The Tyranny of Doubt

The World Today for August 12, 2024

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NEED TO KNOW

MALAWI

In March last year, Cyclone Freddy ripped through Malawi and southeast Africa, killing 679 people, displacing almost 660,000, and causing property damage totaling more than $500 million.

Thirty-nine-year-old mother Gladys Austin was one of those hundreds of thousands who had to flee her home in the southern village of Makwalo after heavy rains destroyed a sandbar on the Ruo River, reported the Guardian. The resulting floods also washed away her livestock, grain, and the rest of her goods. Luckily, she and her family received international aid to rebuild. But many Malawians have not been so lucky.

A year after Austin and her community struggled with flooding, communities in Malawi were dealing with one of the worst droughts in memory due to the meteorological phenomenon, El Niño.

Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera recently declared a state of disaster due to the drought throughout much of the country, reported the Associated Press. He said Malawi needed $200 million in humanitarian assistance to cope with the problem, or else face potential famine. The drought was already forecast to shave multiple points off of the country’s gross domestic product, further constraining growth that would help the country overcome its deep poverty and desperate need for economic development.

The good news, however, is that Malawians have created a “laboratory for low-cost community-led projects” to improve climate resilience, wrote World Politics Review. Farmers, for example, are teaching each other about soil conservation, water management and crop diversification. Others have developed plans for inter-cropping, or growing multiple crops together, composting, organic pest control, and other measures that mitigate the effects of climate change on agriculture.

These efforts extend to more sophisticated commercial enterprises. In the capital of Lilongwe, for instance, computer scientists have established a technology incubator that now supports firms, for example a banana tissue culture lab, CNN noted.

Malawi has also been working closely with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change – Blair is a former British prime minister – to help develop AI companies so that they might leapfrog other stages of economic development and benefit sooner from the latest tech trends. The Malawi University of Science and Technology also recently launched an AI research center with the assistance of American schools, Voice of America added.

Still, Malawi faces governance challenges under Chakwera that could threaten to stymie anyone’s dreams of a better tomorrow in the country. Amnesty International recently criticized a top court decision to uphold a ban on same-sex sexual conduct, for example. The US State Department decried Chakwera’s oversight of torture and other human rights violations, too. Some journalists investigating corruption, meanwhile, are in hiding, even as the corruption chief resigned under pressure.

Malawians face the tough task of standing up for their rights and fighting to survive the weather. And as Deutsche Welle noted, despite making strides in some areas, locals say that “Doubts about the country’s future loom large.”

THE WORLD, BRIEFLY

Giving a Little Back

UKRAINE

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed over the weekend that Ukrainian troops are continuing to fight local Russian border guards and conscripted convicts in Russia’s Kursk region, after Ukrainian forces launched an offensive last week that observers called a major embarrassment for the Kremlin, CNN reported.

The incursion into Russia began Tuesday and marked the first time Ukrainian regular and special operations units have entered Russian territory since the conflict began more than two years ago. Previously Ukraine has conducted limited cross-border attacks in the border region of Belgorod with airstrikes and pro-Ukrainian sabotage groups. Historians said the incursion is the first time foreign troops have entered Russia since World War II,

Ukrainian forces have advanced approximately 20 miles into Russian territory, taking control of at least 96 square miles as of Sunday. The captured areas include the villages Tolpino and Obshchy Kolodez, where Ukrainian troops have been seen replacing Russian flags with Ukrainian ones.

Kyiv’s forces said they intend to stretch Russian defenses, inflict maximum losses, and destabilize the region without any plans to annex the captured territories. Ukrainian officials have emphasized adherence to international humanitarian law during the operation, Agence France-Presse noted. Meanwhile, there’s the morale boost for Ukrainians, who have been living with air strikes, ground fighting, shortages of electricity, and other necessities for two years.

In response to the offensive, Russian President Vladimir Putin described Ukraine’s operations as a “major provocation” and has deployed reserves and additional equipment to the region.

However, he has refrained from declaring a state of war or full mobilization, likely to avoid domestic panic and allow for regime stability.

There have been reports of civilian casualties and more than 76,000 people have been evacuated from the Kursk region, NBC News wrote.

Military analysts explained that Ukraine’s offensive serves to demonstrate Moscow’s vulnerabilities and inability to secure its borders. They also suggested that the operation is also part of Kyiv’s efforts to relieve pressure on other fronts and give it an advantage in peace negotiations.

Meanwhile, even though the offensive underscored a strategic and symbolic victory for Kyiv, Ukraine continues to face Russian attacks: On Sunday, Russia launched missile and drone strikes in the Kyiv region that resulted in civilian casualties, including the deaths of a four-year-old boy and his father.

That attack followed a strike on a supermarket in the Ukrainian town of Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region that killed at least 11 people and injured 37 others.

Ukrainian army officials have accused Moscow of using advanced weapons in its strikes, including North Korean KN-23 ballistic missiles and Iran-made Shahed drones.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine reported that July was the deadliest month for Ukrainian civilians since October 2022, with 219 killed and 1,018 injured in missile strikes in densely populated areas.

Absolution By Decree

PERU

The Peruvian government enacted a new law over the weekend that would bar the prosecution of crimes against humanity committed before 2002, a move that would benefit a convicted former president and other military officials accused of abuses committed during Peru’s internal armed conflict between 1980 and 2000, the Associated Press reported.

Peruvian lawmakers passed the bill last month, prompting criticism from human rights organizations that it would thwart ongoing investigations over the massacres perpetrated during the conflict that killed around 69,000 people, while 21,000 others disappeared.

Observers explained that the legislation would impact around 550 victims and 600 cases, including probes and judicial processes that would be archived or dismissed by statutes of limitations.

One of the key beneficiaries of the law is former President Alberto Fujimori, who governed Peru between 1990 and 2000.

Fujimori was sentenced in 2009 on charges of human rights abuses over the killing of 25 people, including a child, by army death squads between 1991 and 1992. At the time, the government described the murders as part of an anti-terrorist operation.

The 85-year-old former leader is also facing trial over the killing by soldiers of six farmers in a separate case from 1992.

The bill’s passing prompted the Inter-American Court of Human Rights – the highest regional court in this matter – to order Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, congress and the judiciary to annul the draft law because it violates international law.

Despite the court’s order, the bill was passed Friday – although it did not receive any comments from Boluarte.

The United Nations criticized the government’s move, saying the legislation “contravenes the country’s obligations under international law and is a troubling development, amid a broader backlash against human rights and the rule of law in Peru,” Agence France-Presse added.

Mining Discontent

SERBIA

Thousands of Serbians took to the streets of the capital Belgrade over the weekend to protest against an ambitious lithium mining project in western Serbia, a project that officials say will benefit the country, but activists warn would cause irreversible environmental damage, the BBC reported.

Protesters marched in the streets Friday, blocking two railway stations and chanting “Rio Tinto get out of Serbia,” referring to the Anglo-Australian mining company involved in the project.

Authorities estimated that up to 27,000 people participated in the demonstrations, with government officials threatening legal action against organizers.

President Aleksandar Vučić suggested that authorities received information from Russia that the protests were politically motivated and part of a group aimed to bring down the government, according to Reuters.

Friday’s protests are part of a long-running saga over the mining project in the western Jadar Valley, which contains some of Europe’s biggest lithium deposits. The Serbian government previously revoked Rio Tinto’s license to mine in the valley in 2022 following widespread demonstrations at the time.

But the project restarted last month following a court decision and a government reversal.

Demonstrators demanded a permanent ban on lithium and boron mining, warning that the project jeopardizes agricultural land and public health due to potential pollution and the disruption of the ecosystem.

They gave the government a Saturday deadline – which already expired – to bar the exploration and exploitation of the material.

Vučić has emphasized that the project will abide by strict environmental safety protocols, while the government has said it will boost Serbia’s economy.

Lithium is a crucial raw material for electric vehicle batteries and is integral for the transition to zero-emission cars.

The Jadar Valley project – valued at $2.4 billion – could meet 90 percent of Europe’s current lithium needs and significantly reduce the continent’s reliance on imports from America and Asia.

Observers told Reuters that the plan could turn Rio Tinto into one of the world’s biggest lithium producers.

DISCOVERIES

I’m Speaking

One thing that makes humans human is our fast-paced conversation ability. Now, scientists have found chimpanzees have a similar trait.

A recent study discovered that chimps also took rapid turns to speak – not with words, but with hand gestures – sometimes even interrupting each other.

This could point to “deep evolutionary similarities (with humans) in how face-to-face conversations are structured,” Cat Hobaiter from the University of St Andrews told the BBC.

On average, there is a short, 200-millisecond moment of silence between the end of one human’s sentence and the beginning of the other’s response. That’s about the duration of a blink – so short that the second speaker does not even process the last word spoken by the first one.

But there are variations among humans, mainly due to cultural differences. A 2009 study found, for example, that the Japanese have the fastest turn-taking pace with just seven milliseconds, while Danes needed about 450 milliseconds to speak up.

“We still don’t know when these human conversational timing patterns evolved and for what reason,” said lead researcher Gal Badihi.

However, observing the same behavior among some of our closest cousins paves the way toward finding out.

In their research, Badihi, Hobaiter and their team recorded 8,500 gestures from 250 wild chimps in five East African communities.

Most of these gestures meant quick orders such as “stop it,” “follow me,” or “groom me.” The range of turn-taking times among the apes was wider than the humans’ Japanese-Danish spectrum: “The gaps ranged from interrupting the signaler 1,600 milliseconds before they finished their gesture, to taking 8,600 milliseconds to respond,” said Hobaiter.

The scientists also observed that some communities had slower exchanges than others.

“Chimpanzees use gestures in almost every aspect of their life,” Badihi told the Guardian, explaining that gestures helped mitigate conflict and foster companionship, with grooming as the hottest topic of conversation.

The researchers hope further studies will establish the origins of this turn-taking conversational behavior, and whether it exists in other species, such as whales and dolphins.

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