25 May 22
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The championship-winning coach of the Golden State Warriors issued an impassioned call for action in the wake of the shooting that killed at least 19 children in Uvalde, Texas, Tuesday.
19 students, 2 adults killed in Texas elementary school shooting, officials say
Ahead of Game Four of the NBA Western Conference Finals, Kerr took no questions regarding basketball. Instead, he focused on the recent mass shootings in Buffalo, California, and Texas, demanding Washington act on gun control.
“When are we going to do something?” a visibly emotional Kerr exclaimed.
“I’m so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there,” he continued. “I’m tired of the moments of silence. Enough.”
Kerr then trained his ire on senators who have not passed H.R. 8, a legislation on background checks already approved by the House of Representatives.
“So I ask you, [minority leader] Mitch McConnell, I ask all of you senators who refuse to do anything about the violence and school shootings and supermarket shootings, I ask you, are you going to put your own desire for power ahead of the lives of our children and our elderly and our churchgoers, because that’s what it looks like,” Kerr said. “I’m fed up, I’ve had enough.”
He next asked everyone in the room to imagine that the victims were their own children or family members. “We can’t get numb to this,” he implored.
“It’s pathetic, I’ve had enough,” Kerr finished before storming off.
Kerr, a former sharpshooter for the Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls and one of the winningest coaches in NBA history, is a frequent voice in basketball circles on social issues.
But the topic of gun control is also a personal one for Kerr. His father, Malcolm Kerr, was assassinated in 1984 while he was president of the American University in Beirut.
Dmitry Medvedev, pictured alongside Vladimir Putin, has warned that the west must drop sanctions on Russia to fix the food crisis sparked by its invasion of Ukraine. (photo: Sputnik Photo Agency/Reuters)
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Naval Blockade of Ukraine
Blinken calls on Moscow to end blockade of Ukraine ports as Medvedev says Russia is ready to allow the flow of food when sanctions lift
Speaking at a UN security council meeting on Thursday, US secretary of state Antony Blinken demanded that Russia lift its blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and enable the flow of food and fertiliser around the world.
“The Russian government seems to think that using food as a weapon will help accomplish what its invasion has not – to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people,” he said at the meeting called by the Biden administration.
“The food supply for millions of Ukrainians and millions more around the world has quite literally been held hostage by the Russian military,” he added.
Blinken called on Russia to “stop threatening to withhold food and fertiliser exports from countries that criticise your war of aggression.”
Russia and Ukraine produce 30% of the global wheat supply and 69% of the world’s sunflower oil.
Earlier on Thursday, Dmitry Medvedev, a former president of Russia who is now senior security official, warned that Russia would not continue food supplies unless the west eased its sanctions on the Kremlin.
After pleas from western government and the United Nations to Moscow to allow the flow of food to avert possible famine in some countries, Medvedev said on Thursday that Russia was ready to do so but expected “assistance from trading partners, including on international platforms” in return.
“Otherwise, there’s no logic: on the one hand, insane sanctions are being imposed against us, on the other hand, they are demanding food supplies,” Medvedev said on the messaging app Telegram. “Things don’t work like that, we’re not idiots.”
“Countries importing our wheat and other food products will have a very difficult time without supplies from Russia. And on European and other fields, without our fertilisers, only juicy weeds will grow,” added Medvedev, who served as president between 2008 and 2012 but is now deputy chairman of Russia’s security council.
“We have every opportunity to ensure that other countries have food, and food crises do not happen. Just don’t interfere with our work.”
Ertharin Cousin, chief executive and founder of Food Systems for the Future, and a co-author of a report on the issue with Boston Consulting Group, said the crisis could have ramifications across the world. “While this crisis will impact all of us around the world in significant ways, low-income economies risk devastation and potential unrest,” she said. “We’re not just talking about the poorest of the poor, who are already suffering from hunger. We’re also talking about people who could recently afford a loaf of bread for their families and who now will be unable to do so.”
The demand to have sanctions on the Russian economy lifted could intensify western efforts to supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs to be able to challenge Russia’s naval blockade. Ukraine has already sunk Russia’s flagship battle cruiser Moskva but its military would need more sophisticated missiles in order to force the Russian Black Sea fleet to back off.
According to a report by Reuters, the White House is working on such a plan. Three US officials and two congressional sources said two types of powerful anti-ship missiles were in active consideration for either direct shipment to Ukraine, or via transfer from a European ally that has the missiles, Reuters reported on Thursday.
The plans are tempered by concerns that supplying Ukraine with the latest anti-ship weaponry could intensify the conflict. Current and former US officials and congressional sources have also cited roadblocks to sending longer range, more powerful weapons to Ukraine that include lengthy training requirements, difficulties maintaining equipment, or concerns weaponry could be captured by Russian forces.
Moscow’s military campaign in Ukraine and a barrage of unprecedented international sanctions on Russia have disrupted supplies of fertiliser, wheat and other commodities from both countries, pushing up prices for food and fuel, especially in developing nations.
Serhii Dvornyk, a member of Ukraine’s mission to the UN, backed Blinken’s claim and called on Russia to stop “stealing” Ukrainian grain and unblock the ports, noting that 400 million people around the world depended on grain from Ukraine.
The country’s grain exports fell from 5m tons a month before Russia’s February invasion to 200,000 tons in March and about 1.1m tons in April, he added.
Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, countered by saying his country was being blamed for all of the world’s woes.
He said the world had long suffered from a food crisis caused by an inflationary spiral stemming from rising costs of insurance, logistical snarls, and speculation on western markets.
He argued that Ukraine’s ports are blocked by Ukraine itself, which, he said, had placed mines along the Black Sea coast.
Russian MiG-29SMT jet fighters forming the symbol 'Z' in central Moscow. (photo: AFP/Getty Images)
Addressing a virtual press conference, Japanese defence minister Nobuo Kishi said that the move by Beijing and Moscow was likely planned to coincide with Japan’s hosting of the Quad meeting with its allies the US, Australia and India.
Tokyo is hosting its first ever informal gathering of Quad nations, which has seen leaders of all four nations — Fumio Kishida, Joe Biden, Anthony Albanese and Narendra Modi — meeting in the city.
Mr Kishi said Japan has expressed “grave concerns” to Russia and China over the movement of warplanes threatening its airspace, reported AFP.
He added that at least two Chinese bombers joined two Russian bombers in the Sea of Japan and “made a joint flight to the East China Sea.”
"After that, a total of four aircraft, two presumed (new) Chinese bombers – which replaced the two Chinese bombers – and two Russian bombers, conducted a joint flight from the East China Sea to the Pacific Ocean," the defence minister said.
Mr Kishi said the aircraft also hovered over northern Hokkaido to the Noto Peninsula in central Japan.
The military exercise was confirmed by Moscow later on Tuesday, which said that the Russian and Chinese military planes carried out joint exercises to patrol the Asia-Pacific region.
Officials said that the joint military drill, involving Russia’s Tu-95 strategic bombers and Chinese Xian H-6 jets, lasted for 13 hours over the Japanese and East China seas.
Aircraft from Japan and South Korea’s air force shadowed the Russian and Chinese jets during the military drill, the Russian defence ministry said.
Mr Kishi said Japan has flagged its concerns to Russia and China via diplomatic channels.
"As the international community responds to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the fact that China took such action in collaboration with Russia, which is the aggressor, is cause for concern. It cannot be overlooked," he said.
Jessica Cisneros and Henry Cuellar. (photo: The Texas Tribune)
The race is a rematch from 2020, when Cuellar narrowly defeated Cisneros in the March primary of that year. This time, Cuellar is weakened because of an FBI raid on his home and renewed attention on his anti-abortion stance.
“This election is still too close to call, and we are still waiting for every ballot and eligible vote to be counted,” she said in a tweet, shortly after Cuellar declared himself the winner.
Just before midnight in Texas, Cuellar led Cisneros by a mere 177 votes.
At the time he declared victory, no major news organization had called the race.
“Tonight, the 28th Congressional District spoke, and we witnessed our great Democratic system at work,” he said in a statement. “The results are in, all the votes have been tallied — I am honored to have once again been re-elected as the Democratic Nominee for Congress.”
With such a narrow margin, it is likely the race may not be decided for days. Mail-in votes from domestic voters can still be counted if they were postmarked by Tuesday and are received by counties by 5 p.m. Wednesday. The race is also within the margin that Cisneros can request a recount.
Cuellar told reporters at his campaign headquarters that he’s undeterred by the close call.
“I know what it is to do a recount in an election contest,” he said, referring to a 2004 recount that ended with him becoming a congressman. “We have very good attorneys and if we need to, we will defend our election victory.”
The race was a dead heat on Tuesday night and the two Democrats took the lead at different points throughout the night as the district’s most rural counties delivered consequential vote totals that swung the race back and forth.
The race is a rematch from 2020, when Cuellar narrowly defeated Cisneros in the March primary of that year. Earlier in the campaign this year, he appeared to be on stronger footing than the previous cycle. That all disappeared in January, when the FBI raided his home and campaign office weeks before the primary election. He has denied wrongdoing, and his attorney has said that Cuellar is not the target of the investigation.
Cisneros effectively capitalized on this development in both fundraising and in a television advertising campaign. And in the March contest, Cuellar was narrowly forced into the runoff election.
Cuellar appeared even more endangered earlier this month, when Politico reported on a leaked draft indicating that the U.S. Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade. As the last anti-abortion Democrat in the House and with a looming runoff with Cisneros, an energized pro-abortion movement turned its energy on the Laredo congressman.
But Cuellar also benefited from his deep connections to the community.
Whoever wins will ultimately face off against Republican Cassy Garcia, former U.S. Senate staffer, who won her own primary Tuesday night.
This once Democratic stronghold is now being labeled a “toss up” seat in the November general election, as Republicans turn their efforts toward South Texas domination. Both Cuellar and Cisneros have their weaknesses in a November race. Cuellar could again be damaged by FBI investigation, if not cleared by then, and Cisneros, some political analysts predict, is too progressive for the region.
Beyond differences in abortion, the pair are at odds on an array of issues that include border security, energy and environmental policy and the experiences they would bring to public service.
Cisneros and the many progressive groups that backed her repeatedly hammered Cuellar for taking campaign donations from the private prison industry, the oil and gas industry and health insurance companies.Cuellar also has broken with the party to side with Republicans who wish to extend Title 42, a Trump-era health policy that allows immigration officials to expel migrants quickly, even those seeking asylum, because of COVID-19 concerns.
Cuellar spent much of the campaign making the case that he is uniquely able to help the Laredo-based district as a member of the House Appropriations Committee. He and his local allies praised his efforts to bring back funding, particularly transportation funding that supports trade within the border community.
Cuellar's 177-vote lead did not crystallize until shortly before midnight. As the wait for results dragged on, his election-night party at a Laredo event center thinned out and was mostly empty by 11:30 p.m. But reporters caught up with him at his nearby campaign headquarters, where an explosion of cheers could be heard upstairs at 11:50 p.m. when the final precincts came in. Some supporters came running downstairs blowing airhorns.
Asked if the tight race made him rethink his politics at all, Cuellar said he believed the Democratic Party had "gone a little bit to the left in many ways" and he wanted to "stay true to my principles." But he also acknowledged he could get to know areas of his redrawn district better, including parts of San Antonio, where Cisneros dominated.
As for the impact of the Roe v. Wade news, Cuellar said abortion is an "important issue" but that other issues matter in his district, like border security and oil and gas.
"They thought that they were gonna win on one issue," Cuellar said. "This district is not a one-issue district."
And Cuellar professed confidence in his ability to withstand the GOP push to flip his seat in November. Cuellar suggested his independent streak would insulate him from Republican criticism that would have stuck more easily to Cisneros, saying the GOP is "not gonna be able to attack me on issues about the border, fighting for Border Patrol, making sure that we don't have open borders."
Before the final precinct votes showed up, Cisneros addressed her supporters at a bar in downtown Laredo, recalling how un-winnable the race seemed when she first challenged Cuellar in 2020. But, she said, she and her supporters have been "inching closer and inching closer and inching closer."
"We're chipping away at that belief that South Texas doesn't deserve better," she said. “Tonight we have already shown that our dreams are so powerful that they are powerful enough to take down — and take on — a machine," she said.
Across town, Cuellar was jubilant as he spoke with reporters about his declared victory. He told reporters they would be surprised by the congratulatory texts he was getting from both Democratic and Republican colleagues. And, not shying away from his friendliness across party lines, he pointed out that the crowd at his campaign office included Lamar Smith, the former longtime Republican congressman from San Antonio.
Shireen Abu Akleh. (photo: Al Jazeera/AP)
The cameraman filming the scene scrambles backwards to take cover behind a low concrete wall. Then a man cries out in Arabic: "Injured! Shireen, Shireen, oh man, Shireen! Ambulance!"
When the camera operator pans around the corner, Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh can be seen lying motionless, face down on the ground as another Palestinian reporter, Shatha Hanaysha, crouches down beside her, using a tree trunk for cover. Hanaysha reaches out and tries to rouse her as gunshots continue. There's no response. Both women are wearing helmets and blue protective vests marked "Press."
In the moments that follow, a man in a white T-shirt makes several attempts to move Abu Akleh, but is forced back repeatedly by gunfire. Finally, after a few long minutes, he manages to drag her body from the street.
The shaky video, filmed by Al Jazeera cameraman Majdi Banura, captures the scene when Abu Akleh, a 51-year-old Palestinian-American was killed by a bullet to the head at around 6:30 a.m. on May 11. She had been standing with a group of journalists near the entrance of Jenin refugee camp, where they had come to cover an Israeli raid. While the footage does not show Abu Akleh being shot, eyewitnesses told CNN that they believe Israeli forces on the same street fired deliberately on the reporters in a targeted attack. All of the journalists were wearing protective blue vests that identified them as members of the news media.
"We stood in front of the Israeli military vehicles for about five to ten minutes before we made moves to ensure they saw us. And this is a habit of ours as journalists, we move as a group and we stand in front of them so they know we are journalists, and then we start moving," Hanaysha told CNN, describing their cautious approach toward the Israeli army convoy, before the gunfire began.
When Abu Akleh was shot, Hanaysha said she was in shock. She couldn't understand what was happening. After Abu Akleh dropped to the ground, Hanaysha thought she might have stumbled. But when she looked down at the reporter she had idolized since childhood, it was clear she wasn't breathing. Blood was pooling under her head.
"As soon as she [Shireen] fell, I honestly wasn't comprehending that she [was shot] ... I was hearing the sound of bullets, but I wasn't comprehending that they were coming at us. Honestly, the whole time I wasn't understanding," she said.
"I thought they were shooting so we stayed back, I didn't think they were trying to kill us."
On the day of the shooting, Israeli military spokesperson Ran Kochav told Army Radio that Abu Akleh had been "filming and working for a media outlet amidst armed Palestinians. They're armed with cameras, if you'll permit me to say so," according to The Times of Israel.
The Israeli military says it is not clear who fired the fatal shot. In a preliminary inquiry, the army said there was a possibility Abu Akleh was hit either by indiscriminate Palestinian gunfire, or by an Israeli sniper positioned about 200 meters (about 656 feet) away in an exchange of fire with Palestinian gunmen — though neither Israel nor anyone else has provided evidence showing armed Palestinians within a clear line of fire from Abu Akleh.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on May 19 that it had not yet decided whether to pursue a criminal investigation into Abu Akleh's death. On Monday, the Israeli military's top lawyer, Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, said in a speech that under the military's policy, a criminal investigation is not automatically launched if a person is killed in the "midst of an active combat zone," unless there is credible and immediate suspicion of a criminal offense. United States lawmakers, the United Nations and the international community have all called for an independent probe.
But an investigation by CNN offers new evidence — including two videos of the scene of the shooting — that there was no active combat, nor any Palestinian militants, near Abu Akleh in the moments leading up to her death. Videos obtained by CNN, corroborated by testimony from eight eyewitnesses, an audio forensic analyst and an explosive weapons expert, suggest that Abu Akleh was shot dead in a targeted attack by Israeli forces.
The footage shows a calm scene before the reporters came under fire in the outskirts of Jenin refugee camp, near the main Awdeh roundabout. Hanaysha, four other journalists and three local residents said that it had been a normal morning in Jenin, home to about 345,000 people — 11,400 of whom live in the camp. Many were on their way to work or school, and the street was relatively quiet.
There was a frisson of excitement as the veteran journalist, a household name across the Arab world for her coverage of Israel and the Palestinian territories, arrived to report on the raid. About a dozen or so men, some dressed in sweats and flip-flops, had gathered to watch Abu Akleh and her colleagues at work. They were milling around chatting, some smoking cigarettes, others filming the scene on their phones.
In one 16-minute cellphone video shared with CNN, the man filming walks toward the spot where the journalists had gathered, zooming in on the Israeli armored vehicles parked in the distance, and says: "Look at the snipers." Then, when a teenager peers tentatively up the street, he shouts: "Don't kid around ... you think it's a joke? We don't want to die. We want to live."
Israeli raids on the Jenin refugee camp have become a regular occurrence since early April, in the wake of several attacks by Palestinians that left Israelis and foreigners dead. Some of the suspected assailants of those attacks were from Jenin, according to the Israeli military. Residents say the raids often lead to injuries and deaths. On Saturday, a 17-year-old Palestinian was killed and an 18-year-old was critically injured by Israeli fire during a raid, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.
Salim Awad, the 27-year-old Jenin camp resident who filmed the 16-minute video, told CNN that there were no armed Palestinians or any clashes in the area, and he hadn't expected there to be gunfire, given the presence of journalists nearby.
"There was no conflict or confrontations at all. We were about 10 guys, give or take, walking around, laughing and joking with the journalists," he said. "We were not afraid of anything. We didn't expect anything would happen, because when we saw journalists around, we thought it'd be a safe area."
But the situation changed rapidly. Awad said shooting broke out about seven minutes after he arrived at the scene. His video captures the moment that shots were fired at the four journalists — Abu Akleh, Hanaysha, another Palestinian journalist, Mujahid al-Saadi, and Al Jazeera producer Ali al-Samoudi, who was injured in the gunfire — as they walked toward the Israeli vehicles. In the footage, Abu Akleh can be seen turning away from the barrage. The footage shows a direct line of sight towards the Israeli convoy.
"We saw around four or five military vehicles on that street with rifles sticking out of them and one of them shot Shireen. We were standing right there, we saw it. When we tried to approach her, they shot at us. I tried to cross the street to help, but I couldn't," Awad said, adding that he saw that a bullet struck Abu Akleh in the gap between her helmet and protective vest, just by her ear.
A 16-year-old, who was among the group of men and boys on the street, told CNN that there were "no shots fired, no stone throwing, nothing," before Abu Akleh was shot. He said that the journalists had told them not to follow as they walked toward Israeli forces, so he stayed back. When the gunfire broke out, he said he ducked behind a car on the road, three meters away, where he watched the moment she was killed. The teenager shared a video with CNN, filmed at 6:36 a.m., just after the journalists left the scene for the hospital, which showed the five Israeli army vehicles driving slowly past the spot where Abu Akleh died. The convoy then turns left before leaving the camp via the roundabout.
CNN reviewed a total of 11 videos showing the scene and the Israeli military convoy from different angles — before, during and after Abu Akleh was killed. Eyewitnesses who were filming when the journalist was shot were also in the line of fire and pulled back when the gunfire started, so do not capture the moment she is hit with the bullet.
The visual evidence reviewed by CNN includes a body camera video released by the Israeli military, which captures soldiers running through a narrow alleyway, holding M16 assault rifles, and variants, as they spill out onto the street where the armored vehicles are parked. An Israeli military source told CNN that both sides were firing M16 and M4 style assault rifles that day.
In the videos, five Israeli vehicles can be seen lined up in a row on the same road where Abu Akleh was killed, to the south. The vehicle closest to the journalists, emblazoned with a white number one, and the vehicle furthest away, marked with the number five, are both positioned perpendicular across the street. Toward the rear of the vehicles, directly above the numbers, is a narrow rectangular opening in the exterior of the vehicle.
The Israeli military referenced such an opening in a statement about its initial investigation into Abu Akleh's shooting, saying that the journalist may have been hit by an Israeli soldier shooting from a "designated firing hole in an IDF vehicle using a telescopic scope," during an exchange of fire. Several eyewitnesses told CNN that they saw sniper rifles sticking out of the openings before the shooting began, but that it was not preceded by any other gunfire.
Jamal Huwail, a professor at the Arab American University in Jenin, who helped drag Abu Akleh's lifeless body from the road, said he believed the shots were coming from one of the Israeli vehicles, which he described as a "new model which had an opening for snipers," because of the elevation and direction of the bullets.
"They were shooting directly at the journalists," Huwail said.
Huwail, a former parliamentarian and member of the Palestinian Fatah Party in Jenin, first met Abu Akleh two decades ago, when Israel launched a major military operation in the camp, destroying more than 400 homes and displacing a quarter of its population. When he spoke with the journalist briefly that morning of May 11 at the Awdeh roundabout, she had showed him a video of one of their early interviews from 2002. The next time he saw her up close, she was dead.
In videos of the dawn army raid on Jenin camp earlier in the morning, Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants can be seen battling each other with M16 assault rifles and variants, according to Chris Cobb-Smith, an explosive weapons expert. That means both sides would have been shooting 5.56-millimeter bullets. To trace the bullet that killed Abu Akleh to the barrel of a specific gun would likely require a joint Israeli-Palestinian probe, since the Palestinians have the bullet that killed Abu Akleh, while CNN's investigation suggests the Israelis have the gun. None is immediately forthcoming. While Israel weighs whether to launch a criminal investigation, the Palestinian Authority has ruled out collaborating with the Israelis on any investigation.
A senior Israeli security official flatly denied to CNN on May 18 that Israeli troops killed Abu Akleh intentionally. The official spoke under the condition of anonymity to discuss details about an investigation that remains formally open.
"In no way would the IDF ever target a civilian, especially a member of the press," the official told CNN.
"An IDF soldier would never fire an M16 on automatic. They shoot bullet by bullet," the official said, in contrast with Israel's assertion that Palestinian militants were firing "recklessly and indiscriminately" while its soldiers conducted the raid in Jenin.
In a statement emailed to CNN, the IDF said it was conducting an investigation into the killing of Abu Akleh. It "calls on the Palestinian Authority to cooperate with a joint forensic examination with American representatives to conclusively determine the source of the tragic death."
And added, "assertions regarding the source of the fire that killed Ms. Abu Akleh must be carefully made and backed by hard evidence. This is what the IDF is striving to achieve."
Even without access to the bullet that hit Abu Akleh, there are ways to determine who killed Abu Akleh by analyzing the type of gunfire, the sound of the shots and the marks left by the bullets at the scene.
Cobb-Smith, a security consultant and British army veteran, told CNN he believed Abu Akleh was killed in discrete shots — not a burst of automatic gunfire. To reach that conclusion, he looked at imagery obtained by CNN, which show markings the bullets left on the tree where Abu Akleh fell and Hanaysha was taking cover.
"The number of strike marks on the tree where Shireen was standing proves this wasn't a random shot, she was targeted," Cobb-Smith told CNN, adding that, in sharp contrast, the majority of gunfire from Palestinians captured on camera that day were "random sprays."
As evidence, he pointed to two videos that showed Palestinian gunmen firing haphazardly down alleyways in different parts of Jenin. The videos were circulated by the office of Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, and Israel's foreign ministry, with a voiceover in Arabic saying: "They've hit one — they've hit a soldier. He's lying on the ground."
Because no Israeli soldiers were reported killed on May 11, Bennett's office said the video suggested that "Palestinian terrorists were the ones who shot the journalist." CNN geolocated the videos shared by Bennett's office to the south of the camp, more than 300 meters, or 1,000 feet, away from Abu Akleh. The coordinates of the two locations, which were verified using Mapillary, a crowdsourced street imagery platform, and footage of the area filmed by Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, demonstrate that the shooting in the videos couldn't be the same volley of gunfire that hit Abu Akleh and her producer, Ali al-Samoudi. CNN was also unable to verify independently when the footage was filmed.
According to the Israeli army's initial inquiry, at the time of Abu Akleh's death, an Israeli sniper was 200 meters away from her. CNN asked Robert Maher, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Montana State University, who specializes in forensic audio analysis, to assess the footage of Abu Akleh's shooting and estimate the distance between the gunman and the cameraman, taking into account the rifle being used by the Israeli forces.
The video that Maher analyzed captures two volleys of gunfire; eyewitnesses say Abu Akleh was hit in the second barrage, a series of seven sharp "cracks." The first "crack" sound, the ballistic shockwave of the bullet, is followed approximately 309 milliseconds later by the relatively quiet "bang" of the muzzle blast, according to Maher. "That would correspond to a distance of something between 177 and 197 meters," or 580 and 646 feet, he said in an email to CNN, which corresponds almost exactly with the Israeli sniper's position.
At 200 meters, Cobb-Smith said that there was "no chance" that random firing would result in three or four shots hitting in such a tight configuration. "From the strike marks on the tree, it appears that the shots, one of which hit Shireen, came from down the street from the direction of the IDF troops. The relatively tight grouping of the rounds indicate Shireen was intentionally targeted with aimed shots and not the victim of random or stray fire," the firearms expert told CNN.
The tree is now referred to in Jenin as the "journalist tree" and has become a makeshift shrine to Abu Akleh, with photographs of the beloved reporter taped to the trunk and Palestinian kaffiyeh scarves draped from its branches.
Awad, one of the Jenin residents who inadvertently captured Abu Akleh's killing on camera, said the first time he saw her in person was in 2002, when she was covering the Intifada, or uprising, in Jenin. "She is of course loved by so many, but she has a very special memory in our camp specifically because of the work she has done here. The people here are very sad for her loss," he said.
Last month, Abu Akleh celebrated her birthday in Jenin, when she was there to cover an Israeli miltary raid, her longtime colleague, cameraman Majdi Banura, recalled. Banura and Abu Akleh started at Al Jazeera on the same day 25 years ago, and spent much of their careers out in the field together.
Banura is still reeling from having seen Abu Akleh, whom he had filmed countless times before, die in front of his own eyes. But when the gunfire broke out, he knew he had to continue rolling, saying that it was important to have a "continuous record" of her killing.
"To be honest, as I was filming, I had hoped that she will be alive, but I knew seeing her motionless she had been killed," Banura said.
"Her picture doesn't leave my life and memory, everything I say or do or touch, I see her."
Francia Márquez campaigns in Santander de Quilichao, Cauca. (photo: Robert Bonet/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock)
Leftwinger Francia Márquez is on course to become the first black female vice-president of a deeply unequal country
She has been threatened with violence for speaking out against the armed groups that plague her community, and each election season she has witnessed light-skinned candidates pass through the war-torn province of Cauca offering food handouts and empty promises of development.
But on Sunday she will cast her vote for Francia Márquez, who is hoping to become the South American country’s first black female vice-president, on the ticket of the leftist presidential frontrunner, Gustavo Petro.
MejÃa is convinced that Márquez’s victory would usher in a new, more equitable chapter in a deeply unequal country.
“Francia’s candidacy for women means a before and an after, because she’s a woman, because she’s black – and because she comes from nothing,” said MejÃa, who was wearing a traditional Afro-Colombian blouse and skirt. “Francia marks a before and an after in the history of Colombia.”
Afro-Colombians make up nearly 10% of Colombia’s population of 50 million, descending from enslaved people people brought from Africa to work on sugar cane plantations, goldmines and the large estates of landowning Spanish colonists. Only Brazil in South America has a larger population of Afro-descendants, and like there, in Colombia they are vastly underrepresented in business and politics.
If elected, Márquez would join Costa Rica’s Epsy Campbell Barr as one of only two black female vice-presidents in Latin America, and her route from domestic worker to vice-presidential candidate has been anything but typical.
The 40-year-old has been an activist since she was 13 years old, when her village was threatened by the construction of a dam. Since then, she has worked as an artisanal goldminer and cleaner, studied for a law degree, been forcibly displaced by local mafias and survived at least one assassination attempt.
In 2014, after illegal goldminers clearcut forests, diverted a river and dumped mercury into local water supplies, the single mother of two led a march of 80 women from the mountains of her home town on a 350-mile march to the capital, Bogotá. Four years later, Márquez was awarded the prestigious Goldman environmental prize.
“What sums her up best is her humility,” said Beatriz Cocino, 49, who has marched alongside Márquez in campaigns against goldminers. “Out in the countryside, it is us working the fields to feed the cities, but we’re totally forgotten.”
Cocino had travelled an hour from her village to Santander de Quilichao to hear the candidate speak at a recent campaign event.
“I’m so proud that Francia is here, representing us, because I’m proud to be a Black woman,” said Cocino. “Today it’s Francia, but tomorrow it could be any of us.”
Márquez was chosen as Petro’s running mate after winning more than 750,000 votes in a primary in March, beating a number of established career politicians. Both candidates belong to the leftist Historic Pact coalition, which features many anti-establishment politicians and political newcomers. Colombia has never had a leftwing president.
Petro, who as a youth was a member of the now defunct M-19 guerrilla group, has served as mayor of Bogotá, and came second in the last presidential election in 2018.
His main rival for the presidency is Federico Gutiérrez, the former mayor of MedellÃn, Colombia’s second city, who is widely viewed as a continuation of the rightwing status quo. If neither candidate takes more than 50% of votes on Sunday, the race will go to a runoff in June.
Also on the ballot will be Colombia’s fragile peace process with the leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), who demobilised after a peace deal was signed in 2016, ending decades of vicious civil war against state forces and their paramilitary allies that killed over 260,000 people and displaced 7 million.
Petro and Márquez are viewed as fervent supporters of the deal, while Gutiérrez is thought to be a skeptic.
“Their vision of peace and commitment to it is consistent with the vision of a large part of the population that has been a victim of the armed conflict in Colombia,” MejÃa said.
But political violence continues to dog the campaign – a particular worry in a country where four presidential candidates have been murdered since the 1980s. Hours after Márquez’s trip to Santander de Quilichao, a prominent local community leader and land rights activist, Édgar Quintero, was murdered by four gunmen. Days later, another Márquez supporter was murdered in southern Cauca.
As Márquez met other black female leaders from the region, supporters whooped and cheered, holding homemade signs aloft. “She represents me,” read one, held by a young girl. “For a life without violence,” read another.
On billboards and car windows across the country, posters portray Márquez with a clenched fist, reminiscent of the “HOPE” posters that circulated during Barack Obama’s campaign. The rapper Snoop Dogg has shared her story on social media.
But while her campaign has inspired rapturous pride and joy in her supporters, it has also brought implicit racism to the surface of public discourse.
Márquez has been mocked as “King Kong” on social media – even by a senator from her coalition. One rightwing commentator accused her of sowing “ignorance, hate and resentment” in what was widely seen as a racist dogwhistle. And at a recent campaign in Bogotá, a laser-pen was shone on her chest in what many saw as a thinly veiled threat of violence.
“Colombia is known as one of the most racist countries in Latin America for a reason,” MejÃa said, her diction tinged with anger. “In Colombia they speak about Black women as being ‘pretty little black things’ and who do Colombia’s legislatures give priority to? White and mestizo people, not Black people.”
In front of a stage in the central plaza of Santander de Quilichao, venders hawked ice creams as the crowds gathered under a punishing sun.
Beneath the statue of Francisco de Paula Santander – a hero of independence and one of Colombia’s first presidents – a band of Nasa Indigenous musicians played panpipes and drums.
“I hope that one day I can be like her,” said Gabriela Castillo, a teenaged student, over the hubbub. “Everything she has achieved has been through effort, tears and truth.”
Mariela Carabali, 62, was similarly effusive. “Francia came from below and she will keep climbing.”
When Márquez appeared, flanked by campaign aides, local leaders and a bodyguard holding an iron shield, the cacophony was almost deafening.
Scanning the sea of bodies before her, she took a breath and her infectious smile broadened. “Good afternoon, Cauca,” she began. “Your daughter is here.”
Captive Mexican gray wolves are seen at the Desert Museum in Saltillo, Mexico, on July 2, 2020. (photo: Julio Cesar Aguilar/AFP/Getty Images)
Endangered Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery Is Being “Sabotaged” by Ranchers Who Claim the Canines Are Killing Cattle — and the Federal Employees Who Sign Off on Reports
The death of this endangered Mexican gray wolf completed the eradication of her pack, a vital bloodline in a critically low gene pool. In 2021, there were fewer than 200 Mexican gray wolves in the wild — the highest count ever taken in a recovery program whose gradual upward climb has been forcibly slowed.
Wildlife Services justified the Prieto pack’s destruction by citing livestock depredation reports, which showed that these wolves were prolific cow killers. Yet watchdogs and wolf biologists have long questioned the validity of this data. Now the former director of the agency has come forward to corroborate their suspicions.
Robert “Goose” Gosnell administered Wildlife Services in New Mexico for a year and a half as state director of the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, a job at which he says he inherited an entrenched and systemic corruption problem. “I know some of those depredation [report]s that caused [wolf] removals were illegal,” he told The Intercept, explaining that inspectors had been instructed by superiors to confirm livestock loss incidents as “wolf kills” for ranchers. “My guys in the field were going and rubber-stamping anything those people asked them to.” He described how many also worked second jobs as hunting guides for the same ranchers whose claims they evaluated — a violation of federal ethics codes.
When Gosnell took over APHIS in New Mexico, colleagues from the Fish and Wildlife Service in the Interior Department warned him of shady dealings. He was skeptical at first but began to see the patterns. Internal communications show that before Gosnell’s tenure, Fish and Wildlife Service employees had been kept in the dark. When they were allowed to review the livestock depredation reports, they clearly contended that Wildlife Services investigators were erroneously confirming wolf kills.
Gosnell attempted to reform New Mexico Wildlife Services during his time as director, but his efforts were met with retaliation. Seeking the insight of experienced livestock depredation investigators from wolf-dense states to the north, he sent the New Mexico reports for review. “Everybody up there said, ‘Those aren’t wolf kills,’” he recounted, adding that the inquiry landed him in hot water. “I had big bosses coming down on me.” A regional director, his direct superior, pulled him aside at an ornithology conference and told him to “back off” his probe into the depredation records, cluing him in to an arrangement between federal APHIS Administrator Kevin Shea and New Mexico Secretary of Agriculture Jeff Witte.
Gosnell later filed a complaint with the USDA Office of Inspector General and was subsequently demerited and transferred out of New Mexico. He responded with a lawsuit against the federal government, which reached a settlement that restored his record and paid his legal fees. But no action was taken to address the corrupt livestock compensation and wolf-removal programs he blew the whistle on.
Internal documents obtained by wildlife watchdogs at the Western Watersheds Project show that 88 percent of predation incidents are attributed to Mexican wolves on grazing allotments in the Gila National Forest and Arizona’s Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests. (The national average is roughly 4 percent.) Of those, 97 percent result in “confirmed” or “probable” determinations — entailing compensation through the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Wolf Livestock Loss Demonstration Project Grant Program. Western Watersheds Project investigators Greta Anderson and Cyndi Tuell have sifted through thousands of pages of documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests to elucidate the opaque system.
“The Mexican wolf recovery program is being sabotaged,” Anderson, the Western Watersheds Project’s deputy director, said of the Wildlife Services data. Her research shows that Rainy Mesa, a ranch in the vicinity of the former Prieto pack, had 48 of 49 claims confirmed as wolf attacks between 2018 and 2021 — worth more than $1,000 on average through the Fish and Wildlife Service program. Its owner was separately compensated through the USDA’s Livestock Indemnity Program for just under $70,000 in 2020 — valuing at as much as one-fifth of the cattle permitted to graze on the company’s public land allotment. On social media, Rainy Mesa Ranch owner Audrey McQueen, who runs a trophy-hunting business and lobbies for wolf removals, claimed 31 depredation confirmations in six months and stated that wolves had killed more than 10 percent of her herd. Wolf experts don’t buy it.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” said Carter Niemeyer, who conducted and reviewed hundreds of depredation investigations over 14 years as a Wildlife Services district supervisor in Montana. While he never saw numbers like those attributed to the much smaller wolves down south, he did recall the “tremendous” influence of the ranching lobby within the agency. “We were the hired gun of the livestock industry,” he said, recalling that he was constantly pressured to change his reports by superiors and eventually lost his job at Wildlife Services due to complaints from ranchers, before transferring to the Fish and Wildlife Service to coordinate wolf recovery in Idaho.
Niemeyer said it was “very unusual” for a wolf pack to attack an adult cow, yet these claims constituted more than half of confirmed wolf kills in the New Mexico Wildlife Services database. And while he and other investigators look for evidence of tearing on the hind legs to indicate wolf pursuit and hemorrhaging around wounds to prove that a cow was alive at the time of attack, state Wildlife Services reports marked as “confirmed” appear satisfied simply by a pair of puncture points roughly within the canine width of a Mexican wolf.
Other government scientists have identified flaws with this criterion. In a 2018 study published in the Journal of Mammalogy, a team of researchers from APHIS, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Navajo Nation Veterinary Program demonstrated that the range of canine spread for Mexican wolves is entirely overlapped by the combined ranges of coyotes, cougars, and feral dogs, stressing that “bite mark analyses should be evaluated along with additional forensic evidence due to the overlap between many of the carnivore species.” Niemeyer also found this form of evidence unconvincing, saying that “tooth spacing by itself doesn’t mean anything, in my opinion,” and describing how wolves often don’t leave tooth-puncture wounds at all.
New Mexico Wildlife Services depredation reports obtained by the Western Watersheds Project show significantly less scrutiny than their northern counterparts. In some cases, canine spread measurements did not match caliper photos, pregnant cows were double-counted, or reports appeared in duplicate with no explanation. In one, a wolf kill was confirmed using only a month-old piece of hide, which was soaked and stretched before the inspector took its measurements. In another, five dead calves in varying states of decomposition were submitted at once. All five were recorded as confirmed kills. These were among the many reports claimed by Rainy Mesa Ranch that were used as evidence in removal orders that wiped out the Prieto pack.
Gosnell attempted to rein in unscrupulous confirmations through a variety of methods, including hiring investigators from outside the department. After one of Gosnell’s new hires paid a visit to Rainy Mesa Ranch, McQueen complained up the hierarchy to the Wildlife Services Western regional office. The inspector was removed from depredation investigations, pressured to sign an admission of fault, and — as Gosnell put it — “railroaded” out of the department before filing a single report. The employee would also go on to file an Office of Inspector General complaint.
The latest to join the chorus of voices calling for a USDA investigation of Wildlife Services was Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., who described “serious accountability issues” and a “lack of scientific integrity” in a letter to the USDA inspector general. At the time of publication, none of the parties who filed complaints with the Office of Inspector General had received resolution.
However, Heinrich’s advocacy on behalf of wolves is rare among the state’s lawmakers. Gosnell’s approach upset not only House representatives, who introduced legislation to strip endangered status from Mexican wolves, but also local officials, who characterized his training workshops for county trappers as redirecting predator control funding toward predator protection. During the 2019 government shutdown, Catron County, which covers part of the Gila National Forest, allowed private contractor Jess Carey to conduct investigations in the stead of federal employees, who wrote in official documents that they had not seen the investigation site and were “peer-reviewing” the state trapper’s work. Over this period, the county confirmed 100 percent of depredation claims as Mexican wolf kills.
“It does not seem feasible there would be that much depredation,” wolf biologist David Parsons said of the Wildlife Services figures, citing a 400-page Environmental Impact Statement he prepared for the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1996 on the impacts of Mexican wolf reintroduction. Parsons served as the recovery program’s first director and was its architect in many ways, working for nearly a decade at the Fish and Wildlife Service and navigating immense political opposition from both ranching and military interests.
He explained that due to its smaller size, the desert subspecies of gray wolf — Mexican wolves, also known as lobos — evolved to hunt smaller prey like javelinas and deer and would be expected to kill less cattle than its northern relatives, controlling for other factors. Using existing depredation data and accounting for the unique factors at play in New Mexico — such as year-round grazing permits and higher cattle density — he and his colleagues estimated that “after the wolf population grows to approximately 100, it is projected to kill between one and 34 cattle annually, mostly calves.” In 2020, the last complete year in the database, population surveys estimated 186 wolves. Wildlife Services confirmed 133 wolf kills.
“No positive advancement in the Mexican wolf recovery project was ever taken by the initiative of the agencies. It was always forced by litigation,” Parsons explained. He would know: When a 1990 lawsuit filed by the Wolf Action Group found his superiors in violation of the Endangered Species Act for canceling the recovery project, the agency was forced to carry Parsons’s plan forward. After successfully relocating the reintroduction area from the White Sands Missile Range to a more suitable habitat on lands leased for grazing in the Blue Range Wilderness area of the Gila National Forest, Parsons received a “surprise early retirement” — his administrator declined to renew his employement. The current Mexican gray wolf recovery coordinator said he was not given clearance by the Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Public Affairs to comment on this story.
Despite Parsons’s efforts, several critical loopholes were built into the recovery plan, including the establishment of a boundary wolves would not be permitted to cross and the designation of the population as “nonessential” to the species’s survival — even though it’s the only wild population of Mexican wolves in the world. This designation granted government agencies exemptions from Endangered Species Act protections, including the ability to kill wolves.
In addition to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s livestock loss program based on Wildlife Services’ depredation reports, the USDA distributes compensation funds for wolf depredations through the Farm Service Agency’s Livestock Indemnity Program. There are also various state allocations, nonprofit coffers, and a predation offset built into the Public Rangelands Improvement Act. Federal grazing fees cost permittees only $1.35 a month per cow/calf pair, despite their compensations being valued in the thousands and the opportunity costs of public grazing licenses being estimated in excess of $1 billion per decade, notwithstanding externalized costs to environmental and public health.
Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity describes the government’s program of leasing public lands for grazing as “a disaster,” pointing out that “it’s the No. 1 cause of species imperilment on public lands.” His book “Predatory Bureaucracy: The Extermination of Wolves and the Transformation of the West” chronicles how the agricultural industry influenced the formation of a division within the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey that transformed into the agency known today as Wildlife Services — a wildlife massacre machine posting annual kill counts in the millions and a leading reason for the near-extinction of the Mexican wolf.
Speaking with The Intercept, he also detailed how compensation programs can incentivize false reports. While cows, which are left unattended on public lands for months at a time, can die of myriad causes — such as weather, illness, malnutrition, vehicles, poisonous plants, birth complications, bears, cougars, and feral dogs — only a depredation investigation resulting in a confirmed or probable kill by a Mexican gray wolf results in a financial reward from the Fish and Wildlife Service.
“For various reasons, there’s an incentive to maximize stocking,” Robinson explains of the public land allotment program. “There are all sorts of things … that make cows in an overstocked situation more likely to die.” So even though a wolf may have been the ultimate cause of death in some cases, there are often underlying factors that would have made the cow easy prey. The deterioration of forage also drives away wolves’ other prey, leaving little to eat but cattle. Furthermore, ranchers are not required to remove or render carcasses unpalatable before investigations, allowing wolves that scavenge from them to be accused of making the kill. This negligence can encourage wolves to develop a taste for cattle.
Since the Mexican wolves’ reintroduction in 1998, Wildlife Services has issued 206 removal orders for members of the endangered species. That’s more than the highest census ever taken — 196 wolves in 2021 — since their extinction from the wild in the 1980s. This has contributed to a severe dearth of genetic diversity, threatening the survival of the subspecies. In an attempt to counteract this, some captured wolves have been bred in captivity, their offspring introduced into wild dens. But of the 72 pups released since 2016, only 14 are alive in the wild today. While the cross-fostering process is fallible and Wildlife Services’ removal orders are not a minor factor, the primary killers of these young wolves are poachers.
Around half of the Mexican wolf population is radio-collared, and among these wolves, poaching is the leading cause of death — surpassed only by unsolved disappearances, which spike when protections are lifted. Even still, the collared wolves are likely to be the safe ones, as their locations are broadcast and the brightly colored ornaments make it difficult for potential killers to claim that they were mistaken for a coyote. While the collars are intended in part to help the industry protect cattle, Gosnell says many ranchers lobby against them for these reasons, recounting that one told him bluntly: “We don’t want them collared, because then we can kill them.”
In the first two decades of the recovery, more than 100 cases of illegal killings were recorded, along with many more unsolved disappearances. With tax-exempt wolf bounty programs becoming a million-dollar industry in the Northern Rockies, allegations abound of black-market exchanges for the trapping and killing of lobos in the Southwest. In documented cases, the government has shown ambivalence toward enforcing the Endangered Species Act.
Bill Nelson, a Wildlife Services agent who evaded prosecution for shooting two endangered wolves in 2007 and 2013, was subsequently hired by the Fish and Wildlife Service to work on the recovery program. And in 2020, McQueen, the Rainy Mesa Ranch owner, posted a photo of a wolf trapped beside a dead cow, suggesting illegal baiting. The incident was not investigated.
McQueen, who did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment, is now running in the June 7 Republican primary for a Catron County commissioner position.
In another case, a rancher named Craig Thiessen, convicted for mutilating trapped wolves using instruments like shovels and handsaws, filed seven livestock compensation claims after pleading guilty, including one after the formal revocation of his grazing permit. Wildlife Services confirmed them all. In addition, subsidy filings show that his corporation, Canyon del Buey, received $119,000 from the USDA Livestock Indemnity Program that year. After unsuccessfully appealing the permit decision, he is being sued by the Forest Service for trespassing. His cattle remain in the Gila National Forest at the time of publication.
Ironically, the Fish and Wildlife Service isn’t required to involve Wildlife Services in the compensation program at all. The agency could instead employ a third party to conduct depredation investigations — a proposition many think it should consider. “The guy they put in my place was a wolf hater,” Gosnell lamented. “They’re still just approving those depredation investigations left and right. It’s totally wrong.”
Despite enormous barriers, the Mexican wolf population has grown in recent years, albeit at a troublingly slow pace. To survive into the future, their recovery program needs a far bolder tack. Wolf advocates have long petitioned the Forest Service to allow retiring of grazing permits and proposed releasing intact families in addition to cross-fostering pups. Many champion a new plan drafted by an independent working group commissioned by the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2012. That group called for doubling the recovery target to 750 wolves and establishing two additional subpopulations in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado and the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. The proposal was rejected due to opposition from the ranching lobby.
Nonetheless, the mission to rescue the desert wolves has since blossomed into an international endeavor, with Mexico sheltering nearly a quarter of the world’s population in the Sierra Madre mountain system. Its cooperation complements that of the White Mountain Apache tribe, which joined early on, declaring that “we want to bring the Mexican wolf back to its home.”
It’s been said that the wolf was humankind’s first companion, approaching our campfires with tail tucked and ears lowered thousands of years before the domestication of sheep and cattle. For millennia, we revered wolves as sacred spirits — smart and social, like us. But we recast them as villains and burned them like witches when we enclosed Europe and colonized the world with ranching. The modern plight of Mexican wolves illustrates how private power over public land remains a central threat to their existence.
While the betrayal of the Prieto pack evokes a classical tragedy, it is not an anomaly. For centuries, the United States government has persecuted predators, but now light is creeping in to the shadows of its operations. Though rough terrain lies ahead, hope yet survives that wolves may once again watch over the walls of the Grand Canyon and sing to the Sonoran moon.
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