a dead indigo bunting along Wacker Drive on May 11, 2022, in Chicago. - Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune/TNS

CHICAGO — Migratory bird movement is in full swing, and experts are urging Chicagoans to turn off their lights at night to help protect the birds over the next few days from fatal window collisions.

Thousands of birds carpeted the sky last night, according to Annette Prince, director and president of Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, a nonprofit dedicated to the respite and protection of migratory birds through daily rescue efforts, when on Thursday Chicago experienced a drastic shift in wind patterns moving up from the south, prompting waves of birds to pass through downtown looking for green space to settle.

Chicago is located on the Mississippi flyway, and birds pass through the city on their journey north toward Canada in search of a good place to nest and breed for the summer.

On her way to work this morning, Prince found a little bird in the street, stunned.

“He couldn’t even move, he just sat there blinking and hurt,” she said. “It would have been just a matter of seconds before a car came and ran him over.”

Birds fly at night to protect themselves from predators. They navigate using the moon and stars, but artificial light from city buildings can skew their flight and make them crash into glass.

This morning, the CBCM hotline was swamped with calls from people around the city. Prince said after a night like Thursday, it’s not uncommon for people to look out onto rooftops from their downtown offices and find them littered with dead and dying birds.

During key migration months — spring and fall — CBCM leads volunteer groups ranging between eight and 20 people to walk around skyscrapers and scoop up fallen flyers. They take the injured ones to the Willowbrook Wildlife Center in Glen Ellyn for rehabilitation and care, and take thousands of dead birds each year to the Field Museum, where they are added to the collection for documentation and research.

Using weather surveillance radar techniques, real-time bird migration numbers can be found online at BirdCast. Researchers from the Field Museum are now also going out across Illinois to conduct a spring species count from the ground.

CBCM volunteer groups collect up to 7,000 birds each year, about a quarter of which are injured, said Prince.

“And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. That’s just what we’ve found, and what people report to us,” she said.

A study published in June found that bird collision mortality could be reduced by about 60% if artificial light was cut in half. This would have global implications, as birds are a critical part of controlling insects, distributing seeds, and pollinating plants.

“These birds are doing a really hazardous thing, and we make it even more hazardous by putting buildings along the lakefront,” said John Bates, curator of the division of birds at the Field Museum.

Chicago has been ranked as the most dangerous city for migratory birds in North America by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

In July 2021, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the Bird Safe Buildings Act, requiring bird-safety building features to be implemented in construction and renovation of state-owned buildings in Illinois.

But Prince said she has heard bird strikes are increasing in the West Loop, as skyscrapers, stores and restaurants bring more glass to downtown Chicago. Thrushes, orioles, woodpeckers, yellow-bellied sapsuckers and herons are among the species of birds she and her volunteers pick up on any given morning.

“The glass confuses them — because it’s clear and they think they can fly into it, or they think it’s a tree and it’s really the reflection of a tree,” said Prince.

Prince said sometimes she finds birds that weigh as little as two pennies. They’re spectacular, she said. Bright orange, yellow and red.

Research shows giraffes can use statistical reasoning. They’re the first animal with a relatively small brain known to do this

The Conversation
May 5, 2023

Giraffe (Shutterstock)

Humans make decisions using statistical information every day. Imagine you’re selecting a packet of jellybeans. If you prefer red jellybeans, you will probably try to find a packet that shows the most red (and less of the dreaded black ones) through the small window.

Since you can’t see all the jellybeans at once, you’re using statistical reasoning to make an informed decision. Even infants have this capability.

And as it turns out, humans aren’t alone in using statistical inferences to make decisions. Great apes, long-tailed macaques and keas have all been shown to use the relative frequencies of items to predict sampling events.

Now a new study has added giraffes to this list. The research, published today in Scientific Reports, shows giraffes can use statistical inferences to increase their likelihood of receiving carrot slices rather than zucchini – much like a human picking jellybeans.

The researchers worked with four giraffes – Nakuru (M), Njano (M), Nuru (F) and Yalinga (F) – living at the Zoo of Barcelona.

 Alvaro L. Caicoya, CC BY-NC

Brain size and statistical skills

Until now, primates and birds were the only animals to show evidence of statistical reasoning. Both are considered to have large brains relative to body size, which is often linked with higher intelligence.

Researchers at the University of Barcelona, University of Leipzig, and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology wanted to test whether an animal with a small brain relative to its body size could perform statistical reasoning.

Giraffes were an ideal choice. They have already demonstrated an ability to perform quantity discrimination (being able to tell a larger amount of items from a smaller amount), and their social systems and dietary breadth have been linked with the emergence of complex cognition.

How does a giraffe demonstrate statistical reasoning?

As it turns out, giraffes love carrots but have only a lukewarm appreciation for zucchinis, making these foods ideal to use in a statistical reasoning task.

Working with four giraffes, the researchers placed different proportions of carrot and zucchini slices into transparent containers to test if the giraffes could predict a higher likelihood of receiving a carrot in three tests of different treat quantities.


Each test consisted of 20 trials in which a researcher selected a piece of food from each container without showing the giraffe. The giraffe then touched the hand it wanted to eat from, using only the information it had from the containers.

The giraffes were reliably able to select the correct container in the trials of the first test, wherein the correct choice had both a higher quantity of carrots and lower quantity of zucchini slices.


In the second test, the quantity of carrots was the same in both containers, but the correct choice had fewer zucchini slices. Again, the giraffes were able to select correctly.

In the third test, the quantity of zucchini slices remained the same, but the correct container had a larger quantity of carrots. Yet again the giraffes chose correctly.


Each test of the experiment used different stimuli. Left to right: test 1, test 2 and test 3. Alvaro L. Caicoya et al/Scientific Reports

The combined results informed the researchers whether giraffes were using relative frequencies (statistical reasoning) or simply comparing absolute quantities of their preferred or non-preferred food.

Since the giraffes succeeded in all three tests, the researchers concluded they had used statistical inferences. If the giraffes had only been looking at the absolute quantities of the carrots, they would have succeeded in the first and second tests only, and failed the third.

Do you need a large brain for statistical reasoning?

Evidence of statistical reasoning in giraffes suggests relatively large brains are not required to evolve complex statistical skills – at least in vertebrates (animals with backbones). Furthermore, the authors propose the ability to make statistical inferences may actually be widespread in the animal kingdom.

The question now is: how many other animals with small brains relative to their body size could also succeed in this task?

Scarlett Howard, Lecturer, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Gordon Lightfoot’s Death Is a Loss That Feels Personal

Lightfoot’s music created the soundtrack for the daily life of many Canadian families.

By Shawna Richer
May 6, 2023

NEW YORK TIMES

Canada Letter

When I was growing up, Gordon Lightfoot songs played on the living room stereo, on the radio in the kitchen and in the family car and on my dad’s guitar so continuously that it felt like the Canadian singer-songwriter, who died in a Toronto hospital on Monday at 84, lived with us.

[Read: Gordon Lightfoot, Hitmaking Singer-Songwriter, Is Dead at 84]

Nature and wilderness were central themes of Gordon Lightfoot’s music.

Credit...Reuters

I talked this week with my mom and dad, who are 82, about the musician who made the soundtrack to our lives. My father recalled the first time they saw Lightfoot, who had been making a name for himself in 1965 on the folk music scene in Toronto. He is near certain it was in a union hall in nearby Hamilton, a few years before I was born. Lightfoot was a part of my family before I was.

In the early days his 1966 debut record — “Lightfoot!” — lived on the turntable of our mahogany console stereo that took up nearly as much space as the couch, but was the far more essential piece of furniture.

As his popularity grew through the 1960s and ’70s, Lightfoot was prolific, releasing an album each year, and they stacked up at our place, leaning against the stereo and within easy reach. All the covers featured Lightfoot, sensitive and brooding. His good looks of the 1970s were lost on younger me. But Lightfoot was the one artist that my parents could always agree on playing any time at any volume. Saturday nights. Sunday mornings. Home alone. With a house full of company. It was always Lightfoot.

My dad learned to play his whole catalog by ear on an acoustic six-string.

Nature and the wilderness were central themes for Lightfoot, as they were for my mom and dad and for me and my younger brother. His sense of place made me curious about Canada beyond my backyard. His few political songs — particularly “Black Day in July,” about the Detroit race riots of 1967 — sparked a fascination with the United States.

“Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” a panoramic suite that tells the story of Canada’s founding in 1867, was a history class set to music. Lightfoot wrote perfect three-minute ballads and sweeping seven-minute narratives, what the American musician Steve Earle, in the excellent 2019 documentary “If You Could Read My Mind” called “story songs.”

[Read: Gordon Lightfoot’s 10 Essential Songs]

A Gordon Lightfoot album was packed with intrigue: songs about trains, shipwrecks, forests, lakes and rivers, with a throughline of melancholy that was mysterious and irresistible to an introverted kid who spent most of her time reading and writing.

I loved his melodic guitar and supple baritone. But his simple, succinct songs were a master class in narrative storytelling and wordcraft. Lightfoot’s songs, precise and profound, read like poems and unfolded like three-act plays.

[Read: Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ Was an Unlikely Hit]

Gordon Lightfoot’s funeral will take place in his hometown, Orillia, Ontario.

Credit...Cole Burston/Reuters

Everyone rightfully treasures “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” but as a kid I loved “Ballad of Yarmouth Castle,” which told the story of a steamship that caught fire and sank off Nassau, the Bahamas, in 1965. On the 1969 live album “Sunday Concert,” the moody, haunting song captivated and frightened me, and still does.

Plain-spoken imagery mingled with understated emotion, Lightfoot’s introspection fueled my own.

Canada lost something of itself this week. I read the nearly 1,400 comments (at the time of this writing) left by readers on the Times obituary, and related in some way to all of them.

“It is so emotional, so deeply rooted in my young, searching being,” Tim Snapp of Chico, Calif., wrote about Lightfoot’s music.

“For all my life, Gordon Lightfoot’s songs have been a steady anchor for my inner sadnesses,” wrote Rick Vitale, a retired mathematician from Wallingford, Conn. “Thanks, Bro … Hope to see you on the other side.”

My dad is eternally analog, but for Christmas in 2005, I gave him and my mom iPod Minis, loaded with hundreds of their favorite songs and artists, and songs I thought they would like. The lineup on each iPod was quite different, except for Lightfoot’s complete discography, which was on both.

My mom has moved on to streaming and satellite radio. My dad still listens to his old iPod at night when he’s falling asleep. The battery hasn’t held a charge in years. It stays plugged into a wall outlet.

On Tuesday, my dad said he would play some Lightfoot songs that evening on his guitar, a vintage El Degas red sunburst model that he’s strumming these days.

Play one for me, I said.

Lightfoot’s hits — celebrated on playlists published this week — are unspeakably good and timeless, but his deeper cuts are where I go more often. Here are 26 songs that I’ve been appreciating this week.

Canadians greet the coronation with a muted response.

The king’s representative in Canada, where he is head of state, recently appealed to people in the country to “give him a chance.”

King Charles III with Mary Simon, center, Canada’s governor general, and Indigenous leaders during an audience at Buckingham Palace in London on Thursday.

Credit...Pool photo by Gareth Fuller

By Vjosa Isai

NEW YORK TIMES
May 6, 2023

TORONTO — Despite his status as Canada’s head of state, only modest festivities have been planned this weekend for the coronation of King Charles III in the country’s capital, Ottawa, and turnout is predicted to be much lower than is typical for other Canadian public celebrations.

Last May, Charles’s most recent visit to the country drew scant news media attention and crowds by the hundreds rather than thousands.

When he became king upon the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, five months later, his ascension to the throne was greeted with such a shrug in the country that Mary Simon, the king’s representative in Canada, commented on it in a recent interview with the national broadcaster. She also cited public opinion polls in which respondents viewed Charles unfavorably.

“We need to give him a chance to show us that he is a good leader,” said Ms. Simon, Canada’s governor general. This weekend, she is part of a delegation from Canada, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and several Indigenous leaders, attending the coronation ceremony in London.

At a time when some other Commonwealth countries have been considering severing ties, Canada’s relationship to the British crown is the subject of recurring public debates. But that angst has never ripened into rebellion — in part because replacing the monarchy would require a gargantuan effort to amend Canada’s Constitution and, in doing so, raise complicated issues regarding the validity of the crown’s treaties with Indigenous peoples.

Quebec, originally a French-speaking colony that Britain conquered in 1763, has taken some steps to diminish the crown’s presence. In December, the province made it optional for elected officials to swear an oath of allegiance to the king. But Quebec was once also a bastion of loyalism to the monarchy, one with a 200-year history of staunch attachment to the crown, said Damien-Claude Bélanger, a history professor at the University of Ottawa who is writing a book on the subject.

Historically, the province’s upper class rallied around the monarchy as a civic, neutral institution that represented stability, he said.

“We’ve had nothing but monarchical continuity in our political system since the early 17th century,” he said, “and that stability, it means something to some people.”

Vjosa Isai reports for The Times from Toronto. More about Vjosa Isai

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Why the mafia loves Germany

Ben Knight

DW
May 6, 2023

The massive international raids on the Italian 'Ndrangheta organization have again put the spotlight on money laundering in Germany. Has organized crime found a haven in this country?

Coordinated raids against 'Ndrangheta organized crime syndicate across Europe this week attracted international headlines and generated explosive insider stories about the details of the investigation. What the raids didn't do was surprise seasoned mafia investigators.

"It won't change anything about mafia operations in Germany," said Petra Reski, a German journalist based in Italy who has spent years investigating mafia activities. "You can arrest a few people, but it doesn't change the structure."

Some 108 people were arrested in Italy and more than 30 more in Germany, following a more than three-year investigation called Operation Eureka into drug and arms trafficking. The ’Ndrangheta, which has its origins in Italy's southern Calabria region and is one of the richest and most powerful crime groups in Europe, is said to have built up a worldwide money-laundering operation to hide the money.

For Reski, who has written several books about the Italian mafia, this week's arrests brought a certain gratification, as some of those arrested had sued and threatened her over her reporting. In some cases, German courts have forced her to redact some of her books about organized crime activities.

"These are people at the heart of 'Ndrangheta, and I wrote about them in 2008 — I was the first to get sued and lost," she told DW. "For me personally it's gratifying because what I described has led to a result, thanks to the Italians."

Italy, Germany carry out large raids against 'Ndrangheta  01:38

Germany's reputation as safe haven

Although German police cooperated in the investigation, and some arrests were carried out in Germany, these were enforced under an international arrest warrant filed by the Italian authorities, Reski said. "These arrests couldn't have happened at all under German law," she told DW. "In Germany, just belonging to a mafia organization is not prosecutable. You have to be able to prove an actual crime as well."

Germany has long had a reputation as a safe haven for organized crime. This week, some 30 arrest warrants were executed the German states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Bavaria, Saarland and Thuringia.

The east German state of Thuringia became a mafia stronghold following the reunification of Germany in 1991 when the lack of interest from distracted law enforcement meant that the Italian mafia could buy swathes of real estate.

As long ago as 2012, Roberto Scarpinato, chief anti-mafia prosecutor from Palermo, Sicily, told the German federal parliament, the Bundestag, of "incredible flows of money from Italy to Germany," and highlighted loopholes in the anti-money laundering laws.

Money laundering in Germany

But Germany remains a very cash-friendly economy. To this day, unlike in other European Union countries, there is no limit on how much one can pay for a single transaction in cash: In Spain, the cap is €2,500 ($2,750), in Italy €1,000 and in Greece €500.

Current Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning a €10,000 cap in Germany, which would bring the country into line with an EU directive, but legal experts are already worrying about whether it conforms with the German constitution.

As things stand, you can also spend up to €10,000 in cash in Germany on most things without having to identify yourself (though since 2020 you do have to show ID when spending more than €2,000 on precious metals). All this makes it extremely easy for mafia groups to launder money in Germany.

Until April 2023, even real estate could be bought in cash, which could be particularly lucrative in cities like Berlin, where the property market promises astronomical profits.

In Germany, you can spend up to €10,000 in cash without even having to identify yourself

 
No transparency, no enforcement

The fact that organized crime groups have been taking advantage of this through opaque networks of shell companies has been public knowledge since 2016 when the Panama Papers were leaked.

"We can't call this a breakthrough, but maybe it's a partial success against parts of the mafia," said Andreas Frank, who has spent three decades investigating and writing about Germany's money laundering loopholes. "The 'Ndrangheta is something we've been confronted with for a long time."

Frank, whose 2022 book Dreckiges Geld ("Dirty Money") argued that laundered money was undermining democracy in Western Europe, is almost weary of describing what he sees as the lack of political will to tackle it.

"Has anything improved in fighting money laundering? No! Nothing at all," he told DW.
Consequences for the whole of society

Frank, who also testified before the Bundestag committee in 2012 alongside Scarpinato, thinks the damage that organized crime does is constantly underestimated.

"The mafia is highly dangerous, it undermines our economy," he said. "As a legitimate business, it's very hard to compete with mafia-led businesses. And the 'Ndrangheta is just one of many organizations."

On top of this, like in many other countries around the world, Germany's agencies have resource shortages. The German authority charged with tracking down money launderers, the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), has been accused of being slow in reporting its suspicions to the relevant prosecutors.

In turn, the prosecutors usually operate at state level and often complain that they can't pursue crimes beyond their jurisdiction, which makes coordinating information extremely difficult.

Frank thinks the structural problems come down to a lack of personnel combined with inhibitions on the sharing of data between authorities. "It took years, up to 2021 and 2022, for the FIU to be allowed access to the data it needed," he told DW. "And even today it doesn't have full access."

For journalist Reski, the whole issue boils down to political will: "There is no political will in Germany to fight the mafia, that's the point," she concluded.

"Because German politicians see the mafia's investment as an economic driver. Money comes, and they don't want to know where it comes from."

Edited by: Rina Goldenberg

Myanmar’s Prisoner Release Still Leaves Thousands Detained

Junta’s Gesture No Substitute for Lasting Human Rights Changes

Manny Maung
Myanmar Researcher, Asia Division

Former prisoners get off a bus after their release from Insein Prison in Yangon, Myanmar, May 3, 2023. 

© 2023 AP Photo/Thein Zaw

On Wednesday, Myanmar’s military junta announced it would release 2,153 prisoners. These include some convicted under section 505A of the Penal Code, which the junta has used to suppress peaceful dissent in the country. Families will welcome the releases of their loved ones, but the junta’s oppressive policies and practices remain unchanged.

Section 505A is a sweeping law that makes any criticism of the junta a criminal offense punishable by up to three years in prison. Many political activists arrested since the coup in February 2021 have been convicted by junta courts under section 505A.

The junta stated that the releases were based on “humanitarian grounds” and “for the peace of mind of people” ahead of a Buddhist holiday. It is not clear how many of those released are political prisoners: people arrested for the peaceful exercise of their political rights.

Myanmar traditionally marks Buddhist holidays by granting amnesties to prisoners, but data suggests that political prisoners make up only a small fraction of those released. In November last year, the junta released 402 political prisoners out of more than 5,000 prisoners amnestied, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP). In January, another amnesty released 7,000 prisoners, including 306 political prisoners. In April, just 13 political prisoners were among 3,000 prisoners released.

The junta should immediately be releasing all its political prisoners: 17,000 people who should not have been arrested in the first place. The relatively few released each amnesty really just shows that the junta still does not recognize their detentions are unlawful.

Myanmar’s military juntas have long used amnesties as a tool to gain credibility and deflate international pressure ahead of global events. It is unsurprising that the latest amnesty comes ahead of an important meeting of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

ASEAN foreign ministers should not be fooled when they meet in Indonesia on May 9. They should avoid lending credibility to the military junta and instead press for the release of all political prisoners, an end to abuses against the junta’s critics, and the return of Myanmar to civilian democratic rule.