Spain warns it will act if Catalonia declares independence

October 09, 2017

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy warned anew Monday that Spain will not be divided by a declaration of independence from Catalonia and said the government is ready to respond to any such attempt.

Catalan regional President Carles Puigdemont plans to address the Catalan parliament on Tuesday evening to debate the current political situation. Separatist politicians say there will be a declaration of independence for the northeastern region of 7.5 million during that session, although some ruling coalition lawmakers say the move could be simply "symbolic."

Still, Rajoy was being as explicit as possible in warning that the national government in Madrid would not stand for such a declaration. "Spain will not be divided and the national unity will be preserved. We will do everything that legislation allows us to ensure this," Rajoy told the German newspaper Die Welt. "We will prevent this independence from taking place."

Secession-minded authorities in Catalonia have vowed to break away from Spain after claiming victory in a disputed independence referendum earlier this month. The Oct. 1 vote has been followed by mass protests of Catalans angered by police violence as authorities tried to stop the vote and, more recently, by others in Catalonia and Madrid urging the unity of Spain.

Yet politicians supporting Puigdemont's minority government and civil society groups backing independence say they will not accept anything less than a full declaration of independence. "Credibility and dignity suggest making the declaration of independence tomorrow," Jordi Sanchez, the head of the civil group National Catalonia Assembly, said Monday.

A lawmaker with the Catalan CUP party told the Associated Press that the the far-left separatists won't accept anything short of a declaration of secession. "It's very clear to me that those who I represent won't accept any other scenario," Benet Salellas said during an interview at the regional parliament.

Puigdemont has not clarified what his intentions are. Rajoy's deputy, Soraya Saenz de Santamaria, also warned that Spain would act decisively if there was any independence declaration. "If they declare independence, there will be decisions to restore the law and democracy," she said on Monday during a radio interview.

She called for members of the Catalan government "who still respect democracy and freedom to refrain from jumping into the void." Catalonia's top judicial official, meanwhile, ordered additional Spanish police protection for the headquarters of the regional judiciary.

The regional Mossos d'Esquadra police force, whose hierarchy reports to the Catalan government, had been in charge until now of guarding the palace in central Barcelona that hosts the judiciary. But the High Judiciary in Catalonia says its president, Jesus Barrientos, has asked the chief of the National Police force in the region to join in the protection of the building. The statement says a declaration of independence, even if illegal under Spanish laws, could trigger the suspension of the judiciary and the ouster of its president.

On Sunday, a massive protest in Barcelona showed the strength of Spanish unionists in Catalonia, as thousands marched with the Spanish national flag that had been absent until now in the regional debate.

They chanted "Don't be fooled, Catalonia is Spain" and called for Puigdemont to go to prison for holding the banned referendum. Catalan authorities say the "Yes" side won the referendum with 90 percent of the vote, although only 43 percent of the region's 5.3 million eligible voters turned out in polling that was marred by police raids of polling stations.

Rajoy has said the central government could take control of the governance of the Catalan region. "The ideal situation would be that I don't have to find drastic solutions, but for that to happen there will have to be some rectifications (by Catalan leaders)," Rajoy said this weekend.

Rajoy's government had repeatedly refused to grant Catalonia permission to hold a referendum on grounds that it is unconstitutional, since it would only poll a portion of Spain's 46 million residents.

Catalonia's separatist camp has grown in recent years, strengthened by Spain's recent economic crisis and by Madrid's rejection of attempts to increase self-rule in the region.

Spanish unionists find their voice in huge Barcelona rally

October 08, 2017

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Spanish unionists in Catalonia finally found their voice on Sunday, resurrecting Spain's flag as a symbol of patriotism after decades of it being associated with the Franco dictatorship.

In a defiant challenge to plans by Catalonia's regional government to unilaterally declare independence, hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets of Barcelona in a surprising outpouring of Spanish unity.

They chanted "Don't be fooled, Catalonia is Spain" and called for regional president Carles Puigdemont to go to prison for holding an illegal referendum last week. Some of the demonstrators took to rooftops, including families with children, and leaned over ledges from their perches overlooking the streets below to wave giant Spanish flags in a city accustomed to the prevalence of the Catalan pro-independence "estelada."

Spain's red-and-yellow flag has long been taboo here in Catalonia and throughout the country because it has been linked to groups supportive of Gen. Francisco Franco's dictatorship. But on Sunday, a sea of Spanish flags, interspersed with some Catalan and European Union flags, dominated Barcelona's boulevards.

Barcelona police said 350,000 people participated, while march organizers Societat Civil Catalana said that 930,000 people turned out. The march was peaceful and no major incidents were reported. Puigdemont has pledged to push ahead for independence and is set to address the regional parliament on Tuesday "to report on the current political situation." In the days after the Oct. 1 referendum, the momentum appeared to be on his side. Pro-independence protests were attracting large numbers and he benefited politically from a violent crackdown by Spanish police during the referendum voting.

But now the tide seems to be turning. Catalonia's top two banks announced they were relocating their headquarters to other parts of Spain because of financial uncertainty if there is an independence declaration. Other companies are reportedly considering leaving Catalonia to avoid being cast out of the EU and its common market in the case of secession.

And Sunday's mass demonstration by pro-unity Catalans, under the slogan of "Let's recover our common sense!" will put further pressure on Puigdemont. The march was the largest pro-unionist showing since the rise of separatist sentiment in the prosperous northeastern region that has pushed Spain to the brink of a national crisis.

The rally comes a week after the Catalan government went ahead and held a referendum on secession that Spain's top court had suspended and the Spanish government said was illegal. Catalan authorities say the "Yes" side won the referendum with 90 percent of the vote, though only 43 percent of the region's 5.3 million eligible voters turned out in polling that was marred by police raids of polling stations on orders to confiscate ballot boxes.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy vows that his government will not allow Catalonia, which represents a fifth of Spain's economy, to break away from the rest of the country. In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais published Sunday, Rajoy said that he will consider employing any measure "allowed by the law" to stop the region's separatists.

Rajoy said that includes the application of Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, which would allow the central government to take control of the governance of a region "if the regional government does not comply with the obligations of the Constitution."

"The ideal situation would be that I don't have to find drastic solutions, but for that to happen there will have to be some rectifications (by Catalan leaders)," Rajoy said. Rallies were held Saturday in Madrid, Barcelona and other cities to demand that Rajoy and Puigdemont negotiate to find a solution to Spain's worst political crisis in nearly four decades.

"I hope that nothing will happen. Because (Catalonia) is going to lose more than (Spain) because businesses are fleeing from here already," said protester Juliana Prats, a Barcelona resident. "I hope it will remain like it has been up until now, 40 years of peace."

The rally drew Spaniards from outside the northeastern region to the Catalan capital. One group held a large banner boasting "Marbella," a town on Spain's southern coast. An AP reporter spoke with another man who had come from the northern Basque Country region.

Nobel Literature Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa and former president of the European Parliament Josep Borrell addressed the rally. "Besides Catalans, there are thousands of men and women from all corners of Spain who have come to tell their Catalan companions that they are not alone," said Llosa, who took on Spanish citizenship in addition to that of his native Peru in 1993. "We want Barcelona to once again be the capital of Spanish culture."

Borrell added that: "Catalonia is not a state like Kosovo where rights were systematically violated." The most recent polls taken before the referendum showed that Catalonia's 7.5 million residents were roughly split over secession, while a majority would support an official referendum on independence if it were condoned by Spanish authorities

Rajoy's government has repeatedly refused to grant Catalonia permission to hold a referendum on grounds that it is unconstitutional since it would only poll a portion of Spain's 46 million residents. Catalonia's separatists camp has grown in recent years, strengthened by Spain's recent economic crisis and by Madrid's rejection of attempts to increase self-rule in the region.

Frank Griffiths contributed from London.

Member of Catalan govt wants 'cease-fire' with Spain

October 07, 2017

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — A member of Catalonia's separatist-led government has called for a "cease-fire" with Spain to decrease tensions after a disputed referendum on independence by the prosperous region.

Santi Vila, Catalonia's regional chief for business, told Cadena SER Radio late Friday that he's pushing for "a new opportunity for dialogue" under "a cease-fire" with Spanish authorities. Vila says he is against Catalonia unilaterally declaring independence at this moment and wants to see a committee of experts from both sides be created to work toward a solution to the political crisis.

Separatists say they won the Oct. 1 referendum, but Spain says the vote was illegal, invalid and unconstitutional. Less than half of the electorate cast ballots in the referendum which has marred by a brutal police crackdown.

Catalan leader wants parliament speech amid independence bid

October 06, 2017

MADRID (AP) — Catalan president Carles Puigdemont on Friday asked to address the regional parliament next week amid growing challenges for his government to deliver on its pledge to declare independence for the prosperous northeastern region in Spain.

A disputed independence referendum in Catalonia last Sunday has led to Spain's biggest political crisis in decades, with the government condemning the vote as illegal, unconstitutional and invalid. Puigdemont's separatist ruling coalition for the region suffered a setback Thursday when Spain's Constitutional Court suspended a Monday session of regional lawmakers assessing the vote's results. Some lawmakers had said that Puigdemont would declare Catalonia independent then.

Puigdemont says the vote is valid despite a Constitutional Court ban on holding it and the fact that only 40 percent of the region's 5.5 million eligible voters turned out amid strong police pressure to shut down the vote. Catalan officials say 90 percent of those who did vote favored independence.

Spain's conservative government, which is under political and social pressure after police violently tried to halt the banned vote, has rejected any dialogue with Catalan officials unless they drop plans for secession.

Puigdemont has asked now to address the regional parliament on Tuesday to "report on the current political situation." The speakers' board of Catalonia's regional parliament was to meet Friday afternoon, likely to discuss the request.

Spain's main stock index, meanwhile, was slightly down at the end of morning trading Friday, with Catalan banks leading losses amid uncertainty of what's next in the regional independence bid. In Madrid, Spain's National Court unconditionally released two senior officers of Catalonia's regional police force and the leaders of two pro-independence civic groups who are being investigated for sedition in connection with the referendum.

The four are to be questioned again in coming days, once the court studies a report by the Civil Guard police about incidents surrounding the referendum. The case is linked to demonstrations on Sept. 20-21 in Barcelona, when Spanish police arrested several Catalan government officials and raided offices in a crackdown on preparations for the referendum..

The four being investigated are Catalan police chief Josep Lluis Trapero, Catalan police Lt. Teresa Laplana, Jordi Sanchez, the head of the Catalan National Assembly, and Jordi Cuixart, president of separatist group Omnium Cultural.

After being questioned for about an hour, Trapero left the courthouse to applause by Basque and Catalan party representatives and insults from bystanders. Sanchez also answered questions related to his defense.

"I ask strongly that the Spanish government, the national parliament and the head of state (the king) understand that time and the hours are very important to find a debated solution and give way to a political solution," Sanchez said.

Laplana, who had remained in Barcelona, declined to testify for medical reasons while Cuixart refused to testify, saying he didn't recognize the court's capacity to question him for a crime he didn't commit.

Spanish authorities say the demonstrations hindered the Spanish police operation, and that Catalan police didn't do enough to push back protesters blocking Spanish police officers from leaving a building. Two police cars were vandalized and officers were caught inside the building for hours.

Ahead of Friday's hearing, Catalan pro-independence supporters, including politicians, stood outside as Trapero, Sanchez and Cuixart walked into the National Court. Carles Campuzano, the spokesman for the Democratic Party of Catalonia, described the hearing as an outrage, saying that the demonstrations last month can in no way be considered illegal.

"It's just another expression of the absolutely mistaken, authoritarian, repressive response by the (Spanish) state to the pacific, democratic and civic demand of Catalan society," he told reporters. On Thursday, Spain's Constitutional Court ordered Catalonia's parliament to suspend a planned session next week during which separatist lawmakers plan to declare independence.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has urged Puigdemont to cancel plans for declaring independence in order to avoid "greater evils."

Parra reported from Barcelona. Frank Griffiths contributed from London.

Venezuela's Maduro meets Turkey's Erdogan on European tour

October 06, 2017

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is meeting his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for talks on bilateral relations and international issues. Maduro's visit on Friday comes amid stringent U.S. sanctions on the South American nation and a deepening political crisis in Venezuela, as the country struggles with triple-digit inflation and widespread shortages.

The foreign ministers of both countries will also participate in the second meeting of their joint "partnership commissions" aimed at forging cooperation between the two countries, according to the Turkish president's office.

Maduro's visit follows a tour to Russia and to Belarus, where he discussed expanding military ties with the ex-Soviet nation. In February 2016, Erdogan visited Chile, Peru and Ecuador to boost trade ties between Turkey and South America.

The Tuxá Indigenous Paradise, Submerged under Water

The Tuxá Indigenous Paradise, Submerged under Water

By Fabiana Frayssinet

RODELAS, Brazil, Sep 30 2017 (IPS) - The Tuxá indigenous people had lived for centuries in the north of the Brazilian state of Bahia, on the banks of the São Francisco River. But in 1988 their territory was flooded by the Itaparica hydropower plant, and since then they have become landless. Their roots are now buried under the waters of the reservoir.

Dorinha Tuxá, one of the leaders of this native community, which currently has between 1,500 and 2,000 inhabitants, sings on the shore of what they still call “river”, although now it is an 828-sq-km reservoir, in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, along the border with the state of Bahia, to the south.

While singing the song dedicated to their “sacred” river and smoking her “maraku”, a pipe with tobacco and ritual herbs, she looks dreamily at the waters where the “Widow’s Island” was submerged, one of several that sprinkled the lower course of the São Francisco River, and on which the members of her community used to live.

“This song is to ask our community for unity, because in this struggle we are asking for the strength of our ancestors to help us recover our territory. A landless indigenous person is a naked indigenous person. We are asking our ancestors to bless us in this battle and protect our warriors,” she told IPS.

The hydroelectric plant, with a capacity of 1,480 megawatts, is one of eight installed by the São Francisco Hydroelectric Company (CHESF), whose operations are centered on that river which runs across much of the Brazilian Northeast region: 2,914 km from its source in the center of the country to the point where it flows into the Atlantic Ocean in the northeast.

After the flood, the Tuxá people were relocated to three municipalities. Some were settled in Nova Rodelas, a hamlet in the rural municipality of Rodelas, in the state of Bahia, where Dorinha Tuxá lives.

After a 19-year legal battle, the 442 relocated Tuxá families finally received compensation from the CHESF. But they are still waiting for the 4,000 hectares that were agreed upon when they were displaced, and which must be handed over to them by state agencies.

“What nostalgia for that blessed land where we were born and which did not let us lack for anything. The river where we used to fish. I have such nostalgia for that time, from my childhood to my marriage. We were indeed a suffering and stoic but optimistic people. We grew rice, onions, we harvested mangoes. All that is gone,” Tuxá chief Manoel Jurum Afé told IPS.

The new village is very different from the community where they used to live on their island.

Only the soccer field, where children play, retains the shape of traditional indigenous Tuxá constructions.

But the elders strive to transmit their collective memory to the young, such as Luiza de Oliveira, who was baptized with the indigenous name of Aluna Flexia Tuxá.

She is studying law to continue her people’s struggle for land and rights. Her mother, like many other Tuxá women, also played an important role as chief, or community leader.

“It was as if they lived in a paradise. They had no need to beg the government like they have to do now. They used to plant everything, beans, cassava. They lived together in complete harmony. They talk about it with nostalgia. It was a paradise that came to an end when it was flooded,” she said.

After three decades of living with other local people, the Tuxás stopped wearing their native clothes, although for special occasions and rituals they put on their “cocares” (traditional feather headdresses).

They welcomed IPS with a “toré” – a collective dance open to outsiders. Another religious ceremony, “the particular”, is reserved for members of the community. That is how they honour the “enchanted”, their spirits or reincarnated ancestors.

But they are also Catholics and very devoted to Saint John the Baptist, patron saint of Rodelas, which was named after Captain Francisco Rodelas, considered the first chief who fought alongside the Portuguese against the Dutch occupation of northeast Brazil in the 17th century.

Armando Apaká Caramuru Tuxá is a “pajé” – guardian of the Tuxá traditions.

“The waters covered the land where our ancestors lived. Many times I saw my grandfather sitting at the foot of a jua (Ziziphus joazeiro, a tree typical of the eco-region of the semi-arid Northeast), there on the island talking to them up there (in the sky),” he said.

“We lost all that. That place which was sacred to us was submerged under water,” he said, sadly.

The Tuxá people, who for centuries were fishermen, hunters, gatherers and farmers, practically gave up their subsistence crops in their new location.

Some bought small parcels of land and grow cash crops, such as coconuts.

“We need to improve our quality of life. Before we used to live on what we produced from agriculture and fishing. Today that is not possible, so we want to return to agriculture, and to do that we need our land,” Chief Uilton Tuxá told IPS.

In 2014, a decree declared some 4,392 hectares of land an “area of social interest” in order to expropriate it and transfer it to the Tuxá people.

In June of this year, they won a lawsuit in a federal court, which ruled that the National Indigenous Foundation (Funai) had three months to create a working group to begin the demarcation process. It also set a new compensation to be paid to the Tuxá people.

But distrustful of the state bureaucracy and the courts, the Tuxá people decided to occupy Surubabel, the area near their village, on the banks of the reservoir, which was expropriated in order for it to be demarcated in their favor, but this never happened.

They began to build a new village there, in what they call “the recovery” of their lands.

“The occupation of this land by us, the Tuxá people, represents the rekindling of the flame of our identity as an indigenous people native to this riverbank. We were already here, since the beginning of the colonization process, even in the 16th century when the first catechists arrived,” argued Uilton Tuxá.

“We want to build this small village for the government to fulfill its obligations and the order to delimit our territory,” he said.

During the week they have other activities. They are public employees or work on their plots of land. But on Saturdays they load their tools in their vehicles and build their houses in the traditional way.

“Nowadays a lot of land in this sacred territory of the Tuxás is being invaded by non-indigenous people and also by indigenous people from other ethnic groups,” chief Xirlene Liliana Xurichana Tuxá told IPS.

“We were the first indigenous people from the Northeast to be recognized and we are the last to have the right to our land. This is just the beginning. If the justice system does not grant us our right to continue the dialogue, we will adopt forceful measures, we will mobilize. We are tired of being the good guys,” she warned, speaking as a community leader.

Meanwhile, the small portion of their ancestral land that was not submerged, and the land they occupy now, are threatened by new megaprojects.

These lands were left in the middle of two canals, on the north axis of the diversion of the São Francisco River, a project that is still under construction, which is to supply 12 million people with water.

“The Tuxá people have suffered impacts, above and beyond the dam. There is also the diversion of the river and the possibility that they might build a nuclear plant will also affect us,” said Uilton Tuxá, smoking his marakú during a break.

They say the marakú attracts protective forces. And this time they hope these forces will help them to get the land promised to them when their ancestral land was taken away, and that they will not lose it again to new megaprojects.

Source: Inter-Press Service (IPS).
Link: http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/09/tuxa-indigenous-paradise-submerged-water/.

Admirers honor 'Che' Guevara 50 years after his death

October 08, 2017

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — A little band of guerrillas had been on the run through rugged, mountainous terrain, struggling unsuccessfully to build support among the indigenous people of rural Bolivia as a step toward a global socialist revolution.

Finally, on Oct. 8, 1967, the army ran them down. A day afterward — apparently at the behest of the CIA — an army sergeant shot to death their leader: Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Fifty years later, the mountain village where he was killed and the nearby town where he was buried have become shrines to a sort of socialist saint, a man whose death helped cement his image as an enduring symbol of revolt. Some there even pray to him — an outcome that likely would have outraged the iconoclastic atheist.

Thousands of activists and sympathizers from many countries poured into La Higuera and Vallegrande this week for ceremonies to commemorate Guevara led by the country's leftist president, Evo Morales, who laid flowers at a bust of the fallen guerrilla in the village on Sunday.

In Cuba, President Raul Castro — one of Guevara's old comrades-in-arms — oversaw a memorial ceremony at the large mausoleum constructed to hold the revolutionary's remains, though the main speaker was the man many believe may replace him, Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel.

"The colossal example of Che endures and multiplies day by day," said Diaz-Canel, who added warnings that the United States, Guevara's chief foe, had demonstrated "a marked interest in a political and economic reconquest" of Cuba.

Guevara was the very personification of the communist dream of spreading revolution around the world. The Argentine-born physician was radicalized by a youthful trip through South America, witnessed the CIA-backed overthrow of a leftist president in Guatemala and ran across exiled Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro while working as a photographer in Mexico.

Despite an often-debilitating asthma, he turned himself into one of the most important fighters of Castro's Cuban revolution, winning the climactic battlefield victory in the city of Santa Clara that prompted dictator Fulgencio Batista to flee the country.

In the aftermath of that triumph, Guevara commanded the Havana military fortress of La Cabana, where hundreds of men accused of crimes under the Batista regime were put to death. Castro then made Guevara into an unlikely financial bureaucrat, naming him to head Cuba's Central Bank and later the Ministry of Industry. He was famous for working long hours, and then turning up for volunteer work in the sugar fields.

But he felt the call to spread socialism to other nations. He left Cuba in 1964 to help rebels in the Congo, renouncing his Cuban citizenship but relying on Cuban aid. The mission was a flop and he had to pull out a year later.

Back in Cuba, Guevara secretly organized another revolution, this time in Bolivia. But his band there, which included several Cubans, failed to find the sort of popular support that Castro had won in Cuba during his revolution. Bolivia's army tracked Che down and killed him.

An oddly Christ-like photo of the slain Guevara emerged and helped build the image of him as a martyr. An even more famous photo of the living Che, seeming to gaze into the future, has become an icon of rebellion on t-shirts, tattoos and key rings — sometimes to the consternation of Guevara's socialist allies, who disapprove of the way it has become commercialized.

One of Guevara's younger brothers, Juan Martin Guevara, said the causes he fought for remain important. "The inequality today is greater than when he fought, the economic concentration is much greater. What he fought for is still present," the brother said in Buenos Aires. "He would be in the same place that he always was, confronting it."

Andrea Rodriguez reported from Havana. Associated Press journalist Paul Byrne contributed from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Finally, Argentina Has a Law on Access to Public Information

By Daniel Gutman

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 28 2017 (IPS) - After 15 long years of public campaigns and debates in which different political, social and business sectors held marches and counter-protests, Argentina finally has a new law that guarantees access to public information.

This step forward must now be reflected in reality, in this South American country where one of the main social demands is greater transparency on the part of the authorities.

The Law on the Right of Access to Public Information, which considers “all government-held information” to be public, was approved by Congress in September last year and enters into force Friday Sept. 29.

Eduardo Bertoni stressed the importance of the new law. He is the academic appointed by the government of President Mauricio Macri to lead the new Agency for Access to Public Information, which will operate within the executive branch, although “with operational autonomy,” according to the law.

“There are already 113 countries that have right of access to information laws and 90 countries have incorporated it into their constitutions,” Bertoni said during the public hearing where his appointment was discussed.

Bertoni, a lawyer with a great deal of experience regarding the right to information, served as Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIADH) between 2002 and 2005.

“We must now encourage society to demand more information from the authorities. And it is essential to push for better organisation of the public archives, because if we do not find the information people seek, we will fail,” he added.

The text is broad in terms of the list of institutions legally bound to respond to requests for access to information: besides the various branches of the state, it includes companies, political parties, trade unions, universities and any private entity to which public funds have been allocated, including public service concessionaires.

The Agency was created to ensure compliance with the law. Its functions include advising people who seek public information and assisting them with their request.

“This was clearly a pending issue for Argentina. It is incomprehensible that the governments of Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and Cristina Fernández (2007-2015) did not push for approval of this law, which should be an incentive for provinces and municipalities to do the same, since very few have regulations on access to public information,” Guillermo Mastrini, an expert on this question, told IPS.

For Mastrini, a former director of Communication Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, “this does not change the worrying scenario with respect to the right to information, since the government is regulating by decree issues related to audiovisual communication services in a way that does not favor plurality and transparency.”

The bill was sent to Congress by the government a few months after Macri took office in December 2015, and passed with large majorities in both legislative chambers.

Until now, at the national level, there was only decree 1172, signed in 2003 by Kirchner with the aim of “improving the quality of democracy”, which was not only below the status of a law, but only covered the executive branch with regard to the obligation to provide information.

José Crettaz, a journalist and the coordinator of the Center for Studies on the Convergence of Communications, told IPS that “Néstor Kirchner’s decree, which applied to the executive branch, worked very well at first, but then public officials began to leave most requests for information unanswered.”

“Now we are seeing a huge step forward, since the law encompasses all branches of the state, and I see a government with a different attitude. The decisive thing will be how the law is implemented. The only valid criterion should be: if there is public money involved, it is public information,” he said.

The law was passed after dozens of bills on access to information were introduced in Congress in recent years. The first was presented under the government of Fernando de la Rua (1999-2001), with the support of a network of civil society organisations, but with little backing from journalists.

The initiative obtained preliminary approval from the lower house of Congress in 2003, passed to the Senate and then the main Argentine media outlets joined the public campaign demanding that it be approved. However, they later distanced themselves from the bill.

They did so, Bertoni recalled in a paper written in 2011 for the World Bank, when a senator warned that the media should also respond to requests for information submitted by any member of the public, as they receive state advertising, which is considered a subsidy.

In 2004, the Senate approved the bill, but with modifications that included private entities among the subjects obligated to provide information, and sent it back to the lower house, where it was shelved. Another bill was passed by the Senate in 2010, but it also failed to prosper.

Now one thing that stood out is that just two days before the law went into effect, the government modified it through a questioned channel: based on “a decree of necessity and urgency”, putting the new Agency in the orbit of the chief of the cabinet of ministers.

“The government thus gave a lower status to the Agency, which according to law was to depend directly on the Presidency of the Nation; the decision, moreover, cannot be taken by decree when Congress is in session,” said Damián Loreti, professor of Right to Information at the University of Buenos Aires.

“That the law is in force is good. But I am concerned about a number of things, such as not including among its objectives a guarantee for the exercise of other rights, such as housing or sexual and reproductive rights. The model law of the Organisation of American States was not followed,” he told IPS.

For Sebastián Lacunza, the last director of the Buenos Aires Herald, a well-respected English-language newspaper that closed this year, “in a country that does not have a culture of transparency, there is a risk that the law will fail.”

“This government promised a regeneration of the country’s institutions, but in some aspects it ended up aggravating the shortcomings of the previous administration, which was not prone to being open with information,” he told IPS.

In his view, “in a context of global crisis in the media industry and a shrinking of plurality of information, the most important thing is that there is an active state that combats the concentration of the media in a few hands.”

Source: Inter-Press Service (IPS).
Link: http://www.ipsnews.net/2017/09/finally-argentina-law-access-public-information/.

Ukrainian parliament approves bills related to rebel regions

October 06, 2017

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — The Ukrainian parliament has passed hotly-disputed bills regarding the rebel-controlled eastern territories following debates interrupted by scuffles. The bills submitted by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko have drawn fierce criticism from some lawmakers. Opponents of the bills argued that they don't assert Ukraine's control of the eastern territories strongly enough and swarmed the speaker's platform Thursday, causing the session to be adjourned.

The parliament on Friday finally passed the bills, which refer to elements of the 2015 peace deal for eastern Ukraine brokered by France and Germany. The agreement signed in the Belarusian capital Minsk has helped reduce fighting between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops, but clashes have continued and efforts to reach a political settlement have stalled. Over 10,000 people have been killed in fighting since April 2014.

Serbia's dethroned royals hold a wedding in Belgrade

October 07, 2017

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Although it's not a kingdom now, Serbia has hosted a wedding for dethroned royals. Prince Philip Karadjordjevic, of the dethroned Serbian royals, married Danica Marinkovic on Saturday in a ceremony at Belgrade's main cathedral.

The wedding was performed by the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Irinej, and attended by many public figures. Dozens gathered outside the church on a sunny but chilly autumn day. Philip is one of the sons of Crown Prince Aleksandar Karadjordjevic, the heir to Serbia's now-defunct throne. The royal family ruled Yugoslavia until communists took power after World War II and abolished the monarchy. Exiled during WWII, the family returned to Serbia after 2000.

Philip was born in Fairfax, Virginia, while his wife is the daughter of prominent Serbian painter Cile Marinkovic.

Hundreds rally for free, fair elections in Serbian capital

October 06, 2017

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Several hundred people have gathered at an opposition protest demanding that an upcoming local election in the Serbian capital of Belgrade be free and fair. Opposition leaders have alleged that the ruling parties have been beefing up voters' lists ahead of the ballot expected next spring. The authorities have denied this.

The Belgrade race is viewed as a test of President Aleksandar Vucic's rule. Vucic swept the presidential elections earlier this year and his right-leaning coalition controls the government, but opposition parties are hoping to undermine his power in Belgrade.

Opposition leaders have accused Vucic of stifling democratic freedoms, exerting pressure on the media and threatening opponents. Protesters on Friday put forward a set of demands, including equal treatment in the media and international observers at the Belgrade vote.

Poles pray en masse at border; Some see anti-Muslim agenda

October 07, 2017

GDANSK, Poland (AP) — Polish Catholics held rosaries and prayed together Saturday along the country's 3,500-kilometer (2,000-mile) border, appealing to the Virgin Mary and God for salvation for Poland and the world in a national event that some felt had anti-Muslim overtones.

The unusual "Rosary to the Borders" event was organized by lay Catholics but was also endorsed by Polish church authorities, with 320 churches from 22 dioceses taking part. The prayers took place from the Baltic Sea coast in the north to the mountains along Poland's southern borders with the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and all along the border of this country of 38 million where more than 90 percent declare themselves Roman Catholics.

Organizers say the prayers at some 4,000 locations commemorated the centenary of the apparitions of Fatima, when three shepherd children in Portugal said the Virgin Mary appeared to them. But the event also commemorated the huge 16th-century naval battle of Lepanto, when a Christian alliance acting on the wishes of the pope defeated Ottoman Empire forces on the Ionian Sea, "thus saving Europe from Islamization," as organizers put it.

Prime Minister Beata Szydlo showed her support by tweeting an image of rosary beads with a crucifix and sending greetings to all the participants. While organizers insisted the prayers Saturday were not directed against any group, some participants cited fears of Islam among their reasons for praying at the border.

Halina Kotarska, 65, traveled 230 kilometers (145 miles) from her home in Kwieciszewo, central Poland, to express gratitude after her 29-year-old son Slawomir survived a serious car wreck this year. She described it as a miracle performed by St. Mary.

She said she was also praying for the survival of Christianity in Poland and Europe against what she sees as an Islamic threat facing the West. "Islam wants to destroy Europe," she said. "They want to turn us away from Christianity."

Poles also prayed in chapels at airports, seen as gateways to the country, while Polish soldiers stationed in Afghanistan prayed at Bagram Airfield there, the broadcaster TVN reported. A leading Polish expert on xenophobia and extremism, Rafal Pankowski, saw the prayers Saturday as a problematic expression of Islamophobia coming at a time of rising anti-Muslim sentiment in Poland, a phenomenon occurring even though the country's Muslim population is tiny.

"The whole concept of doing it on the borders reinforces the ethno-religious, xenophobic model of national identity," said Pankowski, who heads the Never Again association in Warsaw. At the Polish-Czech border near the town of Szklarska Poreba, hundreds of pilgrims arrived in buses and cars to pray at the Karkonosze mountain range. The procession, which included young and old and families pushing children in strollers, was made up of pilgrims who held rosaries and prayed to the Virgin Mary, braving the cold and rain.

"It's a really serious thing for us," said Basia Sibinska, who traveled with her daughter Kasia from Kalisz in central Poland. "Rosaries to the border means that we want to pray for our country. That was a main motive for us to come here. We want to pray for peace, we want to pray for our safety. Of course, everyone comes here with a different motivation. But the most important thing is to create something like a circle of a prayer alongside the entire border, intense and passionate."

In the northern city of Gdansk, people prayed on a beach lapped by waves as seagulls flew above. Krzysztof Januszewski, 45, said that he worries Christian Europe is being threatened by Islamic extremists and by a loss of faith in Christian societies.

"In the past, there were raids by sultans and Turks and people of other faiths against us Christians," said Januszewski, a mechanic who traveled 350 kilometers (220 miles) to Gdansk from Czerwinsk nad Wisla.

"Today Islam is flooding us and we are afraid of this too," he added. "We are afraid of terrorist threats and we are afraid of people departing from the faith."

Janicek reported from near the town of Szklarska Poreba at Poland's border with the Czech Republic.

This story corrects the spelling the name of the town of Kwieciszewo.

Refugee intake at the heart of Germany’s govt formation

2017-10-09

BERLIN - Two weeks after winning elections with a reduced majority, Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed on Sunday to limit Germany's refugee intake in a bid to unite her conservative camp ahead of tough coalition talks to form a new government.

Merkel's team huddled with her Bavarian CSU allies led by Horst Seehofer, who has angrily blamed her decision to allow in over one million asylum seekers since 2015 for the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

After 10 hours of closed-door talks, Merkel's CDU and the CSU agreed they would aim to cap refugees coming to Europe's top economy at 200,000 a year, according to a draft paper -- a formulation close to a long-time Seehofer demand that Merkel had repeatedly rejected.

The goal of the meeting was to settle bitter squabbles so the estranged conservative sister parties can again present a united front in upcoming coalition talks with two smaller parties -- the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the left-leaning and ecologist Greens.

The CSU's beleaguered Seehofer -- who after a vote drubbing faces internal challengers, and state elections next year -- had vowed to close his party's exposed "right flank" and win back AfD voters, crucially by taking a harder line on refugees and immigration.

In an opening salvo Sunday, the CSU had published a list of demands, including capping refugee numbers, a commitment to a "healthy patriotism" and an acknowledgement that "conservatism is sexy again".

"We must fight the AfD head-on -- and fight to get their voters back," said its ten-point list published in mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag.

- 'Fundamental compromise' -

Merkel had long rejected Seehofer's signature demand for an iron-cast "upper limit" of 200,000 refugees a year -- but late Sunday a deal was shaping up that some commentators dubbed an "upper limit light".

After hours of talks to square the circle of their competing positions, "a fundamental compromise has been reached", an alliance source said.

Later, as the marathon talks ended, a party spokesman announced that Merkel and Seehofer would explain the agreement in a joint press conference at 1000 GMT Monday.

The draft deal includes a target of limiting the refugee intake at 200,000 a year, but with caveats. It also says that asylum seekers will not be turned back before their cases are assessed, in line with the German constitution.

The 200,000-figure refers to controlled entries, such as through family reunions, and refugees accepted at the EU level or under a deal between the bloc and Turkey.

If there were a repeat of the chaotic mass migration like that from war-torn Syria and other conflict zones seen in 2015, the government would reassess the issue and consult parliament on a new target figure, according to the draft proposal.

Both CDU and CSU say migrant flows must be reduced through fighting traffickers and better guarding the EU's outside borders.

And the parties also plan a broader immigration law aimed at attracting qualified migrants with labor skills sought by German industry -- matching a core demand of the FDP.

They also want to renew a push to declare three North African nations "safe countries of origin", raising the bar for asylum claims from there -- a demand so far blocked by the Greens, who point to human rights abuses in those countries.

- Odd bedfellows -

The emergence of the anti-immigration AfD, which scored 12.6 percent to enter the opposition benches, has stunned Germany by breaking a long-standing taboo on hard-right parties sitting in the Bundestag.

Its success came at the expense of all the mainstream parties, making it harder for Merkel to form a working majority.

Her only chance now, if she wants to avoid fresh elections that could further boost the AfD, is an alliance with two other parties that make for odd bedfellows, the FDP and Greens.

Such a power pact -- dubbed a "Jamaica coalition" because the three party colors match those of the Caribbean nation's flag -- would be a first at the federal level in Germany.

Tough talks lie ahead as the parties differ on refugees, EU policy and the Greens' core demands, including phasing out coal plants and fossil fuel vehicles.

The Greens' co-leader Cem Ozdemir, voicing some impatience with the divided conservatives, warned that they "must not block the formation of a government for weeks".

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=85278.

'Allah,' 'Ali' writing discovered in Sweden's Viking graves

October 7, 2017

Viking-era burial costumes depicting the names "Allah" and "Ali" were discovered by Swedish researchers last week, raising questions about the relation between Muslim and the Scandinavian civilization.

Archaeology researchers from Uppsala University discovered the silk costumes with Kufic script during excavations in Viking graves located in Sweden's Birka city.

Muslims use the word "Allah" for God, while Ali is the name of Prophet Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law.

The Vikings could have been influenced by Islam and "the idea of an eternal life in paradise after death," Annika Larsson, a researcher in textile archaeology at Uppsala University, told Anadolu Agency Friday.

"In the Quran, it is written that the inhabitants of paradise will wear garments of silk, which along with the text band's inscriptions may explain the widespread occurrence of silk in Viking Age graves," the researcher said in an earlier statement.

Similar Kufic characters were also found in mosaics on burial monuments and mausoleums, primarily in Central Asia, the university said in a statement.

In 2015, Swedish researchers at Stockholm University also discovered a ninth century ring in a Viking grave with an inscription that says "for Allah" or "to Allah."

Following the ring's discovery, researchers concluded that there was interaction between the Vikings and the Muslim civilization and the former carried Muslim goods to their homes.

Source: Daily Sabah.
Link: https://www.dailysabah.com/history/2017/10/07/allah-ali-writing-discovered-in-swedens-viking-graves.

Zimbabwean talk about who will follow Mugabe gets murkier

October 06, 2017

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — He was viewed as a likely successor to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, a longtime ally whose close association with the 93-year-old leader dates to the struggle against white minority rule, Now Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa appears to be falling out of favor, deepening the mystery over who will take over from a man who has ruled since independence in 1980.

Mugabe has led attacks on his old friend, reflecting turmoil within the ruling ZANU-PF party in a country where political uncertainty has fueled problems in a deteriorating economy and increased hardship for many Zimbabweans. The criticism of the vice president, one of two presidential deputies, comes ahead of Mugabe's re-election bid next year and amid a rise in prominence of Defense Minister Sydney Sekeramayi, whose name is popping up more often as a possible successor.

On Thursday, Mnangagwa pledged his "unflinching loyalty" to Mugabe following accusations from Mugabe's wife, Grace Mugabe, and others that he had misled the country by saying recently that he fell ill because he was poisoned.

The fractured opposition, meanwhile, has been unable to channel national discontent into a strong play for power. The main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, has health problems and recently received treatment in neighboring South Africa.

"Mugabe survives on pitting one faction against the other. He elevates one faction, discards it when it begins to feel comfortable and props up another one," said Gabriel Shumba, a Zimbabwean political analyst and human rights lawyer based in South Africa.

The machinations are eerily similar to those that augured the 2014 dismissal of Vice President Joice Mujuru, another former ally of Mugabe who is now an opposition figure. A dominant figure in the ouster of Mujuru who has now set her sights on Mnangagwa is Zimbabwean first lady Grace Mugabe, whose calls for the appointment of a female vice president intensified talk that she eventually wants to take over the top spot from her husband.

So Mnangagwa has dutifully sat through political rallies where the Mugabe couple accused him of leading a faction that seeks power and has endured humiliating barbs from his boss. President Mugabe, for example, told a crowd about allegations that the vice president once left a rival for a woman's affections paralyzed after forcing him to jump from a multi-story building.

"He was told to make a choice between sitting on a hot stove or jump out of the window. He chose to jump and now he is disabled. He could have refused both options but I guess he was afraid," Mugabe said at a rally in Bindura town on Sept. 9.

During the remarks, Mnangagwa and his wife sat stone-faced on the dais. And that wasn't all. Grace Mugabe then piled on, warning Mnangagwa that he might face a similar fate to that of Mujuru, who was also accused of plotting to oust the president.

"I am begging the VP to stop this. I once warned Mujuru and she thought I was joking. Where is she now?" the first lady thundered. The other vice president, Phelekezela Mphoko, has joined in criticism of his colleague, even though he is not considered a front-runner to succeed Mugabe because he lacks a strong political base.

Zimbabwe's constitution says that if the president dies, resigns or is removed from office, the vice president who last stood in as acting president takes over for 90 days, following which the ruling party must appoint a person who takes over until the expiry of the former president's term. Mnangagwa was acting president during Mugabe's trip to the United Nations last month, while Mphoko has previously assumed the role.

Some analysts point to Sekeramayi, the low-key defense minister, as a possible successor. A medical doctor, Sekeramayi appears acceptable to those wary of Mnangagwa, who was in charge of state security when Mugabe unleashed a North Korean-trained brigade to crush dissent in western Zimbabwe in the 1980s. Sekeremayi's name was first brought to the fore by Jonathan Moyo, an ally of Grace Mugabe and a critic of a faction associated with Mnangagwa.

At the Bindura rally, Mugabe said he invited Mnangagwa and Sekeremayi to join the independence war at around the same time, making neither of them senior to the other. His wife said Mugabe summoned Sekeremayi when he suffered diarrhea and thought he was dying; she didn't say when that happened.

"The first family is using the rallies to reconstruct Mnangagwa's image from a war hero to a careless, cruel and divisive individual, unfit to take over. At the same time, he is painting Sekeremayi as equal to Mnangagwa in terms of seniority in the party," said Alex Rusero, an analyst based in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital. He speculated: "All this is to cast Sekeremayi as the chosen one."

Duterte losing favor amid drug killings, wealth allegations

October 09, 2017

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Filipinos' satisfaction with President Rodrigo Duterte has made its steepest drop since he took office last year amid an outcry over unabated drug killings and unresolved allegations that he has unexplained wealth, an independent poll showed.

The Social Weather Stations said its Sept. 23-27 nationwide survey showed Duterte's satisfaction rating dropping by 18 points to 48, a level classified as "good," compared from its last survey in June, when he got a "very good" 66-point rating.

The president's trust rating dropped by 15 points to 60, which is classified as "very good," from his "excellent" grade of 75 points in June, according to the SWS poll released Sunday. Although Duterte generally remains popular, the survey outcome immediately reignited calls by several groups for an end to the killings of mostly poor suspects under his brutal crackdown against illegal drugs and for him to sign a bank secrecy waiver to allow an investigation into allegations of undeclared wealth.

An alliance of civil society groups called Tindig Pilipinas said the steep drop in Duterte's satisfaction and trust ratings means the "honeymoon is over." "The huge drop in the president's rating must serve notice to him: the people expect nothing but the truth on the allegations of corruption, ill-gotten wealth, and drug smuggling facilitation leveled against him and members of his family," the alliance said. "Mr. President, we reiterate our call: sign the bank waiver!"

"The people are now seeing through the hype and fake news, and are realizing that change is not coming under President Duterte's watch," left-wing Rep. Emmi de Jesus said, citing "nonstop" drug killings, the rise in prices of commodities and the entry of a large shipment of illegal drugs through the Bureau of Customs in Manila.

There was no immediate comment from Duterte, but he has repeatedly denied that he condones extrajudicial killings of drug suspects even though he has publicly threatened drug dealers with death. He won the presidency with a wide margin last year on a pledge to eradicate widespread crimes, especially drug trafficking and use, and corruption.

Police officials said the arrests of more than 100,000 suspected drug offenders in 71,393 anti-drug raids since July last year help prove that suspects only get killed when they fight back and threaten law enforcers.

The drug killings recently came under renewed criticisms after police shot to death a teenage student they said was a drug dealer who drew a gun while being arrested. Witnesses, however, said the student was shot to death in a dark alley while pleading for his life.

Duterte has also denied stashing undeclared funds in joint bank accounts with family members, saying he would resign if the allegations were proven. He has refused, however, to heed a demand by opposition Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV for him to sign a waiver to allow investigators to examine the bank accounts.

SWS polled 1,500 adults nationwide in face-to-face interviews for the survey, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

Philippines hails US as top ally, welcomes war games

Manila (AFP)
Oct 5, 2017

The Philippines' military chief hailed the United States as his nation's "number one ally" and announced a return of regular war games, following President Rodrigo Duterte's call for warmer ties.

Duterte last week vowed to be "friendly" with the United States, signalling an end to relentless criticism that included a vow to end all joint military exercises and branding then US president Barack Obama a "son of a whore".

Military chief General Eduardo Ano, returning from Hawaii where he met US Pacific Command chief Admiral Harry Harris last week, said Thursday the allies had agreed to increase joint military exercises for 2018 after they were scaled down this year.

"The president said: 'I want to be friendlier to the US'. So we have a closer relationship and more exercises," Ano told reporters in Manila.

"He (Duterte) said to continue engagement with the United States. They are still our number one ally."

Ano said the joint exercises next year would focus on counter-terrorism, disaster response and even territorial defense.

As he sought to loosen his nation's alliance with the United States, Duterte also looked to build warmer relations with China and Russia.

During a visit to Beijing a year ago he announced his nation's "separation" from the United States.

He later explained he was angry at Obama for criticizing his war on drugs, which has since seen thousands killed and led rights groups to warn Duterte may be orchestrating a crime against humanity.

Duterte said last week the dispute was "water under the bridge" as he thanked the United States for helping the Philippines fight Islamic militants who have occupied parts of the southern city of Marawi since May 23.

The US has provided intelligence, weapons and training to local forces trying to retake Marawi.

The fighting has claimed more than 900 lives and raised fears the Islamic State group is trying to establish a Southeast Asian base in the Philippines.

Ano said on Thursday the Philippines would still pursue closer defense ties with China.

Ano was speaking at a ceremony at which China turned over 3,000 assault rifles and ammunition worth 168 million pesos ($3.2 million) to the Philippine military for use in fighting terrorism.

"The US is not our enemy. China is not our enemy. Our utmost priority is the interest of the country," Ano said.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Philippines_hails_US_as_top_ally_welcomes_war_games_999.html.

Private companies are launching a new space race

London, UK (The Conversation)
Oct 05, 2017

The space race between the USA and Russia started with a beep from the Sputnik satellite exactly 60 years ago (October 4, 1957) and ended with a handshake in space just 18 years later. The handshake was the start of many decades of international collaboration in space. But over the past decade there has been a huge change.

The space environment is no longer the sole preserve of government agencies. Private companies have entered the exploration domain and are propelling the sector forward more vigorously and swiftly than would be the case if left to governments alone.

It could be argued that a new space race has begun, in which private companies are competing against each other and against government organisations. But this time it is driven by a competition for customers rather than the urge to show dominance by being first to achieve a certain goal. So who are the main players and how will they change the science, technology and politics of space exploration?

Put the phrase "private space exploration" into a search engine and a wealth of links emerges. Several have titles such as: "Six private companies that could launch humans into space", "The world's top 10 most innovative companies in space" or "10 major players in the private sector space race". What is immediately apparent is that practically all these companies are based in the US.

There is a big difference between building and launching satellites into low Earth orbit for telecommunications and sending crew and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) and beyond. Private companies in several nations have been engaged in the satellite market for many years. Their contributions to the development of non-governmental space exploration has helped to lay the trail for entrepreneurs with the vision and resources to develop their own pathways to space.

Today, several companies in the US are looking very specifically at human spaceflight. The three that are perhaps furthest down the road are SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. The main goals of all three companies is to reduce the cost of access to space - mainly through reuse of launchers and spacecraft - making space accessible to people who are not specially trained astronauts. One thing these companies have in common is the private passion of their chief executives.

SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, a charismatic entrepreneur, engineer, inventor and investor. The ambition of SpaceX is "to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets". To this end, the company has specialized in the design, manufacture and launch of rockets, providing direct competition to the United Launch Alliance (between Boeing and Lockheed Martin) that had been the contract holder of choice for launch of NASA and Department of Defense rocket launches.

Its success has been spectacular. Having developed the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft, it became the first commercial company to dock a spacecraft at the ISS in 2012. The firm now has a regular run there, carrying cargo. But so far, no astronauts. However, the Falcon Heavy is comparable to the Saturn 5 rocket that launched the Apollo astronauts, and SpaceX has designed its vehicle with a view to sending astronauts to the moon by 2018, and to Mars as early as 2023.

On September 29, Musk refined his plans, announcing the BFR project (which I like to pretend stands for Big F**king Rocket). This would replace the Falcon and Dragon spacecraft - and would not only transport cargo and explorers to the moon and Mars, but could also reduce travel times between cities on Earth. Musk calculates it could take as little as 29 minutes to fly from London to New York.

Whether the company succeeds in sending astronauts to the moon in 2018 remains to be seen. Either way, a lot could be going on then - 2018 is also the year when Blue Origin, founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the technology and retail entrepreneur behind Amazon, aims to launch people to space. But its ambition is different from that of SpaceX. Blue Origin is focusing on achieving commercially available, sub-orbital human spaceflight - targeting the space tourism industry.

The company has developed a vertical launch vehicle (New Shepard, after the first American astronaut in space, Alan Shepard) that can reach the 100km altitude used to define where "space" begins. The rocket then descends back to Earth, with the engines firing towards the end of the descent, allowing the spacecraft to land vertically. Test flights with no passengers have made successful demonstrations of the technology. The trip to space and back will take about 10 minutes.

But Blue Origin has got some competition from Virgin Galactic, which describes itself as "the world's first commercial spaceline". Founded in 2004 by Richard Branson, also a technology and retail entrepreneur, it plans to carry six passengers at a time into sub-orbital space and give them about six minutes of weightlessness in the course of a two and a half hour flight.

The technology differs from that of SpaceX and Blue Origin in that the launch into space is not from the ground, but from a jet airplane. This mothership flies to an altitude of about 18km (about twice as high as regular aircraft fly) and releases a smaller, rocket-powered spacecraft (SpaceShip Two) which is propelled to an altitude of about 100km. The program has been delayed by technical difficulties - and then by the tragic loss of pilot Mike Alsbury, when SpaceShip Two exploded in mid-air during a test flight in 2014. No date is yet set for the first passengers to fly.

There's also the Google Lunar XPrize competition, announced in 2007, with the tagline: "Welcome to the new space race". The aim of the prize is to launch a robotic mission to the moon, place a lander on the surface and drive 50 meters, sending back high-quality images and video. The competition is still in progress. Five privately funded teams must launch their spacecraft to the moon by the end of 2017.

Powerful international ties

The changes are taking place against a backdrop of tried and tested international collaboration in space, which took off in earnest at the end of the space race. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the US and Russia space programs complemented each other beautifully - though perhaps not intentionally. Following the cessation of Apollo in 1975, the US space program focused its efforts on robotic exploration of the solar system.

The Voyager probes gave us amazing images of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The Mariner and Viking missions to Mars led to Pathfinder, Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity. Messenger orbited Mercury and Magellan orbited Venus. When New Horizons launched to Pluto in 2006, it was a mission to visit the last planet left unexplored in the solar system.

Russia, on the other hand, pursued the goal of human spaceflight, with its incredibly successful Mir orbiting space station and its program of flights to transfer cosmonauts and cargo backwards and forwards to Mir. Human spaceflight in the US revived with the Space Shuttle and its mission to build and occupy the International Space Station (ISS). The list of nations that contribute to the ISS continues to grow. The shuttle program finished in 2011 and, since its successor Orion (built in collaboration with European Space Agency, ESA) is not due to come into service until at least 2023, the international community has been reliant on Russia to keep the ISS fueled and inhabited.

Today, as well as the US and Russia, there are strong, vibrant and successful space programs in Europe, Japan, India and China. The European Space Agency was established just two months before the historic handshake of 1975, following many years of independent aeronautical engineering research by individual nations. Similarly, the Chinese, Japanese and Indian space agencies can trace their heritages back to the 1960s. A number of smaller countries including the United Arab Emirates also have ambitious plans.

Of course these countries also compete against each other. There has been widespread speculation that the entry of China into the field was sufficient to introduce a fresh imperative to the US space program. China has a well-developed space program and is currently working towards having a space station in orbit around the Earth by about 2020. A prototype, Tiangong-2, has been in space for almost a year, and was occupied by two astronauts (or "taikonauts") for a month.

China has also had three successful missions to the moon. And its next mission, Chang'e 5, due to launch towards the end of 2017, is designed to bring samples from the moon back to Earth. China also has a declared intent of landing taikonauts on the moon by 2025 - the same time frame in which the US will be testing its new Orion spacecraft in orbit around the moon.

But while there's an element of competition, the success of the past few decades certainly shows that it is possible to collaborate in space even when tensions rise on the ground. Indeed, space exploration may even act as a buffer zone from international politics, which is surely something worth having. It will be interesting to see how a wider role in space exploration for private companies will affect such international collaborations, especially since so much of the effort is based in the USA.

Healthy competition or dangerous game?

A benefit of the entry of the private sector into space exploration has been recognition of the high-tech companies that contribute to the growth of the economy as valuable targets for investment. Indeed, a recent presentation at an international investment bank - under a heading of "Space; the next investment frontier" - declared that "investment interest has helped reduce launch costs and spur innovation across related industries, opening up a new chapter in the history of the space economy".

One of the last engagements of Barack Obama's presidency was to chair the Whitehouse Frontiers Conference, where space exploration was discussed as much within the context of US industry as within the drive to explore new worlds. Contributors to the conference included NASA - but overwhelmingly the speakers were from private technology and investment companies.

Perhaps it is cynical to say - but once investment starts to flow, lawyers won't be far behind. And that is another aspect of the explosion of interest in space commerce and tourism. Laws, statutes and other regulations are necessary to govern the international nature of space exploration. At the moment, the United Nations, through its Office for Outer Space Affairs, is responsible for promoting international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space. It also oversees operation of the Outer Space Treaty, which provides a framework for the governance of space and activities that might take place. While the obvious lack of "space police" means that it cannot be practically enforced, it has never actually been violated.

The operation is designed along similar lines to the international treaties that oversee maritime activities and the exploration of Antarctica. This is the closest that there is to international legislation and, since coming into operation in 1967 with the three inaugural signatories of the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the (then) USSR, the treaty has been signed by 106 countries (including China and North Korea). It is necessary to have such controls because although the risks that surround space exploration are high, potential rewards are even higher.

If we look at the way more conventional businesses operate, such as supermarkets, competition drives prices down, and there is little reason to believe that competition between space companies would follow a different model. In which case, greater risks might be taken in order to increase profitability. There is no evidence for this so far - but as the field develops and additional private companies move into space exploration - there will be a higher probability of accident or emergency.

The treaty says that a state launching a probe or satellite is liable to pay compensation for damage when accidents occur. However, the costs of space exploration are astronomical and crippling to poorer countries, making them increasingly depend on commercial launchers. But if a private company launches an object that subsequently causes damage in space, the struggling economy will have to pick up the bill. The treaty may therefore need to be updated to make private companies more liable. There are also serious issues around the safety of astronauts, who have the legal right to a safe existence when in outer space. But even lawyers aren't sure whether the law does - or should - extend to private astronauts.

Looking to the future, there will be a need for an expanded version of a Civil Aviation Authority, directing and controlling routes, launches and landings on Earth, and between and on planetary bodies. All the safety and security considerations of air and sea travel will pertain to space travel at a vastly enhanced level, because the costs and risks are so much higher.

There will have to be firm and well-understood protocols in the event of a spacecraft crashing, or two spacecraft colliding. Not to mention piracy or the possibility of hijack. All this might sound a little gloomy, taking the dash and exhilaration from space exploration, but it will be a necessary development that opens up the era of space travel for citizens beyond those with deep pockets.

The original space race resulted from the ideas and skills of visionary theoretician engineers including: Robert H Goddard, Wernher von Braun, Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky... Is it too far a stretch to think that the second space race is propelled by a new generation of entrepreneurs, including Bezos, Branson and Musk? If this is the situation, then I would hope that the main enabling factor in the pursuit of space endeavors is not possession of wealth, but that vision, ingenuity and a wish for the betterment of human are the main driving forces.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Private_companies_are_launching_a_new_space_race_999.html.

US spacewalkers repair aging ISS robotic arm

Miami (AFP)
Oct 5, 2017

Two NASA astronauts wrapped up a successful spacewalk Thursday to repair the International Space Station's aging robotic arm, the US space agency said.

The outing by Americans Randy Bresnik and Mark Vande Hei ended at 3 pm (1900 GMT), marking a "very successful day," a NASA spokesman said.

The spacewalk lasted six hours and 55 minutes, almost a half hour longer than planned because the pair managed to tack on a few extra jobs that had been planned for next week.

Their main work involved the latching end of the Canadian-made arm, known as Canadarm2.

They replaced one of two Latching End Effectors (LEE) which had lost the ability to grip effectively, said the US space agency.

The 57.7 foot-long (18 meter) arm was instrumental in assembling the space station and is used to reach out and grab approaching cargo ships.

The robotic arm has been a key piece of equipment at the orbiting outpost for more than 16 years, but began malfunctioning in August.

NASA wants to restore its full capability before the next US cargo ship arrives next month, carrying supplies for the six astronauts living in orbit.

Thursday's spacewalk was the first of three scheduled spacewalks this month aimed at repairing and maintaining various pieces of equipment outside the ISS, and was the 203rd spacewalk in the history of the space station.

Vande Hei and Bresnik plan to step out on another spacewalk October 10, with the third set for October 18.

"The second and third spacewalks will be devoted to lubricating the newly installed end effector and replacing cameras on the left side of the station's truss and the right side of the station's US Destiny laboratory," NASA said.

Source: Robo Daily.
Link: http://www.robodaily.com/reports/US_spacewalkers_repair_aging_ISS_robotic_arm_999.html.

Protesters rally across Russia on Putin's 65th birthday

October 08, 2017

MOSCOW (AP) — In a challenge to President Vladimir Putin on his 65th birthday, protesters rallied across Russia on Saturday, heeding opposition leader Alexei Navalny's call to pressure authorities into letting him enter the presidential race.

Police allowed demonstrators in Moscow to rally near the Kremlin in an apparent desire to avoid marring Putin's birthday with a crackdown. A bigger rally in St. Petersburg, Putin's hometown, was disbanded by police after protesters blocked traffic and attempted to break through police cordons.

The rallies came as Navalny himself is serving a 20-day jail term for calling for an earlier unsanctioned protest. In Moscow, several hundred protesters, most of them students, gathered on downtown Pushkinskaya Square, waving Russian flags and chanting "Russia will be free!" and "Let Navalny run!" Police warned them that the rally wasn't sanctioned and urged them to disperse, but let the protest continue for hours without trying to break it up.

Mostly teenage protesters later walked down Moscow's Tverskaya Street toward the Kremlin, shouting "Putin, go away!" and "Future without Putin!" Police lines blocked them from approaching Red Square and they turned back. Several hours later, some made a new attempt to march on the Kremlin, shouting "Putin thief!" and briefly attempted to block traffic.

"We battle for Russia to be free from Putinism. Because the power we have now is feudal, we have no freedom of speech, no freedom of choice," said protester Stepan Fesov. The authorities' decision to refrain from breaking up the Moscow protest contrasted with a more forceful response to previous Moscow rallies called by Navalny, when police detained more than 1,000 demonstrators.

Police also didn't intervene at first with a bigger unsanctioned rally in St. Petersburg, where nearly 2,000 gathered at Marsovo Pole park and then marched across the city chanting "Russia without Putin!" and "Putin, retire!"

Shortly after, police broke up the demonstration, detaining nearly 40 after some tried to break through police lines. Police said those detained were released and will face fines for blocking traffic.

One detainee, Marina Bukina, said she was injured in the head when a police officer hit her with a club. After the St. Petersburg march was disbanded, several hundred protesters continued rallying for hours at the downtown Vosstaniya Square as police stood by without intervening.

"Putin has been in charge since I was born," said Dmitry Samokhin, an 18-year-old protester in St. Petersburg. "The country is mired in stagnation and I want to see changes." Navalny's headquarters called protests in 80 cities. Most were not sanctioned by authorities, but police largely refrained from dispersing the rallies that drew from a few dozen to a few hundred people. The Siberian city of Yakutsk saw a tough police response, with a few dozen demonstrators reportedly detained.

Navalny has declared his intention to run for president in the March 2018 election, even though a criminal conviction that he calls politically motivated bars him from running. The 41-year-old anti-corruption crusader has organized waves of protests this year, raising the pressure on the Kremlin.

Putin hasn't yet announced whether he would seek re-election, but he's widely expected to run. With his current approval ratings topping 80 percent, he is set to easily win another six-year term in a race against torpid veterans of past election campaigns, like Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov.

Navalny argues that the high level of support for Putin comes from the lack of real political competition and urged supporters to help him get registered. "(Putin's) 86 percent approval rating exists in a political vacuum," he said. "It's like asking a person who has been fed rutabaga his entire life how eatable they find it and the rating will be quite high. Listen, there are other things that are better than rutabaga."

The sarcastic analogy demonstrated Navalny's stinging style, which has helped him win broad support among the young. Navalny has worked to expand his reach with videos exposing official corruption and YouTube live broadcasts. His documentary about Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's alleged ill-gotten wealth has been viewed nearly 25 million times since its release in March, helping galvanize protests.

Following Navalny's call, tens of thousands took to the streets in dozens of cities and towns across Russia in March and June in the biggest show of defiance since the 2011-2012 anti-government protests.

Unlike those past rallies, which were driven by anti-corruption slogans, Navalny this time focused on rallying support for his own presidential bid — a reason some gave for the smaller protest in Moscow.

"Some people dislike Putin and the government, but that doesn't mean they are willing to unequivocally back Navalny," political analyst Valery Solovei said on Dozhd television.

Titova reported from St. Petersburg. Ahmad Katib in Moscow contributed to this report.

Nobel Peace Prize awarded to anti-nuclear campaign group

October 06, 2017

OSLO, Norway (AP) — The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a group of mostly young activists pushing for a global treaty to ban the cataclysmic bombs.

The award of the $1.1-million prize comes amid heightened tensions over both North Korea's aggressive development of nuclear weapons and President Donald Trump's persistent criticism of the deal to curb Iran's nuclear program.

The prize committee wanted "to send a signal to North Korea and the U.S. that they need to go into negotiations," Oeivind Stenersen, a historian of the peace prize, told The Associated Press. "The prize is also coded support to the Iran nuclear deal. I think this was wise because recognizing the Iran deal itself could have been seen as giving support to the Iranian state."

The Geneva-based ICAN has campaigned actively for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons adopted by the United Nations in July, but which needs ratification from 50 countries. Only three countries have ratified it so far. It organized events globally in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversaries of the World War II U.S. atomic bombings of the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Last month in Berlin, ICAN protesters teamed up with other organizations to demonstrate outside the U.S. and North Korean embassies against the possibility of nuclear war between the two countries. Wearing masks of Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, protesters posed next to a dummy nuclear missile and a large banner reading "Time to Go: Ban Nuclear Weapons."

The group "has been a driving force in prevailing upon the world's nations to pledge to cooperate ... in efforts to stigmatize, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons," Norwegian Nobel Committee chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said in the announcement.

The prize "sends a message to all nuclear-armed states and all states that continue to rely on nuclear weapons for security that it is unacceptable behavior. We will not support it, we will not make excuses for it, we can't threaten to indiscriminately slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians in the name of security. That's not how you build security," ICAN executive director Beatrice Fihn told reporters in Geneva.

She said that she "worried that it was a prank" after getting a phone call just minutes before the official Peace Prize announcement was made. Fihn said she didn't believe it until she heard the name of the group proclaimed on television.

ICAN leaders later popped open some bubbly to celebrate the prize, and held up a banner with the name of the organization in their small Geneva headquarters. "We are trying to send very strong signals to all states with nuclear arms, nuclear-armed states — North Korea, U.S., Russia, China, France, U.K., Israel, all of them, India, Pakistan — it is unacceptable to threaten to kill civilians," she said.

Reiss-Andersen noted that similar prohibitions have been reached on chemical and biological weapons, land mines and cluster munitions. "Nuclear weapons are even more destructive, but have not yet been made the object of a similar international legal prohibition," she said.

Reiss-Andersen said "through its inspiring and innovative support for the U.N. negotiations on a treaty banning nuclear weapons, ICAN has played a major part in bringing about what in our day and age is equivalent to an international peace congress."

Asked by journalists whether the prize was essentially symbolic, given that no international measures against nuclear weapons have been reached, Reiss-Andersen said "What will not have an impact is being passive."

Jamey Keaten in Geneva, George Jahn in Vienna and Jim Heintz in Stockholm contributed to this story.