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Scholars urge Biden to stop Title 42 expulsions and Mexico to end arrest of migrants – WDTN.com

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

Group fears humanitarian crisis if migrant bottleneck continues at border; cartels win when expelled families turn to smugglers, they say

by: Julian Resendiz

U.S. Customs and Border Protection operations following the implementation of Title 42 USC 265 at the northern and southern land borders. U.S. Border Patrol agents transport a group of individuals encountered near Sasabe, Ariz. to the U.S. Mexico border on March 22, 2020. CBP Photo by Jerry Glaser

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) A group of nearly 100 North American scholars is calling on the Biden administration to phase out COVID-19 related expulsions of migrants at the border and for Mexico to refrain from stopping international asylum-seekers crossing its territory.

This, to reduce violence faced by international citizens passing through Mexico and facing a bottleneck at the U.S. border that forces them to resort to smugglers, the scholars said in a teleconference on Monday.

As you increase the enforcement on asylum-seekers going through Mexico, what you get is people hiding, people taking more dangerous routes and getting involved with dangerous people along the way [] and it becomes a huge problem, said Jeremy Slack, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso.

The scholars said they dont see an immigration crisis on the border, but they fear prolonged and unnecessary detentions in the United States, mass expulsions of families and individuals to Mexico and a Mexican system lacking adequate services and resources could bring a humanitarian crisis. The scholars on Monday proposed:

The politics of enforcement and (militarization) only favor the coyotes (smugglers) and increase the chances that a person will suffer abuse, said Emiliano Diaz Carnero, a researcher at Mexicos Northern Border College (COLEF). In times of a pandemic [] detention increases the risk of contact. We must look for alternatives to detention to dismantle the structure of crime and human trafficking.

The scholars argued the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have stabilized in both Mexico and the United States, so the public health Title 42 order is no longer justified.

People coming in from the outside have generally been testing at normal rates compared to people inside the United States, said Josiah Heyman, professor of anthropology and director of UTEPs Center for Interamerican and Border Studies. So, its not a question of it coming in from the outside.

Heyman said all asylum-seekers could be tested for COVID-19 before being allowed to enter the United States, using the MPP wind-down model. Asylum-seekers placed in that program, which is also known as Remain in Mexico, are being re-admitted by the hundreds in coordination with various United Nations agencies operating in Mexico.

People were tested in Mexico before coming here. There are pathways so people testing positive can be quarantined. This is going to take planning, preparation and some investment, but we know how to do it; its already been done with the unwinding of MPP, Heyman said.

The group is also calling for the Biden administration to stop practices such as expelling migrants late at night in small, remote Mexican towns south of Columbus, New Mexico and Sasabe, Arizona, and taking families who crossed the border at South Texas to be deported hundreds of miles away.

Group members said they will share their recommendations with lawmakers and institutions in Mexico and the United States.

Visit theBorderReport.com homepagefor the latest exclusive stories and breaking news about issues along the United States-Mexico border.

We Know the Harvard Study on UP is Not from Harvard. Its Also Not Much of a Study. – The Wire

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

Last week, as reported cases of COVID-19 witnessed an unprecedented spike in Uttar Pradesh and the rest of India, several news outlets ran breathless stories about how a study by Harvard University had lauded the Yogi Adityanath governments handling of the migrant crisis last year.

While most of these outlets are obscure or openly identified with the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindustan Times was the only national newspaper to carry the news item. Its story was datelined Lucknow and ran with the headline, Harvard study praises UP Govt for its handling of migrant crisis during pandemic.

The Hindustan Times story, like all the others, gave no details about this Harvard study no title or authorship or link or methodology. The only information the newspaper provided was that this study had been shared by the government. Others said they had obtained the story through an unnamed UP government spokesman.

The spokesman said the Yogi government worked towards the multi-fold agenda of providing transportation facilities, delivering ration kits, and running healthcare centres for migrants, Times Now said. Times Now is owned by Bennet Coleman Company Ltd, publishers of the Times of India. The exact same sentence also appeared in the HTand in the story carried by the pro-establishment Swarajya magazine.

The only problem with these stories is that the 72-page report in question a copy of which is with The Wire is not from Harvard but Haryana. And it is not much of a study either, being bereft of the kind of references or field-based evidence one normally associates with a research paper. Worse still, the report does not even say some of the things the UP government claims it does.

For example, the Hindustan Times reported:

The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh (UP) handled the migrant crisis most adroitly according to a study by Harvard University shared by the government.

However, these words do not appear anywhere in the study.

According to AltNews, these reports were all the result of a message shared by a UP government official on a WhatsApp group for correspondents, many of whose publications simply cut and paste the government handout and passed it off as their own story.

Had any of these media outlets insisted on some corroboration of the UP governments claims, they would have realised that the study in question was not by Harvard or any of its schools or departments but by the Gurgaon-based Institute for Competitiveness (IFC).

Cover of the Institute for Competitiveness report on Uttar Pradesh.

Titled, Covid-19 & the Migrant Crisis Resolution: A Report on Uttar Pradesh, the reports authors are Amit Kapoor and Manisha Kapoor. Amit Kapoor is honorary chairman of the IFC and editor-in-chief of a magazine called Thinkers, while Manisha Kapoor is a senior researcher at the institute. Neither author appears to have done any scholarly work on Uttar Pradesh before.

The report does not have a section for references or a bibliography with details of the journal papers, data sources and/or newspaper articles referred to for the research. It only lists the UP government, a COVID-19 data tracker and (unidentified) migration studies by scholar Chinmay Tumbe as its main data sources. There are also 12 footnotes, many of which are media reports of official UP government announcements.

A footnote on the first page acknowledges all those who helped the authors in the process of the study. Apart from financial support from the Gates Foundation, the authors openly acknowledge the central role the Uttar Pradesh government itself played in guiding the study from conceptualisation to completion. Insightful feedback was offered by Mr. Sanjay Goyal (Secretary, Disaster Management, U.P. Government).

Acknowledgments listed on the first page of the UP report.

K.V. Raju, who is economic adviser to UP chief minister, has been thanked for guiding from conceptualisation to completion, besides making suggestions on the earlier drafts. Awanish Awasthi, who is additional chief secretary, has been credited with enabling and coordinating this entire process with different departments. Awasthi is known to be close to chief minister Yogi Adityanath and has been referred to as his right hand man and as the mini CM.

The study itself essentially consists of a summation of official claims about how the state government acted, all taken at face value without actually assessing what the impact of its policies actually were on the ground. There are no interviews with migrant workers, academics, volunteers. Reports in the media that highlighted problems with the states handling of the migrant issue do not figure at all.

Apart from the fear that its Harvard claim would be exposed, the UP chief ministers office might have decided against circulating what is evidently an authorised study because the text does not actually shower a lot of praise on the UP government.

Contrary to media reports, our study doesnt conclude the UP government handled the migrant crisis more effectively than other states. The document is not a comparative statement on the handling of the crisis by different states. It is documentation pertaining to the effort of the Uttar Pradesh government and extracting insights from the same, Amit Kapoor told AltNews.

But some of the details in the study and the conclusions drawn are quite dubious nevertheless. For instance, it credits the UP government for arranging transport for migrant workers who wanted to return to the state at the time the lockdown was announced and then later when it was extended. The facts on the ground are rather more complex.

What the report ignores

While the UP government did arrange public transport in some parts of the state in certain periods during the migrant crisis, its performance was quite chequered. The study overlooked the fact that the UP government at one point had even denied entry to migrants coming in from other states who had been able to arrange buses. Some migrant workers were sprayed with chemicals to sanitise them.

When the Congress party tried to arrange buses for migrant workers who had been stranded and wanted to return to UP from other states, the UP government denied it permission and did not arrange transport on its own.

The Wire also documented the plight of workers in western UP who were walking to their homes from Delhi, Noida and Ghaziabad when public transport of the UP government was totally absent.

Next, the study said that the UP government set up 503 hospitals for COVID-19, again without citing the source for this information. Given that UPs population is 204 million, this implies that if this information is true 4 lakh people in the state are dependent on one hospital. As we see now with the COVID-19 situation unravelling in UP, the government was anything but prepared.

It also credited the UP government with providing ration and cooked food through community kitchens to migrant workers who were travelling or were stranded. The study also applauded the government for geo-tagging the community kitchens by collaborating with Google. It did not specify the benefits of this geo-tagging and to whom they would accrue if they do accrue.

While there were several reports of migrant workers suffering due to non-provision of ration, none of this is mentioned in the study. At least seven people died due to starvation in UP during the COVID-19 period as per a database maintained by scholars Kanika Sharma, Aman, Thejesh GN and Krushna.

The Wire had also documented the plight of several migrant workers from Jharkhand who were stranded near Meerut with help coming only from good samaritans and not from the government. In fact, most of the community kitchens at the time had been set up by individuals and NGOs and not by governments in the country.

The study credits the government for setting up screening centres and quarantine facilities but forgot to mention that the state of the facilities was such that some migrants died by suicide. At least one worker died in UP while conducting fogging activities using chemicals supplied by the government. A five year old from a Dalit family died in Agra in August after going without food because the family didnt have employment and no ration card to access subsidised food.

In fact, the most non-virus deaths during the COVID-19 period have occurred in Uttar Pradesh according to the database. Of the 991 people who died in the country, 207, or more than 20% died in Uttar Pradesh. Several migrant workers died while on their way back home due to accidents and exhaustion.

The study too, in a rather feeble manner, points out that the UP government needs to do more. Although the Uttar Pradesh government has taken steps to build economic opportunities for them closer to home using existing schemes as well as by signing new MoUs, it is important to develop a long-term employment generation plan. The plan should be based on existing strengths of the state as well as the skill set of the labour force, it concludes.

Wrong to use Harvard tag

Though the Institute for Competitiveness claims to be the Indian knot in the global network of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness (ISC) at Harvard Business School, both the IFC and ISC told AltNews that it is incorrect to refer to the UP report as a Harvard study. The IFC also said that the Harvard logo should not have been used on the cover and will be removed.

While the Adityanath government can hardly be blamed for doing its best to oversell the IFC report, the ease with which the government has been able to plant false and misleading information in some of the countrys leading news outlets is a cause for alarm. Despite ample evidence in the public domain about the falseness of the Harvard claim, none of the media platforms which fell for this official deception have so far moved to issue clarifications to their readers.

See more here:

We Know the Harvard Study on UP is Not from Harvard. Its Also Not Much of a Study. - The Wire

Colombia gives nearly 1 million Venezuelan migrants legal status and right to work – The Conversation US

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

Colombia will grant legal status to all Venezuelan migrants who fled there since 2016 to escape their countrys economic collapse and political crisis.

The bold new policy which will give nearly 1 million undocumented migrants rights to legal employment, health care, education and Colombian banking services for 10 years is driven by both empathy and pragmatism, says Colombian president Ivan Duque.

Theyll likely stay for more than a decade, Duque told NPR on March 3, 2021. So its better toopen them the opportunity to contribute also to the Colombian economy.

Venezuelan arrivals to Colombia are not confined to refugee camps, so they live scattered across the country. Documenting and absorbing so many migrants who often arrive on foot, with only a handful of personal belongings and no valid ID has been a challenge. Even rich countries like the U.S. struggle to handle mass migration.

But in some ways Colombia itself no stranger to political strife and displacement is uniquely prepared for this migration crisis.

Colombia has received the brunt of the exodus from neighboring Venezuela since 2015.

When many other South American countries closed their borders with Venezuela, Colombia offered a series of two-year permits giving about 700,000 Venezuelans the right to work and access to health care between 2017 and 2020.

Together with the new legalization plan covering 1 million additional migrants, nearly all the roughly 1.7 million Venezuelans who have come to Colombia since 2015 will have some form of legal status. New arrivals who are legally processed in the next two years will also be covered.

Colombia is not wealthy. But Colombians understand better than many what it means to be driven from your home.

Over 8 million of Colombias 50 million people have been displaced by ongoing civil conflict since the 1990s. At least 1 million moved into neighboring Venezuela, seeking safety and opportunity. A government peace agreement with the FARC guerrilla group in 2016 quelled but did not end violence in Colombia.

Because of this history, international organizations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and World Food Program have worked in Colombia for decades. Today, the U.N.s refugee agency and International Organization for Migration are leading a group of 73 international organizations and agencies to align their work with Colombias national humanitarian efforts. The group works in 14 states across Colombia, providing assistance that ranges from distributing COVID-19 hygiene kits to enrolling migrant children in school.

The Colombian government also has some 50 agencies dedicated to helping Colombians displaced by armed conflict. Now many are adapting that experience to help Venezuelan migrants.

Since 2019 we have interviewed over a dozen government officials, lawyers and civil society representatives in two Colombian departments, or states, that have received high numbers of Venezuelan migrants: Atlntico and Norte de Santander. This work was part of a broader study on how countries manage mass migration.

At the religious charity Secretariado de Pastoral Social-Critas, part of the Catholic Archdiocese of the city of Barranquilla, in Atlntico, the longtime director said the migrant situation today looks a lot like it did decades ago when Colombias civil conflict peaked in the Atlntico region, with people wandering around, not knowing anyone and not sure what to do or where to go. Then as now, they slept in the parks and on the streets.

We already lived it in the '90s, said the director of Pastoral Social.

Back then, the group helped the Colombians displaced by fighting to find food and shelter. Now many of its clients are Venezuelan.

The nonprofit Opcin Legal an umbrella organization that manages refugee programs for the U.N. has a similar origin story.

At its start 21 years ago, staffers worked in some of the most difficult conflict regions in Colombia, training the nonprofits that help displaced Colombians in accounting and legal processes, among other technical functions.

Now Opcin Legal offers Venezuelan migrants free legal advice about getting Colombian health care and education, among other services. Using a nationwide network of 22 Colombian universities developed over many years, it trains students and professors to extend the reach of its legal support programs to Venezuelan migrants.

In 2019, nearly 80 million people across the globe mostly Syrians, Venezuelans, Afghans and South Sudanese were driven from their homes by crime, climate change, chronic poverty, war, political instability and disaster, according to the U.N. an all-time high. Many will spend years or decades waiting for a permanent solution, whether that be settling locally, returning home or finding a new country to make a life.

Colombias new legalization plan reflects an assessment that Venezuelas collapse is a long-term challenge and that integrating migrants is a better solution, economically and socially, than trying to keep out or expel them.

[Youre smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversations authors and editors. You can get our highlights each weekend.]

Colombia is being internationally applauded for its humanitarianism. But equipping hospitals and schools to handle the needs of this rapidly growing and often very needy population will require a lot of money. And most of it will have to come from the international community, because Colombia does not have the money to do it single-handedly. Yet the Venezuelan migrant crisis is a chronically underfunded area of humanitarian work.

The legalization plan also risks inflaming anti-migrant sentiments in Colombia. Particularly in border areas, some blame rising violence on migration though evidence shows Venezuelan migrants are more likely to be crime victims than perpetrators.

And Colombia still has domestic migration problems of its own. Dissident FARC members, other guerrilla groups, drug cartels and insurgencies continue to battle over territory and resources, displacing 70,865 more Colombians last year alone.

The Colombian government is betting that the U.N. and international agencies will help it fulfill its ambitious goal of welcoming 1.7 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants.

If it works, that money would improve government services for all Colombians, too.

Lia Castillo, Liss Romero and Lydia Sa conducted research, documentation and analysis for this story.

Colombia gives nearly 1 million Venezuelan migrants legal status and right to work - The Conversation US

The dramatic story of Wilton, the Nicaraguan child found crying on the US-Mexico border – EL PAS in English

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

In the eyes of the world, Wilton was a 10-year-old migrant from Nicaragua who had been abandoned in a Texas scrubland. A viral video that showed the crying child asking a US Border Patrol officer for help became a symbol of the first immigration crisis facing the administration of President Joe Biden.

But the story is part of a larger tragedy that began when Wilton and his mother fled their home to escape domestic abuse. The journey took them through the mountains of El Rama, in Nicaraguas southern Caribbean coast, and ended with a kidnapping in northern Mexico, near the US border.

EL PAS traveled to their hometown to reconstruct their story.

The video of Wilton asking a US Border Patrol officer for help (Spanish audio).

In a remote farming community located more than 3,000 kilometers from the US-Mexico border, in the Nicaraguan mountains of El Rama, a 66-year-old woman named Socorro Leiva was shocked to see her own grandson crying in a video that made the television news. At that point, she did not even know that her daughter, Meylin Obregn Leiva, had left for the US with the eldest of her two children. I was making dinner when my husband, who was sitting in front of the TV set, yelled out Socorro, come quick! Thats Meylins son! And it was indeed my little boy. He was carrying a small bundle in one hand and he was asking for help, she says, standing inside her home in an area known as El Paraso. According to Leiva, her daughter and grandson left to escape an abusive husband.

The pair managed to make it into US territory, but they were sent right back to Mexico under Title 42, a Trump-era policy that has effectively shut the border to new asylum cases. There they fell into the hands of a criminal group that held them for ransom.

Soon after that, a Miami resident named Misael Obregn Meylins brother and Wiltons uncle received the first call from the kidnappers. They were asking for $10,000 (8,400) to release mother and child. But he could only come up with $5,000 (4,200), and it was agreed that they would release Wilton and take him across the border. It was then that a US officer patrolling the area found the child on April 1.

In the month of March alone, the Border Patrol apprehended more than 172,000 undocumented migrants, most of them from Central America. This is the highest monthly figure recorded in the last 15 years. Yet most of those individuals have been sent to Mexico under Title 42 of the US Code, a public-health regulation invoked by former president Donald Trump with the stated aim of curbing the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Joe Biden has maintained the policy but made an exception for unaccompanied minors, who have flooded the US shelter system. Those who get sent back, such as Wilton and his mother, run the risk of getting picked up by the criminal groups operating along the border.

The family tragedy began back in the village that Meylin Obregn fled on February 8 with her eldest son, after deciding that there were no options for a safe life there. Five days before embarking on the journey, she went to the Nicaragua Prosecutors Office and filed a complaint against her former partner, Lzaro Gutirrez Laguna. My daughter put it all down in writing... in her statement she said she did not want Lzaro to be hounding her, begging her or anything, says her mother Socorro Leiva.

The prosecutors office issued a summons, but he never showed up. The harassment continued, and she told me that she could no longer stay in my house. I asked her why: Im her mother and my house is her house too. I know why, she said repeatedly. I felt that she was saying goodbye, but I didnt think it would be for so long, says Leiva.

According to the grandmother, Meylin left a partner who was unfaithful to her, who humiliated her and abused her. He would throw her out of his house every other day. He would boast about having other women, she says. Im not sure if he assaulted her physically, but that man is capable of anything. She would go back to his house out of love for the children, but after a 12-year relationship, she couldnt take it anymore.

Before her daughter went to the Prosecutors Office, Leiva forced Gutirrez to sign a letter in front of an evangelical pastor and a local community leader in which he pledged to stop abusing Meylin. But it had no effect. She is very scared of him, notes the grandmother.

Meylin Obregn Leiva never told her mother too much, but she did confide in her brother Misael who was living in Miami. Misael helped pay for the trip in order to help his sister escape her situation, unaware that she was headed straight for a different kind of hell in northern Mexico. She is currently being held in an undefined location according to her brother, who has spoken to her.

On the day that EL PAS visited Socorro Leiva in El Paraso after a 300-kilometer trip from Managua, there was more bad news on TV. The grandmother learned that her daughter was being held by a group of coyotes, or people smugglers. There is no electricity in El Paraso, and hardly any cellphone reception. The only real contact with the outside world is through a small TV whose battery is powered by solar panels.

Oh my Lord! exclaimed Leiva when she heard the news. Bursting into tears, she said that only God now with his power can release her. In the hands of those people, anything can happen. If there were a law protecting women here [in Nicaragua] maybe my daughter would not have left.

In an interview with the local media, Lzaro Gutirrez Laguna said that his relationship with Meylin ended due to couples problems and that both of them agreed that she and Wilton would travel to the US. But the grandmother denies this, and says the boy refused to go with his father when the latter attempted to keep him by force a few days before the trip. The second child did stay in Nicaragua with him.

In the meantime, Nicaraguan Vice-President Rosario Murillo has taken the case to heart, saying that Meylin left due to problems at home although she did not specifically mention gender violence, which has killed 19 women so far this year according to the non-profit group Catlicas por el Derecho a Decidir (Catholics for the Right to Decide). Murillo also said that the government is working to repatriate the 10-year-old, who is currently staying at a shelter for unaccompanied minors in Brownsville, Texas.

But Leiva thinks it would be better for Wilton to go live with his uncle in Miami, and for Meylin to do the same if she makes it out alive. In this country, nothing is done even when they [women] get killed, she says. Its all in vain.

English version by Susana Urra.

Read the original here:

The dramatic story of Wilton, the Nicaraguan child found crying on the US-Mexico border - EL PAS in English

I was alone, I had nothing: from child refugee to student nurse – The Guardian

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

At some point in his journey to a freer place, Ahtisham Khan came to a fork in the road. Fifty days of travel from his native Pakistan to the plains of northern Greece had been unexpectedly frightening and exhausting.

We had a lot of dreams, he says, recalling why he and his brother, Zeeshan, left their village close to the city of Haripur in Pakistan. We were teenagers we didnt know what we were embarking on. We did what we had to do to survive.

The road divided for the brothers when Khan, then 16, ended up in police detention outside the Greek border town of Orestiada after his fifth attempt to enter the EU from Turkey.

I was alone, my brother had got across earlier and I had no papers, nothing, says Khan in the fluent Greek he has learned.

Then, suddenly, my asylum request was granted and soon I was in a camp, and then a shelter. I was so happy. I said to myself from now on youll do nothing illegal. There is a white road and a black road and youll take the white road.

Now a trainee nurse, Khan says four years on he has watched other lone children who made similar journeys to Europe from Asia, Africa and the Middle East founderalong the way. They took the road that seemed easier, and ended up living on the streets, he says. They get by smuggling drugs, that sort of thing, but its a very hard life.

Greece, long the gateway to Europe for the vast majority of asylum seekers, has an estimated 3,800 child refugees, according to the National Centre for Social Solidarity (EKKA). Of that number, more than 900 live in insecure housing conditions shorthand for sleeping rough under bridges, in parks, on roadsides and public squares, or in squats and other shelters with people they barely know.

Six years after Europes migrant crisis erupted, with more than a million people fleeing Syrias civil war, Athens is finally taking action.

Earlier this month, it unveiled a countrywide tracing and protection mechanism with a multilingual hotline to identify homeless children and move them to safe accommodation.

Its a very good step and long overdue, says Sofia Kouvelaki, head of the HOME project, which has housed more than 600 children in 14 shelters across Athens over the last five years.

Since 2015, there have been so many children who have gone missing because theyve slipped under the radar and been left unprotected outside any official care system. Its inexcusable.

For years, Greece has been criticised by human rights groups for its treatment of unaccompanied minors. The countrys policy of holding youngsters in protective custody, often in deplorable and depraved conditions, has been singled out for severe criticism, with damning judgments from the European court of human rights. The controversial practice, condemned for putting children at risk of severe abuse, including sexual assault, was only abolished in December 2020.

The centre-right government of prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, which has been much tougher in its handling of migrant and asylum issues than its leftist predecessor, has also faced accusations of discrimination against asylum seekers. Allegations of pushbacks of boatloads of refugees attempting to reach Greeces Aegean island shores have been widespread.

But Kouvelaki says there has been a marked shift for the better in official policy for lone refugee children. A special secretariat for the protection of unaccompanied minors has been created, with Greece working with other EU states to relocate or reunite children with families.

The first children flew to Luxembourg last year. Efforts to transfer minors from notoriously overcrowded island camps have intensified after devastating fires gutted Moria, Europes largest holding centre on Lesbos. About 2,000 unaccompanied children have since been moved to the mainland from Aegean islands.

Irini Agapidaki, the psychologist who heads the secretariat, says the hotline was the latest step in eradicating homelessness. Its our key priority, she told the Guardian. She added that about 1,000 emergency shelters were expected to be up and running by the end of May.

Now that we have abolished the shameful practice of protective custody, which in reality was an interim measure because we didnt have enough care facilities, the national mechanism will provide an operational alternative.

Agapidaki, who assumed the position in February 2020, insisted the secretariat would help prevent other minors from going missing. The biggest pool of children who end up homeless is in northern Greece because, unlike the islands, theres no reception centre around the Evros [land] border, she adds.

Teams of social workers and psychologists spent close to a year conducting street work that included interviewing undocumented minors. Many youngsters said they wanted to move into shelters but didnt know how.

The hotline works in six languages, as well as in English and Greek, and since its launch there have been lots of calls, including from children, says Theodora Tsovili, head of the UNHCR child protection unit, who helped conceive the initiative.

The mechanism is not only a tracing line. It also brings together NGOs working in the field, day centres, emergency accommodation, the asylum service, the public prosecutors for minors and the Greek police. Weve taken a very holistic approach.

Khan knows he is lucky to have found shelter in the mostly privately funded HOME project. Like Maher Assaf, who left Syria with his younger brother, Muhammad, at the age of 15, he missed out on years of schooling. My biggest goal is to get a job as a nurse and become a Greek citizen, he says.

Assaf, now 20, who has spent almost all his time in Athens housed in a HOME shelter, is still in school, in a class with 16-year-olds.

We tried 12 times to get into Greece from Turkey, and once spent three days trapped inside a truck after its tyres exploded, he says in the English he has honed after winning a scholarship for a private college in Athens. There were 15 people inside and, thank God, there were holes [air vents]. We had to use bottles, you know, to go to the toilet. In the end we called the Turkish police for help.

The Syrian siblings, who fled as conflict began to engulf the country, thought they would stay in Turkey. For three years they lived in Istanbul, initially in a two-room apartment where 35 people slept on bunk beds in exchange for working odd jobs. Now, Assaf works as a caregiver with HOME in his free time.

In the NGOs airy offices, amid the banter and laughter, it is easy to forget that the children who have ended up as its wards were propelled by dark forces to embark on high risk journeys.

Khan admits that, while he and his brother also had to leave because of a dangerous family dispute, he wonders with hindsight how they survived. We travelled on foot, and by bus and car, and never knew what the new day would bring. In Iran, the smugglers left us in a village where there wasnt enough water or food. If I was offered anything, he says, throwing up his arms, anything in the world to do it again, I wouldnt.

At 19, Dorcas Muke is among the few unaccompanied minors to arrive with a toddler in tow. For a long time it was so difficult to see why I was living, she says, explaining that her father helped her flee the Republic of Congo in 2018 by paying for a flight to Turkey. From there she was smuggled with her two-year-old son, Kevin, in a rickety boat across the Aegean.

The police caught us, the first time, in Izmir [trying to get to the island of Chios] and we spent 15 days in prison. When I arrived here, I was always sad, always stressed. Everyone and everything made me angry. Now, I see it as the past. Part of my past life. I think too much about my future because I want to be another person.

Today, Muke works in the HOME shelters, and has dreams of becoming a beautician.

Kouvelaki says the biggest challenge for Greece and the EU is recognising the need to forge ahead with wholesale integration policies. In the five years of our operation weve only seen children wanting to give back, she says. Many of our kids go on to work in our shelters, which has proved to be a great tool for their integration when they come of age. At some point all these children are going to turn 18, and integrating them has to be a priority.

Ten Interesting Things We Read This Week – Forbes India

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

Image: Shutterstock

1) Board Rules for fair Play: Akash Prakash [Source: Business Standard] In this article, Akash Prakash of Amansa Capital talks about the Securities and Exchange Board of Indias (Sebi) recent consultation paper, tightening rules for appointments and resignations of independent directors. The proposed rules bring in some much needed changes as to how independent directors are selected, voted on and possibly even remunerated. Normally, minority shareholders, whose interests are supposed to be represented by these independent directors, have very little say. Either these directors are appointed as additional directors and become afait accompli or their election is ensured with the promoters typically being able to push through an ordinary resolution on the strength of their votes alone (especially as many foreign portfolio investors do not vote).

How many boards in India would actually vote to sack a CEO/ promoter? The proposed Sebi rules make the election or reappointment of each director subject to a dual vote. A majority of all shareholders have to vote for the proposed director, as well as a simple majority of the minority shareholders (non-promoter shareholders). If either track votes against, then either a new director will have to be proposed or after a 90day cool off period and adequate justification, the same director can be proposed again. However, in this second vote, all shareholders will vote once (no dual vote) and the disputed director will have to win 75% of shareholder votes. This new methodology will give significant veto powers to the minority shareholder base and ensure that unwanted directors cannot be forced on to the board.

Similar rules are proposed for any director who is to be removed. By giving minority investors effective veto rights over the removal of independent directors, we will hopefully protect them from undue promoter group influence. The new rules will balance the incentives more fairly and encourage genuine protection of minority shareholder rights. He also feels that directors shouldnt simply walk away, with no reason, and wish away their responsibilities to the minority investors they were elected to protect. After the new rules, the promoter group cannot appoint an independent director as an additional director and not subject the appointment to shareholder approval for almost 12 months (until the next AGM).

2) Parents, stop talking about the Lost Year [Source: The New York Times] On and offline, parents are trading stories, poignant and painful, about all of the ways that they fear their middle schoolers are losing ground. Its really hard to put my finger on what happened exactly, said Jorge Gallegos, whose son, Eyan, is in the seventh grade in Washington, D.C. When Eyan was in fifth grade, he had a lot of friends, Mr. Gallegos said. He was home schooled for sixth grade, and he seemed to thrive. But spending this year at home because of the pandemic has just been too much. Eyan transferred to a new middle school for seventh grade, where nearly all of the other students had started in the sixth grade, prepandemic. He hasnt met any of his classmates in person, and he hasnt made a single friend.

Eyan has told his parents that hes lonely. So lonely, in fact, that he has started posting on Discord and Reddit. Sometimes, when hes bored, he even starts chatting with those strangers during class time. Virtually everyone has waded through hardships this past year job losses, relationship struggles, chronic stress and, in the worst of all cases, the loss of loved ones to Covid-19. And parents with school-age children have battled the demands of combining their usual work and family responsibilities with at least some degree of home-schooling. Experts say some of their worries are justified but only up to a point. Theres no doubt that the pandemic has taken a major toll on many adolescents emotional well-being.

Remote learning and social distancing are in many ways the opposite of what children in this age group want and need. Its been hardest on middle schoolers, said Phyllis Fagell, a therapist, school counselor and the author of the 2019 book Middle School Matters. It is their job to pull away from parents, to use these years to really focus on figuring out where they are in the pecking order, figuring out what they need from a friend, what they can give to a friend. And all of that hard work that has to happen in these years was just put on hold. Parents cant just take a magic wand and sweep away their own mental health woes. But they can still help their children come out of this period feeling whole; they just have to be smarter about the way that they communicate. 3) How to start a new country [Source: 1729.com] There are at least six ways to start new countries that have been publicly discussed. Three are conventional and three are unconventional. The traditional ones are known; election, revolution, war. But, the unconventional are: 1) Micronations: The most obvious of the unconventional approaches and the one most people think of when they hear the concept of "starting a new country" occurs when an eccentric plants a flag on an offshore platform or disputed patch of dirt and declares themselves king of nothing. If the issue with elections is that too many people care about them, the issue with these so-called micronations is that too few people care.

2) Seasteading: Conceived by Patri Friedman and backed by Peter Thiel, seasteading essentially starts with the observation that cruise ships exist, and asks whether we could move from a few weeks on the water at a time to semi-permanent habitation on international waters (with frequent docking, of course). As the cost of cruise ships has fallen recently, this approach is becoming more feasible. But we haven't yet seen a working example. 3) Space: Perhaps the most prestigious of the start-a-new-country paths is the idea of colonizing other planets. Unlike seasteading or micronations, space exploration started at the government level and has been glamorized in many movies and TV shows, so it enjoys a higher degree of social acceptability. People mainly think of it as currently technically infeasible rather than outright crazy.Theres one more to it. Cloud countries. The idea is to proceed cloud first, land last. Rather than starting with the physical territory, we start with the digital community. We recruit online for a group of people interested in founding a new virtual social network, a new city, and eventually a new country. We build the embryonic state as an open source project, we organize our internal economy around remote work, we cultivate in-person levels of civility, we simulate architecture in VR, and we create art and literature that reflects our values. The main difference between cloud countries and the previous six (election, revolution, war, micronations, seasteading, and space) is that it straddles the boundary of practicality and impracticality. No one can claim that it's infeasible to build million person online communities or billion dollar digital currencies, or that it's physically impossible to architect buildings in VR and then crowdfund them.

4) Can digital currencies and crypto investors help close Indias SME financing gap? [Source: pn.ispirt.in] India is home to more than 60 million businesses, 10 million of which have unique GST registration numbers, most of them SMEs. However, of the one trillion USD worth of total commercial lending exposure of the banking system, only ~25% of it is provided to SMEs, which are considered less creditworthy than larger corporates or multinationals. This has resulted in a financing gap estimated to be between 250-500 billion USD, where meritorious businesses without national profiles arent able to access the capital they need to finance their growth. Indias next trillion in GDP growth depends upon solving this problem, but the incumbent financial system may not have the resources to fix it alone.

India does have assets with which to close the capital gap. It has a youthful population. It has a fast-growing economy, even given the setbacks of COVID-19. It has an enormous population of hundreds of millions of new internet users. And it has something new, which is the possibility of informational collateral as a sort of combination of traditional concepts of due diligence and physical collateral. Specifically, the SME funding gap is most pressing for the Indian cash-flow businesses that dont have the physical assets to take out loans, which are the mainstay of the current, hard-collateral-backed credit system. One alternative is to use trustworthy digital records to ascertain whether a business is worthy of credit or equity investment. In addition to credit-based financing, the trustworthy records furnished by GSTs informational collateral can also support equity or quasi-equity financing, to support growth without increasing debt.

Now the question arises: what class of investors is most willing to use this newfangled type of informational collateral to invest in potentially high-risk businesses outside of the proven venues of America, Europe, East Asia and the large Indian enterprises? Who are the most risk-tolerant, international, forward-looking, class of investors in the world willing to risk millions of dollars purely on the basis of internet diligence alone? It may turn out to be the new class of wealthy, globally-minded crypto investors. After all, the 10-year-old cryptoeconomy is now worth trillions of dollars, there are more than a hundred million crypto holders around the world, and there are at least fifty crypto protocols valued over one billion dollars, a unicoin analog to the traditional tech unicorn. While still small in comparison to global capital markets, a sector worth $2T that is growing at more than 100% per annum could become a much larger piece of the global financial puzzle in short order.

5) Victory belongs to the team, defeat to the captain: Kumar Sangakkara [Source: The New York Times] In this interview, the Sri Lankan cricket legend talks about the leadership lessons he has learnt from the cricket field. He starts by talking about his job at Rajasthan Royals. He says, At this stage, you cant make a complete overhaulthere is a structure in place and you have to work within that to fine tune it. Weve got a lead assistant coach in Trevor Penney and some new choices at the auction. [What weve got to do] is set in place a culture of honest, open communication, a culture where making a mistake is absolutely fine as long as the intent aligns with the strategy, and allow the players a brand of cricket that plays to their individual as well as the teams strength.

Talking about key attributes of being a leader, he says There are certain characteristics that you are born with that enable you to become a leader, but without learning and refining those and understanding that leadership is not about yourself but also others, you cant be a true leader. Youve got to understand that engendering leadership in others makes your job easy; its really difficult to have others follow you otherwise. Leadership is about stewardship and serviceits about making others better. And your role as a leader starting from being a prominent one doing a great job goes into the background, because you would have enabled people to be better. That is the key to leadership.

On decision-making, he says, While making a decision, you have to accept that there can always be a chance of failure. In cricket, when I started, one of the first pieces of advice I got was that the only guarantee youll have as a batsman is that youll fail. But once you are aware of the risks, thats when you strategise and pick the right people to do the job for you. Sometimes, your decision isnt vindicated, but thats the nature of leadership. You learn and move on. The fear of failure is natural in all of us. What it cant do is paralyse you.

6) The silent rise of Indias private ports [Source: Livemint] In August 2020, Karan Adani, chief executive officer of Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ) and scion to the Adani group, informed stock analysts on an earnings call that his flagship portMundra, in the gulf of Kutchhad become the busiest port in the country. After nipping at the heels of its closest competitor for container traffic, JNPT (Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust) at Navi Mumbai, for the last few years, Mundra finally pulled ahead in the first quarter of FY21, staging a faster recovery from the covid slump than the central government controlled JNPT could. Since then, Mundra has repeated this feat every subsequent month, consistently widening the gap in container volumes between itself and JNPT.

Indias port ecosystem is broadly divided into 12 major ports (controlled by the central government via the ministry of ports, shipping and waterways), a handful that are run as public-private partnerships, and countless minor ports, owned privately or by state governments, which dot the countrys 7,500-km long coastline. It is in these smaller, nimbler minor ports that much of the action lies. And the Adani Group has managedin the span of just a few yearsto corner nearly half of Indias minor ports capacity. The 12 major ports together handle about 55% of Indias cargo every year. However, incremental traffic growth at private ports is happening twice as fast as at these traditional strongholds.

Although current capacity utilisation at Indian ports hovers at just around the 60% markhaving been weighed down by a multi-year economic slump and a post-covid fall in demandthe government expects this trend to reverse soon. The Centres 1.7 trillion PLI scheme across 10 sectors is expected to boost the export competitiveness of Indias manufactured goods. When this comes to fruition, Indias ports need to be able to move cargo faster. If India wants to be a $5 trillion economy, it cant happen just within our geography, we need international trade," Arun Maheshwari, joint managing director and chief executive officer, JSW Infrastructure.

7) What Sci-Fi can teach you about running a business [Source: Wired] In his new book Skip the Line, James Altucher, host of the James Altucher Show podcast, relates lessons about life and business that hes learned throughout his career. One of his biggest successes came from writing computer software to model the behavior of the stock market, an idea he got from Isaac Asimovs Foundation series. When I would pitch my strategybecause a big part of running a hedge fund is raising money, and you have to pitch your strategyI would always ask people if they had read the Foundation series, because I would use that to explain my strategy,

On time travel, he says, Groundhog Day is an amazing movie. I think they theorize that hes in the Groundhog Day 19,000 days in a row, give or take. He learns to play the piano like a masterhe learns so many skillsand he becomes a better person as a result. In all of these science fiction movies, part of the point is that it doesnt happen to someone special. It happens to someone mediocre, or even below mediocre, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. We can relate to that person whos mediocre, whos an everyday person, and we can speculate: What would it mean for me? Watching Groundhog Day is almost like a safe way to experience those 19,000 days, and understand how I would learn, and how I would grow, and maybe I can learn those things now without spending those 19,000 days.

Talking about artificial intelligence, he says, AI is a different beast, computers are not humans. A computer processor does not act in any way like a brain. Theres nothing about computers that would make me think suddenly ones going to become conscious. If thats true, its at least a thousand years away. The only reason people say, Oh, one day AI will wake up, is because it was a branding thing in the 80s. The Department of Defense was throwing money at any academic computer project that was working on artificial intelligence, because they thought this was about, OK, were going to have robots as soldiers, and the Terminator is going to be a soldier. But [the idea of AI waking up] is ridiculous.

8) The easiest way to solve tough problems is also the one we usually think of last [Source: inc.com] Ask a dozen different people for advice and you may get a dozen different suggestions. According to a much buzzed-about new study recently published in Nature, humans have a pervasive bias to add things on when searching for solutions--and that's causing us to miss out on a whole lot of great ideas. After engineer Leidy Klotz noticed that people tend to add additional features when trying to solve problems, he recruited his colleague, psychologist Gabrielle Adams, to investigate the phenomenon. Through a series of experiments involving everything from stabilizing Lego structures to making abstract shapes symmetrical, the researchers confirmed that, whatever the problem, people tend to add elements rather than take away existing ones.

"Additive solutions have sort of a privileged status--they tend to come to mind quickly and easily," sums up study co-author Benjamin Converse. "Subtractive solutions are not necessarily harder to consider, but they take more effort to find." In short, left to your own devices you and your team will probably do what comes naturally when faced with a problem--and what comes naturally to humans is to add more complexity. That means your company is probably missing out on simpler, cheaper, and more innovative solutions, and creating unnecessary bloat and bureaucracy in your products and systems. The research suggests that putting people under less time pressure and helping them focus should help correct for this bias.

One might wonder if optimizing for speed might generate just the sort of time pressure the researchers suggest pushes people to favor addition over subtraction, but the larger takeaway is that smart leaders are aware of people's tendency to add complexity and think through how to ensure minimalist solutions get fair consideration too. Just being aware of this bias and discussing how best to create a culture that values simplicity is probably a good place to start. And if you're looking for more ideas, Klotz's new book, Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, probably has plenty of suggestions. 9) Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee thinks his creation is out of control. Heres his plan to save it [Source: Science Focus] In 1989, while tinkering with a system to share scientific notes, a 34-year-old CERN scientist named Tim Berners-Lee invented something that would change everything. The World Wide Web. But he is on a separate mission now, pertaining to privacy. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which the data of 87 million Facebook users was obtained without consent Tim Berners-Lee, has led numerous campaigns persuading governments to act. In this interview, he answers a few questions about online privacy, his invention, fixing the internet, etc.

Talking about his invention, he says, Ten years ago I would have said that humanity uses the web and if you look at humanity youll see good and bad stuff. However, at a certain point, around 2016 [circa the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal], I realised its all very well if people I know are honing their bookmarks to have reliable, scientifically-based information, but there are a lot of people I dont know who have very different bookmarks. They could be reading all kinds of stuff that isnt true, and if it wasnt for democracy then I would have been happy for them to go on reading. But because they vote, we require more from the web and certainly more from social networks. They have a duty, because we need informed voters who can participate in the debate.

Is it too late to fix the internet? He says, Its amazing how quickly things can change. Years ago people were worried that Netscape dominated every browser. And then Microsoft came along with Explorer, which became dominant. And then everyone worried about that until many other browsers emerged. And today people are saying Oh no, everyones using the same search engine! Well, problems can pass. In general, the web has been incredibly good at demonstrating that lovely though the walled garden might seem, the outside jungle is more valuable. The dominant thing is always innovation and creativity.

10) What human resources will look like in 2030 [Source: Womens Agenda] The author of this article asks Australias top HR experts to peer into their crystal balls and predict the future of the industry. Surely, the pandemic has changed everything around the world, and some changes are here to stay for long or forever. In the last 20 years, Ive seen the HR industry transform from being all about recruiting, compliance, checklists and health and safety regulations to being about building and leveraging human potential in business, says Karen Gately, who worked as a HR director for eight years before launching her leadership consulting practice 16 years ago. The old-fashioned command and control approach to leadership is dying out and the future of HR will be leading with authenticity.

Flexible work practices are no longer a competitive advantage; theyre the baseline expectation, says Gately, noting that productivity has skyrocketed since more people started working from home. The biggest change facing human resources in the near future is managing remote workforces, finding new ways of working as a team and building culture from afar. While fostering a happy workplace has always been a part of the job description, HR representatives have had to completely overhaul the way they do so. My biggest focus right now is culture, admits Dr. Stacey Jenkins, the Acting Head of the School of Management and Marketing at Charles Sturt University. Im trying to be more in touch with how staff are feeling, more aware of their change fatigue and more available to provide motivation to keep them engaged.

Casual Fridays will soon be an everyday option, says Gately and Dr. Jenkins. Dr Jenkins goes as far as saying ditching homogenous office dress codes will help teams with their aforementioned, all-important emotional wellbeing. Im a big believer in respecting diversity and allowing people to dress the way they want; whether that be a pretty dress or trackies and a hoodie, she says. As HR teams wave goodbye to dress codes, theyre eager to welcome real inclusion and diversity. Of course, organisations need to have a diversity policy and strategy, but it needs to become a key strategic goal. We must take concrete steps to address unconscious bias, move past tokenism and embrace meaningful change, explains Dr. Jenkins, listing blind resume screenings as a practical way to do just that.

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Ten Interesting Things We Read This Week - Forbes India

Incredible Bitcoin stories and facts – ITWeb

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

Bitcoin has been around for over a decade, and during this time, a number of incredible stories have accumulated. A lot of them are very known to the public, but some are still surprisingly not that famous. In addition, there are many interesting facts about Bitcoin that everyone should know. In this press release, we have picked some of the most interesting facts and stories about this revolutionary crypto-currency.

Satoshi Nakamoto

Satoshi Nakamoto is the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin and the blockchain network. He/she worked with other cypherpunk supporters on these innovations. His/her name is associated with the famous white paper: 'Bitcoin a Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System'. The real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is still a great mystery, and the supporters that have been interviewed so far have explained that he has shared very little personal information and avoided any questions about his/her personal life.

The independent blockchain network

A lot of people are not aware that Bitcoin was developed during the financial crisis that has rocked the financial world globally in 2008. So, supposedly, Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to create a payment system that works without the meddling of financial institutions or their control. As a result, he/she created the blockchain network, which is a system that operates based on the individual contribution of each participant (miner). It offers total transparency on the network, and the transactions are processed almost instantly without any additional fees.

But what makes this system very appealing is that the identity of every user remains confidential. Nowadays, blockchain technology has taken the world by storm, and it is being tested and applied in various businesses.

Online trading sites

When the first only trading site was launched, Bitcoinmarket.com, it was one of the main ways where you can trade BTC and also check the price of Bitcoin. Otherwise, before trading sites, users could only make deals to trade their BTC on forums, which was a very unreliable and unsafe way of obtaining BTC.

The number of online trading platforms has definitely grown, and you can choose to trade on sites that work for your budget. Immediate Edge is a well-known all trading platform that has software powered by high-quality artificial intelligence technology. It is an encrypted site that is very secure, and you can start trading when you make a deposit of $250.

Bitcoin Pizza Day

Bitcoin Pizza Day is actually a special day for the Bitcoin community that takes place on 22 May. But this event comes from a trade between Laszlo Haynes and another user on the Bitcointalk forum. Laszlo invested 10 000 BTC for two pizzas from Papa John's. It is worth mentioning that today, one Bitcoin is worth more than $50 000, but Laszlo reportedly didn't regret his decision because he wanted to use his BTC in the real world. Actually, this is the first commercial BTC transaction.

The teenage millionaire

Erik Finman is one of the youngest Bitcoin millionaires. He managed to earn a huge return on investment because the price of Bitcoin surged in 2017 and again in 2020. What we know is that he invested $1 000 that he got from his grandmother for his birthday in BTC. Today, he owns around 446 BTC and has a net worth of around $4.5 million.

BTC investment of Tesla

Recently,Elon Musk made the decision to invest from corporate cash $1.5 billion in BTC. Thanks to the support from companies like Tesla, the demand for BTC is growing, and it's one of the reasons why Bitcoin's price has increased well over $50 000. The company also announced that it would accept BTC payments. Currently, there are approximately 15 000 companies that accept BTC payments, and we predict that the number will go up very soon.

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Incredible Bitcoin stories and facts - ITWeb

Billions in BSV and altcoins at stake in Satoshi court battles: A summary of key events in the story so far – CoinGeek

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

For better or worse, the ongoing case between Ira Kleiman and Dr. Craig Wright has been the most fascinating event in the Bitcoin world for the past few years. This week it took another twist with the news that Ramona Ang, the wife of Dr. Wright, as trustee of the Tulip Trust, has launched a lawsuit against Kleiman over his alleged destruction of property and information that materially impacted something called the Tulip Trust. For the purposes of this case, everyonefrom the plaintiff to the defendants and the courtsare accepting Dr. Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto as he has confirmed this under oath in this case and others.

The Tulip Trust itself has gained an almost mythic reputation in Bitcoin. Information about its exact natureincluding whether it even exists, or exists in multiple formshas trickled out over the years as judges and lawyers have examined evidence from the Kleiman/Wright case as part of the discovery process.

Theres a deeper background to the Tulip Trust story in this article. In this particular instance, the name Tulip Trust applies to a legal entity of which Ramona Ang is a trustee. From the complaint filed with the Southern District of Florida this week, its understood that Tulip Trust is a Seychelles-registered trust and Ang is a trustee. The coins subject to the lawsuit that Ang filed as trustee of the Tulip Trust are separate and apart from the Tulip Trust coins originally mined by Info Defence PTY LTD. while he was operating under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto.

There has also been much speculation over the years that Dave Kleiman and Dr. Wright had collaborated to create Bitcoin. The nature and extent of this collaboration is also largely unknown, given the conflicting accounts and allegations both parties and their supporters have made.

Ira Kleiman has admitted destroying documents and erasing/re-using several hard drives belonging to his brother, the late Dave Kleiman. Dave Kleiman was an esteemed information technology security researcher who had worked with governments and law enforcement and made several appearances on television as a security expert. He was also a close friend of Dr. Wright, and Craig Wright R&D had an interest in a company named W&K Info Defense Research LLC.

Angs complaint, as trustee of the Tulip Trust, based on Ira Kleimans own allegations, alleges that W&Ks records held documents, data and private keys for the benefit of the Tulip Trust. Ira Kleiman destroyed those records in the wake of his brothers April 2013 death and the Tulip Trust has suffered billions of dollars in damages in the form of bitcoins it can no longer access.

Ira Kleiman has enough knowledge of computers and data records to understand that erasing hard drives (and subsequently re-using them) would render the data on those drives inaccessible permanently, the complaint says.

Outside of the allegations, theres also the question of why Kleiman had such little regard for, or curiosity about, his brothers lifes work that he would simply erase it. Regardless of their personal relationship (the two brothers had not interacted for years, despite living in the same area), he might have considered for a moment that his brother held information that could be important or useful to someone outside the family.

To understand all this, its necessary to go back over some of the key events in the past 12 years that led to the current situation. Here is a summary of the background and legal turning points along the way.

The significance of the Kleiman/Wright case to Satoshi Nakamotos identity

Most of the attention the press has given to this case over the years has not been on the merits of Ira Kleimans claims on Dr. Wrights propertyor the moral grounds he has to make this claim on behalf of his late brother, with whom he barely interacted.

Rather it has focused on Dr. Wright himself, his reputation and reliability, and claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto. This has resulted in the public learning many details about the early years of Bitcoin they wouldnt have known otherwise, and probably only strengthened Dr. Wrights Satoshi claims. That the plaintiffs have expended so much time, effort and money pursuing the case suggests they understand a very large amount of money is at stake; money that few other than Satoshi himself would have.

Perhaps realizing the irony of supporting Ira Kleimans side while understanding the implications its victory would have, BTC supporters have attacked Dr. Wrights character at every turn, examining the minutiae of every document, email and sentence of witness testimony, desperately looking for a gotcha moment and declaring premature victory after judges decisions on procedural matters along the way. That way, they can make a tacit admission that Dr. Wright is Satoshi to potentially gain access to Satoshis fortune, while simultaneously casting doubt on his claims in the public eye.

Dave Kleiman

Dave Kleiman was a former soldier and law enforcement officer, and a computer forensics expert who had made multiple appearances at IT security conferences and on television. However, he was left paralyzed and wheelchair-bound following a 1995 motorcycle accident. Though his wellbeing began to decline from that time, he continued his IT security work at several companies. He formed a mostly-online friendship with Dr. Wright (though the two had met in person).

On April 26, 2013, Dave Kleiman died in what Ira Kleimans initial legal complaint described as gruesome circumstances. His official cause of death was natural causes related to MRSA infection complications, but there were several other signs in the house that he had lived his last months in a state of squalor, depression, and increasingly poor health. His body was discovered in a decomposing state, sometime after his passing.

Dr. Wright was distraught at the news of Kleimans death, having not known of his unfortunate state. He posted a video tribute to his friend, and later reached out to Daves family informing them that Dave may have held valuable information and potentially a significant amount of early bitcoins. Again, these coins are separate and apart from the Tulip Trust coins originally mined by Dr. Wright while he was operating under the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto.

Rather than acknowledge this move as a gesture of goodwill, Ira Kleiman interpreted it instead as a scheme to acquire the rights to Daves property. Iras wish to correct this injustice forms the basis for the ongoing Kleiman/Wright case in Florida.

That initial complaint, filed on February 14, 2019, read:

This matter concerns the rightful ownership of hundreds of thousands of bitcoins and the valuable intellectual property rights of various blockchain technologies.

Recognizing that Daves family and friends werent aware of this, Craig perpetrated a scheme against Daves estate to seize Daves bitcoins and his rights to certain intellectual property associated with the Bitcoin technology.

Why Dr. Wright would need to concoct such a scheme and involve Daves family if the Kleimans were unaware of the existence of any of the above is also a mystery. Craig Wright R&D had already obtained a judgment from the Supreme Court of New South Wales in Australia return the company rights to Dave Kleimans share of W&K and its associated IP in return for forgiving debts in the amount of 300k Bitcoins. The rights to those 300k Bitcoin were retained by W&K. Had Dr. Wright never made contact with the Kleimans, this current legal battle would likely not exist.

Years of the case without a trial

We should point out that, as yet, there has been no trial or final decision in the Kleiman/Wright case. Decisions over the past three years have been recommendations or rulings on procedural matters and related cases.

Dr. Wrights supporters initially predicted a swift result in his favor, saying Ira Kleiman had little evidence to support his claims. Mediation was set to happen on June 18, 2019. However new allegations, disputes over the integrity of testimony and documentary evidence, limited understanding of Bitcoins intricate workings, and Dr. Wrights own access to vital information, have seen the case drag on for years. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have also played a part, limiting court time.

The jury trial and ultimate outcome has been delayed multiple times, and in November 2020 it was scheduled to begin in June 2021.

Over this time, both parties have at times taken actions to prompt a speedier outcome, or extend deadlines to produce certain information or wait for the results of related issues. Members of Dr. Wrights family have been drawn into the affair as well, including his ex-wife Lynn Wright, who petitioned the court in July 2020 to determine who actually holds W&Ks beneficiary shares (and therefore rule that Ira Kleiman had no right to take any action on the companys behalf).

Ira Kleiman filed a motion to dismiss Lynn Wrights petition. Though this attempt was unsuccessful, the judge decided to stay that case until after a final decision is reached in the main Kleiman/Wright casewhich effectively renders it irrelevant to that decision, though it may have an impact on what happens later.

The Tulip Trusts new lawsuit creates another legal headache for Ira Kleiman, one that could result in penalties separate to the outcome of the main case.

Timeline of other significant events along the way

On June 20, 2019, Dr. Wright testified in a filing that he had mined the first 70 Bitcoin blocks. In the same filing, he said addresses beyond that block were held in a trust, protected by a Shamir system in which multiple parties held information that needed to be combined to access the coins.

The next month, Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhardt ordered Dr. Wright to divulge his total bitcoin holdings as of December 31, 2011. In the same order (a recommendation to the main trial judge, Beth Bloom) he also cast several doubts on Dr. Wrights integrity as a witness, rejected the notion that a Tulip Trust actually existed, and advocated dividing all bitcoins mined by Dr. Wright and Dave Kleiman 50/50 between Wright and Dave Kleimans estate.

On November 4, 2019, entrepreneur (and CoinGeek owner) Calvin Ayre revealed hed been in negotiations to acquire Dave Kleimans estatebut had withdrawn after his team found no significant assets or IP. Dr. Wright was not involved in these negotiations, but Ayres team found the estate possessed only public Bitcoin addresses. Any private keys it may have held were destroyed when Ira Kleiman erased his brothers hard drives.

Following much crowing from BTC supporters over Judge Reinhardts statements against Dr. Wright (which they frequently misinterpreted as a final decision) Dr. Wright began to fight back. In an editorial posted on January 3, 2020, CSW described Ira Kleiman as one of the greediest people I have ever met and an idiot and a lowlife, accusing him of attacking his companies, forging documents, conspiring with BTC Core personnel, and attempting to steal his lifes work.

At the start of 2020, attention shifted to the much-mocked idea that the Tulip Trust would receive vital information from a form of bonded courier that would either grant him access to a large amount of early bitcoins, and/or other data relevant to the case.

The mockery soon stopped after January 6, 2021 when it became apparent that such an event had actually happened. Dr. Wright produced a document that became known as Tulip Trust III. The exact contents of these records remains sealed, though subsequent events suggest it provided answers to questions over why Dr. Wright had been unable to produce clear records of his pre-2011 Bitcoin holdings.

On January 12, 2021, Judge Beth Bloom reversed most of Judge Reinhardts sanctions and recommendations against Dr. Wright. If new information was available, she said, Wright should at least be afforded the opportunity to gather and produce it.

By the end of January, Dr. Wright stated that he had complied with the legal directives required of him concerning the public keys in the case. In a statement to CoinGeek at the time, Dr. Wright explained: The private keys were never a part of this and the court have accepted that the public keys can, at this time, be held confidentially and viewed only by those involved in the case.

In May 2020 Dr. Wright went on the offensive against Ira Kleiman, filing a Motion for Summary Judgment and calling Kleimans case an elaborate fiction. The judge denied this motion.

Ira Kleiman then attempted to get a default judgment against Dr. Wright via a sanctions motion. Accusing Dr. Wright of perjury and forging documents used in evidence, he requested either a decision, or an official statement that his accusations be deemed as established.

Judge Bloom on June 25, 2020, also denied these requests, saying that Dr. Wright had indeed produced records of the trusts Bitcoin holdings as requested, and that a jury would need to make the final decision. She set the trial to begin in July 2020, later delayed until August.

Throughout June 2020, various witnesses gave depositions to the court that revealed even more previously-unknown details in Bitcoin history. Witnesses included: Satoshi Nakamotos chosen successor as lead Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen; Bitcoin Association President Jimmy Nguyen; journalists Brendan Sullivan and Andrew OHagan; and Dr. Wrights current and former spouses Ramona Ang and Lynn Wright.

Dr. Wrights maternal uncle, Don Lynam, also provided revealing details in his testimony about Dr. Wrights early life and possible Bitcoin origins. Lynam is a former Royal Australian Air Force Wing Commander and Order of Australia medal recipient, with a prestigious reputation. He also noted that his father (and Dr. Wrights grandfather) was Ronald Lynama World War II era signals intelligence officer and cryptology expert whose work remains largely officially classified.

It was in July 2020 that Lynn Wright entered the dispute, with her petition regarding W&Ks beneficiary shares. Then in September, both parties in the main Kleiman/Wright case requested to extend the pre-trial deadline and delay the trial until January 2021. Ira Kleiman had also filed a motion to dismiss Lynn Wrights case. The judge did not dismiss that case, but on January 6, 2021 delayed it until after the main Kleiman/Wright decision.

On November 20, 2020, the court decided to delay the trial for the main Kleiman/Wright case until June 2021, due to limitations arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Exhibit lists and objections were due by March 16, 2021, and all demonstrative and summary exhibits (evidence) are due by March 22. The parties will hold a conference call on May 11.

This legal process has been long and convoluted, with reports and commentary often tainted by their makers support for either the Kleiman or Wright side. The court has at times struggled to grasp important Bitcoin concepts, and even seasoned Bitcoin veterans must admit large gaps in their own knowledge of Bitcoins origins and early history.

Even if the case does manage to arrive at a decision in mid-2021, its unlikely to satisfy everyone. Its also unlikely to result in definitive proof of Dr. Wrights and Dave Kleimans role in Bitcoins creation, and who has the right to benefit from it. This case may eventually conclude and take its place in Bitcoin folklore, but the overall Bitcoin saga will continue (both in and out of court) for a long time to come.

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeksBitcoin for Beginnerssection, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoinas originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamotoand blockchain.

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Billions in BSV and altcoins at stake in Satoshi court battles: A summary of key events in the story so far - CoinGeek

Bitcoin has reached the $1 trillion mark after only 12 years of its release, which is around 3.5 times faster than Apple and Microsoft – Digital…

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

A lot of people are not really familiar with Bitcoin; Bitcoin is a virtual or digital currency that was invented in 2008 by an unknown group of people with the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. It is a network that works on the protocol called blockchain. The currency started to be in use in 2009 when this was released as an open-source software. Bitcoin has made itself as the worlds most popular crypto currency. As per CryptoParrot, only after 12 years, Bitcoin has been able to reach the $1 trillion market value! The same value which Microsoft was able to reach after 44 years and Apple about 42 years. Google took 21 years while Amazon took 24, which means that Bitcoin was able to achieve this $1 trillion target twice as fast as Amazon and thrice as fast as Apple. This speaks great volumes on how Bitcoin was able to make its mark that quickly.Bitcoin is actually one of the most successful virtual money system out there. It remains the largest crypto currency by market capitalization and was able to attain so in a very short span of time. The growth Bitcoin has been able to achieve in these past few years has been outstanding as compared to other mega cap US tech companies. Bitcoins market cap rate growth at the present moment is said to actually beat the highlighted traditional assets value in the near future, according to the reports. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, when every other field was declining, the technology one was soaring, and even though the technology stocks have soared a lot from last year but no one has been able to beat the value of Bitcoin and the things that it was able to achieve. According to the reports, it is most expected that Bitcoins market success will for sure beat other high end companies who have been there in the market stocks for longer periods of time such as Tesla.

It is said that Bitcoins aim at the moment is to develop a payment system to grow value but how and where Bitcoin will be used in the near future is only for us to see. Many see this as a platform where confidential contracts occur. The system which Bitcoin has established has caught the attention of many government authorities as well as private ones. The block chain protocol which Bitcoin uses can also be termed as the most impactful one out there.

(Disclaimer: The data and views expressed herein are not intended to serve as a forecast, a guarantee of future results, investment recommendations or an offer to buy or sell securities. Differences in account size, timing of transactions and market conditions prevailing at the time of investment may lead to different results, and clients may lose money. Past performance is not indicative of future results.)

Disclaimer: The information provided in this post is for educational purposes only and should not be treated as investment advice.

Read next:Nearly 7 in 10 People Want Robots to Manage their Finances Instead of Humans (infographic)

Explained: What is Dogecoin, the $34 billion cryptocurrency that began as a joke? – The Indian Express

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

Just as the virtual currencies Bitcoin and Ethereum have surged in value this week, so has Dogecoin a cryptocurrency started in 2013 as an internet parody.

Based on the Doge meme and started as a fun alternative to Bitcoin, Dogecoins value has risen phenomenally this week, adding around $19.9 billion in the last 24 hours, and now valued at $34 billion, according to CoinGecko, a market data site.

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On Friday in the US, the digital token was valued at 28 cents, more than double its value a day before. A top-10 crypto token, it has seen a seven-day rise of 300%.

According to CNBC, the digital token was created in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer as a faster but fun alternative to Bitcoin. It was started as a satire on the numerous fraud crypto coins that had sprung up at the time, and takes its name and logo from a Shiba Inu meme that was viral several years ago.

Unlike Bitcoins, whose maximum possible number is fixed at 21 million (a figure that is estimated to be reached by 2040), Dogecoin numbers do not have an upper limit, and there are already more than 100 billion in existence.

When the crypto coin first took off, the online community that was backing it invited attention by supporting unconventional causes, such as sponsoring Jamaicas bobsled team at the 2014 Winter Olympics. Also that year, the Dogecoin community gave $55,000 worth of the digital token to a Nascar driver in the US.

The main reason believed to be behind Dogecoins meteoric surge is the same that has propelled the value of Bitcoin and Etherem this weeks listing of Coinbase, the most popular virtual currency exchange in the US.

Coinbases market cap briefly hit $100 billion after it went public on Wednesday, and the values of Bitcoin and Etherem touched $64,000 and $2,500, respectively, during the week. Dogecoin is said to be a part of this frenzy.

Doge also has an ardent supporter in Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who frequently tweets have added to the digital tokens mania. Musk had once changed his Twitter bio to Former CEO of Dogecoin. Other celebrities, including rapper Snoop Dogg and rock musician Gene Simmons, have also promoted it on social media.

Another reason behind its current success is said to be a Reddit group called SatoshiStreetBets, where members built up an enthusiasm for the cryptocurrency in a manner similar that led to the rise of GameStop earlier this year. The groups name refers to Satoshi Nakamoto, the screen name of the person or group of persons behind Bitcoin.

Some investors have expressed fears that Dogecoins rise would lead to a bubble, given that buyers do not see any meaningful value in the digital token, and are only trading to make money while the price keeps going up.

Without having any intrinsic value such as land or gold, cryptocurrencies are considered highly volatile, and may crash as fast as they can rise, experts say, making them susceptible to sudden scares as well as manipulation by small groups who often hold large numbers of the virtual currency in circulation.

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Explained: What is Dogecoin, the $34 billion cryptocurrency that began as a joke? - The Indian Express

Why the Coinbase listing is bad news for bitcoin believers – The Australian Financial Review

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

Coinbase is highly sensitive to super-volatile crypto valuations. A strong bull-market performance in the first quarter of 2021, when bitcoin rose above $US60,000, should be contrasted with the fact Coinbase posted a $US30 million annual net loss in 2019, a year when bitcoin averaged around $US5000-$US6000.

As it stands, Coinbase is also regulated and licensed under the US Money Services Business legislative framework, not as an exchange or so-called prime brokerage for services such as credit for trading. This gives Coinbase a big advantage over its more heavily regulated counterparts like ICE or the CME.

If that changed, there could be big consequences. Were it indeed regulated as an exchange, its capacity to generate earnings from prime brokerage, over-the-counter brokerage and principal trading would be firmly clipped back. If overseen as a prime broker or a bank, its capital burden would be increased significantly.

While the IPO might validate the importance of cryptocurrencies as a speculative asset, its a noteworthy irony that so-called bitcoin maximalists also consider the platform a brazen sellout. They believe it has forsaken cryptos true principles for the golden goose offered by Wall Street. Its a fair argument.

Bitcoin came to market touting promises of trustless banking, cheaper payments, privacy and most famously of all the end of the publics dependency on financial middlemen. But in both wooing Wall Street and embracing regulation, especially know-your-customer and anti-money laundering rules, Coinbase has not only abandoned the role of challenging the traditional state-controlled fiat currency system but also the privacy of crypto transactions envisaged by inventor Satoshi Nakamoto.

The groups transmutation into just another middleman operator has been fascinating to watch. Its unclear if the platforms 56 million users understand or even care that they are not holding coins but Coinbase IOUs, or that most transactions on the platform are not even settled through any public blockchain.

The IPO comes at a time when the original challenger vision of Nakamoto is being rattled in other ways. Last week a former deputy director of the CIA, Michael Morrell, officially endorsed the bitcoin network, arguing blockchain analysis is a highly effective crime fighting and intelligence gathering tool.

It was also a week when famed libertarian Peter Thiel warned that China, a mass-surveillance state with big digital currency ambitions, was using bitcoin as a financial weapon against the US.

If this signals anything at all it is that the state, not crypto, has won the day in terms of control of the financial system.

Rather than celebrate the Coinbase listing, those who thought crypto would up-end the publics dependency on central banks or financiers should be lamenting it. All indicators imply crypto has acted less as a liberator and more as a honeypot designed to lure users into greater surveillance and not less.

Financial Times

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Why the Coinbase listing is bad news for bitcoin believers - The Australian Financial Review

Albany Black Lives Matter protest takes to the streets – Times Union

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

ALBANY - They gathered Saturday at Townsend Park, just as they had three days before.

Are we ready? Legacy Casanova asked the crowd of protesters, most wearing black, many carrying signs that professed the grief and anger that has enveloped so many across the city and nation.

They walked down Lark Street, where business employees peered outside and saw raised fists, raised signs and heard raised voices that screamed, Matter! each time the words Black lives were spoken.

When is this going to stop? Nahshon McLaughlin asked as he walked past the giant yellow Black Lives Matter mural painted last summer, a marker that reminded him of the last time he was here protesting, chanting different names of Black Americans killed by police: Breonna Taylor, George Floyd.

And now here he was again, over half a year later, chanting new names Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo walking atop a mural that was fading away.

Its sadness. This is just anger and sadness, he said.

The scores of activists and supporters eventually converged at the South Station on Arch Street, the scene of a confrontation Wednesday evening.

Casanova told the protesters not to climb or even touch the rail at the South Station an action that police said escalated tensions at the last protest.

As evening settled the scene was calm outside the station, with protesters singing and marching. No police were seen stepping outside, though at least two could be seen on the roof. The rails leading to the entrance were empty of people.

Three days ago the similar demonstration culminated in the brief clash between police officers and demonstrators, where officers deployed pepper spray and a window was broken by some protesters. City officials held a news conference about Wednesday's protest on Friday, describing the gathering as a "riot."

Protesters were peacefully chanting as night fell, with leaders reminding people to pick up their trash. Many criticized Mayor Kathy Sheehanfor her comments equating the clash Wednesday in Albany to the deadly Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol.

What she said made me sick, one protester said.

Lukee Forbes, a community leader, said officers not being outside dramatically helped with deescalating tensions.

Police not being here is whats going to keep this from escalating, he said. Thats what gets tensions high: when police are here.

Many protesters promised to return to the station and continue protesting until the officer who pushed at a womans megaphone on Wednesday is fired.

Kat Reyefico, 29, was at the station on Wednesday. She wasnt hit with pepper spray, she said, but her friends were, and as she tried to help them, she inhaled the residue from the chemicals. She was beginning to have an asthma attack, she said. She borrowed he friends inhaler, and promised herself she would return again on Saturday.

This is where Im supposed to be, she said, playing a drum she had borrowed from the heavy metal band shes in. She was giving rhythm to the chants, providing a beat for the people who yelled again and again: No justice, no peace.

Troy protest

The Albany march came a few hours after another gathering in Troy.

Under different circumstances, the gathering under the Collar City Bridge Saturday afternoon could have been mistaken for a family reunion. Music played, kids drew with chalk on the asphalt, and people passed out snacks and water. A large table loaded with flowers below a large banner reading "Black Lives Matter" taped to bridge supports and signs in the crowd with messages like, "Abolish Racism in Troy PD or Abolish the Troy PD" revealed the event as both a memorial and a call to action. There were no uniformed police present.

Saturday was the fifth anniversary of the day Edson Thevenin, 37, was killed by a Troy police officer during a traffic stop on the road above the crowd of roughly 150. The police officer who shot Thevenin, Sgt. Randall French, was cleared of wrongdoing.

The case roiled Troy, and people who spoke at the Spring into Action: Rally 4 Black Life gathering Saturday said the pain they feel over what they see is a lack of justice in the Thevenin case has only been worsened by the subsequent deaths of people of color at the hands of police, both locally and nationally.

Luz Marquez, a founder of Troy4BlackLives and a cosponsor of the event, spoke passionately, urging the crowd to keep raising their voices for Black lives and keep up pressure on the city's elected leaders.

"If you want to stop gun violence, stop white supremacy," Marquez said, adding her voice to others Saturday to defund the police.

Angela Beallor, a founder of Reimagine Troy, said as a white person, she has had interactions with police, but lived to tell the tale. Black and brown people often do not. Jessica Ashley read a statement from Gertha Depas, Thevenin's mother.

"Five years have not eased the pain, they have intensified the struggle," Ashley read. "The power is always in the hands of the people and change comes when we speak up."

Other speakers included Messiah Cooper, whose nephew, Dahmeek McDonald, was shot by police in 2017. Cooper said what he sees as his failure to act in the past is what motivates him to do so now. It's important, he said, not only to stand up for people because they are a friend or a relative, but simply because it's the right thing to do.

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Albany Black Lives Matter protest takes to the streets - Times Union

How Black Lives Matter put slave reparations back on the agenda – FRANCE 24 English

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to advance a bill that would create a commission to study the idea of reparations for slavery,an idea that has also been gaining ground in Europe since Black Lives Matter protests went global last summer.

Legislation to create acommission to study slavery reparations for Black Americans cleared aHouse committee in a historic vote this week,sending it on its way to a full House vote for the first time more than three decades after it was introduced.If the legislation, HR 40,is passed by the Democrat-controlled House, it would go to the evenly divided Senate, with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.

Reparations are ultimately about respect and reconciliation and the hope that,one day, all Americans can walk together toward a more just future,saidDemocratic Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Leeof Texas, a sponsor of the bill.

Some Republicans voiced opposition to the bill, arguing that the suffering wrought by slavery happened too long ago.

No one should be forced to pay compensation for what they have not done,said Republican Congressman Steve Chabot of Ohio. Paying reparations would amount to taking money from people who never owned slaves to compensate those who were never enslaved.

Historical precedents

The idea of compensating the descendants of the estimated 4 million Africans forcibly brought to theUnited Statesbetween 1619 and 1865 was revived by the wave ofprotests that followedthe death of George Floyd in May 2020. But the first version of the legislative text advanced onWednesday was draftedmore than three decades ago.

Compensation to freed slaves was promised towards the end of the American Civil War in 1865, when Union GeneralWilliam TecumsehShermanfamously promised them forty acres and a mule. But this vow was never kept. It took until the 1970s and the creation of the Reparations Coordinating Committee by Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree for the issue to re-emerge.

Proponents ofreparations, however, remaindivided about what form they should take. Some argue for more welfare programmes and an expansion of existing measures such asaffirmative action.Others argue for direct financial compensation citingfact that there is still severe economic inequality between Black and White Americans,andmaintainingthat the long-term effects of slavery and segregation areresponsible. In 2019, the median annual income for an African-American household was $43,771 (36,000) compared to $71,664 (60,000) for White families.

Advocates of compensation havealso citedhistorical precedents.In 1988,Republicanpresident Ronald Reagansigned a 1988 lawto pay $20,000 (17,000) each to all survivingJapanese-Americans detained during the World War Two.In 2012,Barack Obamas White House agreedto pay more than $1 billion to 41 Native American tribes over the federal governments mismanagement of money and natural resources held in trust.

Partly inspiredby theBlack Lives Mattermovement, demonstrators in Bristol in southern England toppled a statue of18th-centuryslave trader Edward Colston and tipped it into the nearbyharbour last June.

Thatsame month, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bacheletcalled on former colonialistcountries tomake amends for centuries of violence and discrimination, including through formal apologies, truth-telling processes and reparations in various forms.

In 2013, the Caribbean Community (or CARICOM), an intergovernmental organisation of 15 states in the region, believes that France, the Netherlands, the UK, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden and Denmark should pay compensation for their role in the transatlantic slave tradebetween the 16th and 19th centuries.

Senior politicians inthe Democratic Republic of Congo demandedreparations from the countrys former colonial ruler Belgium after the2020 publicationof a letter of regret from Belgian King Philippe for atrocities committed duringthat era. They also called for the removal of statuesof King Leopold II, known for his brutal rule of what was then Belgian Congo. DR Congos neighbour Burundihas been calling for yearsfor 36 billion in compensation for atrocities committed by German and Belgian settlers from 1896 to 1962.

In 1999,a Truth CommissionConference held in Ghana estimatedthe total amount of reparations owedto African countriesbyformer colonial powers at $777 trillion (650 trillion).

An association of descendants of slaves filed a requestwiththe French state for 200 billion in compensationin 2005 on the groundsthat Frances historical participation in slavery was recognised as a crime against humanity in a 2001 law(known as the Taubira law).But a court ruled that this request was inadmissible because it was impossible to discern the amount due for events that happened so long ago.Thejudgement was confirmed by Frances two highest courts of appeal.

The Afro-Caribbean groupsbehind the demandsrejected thecourt rulings on the grounds that Francehadcompensated slave owners when it abolished slavery in 1848. The following year,the French state disbursed the equivalentof7.1 percent of public spending to compensate the owners of slaves in Senegal, Madagascar, Reunion Island, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyana.

In 1825, France imposed a considerable debt on Haiti which had won independence in 1804 as compensation for the French former owners of slaves there. The young Haitian republic was also forced to pay colossal interest on loans from bankers in Paris.

A French research initiative known asthe Repairs project is building a database to log the names of those who received compensation as former slave owners and the amount paid to them.

The British Empire also compensated slave owners when it abolished slavery in 1833.

Some historiansnote that a significant number of these former slave owners were free people of colour former slaves who themselves became owners of slaves.

We tend to see the history of slavery exclusively through the lens of White on Black racial oppression, but this is problematic because race is not the only criterion to be taken into account when thinking about the history of slavery, said Myriam Cottias, director of the Paris-based International Slavery and Post-Slavery Research Centre (Centre international de recherches sur les esclavages et post-esclavages).

In light of this, it seems to me that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to identify the right people to receive compensation, Cottias continued.

In 2015, then FrenchpresidentFranois Hollande ruled outpayingany compensationto thedescendants of slaves.It would be impossible to calculate because it was so long ago, he said.

Private initiatives

While nocountry involvedin the transatlantic slave trade hasestablished reparationsfor the descendants of slaves,other initiativeshave been set up.In the US, the local council of the prosperous town of Evanston in the Chicago suburbs voted in March to hand out $10 million (8m) in compensation to its Black residents over the following decade.

In 2019, Georgetown University in Washington,D.C.,approved the creation of a fund to compensate the descendants of slaves sold to balance the universitys books in the19th century.Thatsame year, Glasgow University in Scotland announced that it would pay 20 million(23m)to fund a joint venture with the University of the West Indies as a way ofrefunding the descendants of slaves for donationsit had received centuries ago from slave owners.

In the private sector,Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Bank and brewer Greene King have acknowledged responsibility for their involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. So far,no French companyhas acknowledged involvement in slaveryor offered compensation.

This article was translated from the original in French.

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How Black Lives Matter put slave reparations back on the agenda - FRANCE 24 English

Miss Grand International wins the crown in Black Lives Matter-inspired dress: ‘I’m proud to be Black’ – Yahoo Sports

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

Abena Appiah became the first Black woman to be crowned Miss Grand International and she served Black excellence throughout the whole competition.

The 27-year-old pageant veteran and Ghanian American earned her spot in the competition while representing the U.S., after being dubbed Miss Grand USA. Appiah seized her moment on the global stage to bring light to social justice issues.

In the National Costume segment she sported a long black overcoat featuring the faces of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Akai Garley all victims of police brutality. The coat read Im proud to be Black. When she took it off it revealed an opulent white gown with the American flag embedded in the skirt.

I am basically trying to tell people that even though theres so much corruption and hate crimes in our society if we come together as one we can all be equal, Appiah told Yahoo Life.

The multifaceted pageant queen, who is a musical therapist and anti-bullying advocate, is using her experience to inspire other young women.

I want you to know your hair is beautiful, your skin is flawless, and that you should wear all of it with pride and grace, Appiah wrote in an Instagram post celebrating her win.

We are enough; we are beautiful, we do not have to fit any beauty standards because we set our own. The first Black MGI Queen, the first to bring the golden crown home to the USA, and finally, a dream as a young three-year-old is now a reality, she said.

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Breonna Taylors mother blasts Black Lives Matter movement – The Independent

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, blasted the Black Lives Matter movement in Louisville, Kentucky in a since-removed Facebook post.

I have never personally dealt with BLM Louisville and personally have found them to be fraud [sic], Ms Palmer wrote on Wednesday. A screenshot of the post was later published by a local media show.

A screenshot captured by WAVE 3 News shows a since-removed Facebook post by Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor

(WAVE 3 News)

She called Kentucky statehouse representative Attica Scott another fraud.

Ms Palmer gave credit to family, friends and local activists for supporting her family after the death of her daughter. Ms Taylor, who was 26, died following a police shooting in her home during the execution of a no-knock warrant.

Ms Scott has pushed for a ban on no-knock warrants since Ms Taylors death.

Ms Palmer said local activist Christopher 2x and other supporters had never needed recognition.

I could walk in a room full of people who claim to be here for Breonnas family who don't even know who I am, she added.

She criticised people who have raised money for Ms Taylor's family without knowing them, writing: Ive watched yall raise money on behalf of Breonnas family who has never done a damn thing for us nor have we needed it or asked so Talk about fraud.

Its amazing how many people have lost focus Smdh. Im a say this before I go Im so sick of some of yall and I was last anybody who needs it Im with this enough is enough!!

Ms Taylor died after being shot six times as police returned fire after her boyfriend Kenneth Walker discharged his weapon, hitting one of the officers, as they used a battering ram to enter the apartment.

Two of the three officers who used their guns have been fired, with one remaining on the job. None of the officers have been charged in the death of Ms Taylor, but one of them is facing charges for wanton endangerment in respect of bullets that entered another apartment.

Sgt Jonathan Mattingly, who remains on the police force, is writing a book about the event and its aftermath to be published by Post Hill Press.

The Independent has reached out to BLM Louisville and Representative Attica Scott for comment.

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Breonna Taylors mother blasts Black Lives Matter movement - The Independent

"Enough is Enough": Black Lives Matter Twin Ports marches through Duluth to spread their message – KBJR 6

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

DULUTH, MN -- On Wednesday, Black Lives Matter Twin Ports and its supporters, took to the streets of Duluth to demand justice for Daunte Wright.

"The only thing I can say is I'm tired. When is it enough? Because it's a year later and it's still going on," said Lamarquita Leach, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Twin Ports.

Leach helped organize the Black Lives Matter march in Duluth on Wednesday.

A community now hurt by the death of another black man, Daunte Wright. Wright was shot and killed by Officer Kim Potter in Brooklyn Center. She is now facing a 2nd-degree manslaughter charge.

"The second degree is not what she did. She innocently murdered somebody and there was no accident. A taser weighs much less than a handgun. A handgun weighs two pounds compared to a taser like c'mon now," said Leach.

Others in attendance Wednesday said it's time to change the policing system.

"Complete reform. Just complete. They just got to abolish it and build from the bottom. I'm sorry. It starts from within," said Kenneth Fair an activist.

Fair traveled from Minneapolis to take part in the march. He said politicians need to stop talking about change and instead take action.

"They have to speak with their actions and not their words. I'm sorry, Jacob Frey, the governor. They need to step up," said Fair.

Calls to step up and make a change as a community mourns once again.

"I can't even say I thought a change would have been made by now. We've had centuries to change racism, and we didn't do it," said Leach.

Leach said they will march again Tuesday and Wednesday next week to continue to make their voices and messages heard.

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"Enough is Enough": Black Lives Matter Twin Ports marches through Duluth to spread their message - KBJR 6

‘The fear increases. The anger grows’ Black Lives Matter rally held at Monongalia County Courthouse in Morgantown (West Virgina) – WV News

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) With her voice cracking and tears beginning to flow, Del. Danielle Walker, D-Monongalia, raised her shirt to reveal the body armor she was wearing underneath.

Walker was speaking at a Black Lives Matter rally Thursday evening in Morgantown, organized in the wake of the death of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man who died in Minnesota after being shot by a police officer.

Once again, we are here. Once again, this is our meeting place, Walker said. Once again, the tears flow. The fear increases. The anger grows. And the heart is no longer broken, it is shattered.

Del. Danielle Walker, D-Monongalia, spoke during the Black Lives Matter rally held in front of the Monongalia County Courthouse, Thursday April 15.

Walker noted that people say the names of Black men killed by police violence when they happen and remember them on anniversaries, but she remembers them every day of her life for one reason: She is Black.

Im not OK, and, neither should you [be OK], she said. Im tired. Im frustrated. And Im scared. Im strong enough to lean on my community.

Walker said she felt guilt wearing body armor, but said it was a necessity.

As the only Black woman state elected official, I have to come into the town that I live in, a state I pay taxes in, where I am a stellar citizen and abide by the laws, come to my community space, and my king and I have to wear body armor, Walker said.

Walker said she was not going to walk in fear Thursday, relying on the support of those around her. But she offered a grim reminder of the reality she faces because of the color of her skin.

Dont make me a childless mother, but dont make my children motherless children, Walker said.

Thursdays rally was organized by Sammantha Harris.

Its just a really bad time to kill a Black man, Ill put it like that, she said. The trial of George Floyd is going on; everyone is already fed up with everything. Just because the winter has passed does not mean that social justice has ended.

Harris said people all around the nation are mad, and that anger exists in Morgantown.

Sammantha Harris organized the Black Lives Matter rally held in Morgantown Thursday April 15.

Its important that our local government and our local cops know that if things like that happen here, we wont accept it, Harris said. Its a nationwide change that needs to be made.

The Black Lives Matter movement is important, she said, because for a long time America told Black Americans that we dont matter.

Daunte Wright is my exact skin color I look at him and I see my brother, Harris said. Until America is able to acknowledge that Black lives do matter, were not going to move forward.

Harris emphasized this is not a case of trying to prove one race is more important than the other.

Were just saying that we matter the barest of the bare, the bar is literally on the floor, Harris said. Somehow we just keep digging under it.

If I was a cop, Id want a police review board so I would know I was doing it right, Harris said. Theres no other job where you dont have some sort of outside influence whether or not youre doing good. The fact that cops can just walk around doing whatever they want and have the protection of the union is absurd, and it has to stop.

The purpose of the rally, Harris said, was to make the city know they are still there and not going anywhere.

I think the City Council and the police were hoping that after last summer, after everything calmed down, that this wouldnt go on anymore, she said. Were not letting up.

Harris said that until theres change nationwide and government sees that citizens are demanding better, it wont get better.

Thats why nationwide movements are so important I know it didnt happen here, and that Minnesota is states away, but it could have happened here, Harris said.

Reach Chris Slater at cslater@wvnews.com, 304-887-6681, or follow @chris_slater on Twitter.

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'The fear increases. The anger grows' Black Lives Matter rally held at Monongalia County Courthouse in Morgantown (West Virgina) - WV News

Roofers slammed with business after hail storms damage property in Ascension – WBRZ

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

PRAIRIEVILLE - Residents are still assessing damage from back to back hail storms in the Prairieville area.

"That is the worst hail storm I have ever experienced," Rev. Anthony Bridges said, who lives in the Crestview area.

"I heard all that banging on the window. I never heard that before," Rev. Bridge added.

The two days of hail caused damage to Bridges' car. Now he's concerned about the house.

"I started worrying about my roof being damaged.Ijust put a new roof up, then my car windows are broken," Rev. Bridges said.

A roofing company answered calls several about damage in Bridges' neighborhood.

"The last two days it's been pretty busy," Kase Dupont with SOCO Roofing said.

DuPont says most of his calls were coming from the Prairieville area.

"The area we're in right now is a one (hail) inch impact zone,which is pretty significant as far as damage that will be causedto a roof," Dupont said.

Dupont says his workers won't be able to start repair jobs until next week, because they are still answering calls and inspecting hail damaged property.

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Roofers slammed with business after hail storms damage property in Ascension - WBRZ

Ascension Healthcare announces partnership with Grand Meadows to launch joint support technology NANOFLEX in US Animal Healthcare market -…

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

PRESS RELEASE

Ascension Healthcare announces partnership with Grand Meadows to launch joint support technology NANOFLEX in US Animal Healthcare market

LONDON, April 15 2021 Ascension Healthcare plc (Ascension or the Company), a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercialising innovative therapies for haemophilia and osteoarthritis is pleased to announce it has signed a commercial partnership agreement with Grand Meadows, Inc. a US-based market-leading provider of high-quality science backed equine and pet supplements, to launch a revolutionary new joint support technology, NANOFLEX, for Horses, Dogs and Cats.

NANOFLEX, represents the first significant scientific evolution in joint support for animals in many years. Harnessing the power of Ascensions patented sequessome technology (SEQ TECH), it changes the way we approach joint wear and tear in animals to improve mobility. Through its lubricating action, NANOFLEX offers a premium and unique treatment for joint health and is entirely drug free.

Biresh Roy, Chief Executive Officer of Ascension said: We are delighted to be partnering with Nick and his team at Grand Meadows to launch NANOFLEX exclusively in the US to build a successful equine and companion animal business together. This exciting collaboration marks Ascensions commercial debut into the large and growing US equine and companion animal markets, using our proven, and highly effective drug-free SEQ TECH.

Nick Hartog, Owner and President of Grand Meadows said: The animal health market in the US, particularly in the area of joint support, has, from a product innovation standpoint, been stagnant and there is a need for new innovative joint support products. NANOFLEX is easy to use, entirely drug-free and, as such, is perfectly suited to fill the gap in this market. I am looking forward to a long and successful collaboration with Ascension.

- Ends -

For further information please contact:

About Ascension Healthcare plc

Ascension Healthcare plc is a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercialising innovative therapies for the treatment of haemophilia and osteoarthritis.

The Company has several products in clinical development for the treatment of Haemophilia A and also a range of internationally marketed products for osteoarthritis and well-being.

For more information please visit: http://www.ascension.co.uk

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Ascension Healthcare announces partnership with Grand Meadows to launch joint support technology NANOFLEX in US Animal Healthcare market -...

With roads still flooded in Ascension Parish, residents find different ways of getting around – WBRZ

Posted on April 20, 2021 by Danzig

ASCENSION PARISH - Homeowners who live along the Amite River have been dealing with flooding since Thursday.

With roads expected to be unusable for the next couple of days, some residents have come up with creative solutions to get around.

Bo Mathern owns a house on Airport Drive. Because of the high water, he and his wife have been using his bulldozer to get to and from his home.

Dudley Marchand III lives right down the road from Mathern. Marchand's land has flooded so much that his front yard looks like a lake. Marchand said that he uses a boat to get around, leaving it parked in the garage for easy accessibility.

Residents also faced power outages Friday night when a tree fell on power lines and cut off electricity in the neighborhood. A DEMCO crew was still working on repairing the lines Saturday.

Even with all the flooding and the power outage, residents say they are still happy to live in the area.

"It's so peaceful and quiet back here it's worth a little bit of aggravation from the water," Marchand said.