BLANTYRE, MALAWI — Malawi, which already is suffering from food shortages, this week banned the import of unmilled maize from Kenya and Tanzania over concerns that the spread of maize lethal necrosis disease could wipe out the staple food.

The ministry of agriculture announced the ban in a statement that said the disease has no treatment and can cause up to 100% yield loss. The statement said maize can be imported only after it is milled, either as flour or grit.

Henry Kamkwamba, an agriculture expert with the International Food Policy Research Institute, told VOA that if the disease were introduced into the country, it would be difficult to contain.

He used the banana bunchy top virus as an example of the potential danger.

“Think of how we lost all of our traditional bananas in the past and now Malawi is a net importer of bananas … due to our lax policies in terms of imports,” he said.

“There are these similar concerns with maize,” he said, with maize being the nation’s main food crop.

Kamkwamba predicted the ban would help Malawi prevent the disease from spreading.

Kenya and Tanzania have long been primary sources of maize for Malawi during periods of food shortage.

Malawi is facing shortages largely because Cyclone Freddy destroyed thousands of hectares of maize last March.

The World Food Program in Malawi and the Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee estimate that 4.4 million people — around a quarter of the population — would face food shortages until March 2024.

Grace Mijiga Mhango, the president of the Grain Traders Association of Malawi, said that while she understands the severity of the impact of the maize disease, banning imports at a time of need would likely result in higher costs.

“If we really don’t have enough food, then we are creating another unnecessary maize [price] increase,” she said.

The next alternative for maize imports is South Africa, she said.

“South Africa is quite a distance,” she said, “and they don’t have enough. … It will be expensive.”

Malawi’s government said the ban will be temporary as it explores other preventive measures to combat the spread of maize lethal necrosis disease.
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SANTA FE, N.M. — Like Christmas trees, Santa and reindeer, the poinsettia has long been a ubiquitous symbol of the holiday season in the U.S. and across Europe.

But now, nearly 200 years after the plant with the bright crimson leaves was introduced in the U.S., attention is once again turning to the poinsettia’s origins and the checkered history of its namesake, a slaveowner and lawmaker who played a part in the forced removal of Native Americans from their land. Some people would now rather call the plant by the name of its Indigenous origin in southern Mexico.

Some things to know:

Where did the name poinsettia come from?

The name comes from the amateur botanist and statesman Joel Roberts Poinsett, who happened upon the plant in 1828 during his tenure as the first U.S. minister to the newly independent Mexico.

Poinsett, who was interested in science as well as potential cash crops, sent clippings of the plant to his home in South Carolina and to a botanist in Philadelphia, who affixed the eponymous name to the plant in gratitude.

A life-size bronze statue of Poinsett still stands in his honor in downtown Greenville, South Carolina.

However, he was cast out of Mexico within a year of his discovery, having earned a local reputation for intrusive political maneuvering that extended to a network of secretive masonic lodges and schemes to contain British influence.

Is the ‘poinsettia’ name losing its luster?

As more people learn of its namesake’s complicated history, the name “poinsettia” has become less attractive in the United States.

Unvarnished published accounts reveal Poinsett as a disruptive advocate for business interests abroad, a slaveowner on a rice plantation in the U.S., and a secretary of war who helped oversee the forced removal of Native Americans, including the westward relocation of Cherokee populations to Oklahoma known as the “Trail of Tears.”

In a new biography titled Flowers, Guns and Money, historian Lindsay Schakenbach Regele describes the cosmopolitan Poinsett as a political and economic pragmatist who conspired with a Chilean independence leader and colluded with British bankers in Mexico. Though he was a slaveowner, he opposed secession, and he didn’t live to see the Civil War.

Schakenbach Regele renders tough judgment on Poinsett’s treatment of and regard for Indigenous peoples.

“Because Poinsett belonged to learned societies, contributed to botanists’ collections, and purchased art from Europe, he could more readily justify the expulsion of Natives from their homes,” she writes.

A Christmas flower of many names

The cultivation of the plant dates back to the Aztec empire in Mexico 500 years ago.

Among Nahuatl-speaking communities of Mexico, the plant is known as the cuetlaxochitl (kwet-la-SHO-sheet), meaning “flower that withers.” It’s an apt description of the thin red leaves on wild varieties of the plant that grow to heights above 3 meters.

Year-end holiday markets in Latin America brim with the potted plant known in Spanish as the “flor de Nochebuena,” or “flower of Christmas Eve,” which is entwined with celebrations of the night before Christmas. The “Nochebuena” name is traced to early Franciscan friars who arrived from Spain in the 16th century. Spaniards once called it “scarlet cloth.”

Additional nicknames abound: “Santa Catarina” in Mexico, “estrella federal,” or “federal star” in Argentina and “penacho de Incan,” or “headdress” in Peru.

Ascribed in the 19th century, the Latin name, Euphorbia pulcherrima, means “the most beautiful” of a diverse genus with a milky sap of latex.

So what is its preferred name?

“Cuetaxochitl” is winning over some enthusiasts among Mexican youths, including the diaspora in the U.S., according to Elena Jackson Albarrán, a professor of Mexican history and global and intercultural studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

“I’ve seen a trend towards people openly saying: ‘Don’t call this flower either poinsettia or Nochebuena. It’s cuetlaxochitl,'” said Jackson Albarrán. “There’s going to be a big cohort of people who are like, ‘Who cares?'”

Most ordinary people in Mexico never say “poinsettia” and don’t talk about Poinsett, according to Laura Trejo, a Mexican biologist who is leading studies on the genetic history of the U.S. poinsettia.

“I feel like it’s only the historians, the diplomats and, well, the politicians who know the history of Poinsett,” Trejo said.

The Mexican roots of U.S. poinsettias

Mexican biologists in recent years have traced the genetic stock of U.S. poinsettia plants to a wild variant in the Pacific coastal state of Guerrero, verifying lore about Poinsett’s pivotal encounter there. The scientists also are researching a rich, untapped diversity of other wild variants, in efforts that may help guard against the poaching of plants and theft of genetic information.

The flower still grows wild along Mexico’s Pacific Coast and parts of Central America as far as Costa Rica.

Trejo, of the National Council of Science and Technology in the central state of Tlaxcala, said some informal outdoor markets still sell the “sun cuetlaxochitl” that resemble wild varieties, alongside modern patented varieties.

In her field research travels, Trejo has found households that preserve ancient traditions associated with the flower.

“It’s clear to us that this plant, since the pre-Hispanic era, is a ceremonial plant, an offering, because it’s still in our culture, in the interior of the county, to cut the flowers and take them to the altars,” she said in Spanish. “And this is primarily associated with the maternal goddesses: with Coatlicue, Tonantzin and now with the Virgin Mary.”

A lasting figure in history

Regardless of his troubled history, Poinsett’s legacy as an explorer and collector continues to loom large: Some 1,800 meticulously tended poinsettias are delivered in November and December from greenhouses in Maryland to a long list of museums in Washington, D.C., affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution.

A “pink-champagne” cultivar adorns the National Portrait Gallery this year.

Poinsett’s name may also live on for his connection to other areas of U.S. culture. He advocated for the establishment of a national science museum, and in part due to his efforts, a fortune bequeathed by British scientist James Smithson was used to underwrite the creation of the Smithsonian Institution.
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Injecting billions of dollars into green solutions to fight climate change has been a top priority of the Biden administration in 2023. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias looks at this year’s achievements and setbacks in the president’s environmental agenda.
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Nairobi, Kenya — According to the British charity Save the Children, some 30,000 children will be born in war-torn Sudan over the next three months without access to proper medical care, such as through doctors, hospitals and medicines. The group says the lack of basic health care endangers both mothers and unborn children, heightening the risk of long-term and deadly complications. 

That’s out of a total of some 45,000 children that are expected to be born in Sudan in the next quarter amid conflict that has destroyed many health facilities in the country.

The head of child protection at Save the Children International in Sudan, Osman Adam Abdelkarim, told VOA that the recent escalation of violence in many parts of Sudan has made his organization fear for pregnant women and millions of others. 

He said that in the town of Wad Madani, in Al Jazirah state, the medical system has collapsed. 

“There are no health facilities going to be operational,” he said. “There were two doctors killed in the last three days, and all of the medical staff evacuated, and left the place. And also, the supply chain to reach out[lying] areas, it was very challenging. It’s difficult to move, and that’s affecting the whole supply chain system for delivering drugs and also to make the medical staff available.”

The recent escalation of the conflict has seen more than 25,000 pregnant women on the move from violence, and Save the Children warns the women likely will be cut off from the health facilities and the right nutrition needed to support their babies.

Health experts say the first four weeks of a child’s life carry the highest risk of death and are the most dangerous for the mother. Most of the deaths are caused by birth asphyxia, premature birth, or infections. 

Hala al-Karib, regional director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, says there are not enough facilities in Sudan right now to help women and children.

“We are going to see a large number of women losing their lives,” she said. “We are going to see a lot of children losing their lives because of the fact that, you know, the infrastructure that’s typically established in wartime, you know, has not been done. And that in itself is an issue. The other issue… [is] the total failures of the mediation efforts that’s controlled by the Americans, it’s controlled by the Saudis,…both of them, they have not been successful to create safe zones for civilians.”

Sudan descended into armed conflict in April after the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces, General Abdel Fatah al-Burhan, and the leader of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, disagreed on how to move the country from military rule to a civilian-led government.

More than 12,000 people have been killed since April, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.   

The conflict has displaced more than 4.3 million people and 1.1 million have fled to neighboring countries.

Al-Karib said Sudanese civilians need safe camps. 

“All medical services and medical facilities totally collapsed at this point in time,” she said. “Now, since the war erupted in April, you know, there have been frequent calls to the international community to establish IDP camps, safe IDP camps for civilians to exist with services, and so on. That never happened. The international community, they never fulfilled their obligations towards Sudan. The crisis in Sudan has been totally abandoned and sidelined.”

The war has made it difficult for aid agencies to reach millions of people in need of food, water, and medicine due to the warring parties’ failure to allow humanitarian workers to safely pass through dangerous areas.

Save the Children is calling on the international community to assist the millions of Sudanese affected by the conflict and to remember their children and their mothers during these difficult times.
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SACRAMENTO, California — When a toilet is flushed in California, the water can end up in a lot of places: an ice skating rink in Ontario, ski slopes around Lake Tahoe, farmland in the Central Valley.

And — coming soon — kitchen faucets.

California regulators on Tuesday approved new rules to let water agencies recycle wastewater and put it right back into the pipes that carry drinking water to homes, schools and businesses.

It’s a big step for a state that has struggled for decades to secure reliable sources of drinking water for its more than 39 million residents. And it signals a shift in public opinion on a subject that as recently as two decades ago prompted backlash that scuttled similar projects.

Since then, California has been through multiple extreme droughts, including the most recent one that scientists say was the driest three-year period on record and left the state’s reservoirs at dangerously low levels.

“Water is so precious in California. It is important that we use it more than once,” said Jennifer West, managing director of WateReuse California, a group advocating for recycled water.

California has been using recycled wastewater for decades. The Ontario Reign minor league hockey team has used it to make ice for its rink in Southern California. Soda Springs Ski Resort near Lake Tahoe has used it to make snow. And farmers in the Central Valley, where much of the nation’s vegetables, fruits and nuts are grown, use it to water their crops.

But it hasn’t been used directly for drinking water. Orange County operates a large water purification system that recycles wastewater and then uses it to refill underground aquifers. The water mingles with the groundwater for months before being pumped up and used for drinking water again.

California’s new rules would let — but not require — water agencies take wastewater, treat it and then put it right back into the drinking water system. California would be just the second state to allow this, following Colorado.

It’s taken regulators more than 10 years to develop these rules, a process that included multiple reviews by independent panels of scientists. A state law required the California Water Resources Control Board to approve these regulations by December 31 — a deadline met with just days to spare.

The vote was heralded by some of the state’s biggest water agencies, which all have plans to build huge water recycling plants in the coming years. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 19 million people, aims to produce up to 570 million liters (150 million gallons) per day of both direct and indirect recycled water. A project in San Diego is aiming to account for nearly half of the city’s water by 2035.

Water agencies will need public support to complete these projects — which means convincing customers that not only is recycled water safe to drink, but it’s not icky.

California’s new rules require the wastewater to be treated for all pathogens and viruses, even if the pathogens and viruses aren’t in the wastewater. That’s different from regular water treatment rules, which require treatment only for known pathogens, said Darrin Polhemus, deputy director of the division of drinking water for the California Water Resources Control Board.

In fact, the treatment is so stringent it removes all of the minerals that make fresh drinking water taste good — meaning they have to be added back at the end of the process.

“It’s at the same drinking water quality, and probably better in many instances,” Polhemus said.

It’s expensive and time-consuming to build these treatment facilities, so Polhemus said it will only be an option for bigger, well-funded cities — at least initially.

In San Jose, local officials have opened the Silicon Valley Advanced Water Purification Center for public tours “so that people can see that this is a very high-tech process that ensures the water is super clean,” said Kirsten Struve, assistant officer for the water supply division at the Santa Clara Valley Water District.

Right now, the agency uses the water for things like irrigating parks and playing fields. But they plan to use it for drinking water in the future.

“We live in California where the drought happens all the time. And with climate change, it will only get worse,” Struve said. “And this is a drought-resistant supply that we will need in the future to meet the demands of our communities.”

Joaquin Esquivel, chair of the Water Resources Control Board that approved the new rules on Tuesday, noted that most people are already drinking recycled water anyway. Most wastewater treatment plants put their treated water back into rivers and streams, which then flow down to the next town so they can drink it.

“Anyone out there taking drinking water downstream from a wastewater treatment plant discharge — which, I promise you, you’re all doing — is already drinking toilet to tap,” Esquivel said. “All water is recycled. What we have here are standards, science and — importantly — monitoring that allow us to have the faith that it is pure water.”
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North America’s oldest citizen science project is underway with thousands of volunteers measuring bird populations in the annual Christmas Bird Count. VOA’s Natasha Mozgovaya joined a birdwatching team in Seattle. 

 
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NEW YORK — A new study adds to evidence that severe obesity is becoming more common in young U.S. children.

There was some hope that children in a government food program might be bucking a trend in obesity rates — earlier research found rates were dropping a little about a decade ago for those kids. But an update released Monday in the journal Pediatrics shows the rate bounced back up a bit by 2020.

The increase echoes other national data, which suggests around 2.5% of all preschool-aged children were severely obese during the same period.

“We were doing well and now we see this upward trend,” said one of the study’s authors, Heidi Blanck of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We are dismayed at seeing these findings.”

The study looked at children ages 2 to 4 enrolled in the Women, Infants and Children program, which provides healthy foods and other services to preschool-aged children in low-income families. The children were weighed and measured.

The researchers found that 2.1% of kids in the program were severely obese in 2010. Six years later, the rate had dipped to 1.8%. But by 2020, it was 2%. That translates to about 33,000 of more than 1.6 million kids in the WIC program.

Significant increases were seen in 20 states with the highest rate in California at 2.8%. There also were notable rises in some racial and ethnic groups. The highest rate, about 2.8%, was in Hispanic kids.

Experts say severe obesity at a very early age is nearly irreversible and strongly associated with chronic health problems and an early death.

It’s not clear why the increase occurred, Blanck said.

When WIC obesity rates dropped, some experts attributed it to 2009 policy changes that eliminated juice from infant food packages, provided less saturated fat, and tried to make it easier to buy fruits and vegetables.

The package hasn’t changed. But, “the daily hardships that families living in poverty are facing may be harder today than they were 10 years ago, and the slight increases in the WIC package just weren’t enough,” said Dr. Sarah Armstrong, a Duke University childhood obesity researcher.

The researchers faced challenges. The number of kids in WIC declined in the past decade. And the study period included 2020, the year the COVID-19 pandemic hit, when fewer parents brought their children in to see doctors. That reduced the amount of complete information available.

Despite its limitations, it was a “very well-done study,” said Deanna Hoelscher, a childhood obesity researcher at the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health, “It gives you a hint of what’s going on.”

What’s happened since 2020 is not yet known. Some small studies have suggested a marked increase in childhood obesity — especially during the pandemic, when kids were kept home from schools, eating and bedtime routines were disrupted and physical activity decreased.

“We are thinking it’s going to get worse,” Hoelscher said.
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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio was in the throes of a bitter debate over abortion rights this fall when Brittany Watts, 21 weeks and 5 days pregnant, began passing thick blood clots.

The 33-year-old Watts, who had not shared the news of her pregnancy even with her family, made her first prenatal visit to a doctor’s office behind Mercy Health-St. Joseph’s Hospital in Warren, a working-class city about 100 kilometers southeast of Cleveland.

The doctor said that, while a fetal heartbeat was still present, Watts’ water had broken prematurely and the fetus she was carrying would not survive. He advised heading to the hospital to have her labor induced, so she could have what amounted to an abortion to deliver the nonviable fetus. Otherwise, she would face “significant risk” of death, records of her case show.

That was a Tuesday in September. What followed was a harrowing three days entailing: multiple trips to the hospital; Watts miscarrying into, and then flushing and plunging, a toilet at her home; a police investigation of those actions; and Watts, who is Black, being charged with abuse of a corpse. That’s a fifth-degree felony punishable by up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine.

Her case was sent last month to a grand jury. It has touched off a national firestorm over the treatment of pregnant women, and especially Black women, in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump elevated Watts’ plight in a post to X, formerly Twitter.

Michele Goodwin, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Policing The Womb, said the case follows a pattern of women’s pregnancies being criminalized against them. She said those efforts have long overwhelmingly targeted Black and brown women.

Even before Roe was overturned, studies show that Black women who visited hospitals for prenatal care were 10 times more likely than white women to have child protective services and law enforcement called on them, even when their cases were similar, she said.

“Post-Dobbs, what we see is kind of a wild, wild West,” said Goodwin. “You see this kind of muscle-flexing by district attorneys and prosecutors wanting to show that they are going to be vigilant, they’re going to take down women who violate the ethos coming out of the state’s Legislature.”

She called Black women “canaries in the coal mine” for the “hyper-vigilant type of policing” women of all races might expect from the nation’s network of health care providers, law enforcers and courts now that abortion isn’t federally protected.

At the time of Watts’ miscarriage, abortion was legal in Ohio through 21 weeks, six days of pregnancy. Her lawyer, Traci Timko, said Watts sat for eight hours at Mercy Health-St. Joseph’s awaiting care on the eve of her pregnancy reaching 22 weeks, before leaving without being treated.

Timko said hospital officials had been deliberating over the legalities.

“It was the fear of, is this going to constitute an abortion and are we able to do that,” Timko said. The hospital didn’t return calls seeking confirmation and comment.

But B. Jessie Hill, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, said the hospital was in a bind.

“These are the razor’s edge decisions that health care providers are being forced to make,” she said. “And all the incentives are pushing hospitals to be conservative, because on the other side of this is criminal liability.”

Warren Assistant Prosecutor Lewis Guarnieri told Warren Municipal Court Judge Terry Ivanchak during Watts’ preliminary hearing that she left home for a hair appointment after miscarrying, leaving the toilet clogged. Police would later find the fetus wedged in the pipes.

“The issue isn’t how the child died, when the child died,” Guarnieri told the judge, according to TV station WKBN. “It’s the fact the baby was put into a toilet, was large enough to clog up the toilet, left in that toilet, and she went on (with) her day.”

In court, Timko bristled.

“This 33-year-old girl with no criminal record is demonized for something that goes on every day,” she said.

The size and stage of development of Watts’ fetus became an issue during her preliminary hearing.

At the time, vigorous campaigning over Issue 1, an ultimately successful amendment to enshrine a right to abortion in Ohio’s constitution, included ads alleging the amendment would allow abortions “until birth.”

A county forensic investigator reported feeling “what appeared to be a small foot with toes” inside Watts’ toilet. Police seized the toilet and broke it apart to retrieve the intact fetus as evidence. An autopsy confirmed that the fetus died in utero before passing through the birth canal and identified “no recent injuries.”

The judge acknowledged the case’s complexities when he bound the case over to the grand jury.

“There are better scholars than I am to determine the exact legal status of this fetus, corpse, body, birthing tissue, whatever it is,” he said from the bench.

Assistant Trumbull County Prosecutor Diane Barber, lead prosecutor on Watts’ case, could not speak specifically about the case, other than to note the county is compelled to move forward with it. She doesn’t expect a grand jury finding this month.

Timko, a former prosecutor, said Ohio’s abuse-of-corpse statute is vague.

“From a legal perspective, there’s no definition of ‘corpse,'” she said. “Can you be a corpse if you never took a breath?”

Grace Howard, assistant justice studies professor at San José State University, said clarity on what about Watts’ behavior constituted a crime is essential.

“Her miscarriage was entirely ordinary,” she said. “So I just want to know what (the prosecutor) thinks she should have done. If we are going to require people to collect and bring used menstrual products to hospitals so that they can make sure it is indeed a miscarriage, it’s as ridiculous and invasive as it is cruel.”
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MEXICO CITY — Guatemala violated Indigenous rights by permitting a huge nickel mine on tribal land almost two decades ago, according to a ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on Friday.

The landmark verdict marks a monumental step in a four-decade struggle for Indigenous land rights and a long, bitter legal battle, which has at times spilled into the streets of northern Guatemala.

It also comes at the close of the U.N. climate summit COP28, which stressed the importance of renewables and energy transition minerals like nickel more than ever.

According to a verdict read from Costa Rica in the early hours of the morning, the Guatemalan government violated the rights of the Indigenous Q’eqchi’ people to property and consultation by permitting mining on land where members of the community have lived at least since the 1800s.

In its written sentence, the court linked the human rights violations to “inadequacies in domestic law,” which fail to recognize Indigenous property and ordered the state to adopt new laws.

Leonardo Crippa, an attorney with the Indian Law Resource Center who has been researching and representing the community since 2005, said that the finding against the state of Guatemala was a once-in-a-century advance for Indigenous rights in Guatemala and internationally.

“All countries in Latin America are going to look at this decision,” Crippa said. “All courts will have to secure that any decision that this made on mining, on Indigenous lands or titling of Indigenous land is done in a way that is consistent with what the court decided today.”

The court also ordered an immediate stop to all mining activities, gave Guatemala six months to begin awarding a land title to the community, and ordered the creation of a development fund. No further mining can take place, it said, without the community’s consent.

The Guatemalan environmental department responsible for initially permitting the mine didn’t immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment.

For Rodrigo Tot, a local leader, the verdict is vindication of a lifelong battle against the mine and the state which took his own son’s life.

Guatemala first granted massive exploratory permits at the Fenix mine in eastern Guatemala to Canadian company Hudbay just under two decades ago. In 2009, the mine’s head of security shot Tot’s son dead. Hudbay sold the site to a local subsidiary of Swiss-based Solway Investment Group two years later.

“Losing your life doesn’t matter, but only for something important,” Tot said. “Within our anthem there is a part where it says ‘overcome or die.’ If I die defending my land, then I believe it is something that will remain as the history of our struggle.”

Over a decade of national and now international litigation after the murder of Tot’s son, documents were leaked appearing to show the mine attempting to divide the community by bribing some locals to testify in court in favor of the mine.

In response the U.S. Treasury sanctioned two Solway officials implicated in the accusations in November 2022. The ruling Friday noted the community suffered “violence, threats and harassment,” from 2006 to 2019. The U.S. Treasury sanctions against the two Solway employees, who were fired by the company, were not part of the court’s decision Friday.

A spokesperson for Solway wrote that the company and its subsidiary were “not a party to this case” and that “disagreements regarding the mismatch in land demarcation began even before our company acquired the project.”

She did not respond to questions about bribery allegations or the community’s harassment up to 2019, eight years after Solway’s subsidiary acquired the site.

While Crippa said it was encouraging that the court’s ruling came with strict timelines, Tot admitted he expects there will now be a battle for compliance.

“It doesn’t end here. Our fight is going to go on,” he said. But “it encourages us when we see that there are people who also value our struggle.”

The Fenix mine isn’t the only conflict between international mines offering clean energy minerals and Indigenous communities in the region, nor is it likely to be the last.

Indigenous and environmental protests rocked Panama for weeks earlier this year when the government approved a 20-year contract for a Canadian company’s local subsidiary. Eventually, a ruling of the country’s supreme court struck down the contract and ordered the copper mine to close.

Meanwhile, one study published last year calculated that over half of existing and planned critical mineral mines sit on or near Indigenous land. In remarks at COP28, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned of the potential for exactly this type of conflict as demand for minerals like nickel grows.

“The extraction of critical minerals for the clean energy revolution — from wind farms to solar panels and battery manufacturing — must be done in a sustainable, fair and just way,” Guterres said.
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WEST END, N.C. — Jesse Wimberley burns the woods with neighbors.

Using new tools to revive an old communal tradition, they set fire to wiregrasses and forest debris with a drip torch, corralling embers with leaf blowers.

Wimberley, 65, gathers groups across eight North Carolina counties to starve future wildfires by lighting leaf litter ablaze. The burns clear space for longleaf pine, a tree species whose seeds won’t sprout on undergrowth blocking bare soil. Since 2016, the fourth-generation burner has fueled a burgeoning movement to formalize these volunteer ranks.

Prescribed burn associations are proving key to conservationists’ efforts to restore a longleaf pine range forming the backbone of forest ecology in the American Southeast. Volunteer teams, many working private land where participants reside or make a living, are filling service and knowledge gaps one blaze at a time.

Prescribed fire, the intentional burning replicating natural fires crucial for forest health, requires more hands than experts can supply. In North Carolina, the practice sometimes ends with a barbecue.

“Southerners like coming together and doing things and helping each other and having some food,” Wimberley said. “Fire is not something you do by yourself.”

More than 100 associations exist throughout 18 states, according to North Carolina State University researchers, and the Southeast is a hot spot for new ones. Wimberley’s Sandhills Prescribed Burn Association is considered the region’s first, and the group reports having helped up to 500 people clear land or learn how to do it themselves.

The proliferation follows federal officials’ push in the past century to suppress forest fires. The policy sought to protect the expanding footprint of private homes and interrupted fire cycles that accompanied longleaf evolution, which Indigenous people and early settlers simulated through targeted burns.

“Fire is medicine and it heals the land. It’s also medicine for our people,” said Courtney Steed, outreach coordinator for the Sandhills Prescribed Burn Association and a Lumbee Tribe member. “It’s putting us back in touch with our traditions.”

The longleaf pine ecosystem spans just 3% of the 360,000 square kilometers it encompassed before industrialization and urbanization. But some pockets remain, from Virginia to Texas to Florida. The system’s greenery still harbors the bobwhite quail and other declining species. The conifers are especially resistant to droughts, a hazard growing more common and more severe due to climate change.

A big tent of environmentalists, hunters, nonprofit groups and government agencies recently celebrated a 53% increase in the longleaf pine range since 2009, spanning an estimated 20,000 square kilometers. However, those strides fell short of their goal to hit 32,000 square kilometers.

Private landowners are central to the coalition’s latest restoration effort. They hold roughly 86% of forested land in the South, according to America’s Longleaf Restoration Initiative.

The partnership needs thousands of new landowners to support longleaf management on their properties. The nascent burn associations are vital in their education, according to a 15-year plan released in November.

Federal agencies back the endeavor through activities such as invasive species removal and land management workshops. Nearly $50 million in federal grants are available for projects bolstering forest health, including prescribed fire.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a “Longleaf Pine Initiative” partnering with burn groups like Wimberley’s. Farm bill money supports planning and planting. Personnel can help install firebreaks.

But applicants are increasingly competing for limited funding that cannot cover all the needed maintenance burns, USDA spokesperson Matthew Vandersande said.

Landowners say liability-concerned states are reluctant to send their relatively few burners onto private property and private contractors cannot meet the demand.

“When it comes time to drop the match, you’re kind of on your own,” said Keith Tribble, 62, who owns a North Carolina tree farm.

While state forestry services provide classes, Tribble credits burn associations for the hands-on experience and crews needed to confidently manage the pines.

Humidity and wind speed are the biggest factors in a burn plan, according to Hitchcock Woods Superintendent Bennett Tucker, manager of a private forest in South Carolina. The pine’s oils allow it to almost always carry fire and he typically burns at a relative humidity between 25% and 50%.

“With a prescribed fire, we can control the where, the when, the how and all those factors by choosing the best conditions,” Tucker said.

Handheld weather meters ensure wind speed, temperature and humidity fall within limits under plans written beforehand. The prescriptions also can reduce potential liability in the event a fire escapes. Runaway fires are rare, according to studies of federal agencies and surveys of community burn groups. Wimberley’s teams haven’t had one yet, even with 40 burns per year.

Climate change is reducing the number of safe burn days. Rising temperatures cause lower relative humidity in the South and intensify periods when it’s too dry, said Jennifer Fawcett, a North Carolina State University wildland fire expert.

As the severity and frequency of storms, droughts and wildfires increase, longleaf pines could become even more important for ecological resilience in the South. Deep roots anchor them during strong winds and stretch far into the ground for water. Flames enhance soil nutrients.

Further, the surrounding ecosystems have few known rivals for biodiversity in the U.S. Light pours through open canopies onto the sparse floor, giving way to flora like an insect-eating plant that needs sun exposure and wet soil. Gopher tortoises feed on the native vegetation and dig up to 4.5-meter burrows sheltering other at-risk species.

“It’s more than just planting trees,” said Lisa Lord, The Longleaf Alliance conservation programs director. “We want to take the time to restore all of the values of the forest.”

A late 1920s education campaign known as the “Dixie Crusaders” harmed those interdependent relationships. Federal officials turned southerners against the practice and burning fell off. Flammable needles and wiregrasses piled up to dangerous tinder levels.

Wimberley’s family resisted, knowing their livelihoods depended on fire. His ancestors first applied it to “sweat” out the pine’s lucrative sap distilled into turpentine or exported as sealants. Later generations burned to shield crops.

Burning looks different from the times Wimberley’s mother dragged kindling known as “fat lighter” through the forest. But public understanding of its importance is returning and the ranks are growing.

“We’re all a bunch of pyromaniacs,” said Tribble, the tree farm owner.

Still, Tribble burns for a reason: he values connecting with people and the land.

Before his burns, brush cluttered the ground, choking waterflow to parts of the property that were “bone dry.” Now water runs from more marshy areas and the squeaky call of the rarely spotted red-cockaded woodpecker resounds from mature pines. Wild turkeys appear when smoke fills the sky.

Steed, the Lumbee outreach coordinator, is heartened by the rekindling of this proactive “fire culture” beyond the tribe that she says introduced it to the region.

She ran through her grandfather’s scorched woods as a child, but the expanse has gone about a decade without fire. Steed plans to lead her first burn next year in Wimberley’s woods and then manage a family property she recently inherited.

“It feels empowering,” Steed said of prescribed fire. “It feels like a very tangible way to connect to the past and also guide the future.”
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New oil and natural gas leasing will be prohibited on state land surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park, an area sacred to Native Americans, for the next 20 years under an executive order by New Mexico Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard.

Wednesday’s order extends a temporary moratorium that she put in place when she took office in 2019. It covers more than 293 square kilometers of state trust land in what is a sprawling checkerboard of private, state, federal and tribal holdings in northwestern New Mexico.

The U.S. government last year adopted its own 20-year moratorium on new oil, gas and mineral leasing around Chaco, following a push by pueblos and other Southwestern tribal nations that have cultural ties to the high desert region.

Garcia Richard said during a virtual meeting Thursday with Native American leaders and advocates that the goal is to stop the encroachment of development on Chaco and the tens of thousands of acres beyond the park’s boundaries that have yet to be surveyed.

“The greater Chaco landscape is one of the most special places in the world, and it would be foolish not to do everything in our power to protect it,” she said in a statement following the meeting.

Cordelia Hooee, the lieutenant governor of Zuni Pueblo, called it a historic day. She said tribal leaders throughout the region continue to pray for more permanent protections through congressional action.

“Chaco Canyon and the greater Chaco region play an important role in the history, religion and culture of the Zuni people and other pueblo people as well,” she said. “Our shared cultural landscapes must be protected into perpetuity, for our survival as Indigenous people is tied to them.”

The tribal significance of Chaco is evident in songs, prayers and oral histories, and pueblo leaders said some people still make pilgrimages to the area, which includes desert plains, rolling hills dotted with piñon and juniper and sandstone canyons carved by eons of wind and water erosion.

A World Heritage site, Chaco Culture National Historical Park is thought to be the center of what was once a hub of Indigenous civilization. Within park boundaries are the towering remains of stone structures built centuries ago by the region’s first inhabitants, and ancient roads and related sites are scattered further out.

The executive order follows a tribal summit in Washington last week at which federal officials vowed to continue consultation efforts to ensure Native American leaders have more of a seat at the table when land management decisions affect culturally significant areas. New guidance for federal agencies also was recently published to help with the effort.

The New Mexico State Land Office is not required to have formal consultations with tribes, but agency officials said they have been working with tribal leaders over the last five years and hope to craft a formal policy that can be used by future administrations.

The pueblos recently completed an ethnographic study of the region for the U.S. Interior Department that they hope can be used for decision-making at the federal level.
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seattle — The U.S. government said Thursday it plans to spend more than $1 billion over the next decade to help recover depleted populations of salmon in the Pacific Northwest, and that it will help figure out how to offset the hydropower, transportation and other benefits provided by four controversial dams on the Snake River, should Congress ever agree to breach them.

President Joe Biden’s administration stopped short of calling for the removal of the dams to save the fish, but Northwest tribes and conservationists who have long sought that called the agreement a road map for dismantling them. Filed in U.S. District Court in Oregon, it pauses long-running litigation over federal operation of the dams and represents the most significant step yet toward breaching them.

“Today’s historic agreement marks a new direction for the Pacific Northwest,” senior White House adviser John Podesta said in a written statement. “Today, the Biden-Harris administration and state and tribal governments are agreeing to work together to protect salmon and other native fish, honor our obligations to tribal nations, and recognize the important services the Columbia River system provides to the economy of the Pacific Northwest.”

The Columbia River Basin, an area roughly the size of Texas, was once the world’s greatest salmon-producing river system, with at least 16 stocks of salmon and steelhead.

Today, four are extinct and seven are listed under the Endangered Species Act. Another iconic but endangered Northwest species, a population of killer whales, also depends on the salmon.

Dams blamed for decline

Dams are a main culprit behind the salmon’s decline, and federal fisheries scientists have concluded that breaching the dams in eastern Washington on the Snake River, the largest tributary of the Columbia, would be the best hope for recovering them, providing the fish with access to hundreds of miles of pristine habitat and spawning grounds in Idaho.

Conservation groups sued the federal government more than two decades ago in an effort to save the fish. They have argued that the continued operation of the dams violates the Endangered Species Act as well as treaties dating to the mid-19th century ensuring the tribes’ right to harvest fish.

Republicans in Congress who oppose the breaching of the dams released a leaked copy of the draft agreement late last month.

“I have serious concerns about what this agreement means for the future of our region,” Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican from Washington, said in an emailed statement Thursday. “It jeopardizes the energy, irrigation and navigation benefits that support our entire way of life, and it makes commitments on behalf of Congress without engaging us.”

Details of agreement

Under the agreement, the U.S. government will build enough new clean energy projects in the Pacific Northwest to replace the hydropower generated by the dams — the Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Lower Granite.

The agreement includes a compromise regarding dam operations — providing for additional water to be spilled in the spring, fall and winter to help some salmon runs such as spring and summer Chinook, while reducing the spill required in late summer, when energy demand is high and production is especially profitable. That could harm fall Chinook, said the environmental law firm Earthjustice, which is representing environmental, fishing and renewable energy groups in the litigation.

The federal Bonneville Power Administration, which operates the dams, will spend $300 million over 10 years to restore native fish and their habitats throughout the Columbia River Basin, though it said the agreement would result in rate increases of only 0.7%. Two-thirds of that money will go toward hatchery improvements and operations, and the rest will go to what the agreement refers to as the “six sovereigns” — Oregon, Washington and the four tribes involved: the Yakama Nation, the Nez Perce Tribe, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs.

Combined with other fish-restoration funding, the federal government will be spending more than $1 billion over the next decade, the White House said.

The U.S. also will conduct or pay for studies of how the transportation, irrigation and recreation provided by the dams could be replaced. The dams made the town of Lewiston, Idaho, the most inland seaport on the West Coast, and many farmers in the region rely on barges to ship their crops, though rail is also available.

The agreement “lays out a pathway to breaching,” said Shannon Wheeler, chairman of the Nez Perce Tribe. “When these things are replaced, and the Pacific Northwest is transforming into a stronger, more resilient, better place, then there’s a responsibility … to make the decisions that are necessary to make sure these treaty promises are kept.”

Utility and business groups Northwest RiverPartners, the Public Power Council and the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association have opposed the agreement.

“This settlement undermines the future of achieving clean energy goals and will raise the rates of electricity customers across the region while exacerbating the greatest threat to salmon that NOAA scientists have identified — the warming, acidifying ocean,” Northwest RiverPartners said in a news release Thursday.

There has been growing recognition that the harm some dams cause to fish outweighs their usefulness, but only a few lawmakers in the region have embraced the idea. Dams on the Elwha River in Washington state and the Klamath River along the Oregon-California border have been or are being removed.

In 2021, Republican Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho proposed removing the earthen berms on either side of the four Lower Snake River dams to let the river flow freely, and to spend $33 billion to replace the benefits of the dams.

Last year, Washington Governor Jay Inslee and Washington U.S. Senator Patty Murray, both Democrats, released a report saying carbon-free electricity produced by the dams must be replaced before they are breached. Inslee declined to endorse breaching the dams during a conference call with reporters on Thursday, but he said figuring out how to replace their benefits would enable Congress to make a better decision.

“I don’t think this agreement makes anything inevitable, but it does make it much more likely that we’ll have the information we need to make the decision,” he said.

In October, Biden directed federal agencies to use all available resources to restore abundant salmon runs in the Columbia River Basin, but that memo too stopped short of calling for the removal of the dams.

“The energy needs of the Pacific Northwest should not rest on the backs of salmon,” said Donella Miller, fisheries science manager with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. “What’s good for the salmon is good for the environment, and what’s good for the environment is good for the people.”
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washington — The maiden liftoff of a new American rocket called Vulcan Centaur has been delayed from December 24 to January 8, the company that developed it said Thursday.

The postponement stems from last-minute technical snags, but United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno said on X, formerly Twitter, that a recent dress rehearsal on the launch pad went well.

The rocket will carry a private lunar lander, developed by the startup Astrobotic, which could become the first such private craft to touch down on the moon and the first American robot to land on the surface since the Apollo program ended in 1972.

“This is sort of, in a way, the first giant step in the campaign for the U.S., and for all of our friends, to go back to the moon, eventually with people,” Bruno told AFP in an interview last week.

“It’s a pretty big deal to have a payload at all, let alone one that goes to the surface of the moon,” he added.

“We wanted to do something really important, and we have a lot of confidence, obviously, in the design of our rocket,” Bruno said.

Liftoff for this mission called Cert-1 will take place at the U.S. Space Force launch base at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

In dress rehearsals in recent days, some “routine” issues emerged in the ground system so a Christmas Eve flight is now out, and the new window opens January 8, Bruno wrote on X.

Besides the lunar lander, this rocket will carry the cremated remains of several people associated with the original “Star Trek” series, including creator Gene Roddenberry and cast member Nichelle Nichols, who played the character Uhura. Roddenberry’s ashes have been launched into orbit previously.

A sample of Bruno’s own DNA will also be taken into space. “Who wouldn’t want to go to space with five ‘Star Trek’ people?” he mused in the interview with AFP.

Vulcan Centaur is meant to replace ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets and is designed to carry a payload of up to 27.2 metric tons into low orbit, comparable to what the SpaceX Falcon 9 can do.
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