US judge tosses murder conviction of man featured on 'Serial' podcast

Issued on: 19/09/2022 - 

A US judge vacated the conviction of Adnan Syed, who has served over 20 years in prison for his ex-girlfriend's murder -- a case that received worldwide attention thanks to the hit podcast 'Serial' 


Baltimore (AFP) – A US judge on Monday threw out the conviction of a man who has served over 20 years in prison for his ex-girlfriend's murder -- a case that received worldwide attention thanks to the hit podcast "Serial."

Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Melissa Phinn vacated the conviction of Adnan Syed, 42, who has been serving a life sentence since 2000 for the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee.

Phinn ordered Syed, who appeared in court wearing a white shirt and a white skullcap, immediately released on his own recognizance "in the interests of justice and fairness."

Lee's body was found buried in February 1999 in a shallow grave in the woods of Baltimore, Maryland. The 18-year-old had been strangled.

Syed has steadfastly maintained his innocence but his multiple appeals had been denied, including by the US Supreme Court which declined in 2019 to hear his case.

In a surprise move last week, the Baltimore City state's attorney, Marilyn Mosby, announced that she had asked a judge to vacate Syed's conviction while a further investigation is carried out.

Assistant state's attorney Becky Feldman told the judge on Monday that the decision was prompted by the discovery of new information regarding two alternative suspects and the unreliability of cell phone data used to convict Syed.

"The state has lost confidence in the integrity of his conviction," Feldman said. "We need to make sure we hold the correct person accountable.

"We will be continuing our investigation," she said, while promising to "do everything we can to bring justice to the Lee family."

Prosecutors now have 30 days to either bring new charges or dismiss the case.

Syed's case earned worldwide attention when it was taken up by "Serial," a weekly podcast that saw a US journalist revisit his conviction and cast doubt on his guilt.

His case has also been the subject of a four-part documentary on the HBO channel called "The Case Against Adnan Syed."

The "Serial" podcast -- a mix of investigative journalism, first-person narrative and dramatic storytelling -- focused its first season on Syed's story in 12 nail-biting episodes.

Both Syed and Lee were high school honor students and children from immigrant families -- he Pakistani, she South Korean -- who had concealed their relationship from their conservative parents.

Prosecutors said during the trial that Syed was a scorned lover who felt humiliated after Lee broke up with him.

© 2022 AFP

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M IRONY
'Grand Theft Auto' maker says game code stolen

Mon, September 19, 2022 


Rockstar Games said Monday that data from the next installment in its blockbuster "Grand Theft Auto" franchise was stolen, as glimpses of play spread on social media.

The normally tight-lipped video game maker's comment came after a trove of data that a hacker said was from a "Grand Theft Auto 6" title in the works was shared online, along with word that source code was also swiped from Rockstar.

"We recently suffered a network intrusion in which an unauthorized third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage for the next 'Grand Theft Auto,'" Rockstar said in a tweet from its official account.

"We are extremely disappointed to have any details of our next game shared with you in this way."

Rockstar added that it did not expect the hack to disrupt any of its projects or online play of its games, and that work on the next "Grand Theft Auto" game will continue as planned.

More than 230 million copies of "Grand Theft Auto," referred to as "GTA," have been sold overall.

"We have already taken steps to isolate and contain this incident," Rockstar parent Take-Two Interactive said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing about the hack.

The GTA franchise, in which players take on the role of a criminal, has been criticized for glorifying law-breaking, violence and abuse of women.

The maker of the notorious video game franchise announced in February that a new edition is under development, confirming long-bubbling speculation.

New York-based Rockstar Games did not say when GTA 6 will hit the street or how it will be different from the previous edition of the game released in 2013 to blockbuster sales.

"We watched GTA 6 leak and Rockstar Games - the most secretive company in the video game industry - get hacked in real time," said a late Sunday tweet from the Gaming Detective account that included an apparent image of the title art.

"Let it be known we were here to witness history."

gc/wd

UN Human Rights Council warns of more 'atrocity crimes' in Ethiopia

FRANCE 24 

UN investigators said Monday they believed Ethiopia's government was behind ongoing crimes against humanity in the Tigray region, and warned that the resumption of the conflict there increased the risk of "further atrocity crimes".


© AFP, Amanuel Sileshi

In its first report, the Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia said it had found evidence of a wide range of violations in the country by all sides since fighting erupted in the northern Tigray region in November 2020.

The commission, created by the UN Human Rights Council last year and made up of three independent rights experts, said it had "reasonable grounds to believe that, in several instances, these violations amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity".

The experts highlighted the horrifying situation in Tigray, where the government and its allies have denied around six million people access to basic services, including the internet and banking, for over a year, and where severe restrictions on humanitarian access have left 90 percent of the population in dire need of assistance.

The report said there were "reasonable grounds to believe that the Federal Government and allied regional State governments have committed and continue to commit the crimes against humanity of persecution on ethnic grounds and other inhumane acts."

They were "intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health based on their ongoing denial and obstruction of humanitarian assistance to Tigray," the report said.

Related video: Fighting intensifies in Ethiopia's Tigray conflict

Duration 12:13   View on Watch

In a statement, commission chair Kaari Betty Murungi described the humanitarian crisis in Tigray as "shocking, both in terms of scale and duration."

"The widespread denial and obstruction of access to basic services, food, healthcare, and humanitarian assistance is having a devastating impact on the civilian population, and we have reasonable grounds to believe it amounts to a crime against humanity," she said.

"We also have reasonable grounds to believe that the Federal Government is using starvation as a method of warfare," she added, calling on the government to "immediately restore basic services and ensure full and unfettered humanitarian access."

Murungi also called on Tigrayan forces to "ensure that humanitarian agencies are able to operate without impediment."

Tigray has been bombed several times since fighting resumed in late August between government forces and their allies, and rebels led by the TPLF, which ruled Ethiopia for decades before Abiy took office in 2018.

The return to combat shattered a March truce and dashed hopes of peacefully resolving the war, which has killed untold numbers of civilians and triggered a humanitarian crisis in northern Ethiopia.

"With a resumption of hostilities in northern Ethiopia, there is a very real risk of further civilian suffering and further atrocity crimes," Murungi warned.

"The international community should not turn a blind eye, and instead increase efforts to secure a cessation of hostilities and the restoration of humanitarian aid and services to Tigray," she said.

"Failure to do so would be catastrophic for the Ethiopian people, and has wider implications for peace and stability in the region."

(AFP)

UN report warns of crimes against humanity in Ethiopia

UN investigators said Monday they believed Ethiopia's government was behind ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Tigray, and warned the resumption of the conflict there increased the risk of "further atrocity crimes".

Lebanon's past echoes its grim present in exhibition

Hashem Osseiran
Mon, September 19, 2022


In a war-scarred Beirut heritage house turned museum, archives of Lebanon's troubled past fuse with artistic depictions of its grim present to portray a country seemingly in perpetual turmoil.

Newspaper clippings, film negatives and diary entries from the years before Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war tell a story of government corruption, public sector strikes and student protests.

They are shown alongside contemporary pictures, video footage and art installations illustrating today's Lebanon, in the grip of political paralysis and its worst ever economic crisis.

"Allo, Beirut?", which premiered Thursday and runs until 2023, seeks to map out the decades-old rot at the heart of Lebanon's downward spiral, said the exhibition's director Delphine Abirached Darmency.

"It's strange sometimes to explain what we are experiencing without knowing what happened in the past," she said.


"Beirut is suffering, we are suffering," she added, arguing that much of Lebanon's misery is rooted in the problems of a bygone era.

The exhibit was born in part from the discovery of the archives of late billionaire Jean Prosper Gay-Para, who owned the once-famous Les Caves du Roy nightclub and is widely regarded as a symbol of Lebanon's pre-civil war golden era.

"Those sick minds, obsessed with making money," Gay-Para writes about the country's political elite, in a text on display.

That sentiment is still widely shared by a population battered by the unprecedented economic crisis that is widely blamed on the country's business and political barons.

Gay-Para "was talking in the 1960s about what we are living today", Darmency said.

- 'Condition of loss' -

More than three decades after the devastating civil war, Lebanon is reeling from a financial crisis that has seen poverty spike as the currency has lost more than 90 percent of its value on the black market.

Beirut also remains scarred by the huge 2020 portside blast of a pile of ammonium nitrate that killed more than 200 people and compounded a population exodus of a similar scale to that of the civil war period.

In addition to the archive material, the show features installations by young Lebanese artists who were asked to express their feelings about their city.

Rawane Nassif made a short documentary about the Beirut neighbourhood she grew up in, and to which she returned this year after two decades away to take care of her sick parents, both of whom have since died.

"The movie depicts the condition of loss," the 38-year-old anthropologist and filmmaker told AFP. "Beirut is in mourning. It is mourning the death of its people and the death of all the chances it once had."

Visual artist Raoul Mallat, 28, also explored the theme of grief, in a short film combining archive family footage from his childhood with recent shots of Beirut.

"This project helped me a lot in grieving some aspects of my city that I will not find again," he said.

- 'Built on rubble' -

The venue for the exhibit is itself a testament to Lebanon's complicated past. The three-storey Beit Beirut, known as the Yellow House, was built in the 1920s by renowned architect Youssef Bey Aftimos.

Riddled with bullet holes and other civil war damage, it stands alongside what used to be known as the "Green Line" that separated Beirut's Muslim and Christian districts during the conflict.


It was renovated and turned into a museum and cultural space that temporarily opened in 2017. It closed again due to difficulties, but the new exhibit has once more opened it to the public.

Holes in the walls once used by wartime gunmen have been fitted with screens showing footage of the unprecedented protest movement of 2019 that demanded sweeping political change before it ran out of steam.

One of the rooms is decorated with worn-out furniture and destroyed objects collected from the now-abandoned Les Caves du Roy nightclub in an attempt to recreate the space from Beirut's heyday.

The installation by Lebanese artists Rola Abu Darwish and Rana Abbout aims to make a symbolic statement about rubble and Lebanon's tumultuous existence.

"Beirut is built on rubble," said Abu Darwish, 38. "One of the main elements of Beirut to me is rubble.

"It's part of where we live, how we live, and who we are. And I feel that in the direction we're going, we are going to be making more rubble."

ho/jmm/hc/fz/it

CLIMATE CRISIS

Drought decimates Texas' key cotton crop

Ulysse BELLIER
Mon, September 19, 2022 


On Sutton Page's ravaged cotton fields, there is almost nothing left to pick. The Texas farmer managed to salvage maybe a fifth of his crop, but the rest was lost to the severe drought that has taken a steep toll across the region.

This year, his harvest is "not well," he says, but in reality, the drought in northern Texas has proven to be a disaster, with most of Page's neighbors not even bothering to harvest their crop, leaving "bare, bare fields."

Texas produces almost half of America's cotton, and the United States is the world's third largest supplier, behind India and China.

This year, national production will hit its lowest level since 2015, down 21 percent year-on-year, and Texas will suffer a 58 percent drop, the US Department of Agriculture estimates.

In the northwest of the state, where cotton is the lifeline of the local economy and water is scarce, the 2022 harvest "could be one of the worst in 30 years," worries Darren Hudson, professor of agricultural economics at Texas Tech University.

With the cascading consequences for the global textile industry, in an economy already reeling from the pandemic, Hudson put the likely economic impact for the region at $2 billion.

Landon Orman, 30, works on 2,000 acres of cotton near Abilene, three hours west of Dallas. His non-irrigated cotton did not even sprout, while his partially watered crop grew but its yield will be slashed by half.

In total, he predicts an 85 percent drop in production compared to a normal year. Like so many others, he has crop insurance, so "financially we're not really doing that bad. But as a farmer, it sucks pretty bad that we can't grow stuff sometimes."

- Depressing -

In Lubbock, the region's cotton hub, rainfall over the past 12 months has roughly been half its normal volume, and what little fell came too late to save the crop.

"Starting in January, all the way to the month of May, no, no literally no rain," said Sutton Page, 48. And from May "we started having 100 degree days and 30 mile an hour winds and it just dried everything out."

He had to plow 80 percent of his dying crop back into the ground to stop the land drying out. Of the few small plants that actually grew, it may not even be economical to harvest them.

"It's a little depressing to some degree, because you work hard all year and you get to get the farms ready and you fertilize and, and and your crop doesn't come up," he said.

- Frequency -

Cotton farmers in the plains of Texas know there will always be bad years, but the drought of 2022 could be the worst yet. And some worry there could be more on the way.

The region is "seeing worse conditions than this time last year," and these are settling in over time, notes Curtis Riganti, a climatologist specializing in drought.

"In the past 10 years, we saw maybe five or six of those years where we saw drought. Maybe one or two of those years we saw a very catastrophic drought," said Kody Bessent, director of one of the region's cotton growers' associations.

These farmers in Texas, a state where climate skepticism abounds, prefer to see unpredictable weather cycles repeating themselves rather than the effects of global warming, which makes extreme weather events more common.

While waiting for answers, everyone is trying their best just to maintain humidity in their soil.

ube/seb/jh/md

Misinformation shrouds Philippine martial law era horrors

Lucille SODIPE
Mon, September 19, 2022


American lawyer Thomas Jones still remembers the scars of Philippine torture victims he interviewed for Amnesty International inside the country's detention centres in 1975 during the rule of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

But Marcos, who presided over widespread abuses and corruption during his 20 years in power, denied the lawyer's visit to the Philippines ever happened.

Decades later the dictator's claim -- debunked by AFP and others -- has resurfaced on social media sites popular among Filipinos.

Amnesty estimates thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands tortured and imprisoned after Marcos imposed martial law on September 21, 1972.

Under legislation signed in 2013 by former president Benigno Aquino, 11,103 victims of torture, killings, enforced disappearances and other abuses have been officially recognised and compensated.

In the run-up to Wednesday's 50th anniversary of the start of martial law, pro-Marcos posts have flooded Facebook and TikTok with false and misleading claims that cast doubt on Amnesty's findings and downplay the abuses.

AFP has fact-checked multiple posts that carried footage of Marcos addressing US media in 1982.

Marcos -- father of current Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr who has defended martial law -- accused Amnesty of relying on "hearsay" for their findings. And he falsely claimed the rights group "never" visited the country.

The clip resurfaced on TikTok in March after an anti-Marcos Senate candidate running in May 9 elections cited Amnesty for figures showing the horrors of martial law.

"Amnesty International (said) 3,257 were killed during Marcos's time, 35,000 were tortured... 70,000 were imprisoned. It's a matter of record," Luke Espiritu said in a debate.

Within hours of that livestreamed event, the Marcos footage had been stitched with the Espiritu video and circulated on TikTok and Facebook.

It received more than 900,000 views, according to analysis by AFP's Fact Check team.

One post drew more than 3,000 comments that questioned Amnesty's numbers and described the dictator as "a great leader destroyed by black propaganda".


Jones said Marcos lied about the Amnesty visit and martial law abuses, and decades later Filipinos were being deceived by his son.

"People of the Philippines, they still don't know the facts," the 81-year-old told AFP from his home in Wisconsin.

Jones and a colleague interviewed Marcos, members of his cabinet and 107 detainees during their visit.

Marcos admitted about 50,000 people had been arrested in the first few years of martial law, while 71 detainees told them they had been tortured, Jones said.

Amnesty published their findings in 1976, with their conclusion that "torture was used freely and with extreme cruelty, often over long periods".

The Marcos government denied torture was "widely used" and said Amnesty's report was "based on fabrications, biased, and without factual foundations".

- 'Short memories' -

Josefina Forcadilla, 66, one of the detainees mentioned in the Amnesty report, remembers being interviewed by Jones and his colleague while she was imprisoned.

"I was hesitant to talk to them at first, until they said they wanted to document what my family went through at the time," she told AFP.

Forcadilla was 17 when police raided their house in search of her elder brother in April 1973.

She said an officer boxed her ears, fondled her breasts and played Russian roulette with a gun while interrogating her about his whereabouts.

"I was in shock. I couldn't cry. I knew then that their purpose was really to kill," she said.

She and three other siblings were eventually arrested.

Her elder sister was assaulted and died in detention, while her brother was tortured and another sister gave birth in prison.

"My family can't help but ask, why do Filipinos have short memories?" she said.

Amnesty visited the Philippines again in 1981 to document abuses that took place from 1976 onwards.

In a 2018 statement, Amnesty said: "From 1972 to 1981, some 70,000 people were imprisoned and 34,000 were tortured; over 3,200 people were killed."

Marcos was toppled from power in 1986.

Rachel Chhoa-Howard, Amnesty researcher for Southeast Asia, defended the rights group's estimates, saying they were "based on our own field missions and documentation during the 80s and cross-referenced with other research at the time".

But she said the true scale of the abuses may never be known "given the immensity and pervasiveness of violations during that time".

- Denying atrocities -

Yet, the truth about what is known is itself under attack.

Filipinos worried about martial law violence being whitewashed or erased by the new Marcos administration have been digitising books, films and articles documenting the brutality.


One group is Project Gunita, which has been scanning and posting old newspaper and magazine reports on social media to educate users influenced by pro-Marcos misinformation.

"It's pointless to have our Google drives, it's pointless to have this database of information if it doesn't get to those people who need to read them," said co-founder Sarah Gomez.

Joel Ariate, a member of the University of the Philippines' Marcos Regime Research group, said denying Marcos atrocities "has become like a bloodsport online".

He said the key to fighting misinformation about martial law was to repeat the truth "as much as the lies".

Marcos Jr, who said earlier this year he had not seen Amnesty's figures and did not know how they were generated, last week acknowledged there had been "abuses" under martial law, "like in any war".

But martial law had been "necessary" to defend the country against communist and Muslim insurgencies, he told a local celebrity talk show host.

Carmelo Crisanto of the Human Rights Violations Victims' Memorial Commission, an independent government body, said in August the real number of victims could be much higher than the official figure.

"Many people in the fringes of our society -- Muslims, farmers, fisherfolk -- they didn't even hear that there was a process for filing claims," Crisanto said.

"So the effects of the regime could have touched them but they are not recorded."

ls/amj/it/axn/dhc

Prime-time lies: Brazil candidates take information wars to TV

Issued on: 20/09/2022 - 

Disinformation wars on TV: Brazilians watch a presidential debate between incumbent Jair Bolsonaro and front-runner Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at a Rio de Janeiro bar on August 29 

CARL DE SOUZA AFP

Rio de Janeiro (AFP) – Disinformation on social networks has become routine as Brazil heads for deeply divisive elections, but it can gain traction and a broader audience when it comes straight from the candidates' mouths on national television.

The official start last month of the campaign for the October 2 elections means candidates have huge exposure on TV, including prime-time interviews, debates and daily ad spots paid for with public funds.

In practice, that has meant a flood of false narratives being beamed into Brazilian living rooms, whether it is incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro taking credit for the idea to create a mega-popular instant payments system known as "Pix" or front-runner Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva claiming he was absolved of all corruption charges against him, to cite just two examples.

In reality, Brazil's central bank started working on Pix in 2018, a year before the far-right incumbent took office. And Lula, the charismatic but tarnished leftist who led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, had his controversial convictions stemming from the "Car Wash" corruption scandal overturned on procedural grounds. He was not absolved.

"Campaigns are above all a war of narratives," and candidates often use distorted or outright false statements to sell themselves, says Amaro Grassi, a public policy expert at the Getulio Vargas Foundation.

There is nothing new about lies in politics.

But analysts warn TV is now giving broader reach to the disinformation that has been raging for months on social networks in Brazil.

"Television is still a mass medium" in Brazil, says Arthur Ituassu, associate professor of political communication at Pontifical Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro.

Unlike social media, Brazilian television -- where the vast majority of audience share is still concentrated among a handful of top networks, notably the dominant TV Globo -- reaches a broad population that is "not segmented by nature," he says.
'If it's on TV, it's true'

"Television is still a space that reaches the general public, going well beyond the audience that is already firmly in one camp or the other," says Helena Martins, a communications professor at the Federal University of Ceara.

There is also a widely held belief that "if it's on TV, it's true," she adds.

The 2018 race that brought Bolsonaro to power was already awash in disinformation, especially on social media -- hugely powerful in a country that has more smart phones than people (an estimated 242 million, for 213 million inhabitants).

If anything, the campaign is arguably uglier this time around, given that the presidential race is highly polarized between the far-right incumbent and his leftist nemesis.

Amid those deep divisions, 85 percent of Brazilians say disinformation could influence the outcome of the election, according to a poll from the Ipec institute published on September 6.

At the same time, however, polls show there are relatively few voters left to persuade: 78 percent of voters say their minds are "completely" made up, found a poll from the Datafolha institute published last week.

The same poll found Lula had 45 percent of the vote, to 33 percent for Bolsonaro -- broadly in line with the institute's previous poll.

No other candidate was in double digits.

"There's a very high level of consolidation of voter intentions. That makes it difficult for any narrative to change the picture at this point," says Grassi.

That has not stopped the candidates from seeking to rile up their bases with truth-bending statements, hoping to persuade the odd undecided or third-candidate voter in the process.

Lula, for example, has repeatedly exaggerated his accomplishments on the economy.

Bolsonaro has meanwhile accused Lula of being anti-Evangelical and anti-agribusiness, two powerful groups that lean toward the incumbent.

"The idea is to reinforce those groups' rejection of Lula," says Grassi.

"Because in an election as polarized as this, it ends up being largely a battle of rejection."

© 2022 AFP

More Amazon fires so far this year than all of 2021, Brazil report shows

Issued on: 19/09/2022 - 

Aerial view of a burning area in Lábrea, southern Amazonas State, Brazil, on September 17, 2022. © Michael Dantas, AFP

Text by:NEWS WIRES

The number of forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon so far this year has already surpassed that for all of 2021, according to official figures released Monday that triggered new alarm for the world's biggest rainforest.

Satellite monitoring has detected 75,592 fires from January 1 to September 18, already higher than the 75,090 detected for all of last year, according to the Brazilian space agency, INPE.

The latest grim news from the rainforest will likely add to pressure on President Jair Bolsonaro, who is fighting to win reelection next month and faces international criticism over a surge in destruction in the Amazon on his watch.

Since the far-right agribusiness ally took office in January 2019, average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased by 75 percent compared to the previous decade, destroying the forest cover of an area nearly the size of Puerto Rico last year.

Experts say Amazon fires are caused mainly by illegal farmers, ranchers and speculators clearing land and torching the trees.

Despite the advancing destruction, the Bolsonaro administration has slashed budgets for environmental enforcement operations and pushed to open protected Amazon lands to mining.

Greenpeace Brazil spokesman Andre Freitas called the latest figures a "tragedy foretold."

"After four years of a clear and objective anti-environmental policy by the federal government, we are seeing that as we approach the end of this government's term -- one of the darkest periods ever for the Brazilian environment -- land-grabbers and other illegal actors see it as the perfect opportunity to advance on the forest," he said in a statement.

Election-year row

This has been a worrying year for the Amazon, a key buffer against global warming.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon last month was nearly double the figure from August 2021, at 1,661 square kilometers (641 square miles).

And since the burning season began in earnest in August with the arrival of drier weather, the number of fires has soared.

According to INPE figures, there have been multiple days that surpassed the so-called "Day of Fire" on August 10, 2019, when farmers launched a coordinated plan to burn huge amounts of felled rainforest in the northern state of Para.

Then, fires sent thick gray smoke all the way to Sao Paulo, some 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) away, and triggered a global outcry over images of one of Earth's most vital resources burning.

Bolsonaro vehemently rejects that criticism, insisting Brazil "protects its forests much better than Europe" and batting away international alarm with the line: "The Amazon belongs to Brazilians, and always will."

The front-runner vying to unseat him in next month's presidential elections, leftist ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has vowed to do a better job protecting the Amazon.

Deforestation in Brazil's 60-percent share of the Amazon basin fell sharply under Lula, from nearly 28,000 square kilometers in 2004 to 7,000 in 2010.

Still, he has faced criticism from environmentalists for his own track record, which notably included the controversial decision to build the massive Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the Amazon.

And the highest number of fires ever recorded in the Brazilian Amazon by INPE, whose records go back to 1998, was on his watch: 218,637, in 2004.

(AFP)

Storm damages space center in Japan, 130K still lack power

By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press -

TOKYO (AP) — A tropical storm that dumped heavy rain as it cut across Japan moved into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday after killing two and injuring more than 100, paralyzing traffic and leaving thousands of homes without power.


People share an umbrella against strong wind and rain as they walk on a bridge Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022, in Kawasaki, near Tokyo. A tropical storm slammed southwestern Japan with rainfall and winds Monday, leaving one person dead and another missing, as it swerved north toward Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)© Provided by Associated Press

New damage was reported in southern Japan, where Typhoon Nanmadol hit over the weekend before weakening as it moved north.

On Tanegashima island, south of Kyushu island, a wall was damaged at a Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency’s space center, the Economy and Industry Ministry said. The extent of damage to the building used for rocket assembly was being assessed.



A person rides a bicycle against strong wind and rain as they walk on a bridge Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022, in Kawasaki, near Tokyo. A tropical storm slammed southwestern Japan with rainfall and winds Monday, leaving one person dead and another missing, as it swerved north toward Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)© Provided by Associated Press

Two deaths were reported in Miyazaki prefecture on Japan’s southern main island of Kyushu on Monday, when the storm was more powerful, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said. One was a man was found in a car sunk in a flooded farm in Miyakonojo town, and another was found underneath a landslide in Mimata.



People share an umbrella against strong wind and rain Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022, in Kawasaki, near Tokyo. A tropical storm slammed southwestern Japan with rainfall and winds Monday, leaving one person dead and another missing, as it swerved north toward Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)© Provided by Associated Press

One person was missing in the western prefecture of Hiroshima, and 115 others were injured across western Japan, the agency said. Most of injuries were minor, with people falling down in the rainstorm, hit by shards of broken windows or flying objects.

More than 130,000 homes, most of them in the Kyushu region, were still without power Tuesday morning, according to the Economy and Industry Ministry. Many convenience stores were at one point closed and some distribution of supplies has been delayed.


A person holds an umbrella against strong wind and rain as they walk on a bridge Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022, in Kawasaki, near Tokyo. A tropical storm slammed southwestern Japan with rainfall and winds Monday, leaving one person dead and another missing, as it swerved north toward Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)© Provided by Associated Press

Most transportation returned to normal on Tuesday when commuters returned to work after a three-day weekend. Bullet trains and most ground transportation resumed operation, but dozens of flights were grounded in northeastern Japan.

The tropical storm has headed out to the Pacific Ocean off northern Japanese coast, the Japan Meteorological Agency said Tuesday.

 

https://selforganizedseminar.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/naomi-klein-the-shock-doctrine.pdf

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE - AUTONOMOUS LEARNING 

Shocking Times: The Rise of the Disaster Capitalism Complex. 14. Shock Therapy in the U.S.A.: The Homeland Security Bubble 283.

FASCIST POPULISM

Italy’s Salvini Wants $30 Billion to Aid Companies Hit by Energy Prices



Daniele Lepido, Chiara Albanese and Tommaso Ebhardt
Mon, September 19, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- Matteo Salvini, a leader of the right-wing coalition expected to win Italy’s elections, wants a 30 billion-euro ($30 billion) state subsidy to cap the cost of energy for businesses in the run-up to winter.

“My problem is how to ensure Italian industries survive the next months with surging energy bills,” Salvini said in an interview at the Milan exhibition center Monday, citing companies which have started to furlough workers because of the price spikes. “If the avalanche starts, when we get into government we would only be able to handle the consequences.”

Salvini, who fostered political ties with Vladimir Putin’s party before his invasion of Ukraine, said that he had changed his mind about the Russian president and doesn’t see any chance of new gas deals with Moscow for Italy.

Countries across the European Union are struggling to ease the financial pain of an energy crisis that has jolted the continent. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has proposed a mandatory cut on energy use in the bloc, as well as steps to ease the crunch in markets caused by ballooning collateral demands.

The coalition led by Giorgia Meloni of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, and which includes Salvini’s anti-migrant League, is expected to win Sunday’s general elections in a context closely-watched by investors because of Italy’s precarious finances. Meloni herself is likely to succeed Mario Draghi as prime minister.

Salvini is urging Draghi to expand the budget deficit to fund the new measures, before he exits the premiership. Salvini pledged that if his request is met, he would refrain from seeking a further increase in Italy’s mammoth debt -- an option worrying investors. Draghi has ruled out such a measure.

French Model

Salvini’s proposal would also be financed by additional tax revenue collected by the state due to higher inflation. “France recently designed a price cap for energy prices domestically,” Salvini said. “We aim for the same program, to allow industrial production to reach the summer.”

France will budget 16 billion euros to limit power and gas price increases to 15% for households and small companies next year to ease the burden of the energy crisis on consumers. Prices would have risen by 120% without the limits, French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said on Sept. 14.

Salvini had long been cultivating ties with Russia, and said in 2018 that he felt at home in Russia and not in some EU countries.

Change on Putin

“My opinion about Putin has indeed changed amid the war, because when someone starts invading, bombing, sending tanks into another country, well, everything changes,” Salvini said. He added that the League had voted in favor of all sanctions against Russia, but questioned whether such measures actually work.

Salvini also backed Italy’s commitment to the NATO military alliance, saying that international relations “don’t change for us.” In May, Salvini opposed enlargement of the alliance, saying this would not favor peace.

The League leader warned against China as a business rival. “For the near future China is our main competitor, we need to fear it because it’s not a democracy and they are ready to invade the European market with their own products and goods, starting with the automotive industry with the new electrification trend,” he said.

Salvini sought to reassure investors about a possible right wing government, saying it will be stable and united regardless of which party prevails inside the coalition.

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