$6 mn raised to preserve Nina Simone's childhood home

AFP
Tue, May 23, 2023

Nina Simone in concert at l'Olympia in Paris, October 22, 1991

An art auction and New York gala have raised nearly $6 million to preserve and restore the childhood home of soul music legend and civil rights activist Nina Simone, organizers said Tuesday.

The twin events brought in some $5.88 million -- far more than the original $2 million organizers hoped to raise to restore the rural North Carolina abode.

"The new funding will meaningfully advance our project goals to complete the full restoration of the house and landscape," said Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.

"With this investment, we are well on our way to opening the doors to visitors in 2024."

Four US artists -- Julie Mehretu, Ellen Gallagher, Rashid Johnson and Adam Pendleton -- bought the dilapidated rural home in 2017 for $95,000. They've since worked with Leggs' organization, as well as tennis star Venus Williams, to raise money to turn the house into a cultural and historic site.

The online auction, with works donated by British painter Cecily Brown and American artist Sarah Sze, was organized by Pace and Sotheby's.

Among the 11 works for sale, Mehretu's ink-and-acrylic "New Dawn, Sing (for Nina)" fetched $1.6 million.

Simone, whose songs found renewed resonance during the Black Lives Matter protests of recent years, had a complex, often difficult relationship with the United States, where she was born in 1933, during the era of racial segregation.

Born Eunice Waymon, she spent the first years of her life in the three-room house in Tryon, in the rural southeastern state of North Carolina, with her parents and siblings, and began playing the piano at age three.

But her dream of becoming a classical concert performer was shattered when she was rejected by Philadelphia's prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, an ordeal she attributed to racism.

In the 1960s, Simone was active in the civil rights movement, including through rousing speeches and song.

Her "Mississippi Goddam," was a response to a 1963 fire in an Alabama church started by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, she performed "Why? (The king of love is dead)."

Simone eventually left the United States and lived her last years in the south of France, where she died in 2003.

arb/cha/nro/ec

 

 

Nina Simone & Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation of Eunice Waymon (Full Album) | Amerigo Gazaway

Soul Mates Records

 Dec 3, 2018

With his latest Soul Mates Project, Amerigo Gazaway imagines a studio session between The High Priestess of Soul, Nina Simone, and living legend, Lauryn Hill. Continuing the “collaborations that never were” theme of his previous releases, the producer seamlessly connects the dots between Hip-Hop and the genre’s predecessor, Soul.

Back in 2016, I had the pleasure of discussing my conceptual collaboration projects via a roundtable discussion at MoPOP’s annual POP Conference in Seattle. During our discussion, a fellow panelist, writer and professor, Zandria Robinson, posed an interesting question: “where’s your project celebrating women artists?”

Two years later and I’m excited to finally share the answer with my new Nina Simone + Lauryn Hill mixtape, “The Miseducation of Eunice Waymon”. Given the project was, in part, inspired by Zandria’s question, she got the first listen and has written a few words on the album below. -AG

“Soul Mates’ “collaborations that never were” enters new territory with a now familiar deft and verve, this time highlighting intergenerational conjurings between two black women cultural workers from the civil rights and hip-hop generations. With Nina Simone and Lauryn Hill seated together at the table, collaboration transforms into vivid conversation, call and response, and a call to action--private, personal, and public--across space, time, and realm.

With "The Miseducation of Eunice Waymon", Amerigo Gazaway renders listeners children in the backseat of a shiny black Chevy, transfixed by the mysteries of grown women’s conversations. We ride along and listen quietly as Hill drives down South to retrieve Simone from North Carolina and the two travel back north together, to New Jersey and then to New York, and onward to woman-ish soul eternity.

Gazaway does a different kind of labor in this mashup, creating a private, interior space for these women to speak the truths of their lives, both to themselves and to each other. As they come to know each other across the project’s apt sample and song combinations and interview snippets, Simone’s piano accompanies and buoys Lauryn and Lauryn sings back Nina’s words and sounds a resonant understanding with her acoustic guitar. They become gold- and white-framed mirrors, dancing to breakbeats around each other’s personal and political struggles and triumphs with all the freedom being seen, being recognized, brings.

In this curated interior space, audiences are compelled, at last, to listen to all of what and who these women were and are and to really hear those truths: to listen and learn about care, alienation, desperation, motherhood, women’s work; about the unending strivings for interpersonal peace and understanding; and about the necessity for liberation.”  - Zandria Robinson

Watch the teaser video here:   

 • Video  

Stream/download the full album here: https://bit.ly/3MLSOnv

Tracklist:

01. Feeling Good 

02. Ready Or Not feat. The Fugees 

03. Doo Wop (That Thing) 

04. To Zion feat. Carlos Santana 

05. Fu-Gee-La feat. The Fugees 

06. The Sweetest Thing feat. John Forté 

07. Take It Easy 

08. Peace Of Mind 

09. Lost Ones 

10. Killing Me Softly 

11. If I Ruled The World feat. Nas 

12. How Many Mic feat. The Fugees

13. So High feat. John Legend 

14. Care For What 

15. Angel Of The Morning 

16. The Miseducation of Eunice Waymon 

17. Fu-Gee-La (Refugee Camp Remix) [Bonus Track]

Produced by Amerigo Gazaway 

Executive Producer: Rickey Mindlin

Soul Mates 2018

DIY Acapellas by The Goodwill Projects:

http://www.thegoodwillprojects.com

http://amerigomusic.com

http://soulmatesproject.com

World 'failing' to protect civilians in combat zones, UN chief says

AFP
Tue, May 23, 2023

Russian ambassador Vasily Nebenzya sits next to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at a Security Council meeting on May 23, 2023

The world is failing to protect civilians as the number of people caught up in conflicts and their humanitarian aftershocks skyrocketed last year, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday.

In 2022, the United Nations tallied a 53 percent increase in civilian deaths compared to the year prior, with nearly 17,000 civilian deaths recorded across 12 conflicts.

Citing civilian deaths in Ukraine and Sudan, schools destroyed in Ethiopia and damage to water infrastructure in Syria, Guterres warned the UN Security Council that "the world is failing to live up to its commitments to protect civilians; commitments enshrined in international humanitarian law."

Guterres, sitting next to Russian ambassador Vasily Nebenzya, said UN research into the treatment of civilians of war zones showed 94 percent of victims of "explosive weapons" in populated areas were civilians last year, while more than 117 million people faced acute hunger primarily because of war and insecurity.

In Ukraine alone, which has been battling Russia's invasion for over year, the UN recorded nearly 8,000 civilian deaths and over 12,500 injuries, though it added that the actual figures are likely higher.

Worldwide, the number of refugees forced from their homes "due to conflict, violence, human rights violations and persecution" has reached 100 million, the UN chief added.

Also speaking in front of the Security Council on Tuesday was Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who told members that "as we meet, countless civilians in conflicts around the world are experiencing a living hell."

"Any minute, the next missile can obliterate their home, their school, their clinic and everyone in it," she said. "Any week, they might run out of food or medicine."

Alain Berset, president of Switzerland -- which took up the rotating presidency of the council in May -- said that all parties to a conflict must abide by international humanitarian law.

"Conflicts are the main drivers of hunger," he said. "More and more people are facing acute food insecurity," with most concentrated in conflict zones like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and the Sahel, "or in other contexts where violence is endemic, such as Haiti."

French ambassador to the UN Nicolas de Riviere singled out alleged rights violations committed by Russia in Ukraine and by the Russian mercenary Wagner group in the Central African Republic and Mali.

The rise in civilians killed in armed conflicts last year is "very troubling," he added.

"Civilians have suffered the deadly effects of armed conflict for too long," Guterres said. "It is time we live up to our promise to protect them."

nr/led/nro/md

International Booker prize announces first ever Bulgarian winner


Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter, translated by Angela Rodel, portrays a ‘clinic for the past’ and was praised as a ‘great novel about Europe’

Sarah Shaffi

Tue 23 May 2023 

Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter, translated by Angela Rodel, has become the first book written in Bulgarian to win the International Booker prize.

Chair of judges Leïla Slimani described Time Shelter as “a brilliant novel full of irony and melancholy”, and added: “It is a very profound work that deals with a contemporary question and also a philosophical question: what happens to us when our memories disappear?”

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel

The £50,000 prize, which is split equally between the author and translator, is awarded annually for a novel or short story collection in any language that has been translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland.

Time Shelter is Gospodinov’s fourth book to be translated into English. It concerns the opening of a “clinic for the past” that offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, with everything from furniture, cigarettes and drinks from the era, to newspapers that cover each day of the decade. As word spreads, healthy people begin to seek refuge in the clinic to escape the horrors of modern life.

Slimani said the novel “questions the way in which our memory is the cement of our identity and our intimate narrative.

“But it is also a great novel about Europe, a continent in need of a future, where the past is reinvented and nostalgia is a poison,” she continued. “It offers us a perspective on the destiny of countries like Bulgaria, which have found themselves at the heart of the ideological conflict between the west and the communist world.”skip past newsletter promotion

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov review – the dangers of dwelling in the past
Read more

Slimani was joined on the judging panel by Uilleam Blacker, one of Britain’s leading literary translators from Ukrainian, Booker-shortlisted novelist Tan Twan Eng, New Yorker staff writer Parul Sehgal and Frederick Studemann, literary editor of the Financial Times.

Gospodinov is a Bulgarian poet, writer and playwright. When published in Bulgaria, Time Shelter topped the book charts, and won the Strega European prize. Rodel is a musician and literary translator who lives and works in Bulgaria.

Patrick McGuinness in his Guardian review called Gospodinov “a writer of great warmth as well as skill” and said Rodel’s translation was done with “skill and delicacy”.


The 2023 International Booker prize shortlist – review

Time Shelter’s win marks the second year in a row that the award has gone to a book in a language never previously honoured by the prize. Last year’s winner, Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated by Daisy Rockwell, was the first novel translated from Hindi to win.

Fiammetta Rocco, administrator of the International Booker, said “although fiction in translation published in Britain has always been a slightly specialised way of looking at literature, I don’t think that’s the case any more. There is an extraordinary evolution going on. We’re seeing it in the range of independent publishers, the presentation of books in languages we’ve never seen before.”

Gospodinov and Rodel were announced as winners at an event at London’s Sky Garden on Tuesday evening. The pair were up against a shortlist that included Eva Baltasar’s Boulder, translated by Julia Sanches from Catalan, The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé, translated from French by her husband Richard Philcox, Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim, Standing Heavy by GauZ’, translated from French by Frank Wynne and Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel, translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey.

RAPIST PRIESTS, CELIBACY COVER UP

Bolivia seeks files on pedophile priests from Pope

AFP
Tue, May 23, 2023

Most of the alleged abuses were committed at the Juan XXIII boarding school for poor, rural children in Cochabamba in the center of the country

Bolivia's president has asked Pope Francis for files on sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests in the South American country following revelations of alleged large-scale exploitation of children.

Investigations are under way after confessions were found in the diary of a deceased Spanish Jesuit priest, Alfonso Pedrajas, that he had abused possibly dozens of minors in Bolivia, where he arrived in 1971.

The revelations, published by the El Pais newspaper in Spain last month, have resulted in prosecutors opening at least eight cases against priests including Pedrajas and three others from Spain: Luis Maria Roma, Alejandro Mestre and Antonio Gausset.

All four are deceased, but there are other accused still alive.

President Luis Arce, in a letter sent to the Pope on Monday, appealed for "access to all the files and information concerning these allegations and acts of sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests and members of the religious order on Bolivian territory."

The letter was made available to journalists by the president's office.

Bolivia has been shocked by revelations that have emerged since a family member of Pedrajas, who died of cancer in Bolivia in 2009 at the age of 66, gave the priest's diary to El Pais.

In the journal, which he kept on a laptop, Pedrajas wrote he had done "harm to many people... too many," with the number 85 and a question mark. He wrote that senior clergy had known about his crimes and kept quiet.

Pedrajas had worked as a teacher in various parts of Bolivia. Most of the alleged abuses were committed at the Juan XXIII boarding school for poor, rural children in Cochabamba in the center of the country.

- 'Cover-up' -

Hilarion Baldivieso, head of an association of former pupils of Juan XXIII, at a press conference denounced "the cover-up" of Pedrajas' crimes by the Church.

Attorney General Juan Lanchipa said that since the media revelations, alleged victims have come forward in the capital La Paz, in Cochabamba, Tarija in the south and Santa Cruz in the east.

Some of the complaints were filed by the Jesuit order itself, but Lanchipa expressed concern at "the apathy this Catholic organization has shown in not denouncing these events" earlier but rather "providing cover and protection for these aberrant events."

More cases could follow, with a recent investigation by Bolivian newspaper Pagina Siete finding at least 170 alleged victims.

Former Jesuit priest Pedro Lima told AFP last week that not only minors but also trainee clergy were subjected to sexual abuse in Bolivia. Lima claimed he was expelled from the Jesuit order in 2001 for reporting abuses.

Days after the exposure of Pedrajas' diary, the Bolivian Episcopal Conference -- an assembly of bishops -- asked for victims' forgiveness.

"We stand in solidarity with victims who have suffered acts of sexual abuse," it said in a statement.

The Jesuit order, for its part, said it would assist in the investigation.

Spanish priest Jordi Bertomeu, a top sex crimes investigator for the pope, has been dispatched to Bolivia.

Thousands of reports of pedophilia within the Catholic Church have surfaced around the world in recent years.

Pope Francis has pledged an "all-out battle" against clerical abuse, holding an unprecedented summit on the issue in 2019 and enacting reforms that include new obligations to report clerical child abuse and cover-ups.

jac/ll/mlr/t

London show explores sari's 21st century reinvention

Helen ROWE
Wed, May 17, 2023 

Over the past decade, according to curator Priya Khanchandani, the sari has seen the most rapid invention in its 5,000 year history

The sari is being reinvented for the modern age in an Indian "fashion revolution," with around 60 trailblazing examples due to go on display at a new exhibition in London.

Over the past decade, according to curator Priya Khanchandani, the sari has seen the most rapid transformation in its 5,000-year history.

From sari styles worn by young women on their way to work in Delhi and Mumbai to the spectacular creation that was the first sari to grace New York's famous Met Gala, the London showcase spotlights the garment's 21st century revival.

Khanchandani says she first became aware of a renaissance in 2015 when she met some of the designers in Delhi who were transforming the sari, traditionally a single long piece of unstitched fabric draped over the body.

"I saw the sari being revived as an everyday garment in a way that was very fashionable. They were being worn by younger women than I knew before," she told AFP ahead of the show, The Offbeat Sari, which opens at the Design Museum on Friday.

"They were often quite intellectual women, writers and artists... wearing them in ways that I didn't expect," she said.

Having previously viewed saris as a garment to be worn for special events or weddings, she suddenly noticed them being reinvented as everyday clothing, even teamed with T-shirts and sneakers.

The birth of mass consumerism and social media in India combined with the growth of the country's urban middle class has accelerated the sari's revamp, Khanchandani said.

"The influence of digital media which has a really significant reach in India, particularly among young people, allowed trends to spread and I think allowed the way that saris were being worn to become a grassroots movement," she added.

- Pushing boundaries -

Popular hashtags that have seen a vast array of images shared online include #sarilove, #sarifashion, #designsarees and #sareeindia.

Despite the sari's long history, it was not until last year that a sari was seen at the celebrated annual Met Gala event in New York.

Worn by Indian businesswoman and socialite Natasha Poonawalla, the showstopping ensemble featured a flowing gold sari by Sabyasachi with a gold Schiaparelli bustier.

In addition to extravagant couture saris, designers in India have also pushed boundaries by experimenting in a range of ways.



The Raj Kilt, by the Little Shilpa brand, is described as "half kilt, half sari" and reflects the cross-cultural experiences of Indian designer Shilpa Chavan who studied in Britain.

Some of the most eye-catching and innovative exhibits include a sari adorned with sequins cut from old X-ray images from hospital waste and another in distressed denim.

But while the sari's potential for extravagance and creativity is on full display in the exhibition's selections, there are also examples of how it is being pressed into use to express ideas of identity and resistance.

Hundreds of thousands of members of the so-called Gulabi Gang, a group set up to fight domestic violence, including sexual abuse and child marriage in rural India, have adopted bright pink saris along with bamboo sticks as the symbol of their movement.

Also included in the show is a purple silk sari embroidered with sequins and crystals by the brand Papa Don't Preach.

After the label posted a photograph of the sari being worn by the author and comedian ALOK, who founded the #DeGenderFashion movement, it decided to remove the "womenswear" wording from their messaging.

har/jj/pvh

Before and after images show how Russia's invasion has shattered the city of Bakhmut

Grace Eliza Goodwin,Ryan Pickrell,Charles R. Davis
Mon, May 22, 2023 

Destroyed buildings in the city of Bakhmut on February 27, 2023.

AFPTV/AFP via Getty Images

Before and after images show the devastation in Ukraine's city of Bakhmut.


The 10-month battle for the eastern city has been the longest and deadliest in the war in Ukraine.


Bakhmut was once flush with greenery. Now it's a gray city littered with skeletal buildings and brown earth.

The Ukrainian city of Bakhmut has been all but completely destroyed. Homes, schools, and businesses have been blown out by months of ceaseless combat and reduced to rubble, and most of the city's people are long gone. What remains is a scarred landscape where thousands of lives have ended.

Satellite images from Maxar, released May 17, highlight the scale of the destruction caused by the battle for Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region.

The horrific fight that began last summer is the longest and bloodiest battle in the war in Ukraine. The battle has seen some of the hardest and most intense fighting and tremendous losses, and it's not over. Neither side is backing away.

The Russian military and Wagner mercenaries began their siege of the city last August — though it faced regular shelling before that — and have been fighting to take control of the city for ten months. The Ukrainian army put up a fierce resistance, but it's unclear if they can hold out against the Russian assault.

On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised Wagner for its fighting in Bakhmut, crediting them with the "liberation" of the ruined city. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy disputed that, with independent observers saying that the fight for control continues, though he conceded that the city exists now "only in our hearts."

While the city's ultimate fate remains uncertain, the following images capture how a thriving town of roughly 73,000 people became a war-torn, bloodstained battlefield.

Bakhmut was once a beautiful city full of leafy green trees until it became the target of Russia's ambitions and a symbol of Ukraine's resistance.

Bakhmut in May 2022 before the battle for the city began.Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies

Nearly all the trees and greenery have been wiped out. Bombs, artillery, and incendiary weapons, among other things, have laid waste to the city.

The same section of the city as seen in May 2023 satellite images.Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

A school and apartment buildings in Bakhmut, now the site of brutal urban combat, were surrounded by grassy lawns and trees.

This section of the city was also lush and green.Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies

The same section of the city now looks like a brown and battered wasteland.

A section of the city as it looks now.Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

Bakhmut's university buildings and radio tower were surrounded by homes before the war.

A section of Bakhmut seen from an aerial view in May 2022, before the battle for the city began.Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies

The university and surrounding buildings are now nearly unrecognizable. The buildings, now skeletal, have been devastated in the war. The radio tower now lays on its side.

Those same buildings as they look in May 2023.Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

A theatre and surrounding stores in Bakhmut were bustling with cars before the battle began.

A closer look at a section of the city before the battle.Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies

Some trees remain in the city but most of its buildings have been destroyed as the Ukrainians and Russians trade fire daily. As a high-casualty fight, the battle has been described as a "meat grinder" by Ukrainian and Russian troops and "slaughter-fest" by outside military observers.

Roofs have been blasted away and reveal the guts of the theatre and stores.Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

In an aerial view of the entire city from May 2022, Bakhmut had corridors of greenery between buildings.

The entire city as it looked before the battle began.Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies

The city's buildings now appear brown and much of the greenery within city limits is gone. Bakhmut has been a focal point for front-line combat in a war that, in a span of six months between December and May, claimed an estimated 20,000 Russian lives. The Ukrainian defense has also come at a heavy cost.

An aerial view of the entire city as it looks now.Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

'Playing War': Conflict Militarises Ukraine Children

By Joshua Melvin and Elizabeth Striy

May 23, 2023
BARRON'S

AFP is republishing this story which has been selected by the agency's chief editors as one of the best of the week. 

Picture by Sergei Supinsky. 

Video by Elizabeth Striy

The boys wear second-hand helmets and their guns cannot kill, but the war they play at in a verdant Ukraine field is real for them and carries consequences.

Over a year into Russia's invasion, the fighting has seeped into Ukrainian children's games and worldviews, impacting them in ways they will carry forever.

"I really enjoy playing war. I want to grow up to be a real war hero," said 10-year-old Maksym Mudrak, wearing child-size battle fatigues, a beat-up helmet too big for his head and a plastic toy gun.

Maksym's father, who was not in the military, was killed near Kyiv in the war's early days after going out to deliver supplies to volunteers defending against Russia's attack, the family said.

The boy's grandmother said he became steadily more interested in war following the invasion and the loss of his 40-year-old dad Oleksiy Mudrak on March 4, 2022.

"He was very, very affected by his father's death. Maksym constantly thinks about him. He goes to the cemetery and cries," 72-year-old Valentyna Mudrak said.

Maksym sees becoming a soldier as a way to preserve his father's memory and has a clear idea who is responsible for the war that took him.

"I treat Russians like my worst enemies," said Maksym, who lives with his grandmother near Kyiv in Stoyanka.

The war has brought staggering destruction and suffering to Ukrainians, and for children that has meant losing loved ones, being ripped from schools or homes and exposure to horror.

Also, over 500 children have been killed since the invasion, according to UN statistics.



Psychologist Kateryna Goltsberg said children have long played war in conflict situations and it is both a reflection and a means to process their experiences.

And while all Ukrainian children are impacted by the war in some way, it's not clear whether those experiences will result in life-long trauma.

"War changes us. But we have to realise that there is such thing as post-traumatic stress growth, when a person who has survived traumatic events... becomes stronger," she said.

The confrontation on the front line has changed the way children interact on the playground.

Lesya Shevchenko said her eight-year-old daughter Dana used to have just one question for the children she met in public: "What's your name? Let's go play."


But on a family trip to the beach in Bulgaria after the war began, Shevchenko was stunned when she realised her daughter was asking where potential playmates were from.

When children said they were Russian, Dana would turn silently and walk away.

"I just think that I don't want to talk to them, that's all. Probably because I think that all Russians are a certain way, because in my eyes they are evil," Dana said.

Her mother, a 49-year-old dentist, said this was not behaviour she had taught, noting that she has told her children they cannot hate everyone from Russia.

Yet Dana has been left traumatised by the war –- shelling has made her fearful of loud noises and she has been afraid to leave the protection of a bomb shelter.

Dana's mother herself is willing to give the benefit of the doubt to Russians clear about their opposition to Moscow's seizure of Ukrainian land in Crimea and the eastern Donbas region.


"If a person says that 'this is a very controversial topic', then I won't talk to them. There is no grey area there –- only black and white. We were attacked," Shevchenko said.

Other parents see it as their duty to teach their children a view of Russia that leaves no room for doubt.

Iryna Kovalenko has taught her children since the invasion that Russians are collectively responsible for the war and those who are good have to prove it.

Her six-year-old daughter Sofiya summarised by saying: "My mother told me they are launching bombs into Ukraine from Russia."

"Mum also said that (Russian President Vladimir Putin) is very bad. And he beat cats and dogs when he was a child. And then, when he grew up, he turned to people," she added.

Kovalenko, a 33-year-old nurse, views her words to her children as a warning.

"One way or another, they should know who they live next to. Ukraine will always have a border –- Russia will always be our neighbour."

One of the other boys who plays war with Maksym, the child whose father was killed in the war's opening weeks, has taken that message a step further.

"I really want to somehow take revenge for the soldiers who died at the front," said 13-year-old Andriy Shyrokyh, who wore battle fatigues and homemade body armour.

He dreams of becoming a soldier, and says he has absolutely no interest in going to school –- unless it is to learn military tactics.

"I want to do to the Russians the same as they did to us," the boy said.

© Agence France-Presse

8-year-old migrant girl who died in US Border Patrol custody was treated for flu several days before her death, authorities say

By Tina Burnside and Zoe Sottile, CNN
 Mon May 22, 2023

Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez, a citizen of Panama, died Wednesday in a Harlingen, Texas, hospital, just eight days after her family was taken into custody by US Customs and Border Protection in Brownsville, Texas, the agency said in a news release Sunday.Courtesy Alvarez Family
CNN —

An 8-year-old migrant girl who died in the custody of US immigration authorities last week was treated for flu-like symptoms for several days prior to her death at a Texas hospital, according to authorities.

The girl, Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez, a citizen of Panama, died Wednesday in a Harlingen, Texas, hospital, just eight days after her family was taken into custody by US Customs and Border Protection in Brownsville, Texas, the agency said in a news release Sunday. Members of her family, including her parents and two siblings, are all citizens of Honduras, says the news release.

According to CBP records, Reyes was medically assessed on May 10 and did not complain of any illnesses or injuries at the time. However, her family did report a medical history, including chronic conditions of sickle cell anemia and heart disease, according to the news release.


8-year-old who died in US Customs and Border Protection custody identified by the Honduran Foreign Ministry

It was not until four days later, on May 14, that Reyes’ mother took her to a treatment area after the girl complained of abdominal pain, nasal congestion and a cough, the release says. At the time, Reyes tested positive for Influenza A and was given several medications, including Tamiflu and Zofran. CBP says she was also given acetaminophen and ibuprofen. She had a temperature of 101.8 degrees, according to the release.

The girl and her family were then taken to the US Border Patrol Station in Harlingen, per agency protocols, CBP said. The Harlingen station is “designated for cases requiring medical isolation for individuals diagnosed with or closely exposed to communicable diseases,” CBP said in the release.

The girl was again assessed by medical personnel after she and her family arrived in Harlingen on May 14. She was given medication for three days, the agency said.

CBP said medical records show Reyes’ mother brought her to the Harlingen medical unit three times on Wednesday. During the first visit, the girl had complained of vomiting, was given Zofran and instructed to hydrate and return as needed.

During the second visit, Reyes complained of stomach pains, according to the release. CBP medical personnel wrote in their records that she was stable and instructed her mother to follow up if needed, the release said.

Reyes’ mother brought her daughter to the medical unit for the third time around 1:55 p.m. CT, according to the release. She was carrying her daughter, who seemed to be having a seizure and then became unresponsive. Medical personnel gave the girl CPR and called for emergency medical help, CBP said.

Emergency medical personnel took the girl and her mother to the Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen. Reyes was pronounced dead less than an hour later, at 2:50 p.m. CT, the release said.

An autopsy was performed on the girl by the Cameron County Medical Examiner’s office Friday but an exact cause and manner of death is still pending, according to the release.

In a statement released Sunday, CBP acting commissioner Troy Miller said “we are deeply saddened by the tragic death” and announced a series of actions intended to “reinforce existing policies and continue to ensure appropriate care for all medically fragile individuals.”

The agency has reviewed and will continue reviewing cases of “all known medically fragile individuals” in custody and, along with the agency’s medical services contractor, will review services rendered to in-custody individuals, “especially those who are medically at-risk,” Miller says in the statement.

“The Department of Homeland Security’s Chief Medical Officer will immediately initiate a review of medical care practices at CBP facilities and ensure the deployment of additional medical personnel as needed,” says Miller.

He added that CBP would make the results of the investigation public.

The girl’s parents have been released from immigration custody and will be headed to New York to meet up with family, the Honduran Foreign Ministry previously told CNN.

Once in New York, the family plans to attend their immigration court hearings and request asylum, according to the ministry.

The Honduran Foreign Ministry is working to help the Reyes family with the transfer of their daughter’s body to New York, where she will likely be buried, the ministry said.

CNN’s Rosa Flores and Marlon Sorto contributed to this report.

Jailed Kremlin critic Kara-Murza's health failing: wife

Nina LARSON
Wed, May 17, 2023 

The wife of Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza voiced deep concern Wednesday at his failing health behind bars

The wife of Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza voiced deep concern Wednesday at his failing health behind bars, hailing his courage in the face of an act of "cynical vengeance" by Moscow.

"I am obviously concerned," Evgenia Kara-Murza said in an interview with AFP. "His health indeed is failing."

Her husband had serious health issues even before he was detained last year, suffering from a nerve condition called polyneuropathy which she said is due to two poisoning attempts in 2015 and 2017.

During the past year in pre-trial detention his condition has deteriorated significantly, she said, warning that with a harsh sentence now imposed, the situation would certainly worsen.

Kara-Murza, 41, was sentenced last month to 25 years in a high security prison on treason and other charges for criticising Russia's war in Ukraine.

He has appealed against the sentence -- the longest given to a Russian opposition figure in recent years -- but his wife said she "of course" expected it to be rejected.

She pointed out that Russian law barred the incarceration of people suffering from polyneuropathy, which can lead to paralysis, but that the "Russian authorities were not bothered by this".

- Aimed 'to kill' -

Speaking to AFP on the sidelines of the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, Evgenia Kara-Murza voiced anger at her husband's sentence.

"It is pure and cynical vengeance by the Russian government," she said, pointing out that Kara-Murza's judge and the head of the prison where he is detained were subjected to sanctions that he had been pushing the United States and Europe to impose.

He contributed to the adoption of the Magnitsky Act, a US bill intending to punish Russian officials responsible for the death of Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison in 2009.

"The regime clearly sees my husband as its personal enemy," she said.

"Twice in the past... our kids almost lost their father," she added, saying he was poisoned in attempts "to kill, not to threaten".

Despite the dangers, she said her husband had not hesitated to return to Russia and that she supported his decision.

"Of course it makes me scared for his life," she said, her dark eyes filling with tears, pointing out that "Vladimir and I have been carefully building our little world for years: our kids, our family."

"But I know what he's fighting for," she said, adding that "through all of these risks, through all of the attacks", he had remained "true to himself".

"If I accepted him the way he is over 20 years ago, it would be quite hypocritical of me to ask him to change now. That would not be Vladimir.

"The only option for me is to stand by him and fight with him and fight for him."

- 'Cracks' -

She acknowledged the situation was "excruciatingly painful" for the couple's three children, but said Kara-Murza "somehow manages to continue being a good father to them even from behind bars."

"He's teaching them a very valuable lesson: that they should face bullies with courage, that they should never give up without a fight, that they should accept the risks... acknowledge them, and still fight despite those risks."

Asked if she thought others would dare follow his example, she pointed to the "20,000 people arbitrarily detained" since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

That so many people had dared protest at a time when "the regime is using the entire arsenal of Soviet-style repressive techniques against anti-war protesters", she said, meant that "there are probably millions who are against the regime, but are afraid to speak up".

In the Soviet era, "mass protests only became possible when the regime started showing cracks", she pointed out, confident that "it will happen... when Putin's regime begins showing cracks".

As for when that might happen, she suggested a clear Ukrainian victory could, after "over two decades of impunity by Vladimir Putin's regime... finally send a signal to the Kremlin that it will not get away with committing such crimes anymore."

nl/rjm/lcm/mca

Private satellites give boost to public sector in climate fight

by Lucie AUBOURG

ESA's Sentinel-6 satellite, which tracks methane emissions across the globe.

From satellites that can pinpoint the sources of industrial pollution, to others that track hurricane movements by the hour, space has emerged as a key front in the fight against climate change.

New launches are—literally and metaphorically—skyrocketing, and giving rise to increased cooperation between space agencies and private companies.

Among the most fruitful areas of collaboration: tracking greenhouse gas emissions.

The potent planet heating gas methane is regularly measured in the atmosphere by one of the satellites of the European Union Space Programme's Copernicus mission.

The spacecraft scans the entire globe, but its resolution is in the order of several kilometers, making it hard to zero in on the exact source.

That's where private companies can step in.

One of them, the Canadian GHGSat, currently has nine small satellites in orbit, each the size of a microwave. Their mission: to fly over oil and gas sites, looking for methane leaks. By orbiting at a lower altitude, they can take a detailed look at each site.

"Think of it as the wide angle lens camera, versus the telephoto lens camera," Stephane Germain, the company's founder, told AFP. The Copernicus team is in constant touch with GHGSat, telling them where to point their cameras.

Canadian company GHGSat uses a group of small satellites to monitor methane emissions.

GHGSat then sells its information to oil companies, such as Total, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell.

"More and more companies are interested in that because they're realizing they have to better understand their own carbon footprints," said Germain, especially since their customers are insisting on better accounting of emissions' life cycles.

A common source of methane emissions are unlit flares, which are meant to burn off the gas.

GHGSat estimates it has prevented the equivalent of 10 megatons of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere, equivalent to 1.3 million homes' energy use for a year.

Other companies plan to enter the sector, including France's Absolut Sensing. Another company, Kayrros, has no satellites of its own but is analyzing Copernicus data to track down the biggest leaks.

Technological advances

"The big picture shows you that there is a problem. And the small one then focuses in higher resolution and sells information to somebody. So this works very well together," European Space Agency director Josef Aschbacher said of such public-private partnerships to AFP.

NASA recently launched the SWOT mission to survey the Earth's surface water in 

unprecedented detail.

But government agency constellations—comprised of mostly large, very expensive satellites—remain the backbone of the Earth observation system.

Copernicus will soon enter a new era, with new missions such as CO2M measuring the carbon dioxide released specifically by human activities. NASA has about thirty Earth observation missions.

In the last six months alone, the US space agency has launched the SWOT mission to survey the Earth's surface water in unprecedented detail, TEMPO to measure pollutants in the troposphere above North America, and TROPICS, to track tropical weather systems, including hurricanes, hour by hour.

Advances in technology make it possible to measure today what was thought impossible just five or 10 years ago, said Aschbacher.

Better forecasts

In addition to these scientific missions, meteorological satellites, such as those overseen by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), play a vital role.

Their data, collected over decades, have revealed stark shifts to global climate systems: from warming sea and land temperatures to receding Antarctic ice sheets, helping feed the models climate science relies on today.

Hurricane Ian approaching Florida, as seen by a NOAA satellite.

But increasingly, they can also help play a major role in adapting to a heating world. To mitigate the impact of increasingly frequent natural disasters, "you've got to provide better forecasts," NOAA's chief scientist Mitch Goldberg told AFP.

The agency has been increasing its partnerships with the private sector. For example, it has teamed up with the company GeoOptics to collect information on the humidity or the temperature of the atmosphere.

According to a report by Inmarsat and Globant, if current satellite technologies were universally adopted, they could reduce carbon emissions by 5.5 gigatons—quadrupling current reductions of 1.5 gigatons enabled by the sector.

These savings could be achieved by, for example, helping the aviation and maritime sectors decarbonize through voyage optimization, weather routing and air traffic control management.

© 2023 AFP

New Space satellite pinpoints industrial methane emissions