03 January 21
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Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, Profiting Off Pandemic Pain, Are the Ugly Faces of GOP Corruption
Margaret Carlson, The Daily Beast
Carlson writes: "Would you vote for a senator who sold a stock likely to tank after getting a senators-only briefing on a coming pandemic? How about one who told you the pandemic was no big deal while buying shares in a company that sells body bags?"
Washington’s turned a blind eye to their self-dealing and alleged insider trading, but Georgians have not.
Both Republican incumbents in Georgia’s crucial runoffs, that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate, were investigated this year for allegedly engaging in pandemic-related insider trading.
The two are the Senate’s wealthiest member, Kelly Loeffler, appointed in 2019 and running for a full term of her own, and its seventh wealthiest member, David Perdue, a businessman sued for wage theft and discrimination while losing $150 million in two years as CEO of Dollar General.
After the notorious briefing, Loeffler, who joined Trump in dismissing the pandemic, and her husband, who almost never trades to avoid conflict with his job as chair of the Intercontinental Stock Exchange, made 27 trades worth between $1.2 and $3.1 million that helped them weather the virus-triggered crash. On the same day, Perdue began accumulating $825,000 worth of stock in DuPont, a company that makes personal protective equipment and body bags, and sold an equal amount of other stocks in over a hundred other transactions. He’d already raised eyebrows when as a member of the Senate’s cybersecurity subcommittee, he promoted FireEye, a cybersecurity firm in which he held $250,000 worth of stock, a fraction of his 2,596 trades since joining the Senate. It makes you wonder when he has time to legislate and why Martha Stewart, who prepared the country to bake sourdough bread as a hedge against insanity, will be remembered for going to jail over one trade.
Bill Barr’s Justice Department and the Senate Ethics Committee, so-called, both ended their investigations into the suspiciously timed trades. The only investigation for insider trading that remains open just happens to be against a senator who’s retired.
But while Washington has turned a blind eye, Georgians have not. During the Republican primary, the candidate Trump backed, former Rep. Doug Collins, said he was “sickened” by Loeffler “profiting off the pain” of COVID victims. Whenever it comes up, Loeffler talks about her humble beginnings growing soybeans. In the general election, Perdue’s opponent, Democrat Jon Ossoff, got off the ground when he ripped through the accusations at their first debate and Perdue just stared ahead, speechless. Rather than endure that again, there’s been an empty podium at subsequent debates where Perdue would be if he could muster a defense.
On Monday, the final day of campaigning, President-elect Biden will try to help get Democrats Ossoff and Raphael Warnock over the top while President Trump, taking time from his exhausting schedule of golfing, pardoning his friends and pushing through the most federal executions since 1896, will try to un-depress turnout after two months of bitter complaints about how Georgia’s Republican officials supposedly allowed Biden to steal the election from him. The charge was supported by little more than a purported eyewitness found by Rudy Giuliani who was actually a temp who wiped down computer screens for one day at one polling place. Weeks of Trump telling voters the “system is rigged,” GOP strategist Frank Luntz told Fox, is having “a debilitating impact on whether his people will vote.” He’s right. Why bother if a gremlin named Roy Raffensberger—the Republican Secretary of State’s imaginary brother in Trump’s warped mind—is going to eat your ballot?
On New Year’s Eve in the pouring rain, early voters in Cobb County were standing in a line two football fields long telling reporters they would be staying for a long as it took to vote. It’s a race that will decide whether Mitch McConnell remains majority leader or lives out what’s likely his last term under the thumb of Chuck Schumer, and if the pandemic some profited from will finally be treated like the threat to the country it is.
Perdue and Leoffler got off for now. Of course they did. The legislation supposed to stop insider trading largely sets up disclosure rules that do little to stop inside trading since members of Congress are by definition insiders. That’s so obvious that uber-capitalist Republican Sen. John Cornyn said that the only way to deal with the problem is to prohibit members from trading stocks altogether.
Or to send those that game the system packing. Nothing gets a senator’s attention like a colleague paying a price for forgetting why he’s there.
Buildings are reflected in the window as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is taken from court, where he appeared on charges of jumping British bail seven years ago, in London. (photo: Matt Dunham/AP)
Decision Expected Monday on Julian Assange Extradition to US
Pan Pylas, Associated Press
Pylas writes: "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will find out Monday whether he can be extradited from the U.K. to the U.S. to face espionage charges over the publication of secret American military documents."
District Judge Vanessa Baraitser is due to deliver her decision at London’s Old Bailey courthouse at 10 a.m. Monday. If she grants the request, then Britain’s home secretary, Priti Patel, would make the final decision.
Whichever side loses is expected to appeal, which could lead to years more legal wrangling.
However, there’s a possibility that outside forces may come into play that could instantly end the decade-long saga.
Stella Moris, Assange’s partner and the mother of his two sons, has appealed to U.S. President Donald Trump via Twitter to grant a pardon to Assange before he leaves office on Jan. 20.
And even if Trump doesn’t, there’s speculation that his successor, Joe Biden, may take a more lenient approach to Assange’s extradition process.
U.S. prosecutors indicted the 49-year-old Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse that carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.
Lawyers acting on behalf of the U.S. government said in their closing arguments after the four-week hearing in the fall that Assange’s defense team had raised issues that were neither relevant nor admissible.
“Consistently, the defense asks this court to make findings, or act upon the submission, that the United States of America is guilty of torture, war crimes, murder, breaches of diplomatic and international law and that the United States of America is ‘a lawless state’,” they said. “These submissions are not only non-justiciable in these proceedings but should never have been made.”
Assange’s defense team argued that he is entitled to First Amendment protections for the publication of leaked documents that exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan and that the U.S. extradition request was politically motivated.
In their written closing arguments, Assange’s legal team accused the U.S. of an “extraordinary, unprecedented and politicized” prosecution that constitutes “a flagrant denial of his right to freedom of expression and poses a fundamental threat to the freedom of the press throughout the world.”
Defense lawyers also said Assange was suffering from wide-ranging mental health issues, including suicidal tendencies, that could be exacerbated if he is placed in inhospitable prison conditions in the U.S.
They said his mental health deteriorated while he took asylum inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for years and that he was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Assange jumped bail in 2012 when he sought asylum at the embassy, where he stayed for seven years before being evicted and arrested. He has been held at Belmarsh prison in London since April 2019.
His legal team argued that Assange would, if extradited, likely face solitary confinement that would put him at a heightened risk of suicide. They said if he was subsequently convicted, he would probably be sent to the notorious ADX Supermax prison in Colorado, which is also inhabited by Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Lawyers for the U.S. government argued that Assange’s mental state “is patently not so severe so as to preclude extradition.”
Assange has attracted the support of high-profile figures, including the dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and actress Pamela Anderson.
Daniel Ellsberg, the famous U.S. whistleblower, also came out in support, telling the hearing that they had “very comparable political opinions.”
The 89-year-old, widely credited for helping to bring about an end to the Vietnam War through his leaking of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, said the American public “needed urgently to know what was being done routinely in their name, and there was no other way for them to learn it than by unauthorized disclosure.”
There are clear echoes between Assange and Ellsberg, who leaked over 7,000 pages of classified documents to the press, including The New York Times and The Washington Post. Ellsberg was subsequently put on trial for 12 charges in connection with violations of the Espionage Act, which were punishable by up to 115 years in prison. The charges were dismissed in 1973 because of government misconduct against him.
Assange and his legal team will be hoping that developments in the U.S. bring an end to his ordeal if the judge grants the U.S. extradition request.
Lisa Montgomery. (photo: Kansas City Star)
Lisa Montgomery: Appeals Court Allows Execution to Proceed
Associated Press
Excerpt: "A federal appeals court has cleared the way for the only woman on federal death row to be executed before President-elect Joe Biden takes office."
Lisa Montgomery's lawyers have argued their client suffers from serious mental illnesses.
The ruling, handed down Friday by a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, concluded that a lower court judge erred when he vacated Lisa Montgomery's execution date in an order last week.
U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss had ruled the Justice Department unlawfully rescheduled Montgomery's execution and he vacated an order from the director of the Bureau of Prisons scheduling her death for Jan. 12.
Montgomery had been scheduled to be put to death at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, in December, but Moss delayed the execution after her attorneys contracted coronavirus visiting their client and asked him to extend the time to file a clemency petition.
Moss concluded that under his order, the Bureau of Prisons could not even reschedule Montgomery's execution until at least Jan. 1. But the appeals panel disagreed.
Meaghan VerGow, an attorney for Montgomery, said her legal team would ask for the full appeals court to review the case and said Montgomery should not be executed on Jan. 12.
Montgomery was convicted of killing 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett in the northwest Missouri town of Skidmore in December 2004. She used a rope to strangle Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, and then cut the baby girl from the womb with a kitchen knife, authorities said.
Montgomery took the child with her and attempted to pass the girl off as her own, prosecutors said.
But her lawyers have argued that their client suffers from serious mental illnesses.
Biden opposes the death penalty and his spokesman, TJ Ducklo, has said he would work to end its use. But Biden has not said whether he will halt federal executions after he takes office Jan. 20.
Dr. Paul Farmer. (photo: Rebecca E. Rollins/Partners In Health)
Dr. Paul Farmer: Centuries of Inequality in the US Laid Groundwork for Pandemic Devastation
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "As the United States sets records for COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations, we speak with one of the world's leading experts on infectious diseases, Dr. Paul Farmer, who says the devastating death toll in the U.S. reflects decades of underinvestment in public health and centuries of social inequality."
s we continue our coverage of the COVID-19 crisis, we turn now to the world-renowned infectious disease doctor and medical anthropologist, Dr. Paul Farmer. He’s chair of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Partners in Health, an international nonprofit that provides direct healthcare services to those who are sick and living in poverty around the world. Dr. Farmer co-founded the group in 1987 to deliver healthcare to people in Haiti. In 2014, Partners in Health was one of the first organizations to respond to the Ebola crisis in West Africa. Dr. Farmer’s new book is titled Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History. I spoke to him in early December and asked him how it’s possible for the United States to have nearly 20% of the world’s infections and deaths while having less than 5% of the world’s population.
DR. PAUL FARMER: Well, I mean, we are facing the consequences of decades and decades of underinvestment in public health and of centuries of misallocation of funds away from those who need that help most. And, you know, all the social pathologies of our nation come to the fore during epidemics. And during a pandemic like this one, we’re going to be showing the rest of the world, warts and all, how — we have shown the rest of the world how badly we can do. And now we have to rally, use new tools that are coming online, but address some of the older pathologies of our care delivery system and of our country. I think that’s where we are right now.
AMY GOODMAN: What needs to happen right now in the United States?
DR. PAUL FARMER: Well, first of all, you know, I think that it’s a great tragedy that such matters as masking or social distancing or even shutting down parts of the economy, that contribute to risk but are — it’s just a shame that that’s been politicized. These are not political or partisan actions. They are public health strategies. Right now they’re all we’ve got.
But even when the vaccine is online or begins to come online, we have no history of seeing a vaccine taken up so rapidly that it would alter the fundamental dynamics of a respiratory illness like this. So, we’re facing, as President-elect Biden said, a long, dark winter. And if we can make a difference that could spare tens of thousands and perhaps more than 150,000 lives, then we should do that.
And whether or not these are called mask mandates or pleading from the president, we need state and local authorities to come together and underline the nonpartisan and life-saving nature of some of these basic protective measures. We need to invest very heavily in making sure the vaccine goes to those who need it most and those who have been shut out of previous developments like this or shut out for too long.
So we have a lot of work ahead of us this winter, but no small amount of it is going to rely on individual families and communities to take up some of these measures rapidly to make sure that the dark winter does not lead to a blighted spring.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Farmer, can you comment quickly on these vaccines, for people to understand, the first what’s called mRNA, messenger RNA, vaccines, what they actually do in the human body? Do they make you immune, or you can get sick and be a carrier, but you, yourself — I mean, you can be infected and be a carrier, but you, yourself, will not get very sick? Explain the choice of who gets the vaccine, also the fact that this has not been studied in children, people under 14, and so what this means for kids.
DR. PAUL FARMER: Well, in general terms, let me just say that in the 30-plus years I’ve been involved in this work, I’ve never seen such a rapid development of a novel preventive for a novel vaccine. So there’s a lot to celebrate in terms of the global effort to come together to develop new vaccines.
Again in general terms, the idea is that instead of having a natural infection — in this case, breathing in the novel coronavirus and getting sick, which leads to the outcomes that we know: death or recovery with sequelae — it also leads probably to immunity. That’s what it’s like with other viral infections in humans, or almost all of them. So, what the vaccine does is introduce something that will trick the body into believing that it’s being invaded by the virus — in this case, it’s focused on a particular protein on the outer surface of the virus — and generate that immune response, which is often robust and enduring, at least with other viruses. Now, in the case of any novel pathogen, we don’t know for sure how long that immunity lasts, right? I mean, how could you? It hasn’t been studied for long. But we know about other viruses and can take some lessons from those.
And in the case of this new vaccine or this new type of vaccines, the mRNA vaccine, we’re also dealing with that unknown. This is a new kind of vaccination. This is a new approach. It’s very exciting, in part because it seems to confer that immunity without significant adverse effects. So, I think, again, on the side of development of a novel technology, these vaccines, whether mRNA vaccines or others, are great news, right? And maybe they will influence a new generation of vaccines for other pathogens, particularly viral pathogens, which tend to be the worst ones among humans. So, that’s where we are with the development of new technology.
Unfortunately, as I said and as you’ve underlined many times, Amy, the old pathologies of our society make it unlikely that the rollout will be smooth and evenly taken up across various communities, some of them with well-founded fears and mistrust of any kind of public health campaign. So, we’re in a bit of a pickle. I’m optimistic about what will happen in this country, but as you pointed out in opening up the hour, a lot of us are concerned with what’s going to happen in the Global South and among those who might as well be considered living in the Global South in wealthy and egalitarian countries like the United States and parts of Europe.
So, it’s going to be a rocky winter, with some highs and lows. And I hope there are more highs than lows. I hope there’s more reason for celebration than for grief. But I think it’s going to be a very, very difficult winter.
AMY GOODMAN: Just before we go to this remarkable book about dealing with Ebola and what it meant, I wanted to ask you about property rights, about patents and about countries like South Africa and India pushing for a temporary suspension of intellectual property rights and patents so that COVID-19 vaccines and medications become more accessible, particularly in the Global South.
DR. PAUL FARMER: Well, I’d just like to say something we’ve had a chance to discuss before in previous years. You know, when you look at what happened around HIV, which by 1995, '96, those of us in the infectious disease world understood that this would be a life-saving suppressive therapy — like as with diabetes requiring insulin, you'd have to keep taking it, but this would save millions of lives, and maybe even more, and prevent transmission of mother to child — the same debates about intellectual property of course came up then.
The average wholesale price for a three-drug regimen in the years immediately after the discovery of these new agents was $15,000, sometimes $20,000, per person per year. So, if you split your time between Harvard and Haiti, as I had and do, you would imagine, if you couldn’t have an imagination beyond conventional property rights discussion, that the majority of the world would be shut out of access to this therapy. And, of course, that made the most difference, on a continent level, in Africa, where the majority of people living with HIV and dying with HIV were at the time.
And what happened later was the production of generic versions of these drugs, often in India or China or even South Africa — right? — so that a much lower cost could be tied to the same agents. And when I say “much lower,” I mean a reduction, really even within those early years, from $15,000 to $20,000, to about $300 per person per year. And with groups like the Clinton Foundation getting involved, those prices dropped even further. And right now you can get a really good three-drug regimen, even with some pediatric formulations for children, for about $60 per patient per year.
So, you could say that took a long time, but it didn’t take a long time in terms of the impact that it could have. Millions and millions of lives, maybe even 16 to 20 million lives, are being saved by these drugs. But in some places, like Rwanda, where I’ve spent 10 years, you saw the virtual eradication of AIDS among children, because if mom is on therapy, the transmission to babies in utero, or through breastfeeding probably, really does not occur. And this is not a hypothetical development. This has already happened in Rwanda, which is a very poor country with a very robust public health and care delivery system.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Paul Farmer. We’ll return to our interview in a moment and talk about his new book, Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History.
Edna Halup, a staff member at a private nursing home, receives a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, in Ganei Tikva, Israel, on Dec. 22. (photo: Ariel Schalit/AP)
As Israel Leads in COVID-19 Vaccines Per Capita, Palestinians Still Await Shots
Daniel Estrin, NPR
Estrin writes: "Israel has vaccinated a larger share of its population against COVID-19 than any other country, and is aiming to achieve 'herd immunity' from the virus by the end of spring or midsummer, the Israeli Health Ministry told NPR."
More than 800,000 of Israel's population of about 9 million have received COVID-19 vaccination shots. The country aims to vaccinate 25% of Israelis by the end of January.
The vaccination drive began Dec. 19 with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu receiving the first shot on live TV. Israel so far is using the vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech and is awaiting a shipment of Moderna's vaccine.
Figures compiled by Our World in Data, a website published by Oxford University, put Israel in the lead in vaccination doses administered per 100 people. But the country is behind China, the United States and the United Kingdom in the total administered as of Thursday.
But Israel is not providing vaccines to Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank or in the Gaza Strip, which is blockaded by Israel and Egypt. Palestinian officials are scrambling to secure deals with vaccine manufacturers.
In February, 3% of Palestinians in both territories are expected to be vaccinated through COVAX, an initiative co-led by the World Health Organization and a vaccines alliance to distribute COVID-19 vaccines more equally around the world, said Ali Abed Rabbo, director general of the Palestinian Health Ministry. That program pledges to eventually vaccinate 20% of the Palestinian territories, which have a combined population of about 5 million.
On Wednesday, drugmaker AstraZeneca offered to sell the Palestinian Authority enough vaccines to cover an additional 20% of the territories' population in February, he said.
Israel says the Palestinians are responsible for their own health care under the 1990s Oslo peace accords. Some aid groups say Israel and the Palestinian Authority both share responsibility.
Abed Rabbo said the Palestinian Authority only began approaching drugmakers in the last few weeks, long after other countries inked their own vaccine deals. The Palestinian Health Ministry official said a recently resolved Palestinian financial crisis, brought on by a months-long Palestinian Authority boycott of Israel, had left few funds for vaccines. Officials had expected to receive vaccines from Russia, but Russian officials Wednesday notified the Palestinian Authority they did not yet have enough supplies to offer.
Israel's vaccination bonanza — with inoculation stations open every day, including on the Sabbath, from a sports arena in Jerusalem to tents in Tel Aviv's central square — is at the core of Prime Minister Netanyahu's campaign for reelection in March.
"Israel is the world champion in vaccines," Netanyahu said Tuesday. "Maybe we will be the first country in the world to emerge from this coronavirus."
The prime minister has said his new friendship with Pfizer's CEO got Israel toward the front of the line. Israeli officials have indicated the country paid a higher price than other countries. One Health Ministry official told local media Israel paid $62 a dose, compared to the $19.50 price tag in the U.S. In a statement to NPR, the Israeli Health Ministry did not confirm how much it paid, citing the "sensitivity of the subject," but Israeli Finance Minister Israel Katz said the higher price was necessary considering Israel was vying for vaccines among much larger countries.
Israeli officials believe the country's fast vaccination campaign could provide an early model for countries.
"One of the reasons why Israel was given some of the vaccines [may be] so we can study in advance to see how such a big effort takes place," said Dr. Boaz Lev, who heads the Health Ministry's advisory committee for prioritizing how COVID-19 vaccines are distributed.
Officially, Israel's four national health insurance companies are only vaccinating citizens over 60 years of age, health care workers and residents of psychiatric and geriatric institutions. But many younger Israelis, who are at lower risk of COVID-19 complications, have also found ways to get vaccinated.
Some clinics vaccinate younger Israelis in the evening so Pfizer vials removed from refrigeration do not go to waste, Lev said.
Some Israeli Jews have also found it easy to get vaccinated at clinics in Arab communities in Israel. Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, who comprise about a fifth of the country, have been more skeptical of the vaccine.
Nicole Schwartz, 27, accompanied her grandmother to get the vaccine Thursday, in the town of Sderot, and unexpectedly received one herself when she asked. She feels relieved after taking a year off work as a special education teacher out of concern she would catch the virus, but also guilty at how easily she as a young person got the vaccine.
"I am unhappy with how political it is to bring the vaccines and do it so fast," Schwartz said. "It's important to [Netanyahu] that everyone will know that he brought the vaccines and he did it so fast and we are the first country."
Sderot borders Gaza, where the medical system has struggled to cope with coronavirus infections.
"No one talks about it in the news, and I don't think that people that live in Sderot actually talk about it, but it's not fair," Schwartz said about Israelis having vaccines before Palestinians in Gaza. "There are people there."
Sunday Song: Simon And Garfunkel | The Boxer
Simon And Garfunkel, YouTube
Excerpt: "When I left my home and my family, I was no more than a boy in the company of strangers in the quiet of the railway station running scared."
I am just a poor boy
Though my story's seldom told
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocketful of mumbles
Such are promises
All lies and jest
Still, a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm
Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm
When I left my home and my family
I was no more than a boy
In the company of strangers
In the quiet of the railway station
Running scared
Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters
Where the ragged people go
Looking for the places only they would know
Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie, lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Asking only workman's wages
I come looking for a job
But I get no offers
Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue
I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome
I took some comfort there
La-la-la-la-la-la-la
Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie, lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Then I'm laying out my winter clothes
And wishing I was gone
Going home
Where the New York City winters aren't bleeding me
Leading me
Going home
In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that laid him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains
Mm-mm-mm
Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie, lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie, lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie, lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie, lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie, lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie, lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie, lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Lie-la-lie
Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie, lie-lie-lie-lie-lie
Turtle. (photo: AFP)
World's Rarest Turtle Could Avoid Extinction After Potential Mate Found in Vietnam Lake
Nick Allen, The Telegraph
Allen writes: "A female specimen of the world's rarest turtle has been discovered, meaning the species now has the chance to avoid extinction."
female specimen of the world's rarest turtle has been discovered, meaning the species now has the chance to avoid extinction.
Until this year a male Swinhoe's softshell turtle living at Suzhou Zoo in China was thought to be the last of its kind.
But genetic testing has confirmed that an animal found in Dong Mo Lake in Vietnam in October is a female of the same species - Rafetus swinhoei - which is also known as the Yangtze giant softshell turtle.
Hoang Bich Thuy of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Vietnam said: "In a year full of bad news and sadness across the globe the discovery of this female can offer all some hope that this species will be given another chance to survive."
The species, which is the largest freshwater turtle in the world, was named after the 19th Century English diplomat and biologist Robert Swinhoe.
It later became virtually extinct due to hunting for food, and the sale of its eggs as medicine in China.
Since 2008 scientists at Suzhou Zoo had been trying, unsuccessfully, to breed the last known remaining male with a female.
That female died in April 2019 after an attempt at artificial insemination.
Scientists then began a search for another female in the wild in Vietnam.
In addition to the 86kg female found in Dong Mo Lake on October 22, they believe there may be one more Swinhoe's turtle there, and potentially another in a nearby lake.
They plan an attempt to capture the additional turtles later this year.
Genetic tests will be carried out to confirm the species of the animals, and their gender will be determined.
Timothy McCormack, programme director of the Asian Turtle Program of Indo-Myanmar Conservation, said: "It is so important that we are taking these steps, confirming the sex of the identified animals.
"Once we know the sex of the animals in Vietnam we can make a clear plan on the next steps. Hopefully, we have a male and a female, in which case breeding and recovery of the species becomes a real possibility. We need to be looking at bringing these [turtles] together as part of the broader conservation plan for the species."
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