Pioneering African-American Nasa mathematician Katherine Johnson has died at the age of 101.
Nasa announced her death on Twitter, saying it was celebrating her life and honouring “her legacy of excellence that broke down racial and social barriers”.
Ms Johnson calculated rocket trajectories and Earth orbits for Nasa’s early space missions.
She was portrayed in the 2016 Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures.
The film tells the story of African-American women whose maths skills helped put US astronaut John Glenn into orbit around the Earth in 1962. Ms Johnson verified the calculations made by new electronic computers before his flight.
Ms Johnson had previously calculated the trajectory for the space flight of Alan Shepard – the first American in space.
Such was her skill and reputation that Glenn had asked for her specifically and had refused to fly unless she verified the calculations. She also helped to calculate the trajectory for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon.
Louis Charbonneau is United Nations Director, Human Rights Watch
Credit: United Nations
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 25 2020 (IPS) – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has long needed to overhaul his approach to human rights. Hopefully his call to action announced in Geneva yesterday is the start of something new.
Guterres’ low-key approach to human rights may have been calculated to avoid conflicts with big powers like the United States, Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia. But human rights groups and former senior UN officials have criticized it for being ineffectual.
The secretary-general’s new initiative contains some excellent ideas. The link he makes between human rights and the impacts of climate change is crucial, and those who fight to protect the environment are increasingly at risk.
Forest defenders in Brazil and elsewhere are threatened, attacked, and killed by those who seek to benefit from the forests’ destruction. And Guterres is right to highlight the risks posed by new technologies, whether it involves government surveillance, artificial intelligence, or fully autonomous weapons, so-called “killer robots.”
The test for any initiative is the implementation. No one is suggesting the secretary-general do everything alone. But he needs to lead by example.
Louis Charbonneau
That means publicly calling out rights abusers and advocating for victims. Human rights violations aren’t like natural disasters.
It also means using the authority of the secretary-general’s office to launch investigations and fact-finding missions when appropriate. That includes launching an inquiry into China’s massive rights violations in Xinjiang, and pressing for an international accountability mechanism on Sri Lanka.
The secretary-general should order a follow-up inquiry into the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi to help determine whether Saudi Arabia’s top leadership ordered his slaying. He should also publicly release the findings of his inquiry into attacks on hospitals and other protected facilities in Syria, likely carried out by the Russian-Syrian alliance.
None of this is to say Guterres should abandon “private diplomacy” with governments. But he should re-emphasize public diplomacy on human rights at the UN. Human rights advocacy shouldn’t be the sole responsibility of High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and her office.
The secretary-general should be the UN’s leading voice on human rights, not only working in the background.
Secretary-General Guterres has issued a call to action on human rights. Now it’s up to him to act.
Delegates gather at FAO headquarters to advance negotiations of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Credit: Maged Srour/IPS
ROME, Feb 24 2020 (IPS) – “The world out there is watching and waiting for results,” Elizabeth Maruma Mrema warns while talking to IPS regarding the preservation of biodiversity of our planet.
The acting Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, is referring to a worrying report[1] released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) which paints a grim picture of the planet.
“Many key components of biodiversity for food and agriculture at genetic, species and ecosystem levels are in decline and evidence suggests that the proportion of livestock breeds at risk of extinction is increasing,” the report says.
The FAO also warns that “nearly a third of fish stocks are overfished, and a third of freshwater fish species assessed are considered threatened”.
These are just some of the critical issues being debated during the open-ended working group on the post-2020 biodiversity framework. This round of negotiations is taking place at FAO headquarters from 24 to 29 February. In the run-up to October’s historic UN Biodiversity Conference, government officials, experts and activists from around the world gathered today at FAO headquarters, Rome, to forge ahead with negotiations. This round of talks was supposed to take place in Kunming, China, on the same dates. Due to the ongoing situation following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), it was moved to Rome, Italy.
Background
The fourteenth meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) had its meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in 2018. It was here that the working group on the post-2020 global biodiversity framework was appointed. The working group’s mandate was to prepare the text of a framework that would guide the work of the Convention after the year 2020. At the working group’s first meeting held in Nairobi in August 2019, the Open-ended Working Group (WG2020) requested the Co-Chairs and the Executive Secretary to prepare a zero-draft text of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. This framework is under consideration at its second meeting, which is currently taking place in Rome. The aim of the second meeting of the Working Group is to significantly advance the negotiation of the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, discussing the different aspects of the whole ambitious project.
‘Healthy Diets’ was among the proposed initiatives during the first day of the six-day event at FAO headquarters. The initiative emphasised the importance of ‘geographical indications’ for biodiversity, with examples and experiences from Africa and Eastern Europe. Credit: Maged Srour/IPS
Negotiations in Rome: Promoting a bi-directional approach
In the coming days, the working groups will be divided on a regional basis. They will discuss a wide variety of concerns including biodiversity, food, agriculture and fishing systems, to the importance of promoting an approach that leaves no one outside of this circuit. Civil society, the private sector, indigenous people, local communities, women and youth are all represented to create a functional framework for the whole society and at all levels. Many organisations, like Bioversity International, supported by a host of international agencies, have submitted research reports on biodiversity and food systems. It has also made representations on alternative models for access and benefit-sharing rules, practices and impacts in the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework.
The voice of indigenous people
Key to the discussions is the role of indigenous people in biodiversity and Aslak Holmberg, the representative of the indigenous people, is convinced that policymakers can learn from these groups.
“There is a key message we want to share with other groups here during these negotiations,” he told IPS. “Indigenous peoples and local communities’ management of natural resources is (in fact) conserving biodiversity. (This is) because these management practices are built on a balanced relationship with the respective environment.
“Biological and cultural diversity are linked, and by this, I mean that (for indigenous communities) culture plays a fundamental role in the process of preserving biodiversity: it is in our culture to use our areas in a sustainable way. That is the message we want to share with others”.
The voice of the business sector
Representatives of the private sector too, in particular of the business world, wish to be part of the framework that will result from the negotiations and officially approved in October, in China. Eva Zabey, Executive Director of the Business for Nature Coalition, told IPS she was grateful to the CBD secretariat for giving business and opportunity to engage and contribute to the zero draft of the post-2020 framework.
This coalition is a unique global group of influential business and conservation organisations participating in the negotiations.
“Forward-thinking businesses are starting to change the way they operate, based on their understanding of the value of nature – but this is still the exception, not the norm,” she told IPS. “Therefore,” said Zabey, “Political leadership is needed now to transform our economic and financial systems in a way that places nature at the heart of global decision-making. It needs to create a level playing field and a stable operating environment for business.”
Zabey is looking forward to an ambitious post-2020 framework which will facilitate businesses’ involvement and create and positive “policy-business feedback loop,” she said.
Perspectives
Audrey Azoulay, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Director-General, perfectly summarised urgency at the negotiation.
Commenting on the global assessment report, she said: “The present generations have the responsibility to bequeath to future generations a planet that is not irreversibly damaged by human activity.”
“Our local, indigenous and scientific knowledge are proving that we have solutions and so no more excuses: we must live on earth differently”.
Zabey echoes Azouley. She said entrepreneurs are increasingly aware that the profit-sustainability ‘conflict’ is no longer feasible or conceivable.
“Companies planning on being successful in the future are starting to realise that financial performance is irrelevant on a dead planet.’
American actress Luaren London has opened up on claims that she’s now dating music mogul, Puff Diddy almost a year after her husband Nipsey Hussle was killed.
The actress was quick to shut down rumors that she is now dating Diddy after the death of the boyfriend who was also a Grammy-winning rapper.
from left: Diidy, London and Nipsey
The hoopla began when 50-year-old Diddy shared a photo of himself with London, 35, during the Roc Nation pre-Grammys brunch, captioning the black-and-white flick, “More lost files…me and my sister @laurenlondon at the @rocnation brunch.”
Despite calling her his sister, fans began to question the state of Diidy and London’s relationship, which immediately set the actress off.
She initially responded with a cool head, posting a photo of Hussle — whose birth name was Ermias Asghedom — alongside the caption, “Still His! King Ermias! Never Forget!”
London followed that up, however, with a more aggressive post demanding the public “stop f–king playing” with her while she continues to mourn the death of her longtime partner.
“I’m all love and peace but never forget….I’m a woman in grief and I don’t play about Nip, my family, my character and code,” she captioned the Instagram message. “Bout to drink a green juice to start the day though ?????.”
Hussle was killed in March last year outside his clothing store in the Hyde Park neighborhood of his native Los Angeles.
He is still regarded as a legend and one those people who contributed positively among African Americans.
WASHINGTON DC, Feb 20 2020 (IPS) – Making sure that opportunities to enter the workforce are fair and rewarding for women benefits everyone. Yet, the average female workforce participation rate across countries is still 20 percentage points lower than the male rate, largely because gender gaps in wages and access to opportunities, such as education, stubbornly persist.
Our new study finds that fiscal policy choices that address gender equality—such as investing in education or infrastructure, developing better sanitation facilities, implementing individual-based tax regimes, and offering parental leave—create more economic opportunities for women, increase growth, and reduce poverty and inequality.
When governments actively promote policies to increase female labor force participation, more women do indeed join the labor force. Most measures pay for themselves in the long run without additional costs for governments and the added bonus—a larger workforce leads to higher economic activity and growth, which generate additional tax revenue for the country.
Inclusive fiscal policies
Since the mid-1980s, at least 80 countries across all levels of development and regions have adopted fiscal policies to promote gender equality. Previous IMF research suggests that in advanced economies, when governments actively promote policies to increase female labor force participation, more women do indeed join the labor force.
Canada, Czech Republic, and Sweden, for example, have witnessed a substantial increase in women’s paid work when the countries switched to using individual rather than family income taxation.
For low-income and developing countries, programs aimed at reducing gender gaps in education, particularly for secondary and university education, have supported more economic opportunities for women.
Other effective fiscal policies, such as better infrastructure, decrease the time spent on unpaid care work, while providing more women the choice to enter into paid employment.
The bottom line is that greater gender parity at all levels, from unskilled workers to top management positions, can also foster the creation of new ideas—leading to higher productivity.
Credit: Food Tank
Competing demands
Policymakers face difficult choices every day, given limited room in the budget and competing demands. These choices often come down to investing in schools or roads, introducing new revenue measures, or offering free, high-quality childcare.
Here, policymakers must consider not only what happens to economic growth, but also how these policies can reduce income and gender inequality.
To help with these decisions, our recent analysis examines how policies designed to increase women’s labor force participation can accomplish multiple economic and social goals.
We find that some gender-responsive fiscal policies increase labor productivity and in turn, sustainable growth. Take for instance, an effort to reduce the gender gap in literacy rates.
In low-income countries the average literacy rate of men is about 70 percent while it is only 54 percent for women. But if fiscal policies can be used to close this gap, then women’s productivity increases and ultimately, more women are equipped for jobs in more skill-intensive sectors.
Labor-saving infrastructure, such as greater access to safe water, frees time, particularly for women. For instance, in Malawi, women on average spend 54 minutes a day collecting water. Better access to infrastructure means that women may then choose to pursue paid work.
Removing tax distortions for the earner in the family with the lower wage, usually the woman, by changing the personal income tax structure from a family to an individual system creates incentives for more women to work, and with greater diversity in the workforce, fresh and innovative ideas can boost productivity.
Securing the future
Not all gender-responsive fiscal policies benefit women equally. Subsidizing childcare and providing paid maternity leave would have a greater impact on poorer women because they typically face higher childcare costs relative to their income.
For example, in the US, poorer women spend 17.4 percent of their income on childcare compared to 7.8 for richer women.
Time horizons matter too. A mix of measures could help support economic goals in a sustainable manner while tackling immediate social needs.
For example, investing in education to equip girls with the same skills as boys would boost women’s human capital while shaping future labor productivity. In the meantime, cash transfers that target poorer working women may help reduce poverty and inequality.
Our research shows that tackling gender-biased social norms is crucial. In fact, removing discriminatory practices and addressing social norms amplifies the positive effects of gender-responsive measures. Not only would this improve human rights, but it also would help promote women’s economic empowerment.
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), discriminatory laws and social practices reduce women’s years of schooling by 16 percent and decrease labor force participation by 12 percent, resulting in a global income loss of 7.5 percent of the global GDP.
Progress in some countries is encouraging. For example, under the Promundo initiative, 34 countries have introduced programs to engage men and boys on gender norms with participants responding very positively to the initiative.
Real changes are happening. Still, we have a long way to go to make the world a place with the same opportunities for men and women. Policymakers and citizens working together can foster equality, equity, and brighter prospects for all, and ensure that gender equality becomes a reality in all of our lifetimes.
IMFBlog, where this article was originally published, is a forum for the views of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff and officials on pressing economic and policy issues of the day.
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF and its Executive Board.
Jonathan Rozen* is Senior Africa Researcher at Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
NEW YORK, Feb 19 2020 (IPS) – As reporters for Nigeria’s Premium Times newspaper, Samuel Ogundipe and Azeezat Adedigba told CPJ they spoke often over the phone. They had no idea that their regular conversations about work and their personal lives were creating a record of their friendship.
On August 9, 2018, Ogundipe published an article about a communication between Nigeria’s police chief and vice president. Days later, police investigating his source issued a written summons, CPJ reported at the time.
It was not addressed to Ogundipe and made no mention of his article or the charges he would later face of theft and possession of police documents. Instead, as Ogundipe recounted, police called Adedigba for questioning in connection with a slew of serious crimes, allegations that evaporated after police used her phone to summon her friend to the station.
Ogundipe’s experience is one of at least three cases since 2017 where police from across Nigeria used phone records to lure and then arrest journalists currently facing criminal charges for their work.
In each case, police used the records to identify people with a relationship to a targeted journalist, detained those people, and then forced them to facilitate the arrest.
The police methods reinforce the value of internet-based, encrypted communications at a time when authorities have also targeted journalists’ phones and computers to reveal their sources. Those prosecuted in all three cases are free on bail.
Nigerian journalist Samuel Ogundipe (Photo: Samuel Ogundipe)
“If the police called me and said we have something to ask you, I would go there…this is just their tactics,” Ogundipe said.
Ogundipe and Adedigba told CPJ that police made no secret of the way they had established their relationship, showing them each call records they claimed to have obtained from the pair’s cellphone network providers—Nigeria-based 9mobile, a subsidiary of the UAE-based Etisalat telecom company, and South Africa-based MTN, respectively.
“[Police have] been checking who I’ve been talking to…[in order to] see who was close enough to me to be used as bait,” Ogundipe added.
CPJ’s repeated calls in late 2019 and early 2020 to Nigerian police spokesperson Frank Mba rang unanswered.
The 2003 Nigerian Communications Act mandates that network service providers assist authorities in preventing crime and protecting national security. Regulations for enforcing it grant senior police officials the power to authorize requests to obtain “call data” from telecom companies without a judicial warrant, according to CPJ’s review.
That data includes where and when regular phone calls and SMS messages took place and between which numbers, according to documents reviewed by CPJ and interviews with three individuals with knowledge of police requests for call data in Nigeria. All three requested not to be named for fear of reprisal.
Nigeria has over 184 million active mobile phone lines, with roughly two million lines added every month to service its estimated 190 million people, according to 2019 data released by the national telecom regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). SIM card ownership for these lines is tracked under a 2011 regulation, which CPJ reviewed, mandating the collection of personal information, including fingerprints and photos, that police can access without a warrant as long as a senior-ranking officer gives written approval.
Other NCC regulations, released in October 2019 and reviewed by CPJ, detail police permissions to intercept communications under certain circumstances.
At the time of publishing, Ogundipe told CPJ his next court date had yet to be scheduled, but two journalists who were taken into custody at the end of 2019–Gidado Yushau and Alfred Olufemi–were preparing for their fifth hearing scheduled in Kwara State for March 4.
Similar to Ogundipe and Adedigba, police used call records to identify individuals that could be used to lead them to their targets, those affected told CPJ.
Yushau, publisher of The News Digest website, and Olufemi, a freelance reporter, were charged in November 2019 with criminal conspiracy and criminal defamation in connection with a complaint over a May 2018 News Digest report Olufemi wrote about a factory owned by Sarah Alade, now special adviser to Nigeria’s president. Alade and other representatives of the factory did not answer calls or declined comment when CPJ reported on the case.
The first journalist police used to track down Yushau and Olufemi worked in another city for an unrelated news outlet. Wunmi Ashafa, a Lagos-based journalist with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), told CPJ that police tricked her into meeting, then made her summon her colleague, Yusuf Yunus, who in turn was used to facilitate the arrest of the Digest’s web developer, Adebowale Adekoya. The officers claimed to know they were connected from their call records.
Police were “tracking all the people that are calling me, that I’m talking to,” Yunus told CPJ in an interview. “The network provider has said that this line and this line have spoken at this particular hour,” he said police told him. Ashafa and Yunus said they were released after police detained Adekoya.
“I don’t know why they decided to do that,” Ashafa told CPJ, adding that she missed a meeting at her daughter’s school because police involved her. “They apologized to us, to myself and Yunus, that that was the only way they could get [Adekoya].”
Mistaken for the Digest’s publisher, Adekoya described being held for five nights, driven over 1,200 kilometers—including to Abuja and Kwara State—and threatened with detention if he did not lead the officers to Yushau and promise to help bring Olufemi into custody, before his release.
Nigerian journalist Alfred Olufemi. (Photo: Alfred Olufemi)
CPJ reached Peter Okasanmi, a spokesperson with the Kwara State police, by phone in January. He declined to comment on Yushau and Olufemi’s case because the trial was ongoing, but described how police regularly used telecommunications information to make arrests.
“We are able to track the culprits by use of technology through the SIM [cards] that were registered,” Okasanmi said. “Suspects, they are usually like kidnappers…we use all of those gadgets to track their locations and get them arrested…we have our own equipment we are using,” he added, without elaborating.
On November 4, CPJ contacted NCC spokesperson Henry Nkemadu by phone and upon his request sent questions regarding security agencies’ access to communications data, but received no response. Subsequent calls to Nkemadu and other NCC officials went unanswered.
Police used a similar tactic in 2017 to arrest Tega Oghenedoro, the Uyo city-based publisher of the Secret Reporters news website who writes under the pseudonym Fejiro Oliver, CPJ reported this month.
He faces cybercrime charges related to reports alleging corruption in a Lagos-based Nigerian bank and is due in court on May 28, CPJ reported.
Isaac Omomedia, an aide to the governor of Delta State, told CPJ in October 2019 that he did not know Oliver, but that they had a mutual acquaintance, Prince Kpokpogri, the publisher of Integrity Watchdog magazine.
In March 2017, Omomedia arrived at a hotel in Asaba, the Delta State capital where he lives, after receiving a call to collect a parcel from the DHL delivery company, he told CPJ.
Instead, he was met by six police officers who questioned him about Kpokpogri, someone they claimed to know he was in touch with by reviewing his call records. On their instructions, Omomedia said he invited Kpokpogri to a meeting.
Kpokpogri told CPJ that police arrested him upon arrival, drove him over 200 kilometers to Uyo, and told him, in turn, to summon Oliver. The officers had identified him because they had “bugged” both his and Oliver’s phone lines, he remembered them saying. Kpokpogri said police arrested Oliver when he arrived and drove them both over 350 kilometers to Benin City; Oliver was then flown to Lagos and Kpokpogri was released without charge.
Kenneth Ogbeifun, the Lagos-based investigating officer in Oliver’s case, requested emailed questions when contacted for comment by CPJ in January 2020. Follow-up emails and messages went unanswered.
CPJ also reached an officer who confirmed his name as Moses and that he was part of the team that arrested Oliver on behalf of Lagos police, but when asked about how Omomedia and Kpokpogri were used in the arrest, the line disconnected.
Those involved in Oliver’s arrest, and the chain leading to Yushau and Olufemi, told CPJ they relied on the Nigeria-based Globacom, also known as Glo, India-based Airtel, or MTN for their cell phone service.
“I will give you the number used to commit the crime and you have only 60 minutes to produce the details,” the Premium Timesquoted Isa Pantami, Nigeria’s minister of communications and digital economy, as saying in late 2019. Operators that failed to produce data would be sanctioned, according to that report.
CPJ called the ministry of communications and digital economy in mid-January. Philomena Oshodin, a deputy director, said that she was not the relevant person to comment before the line went silent; follow up messages went unanswered.
Between November 2019 and January 2020, CPJ reached out to public relations departments at MTN, 9mobile, Airtel, and Glo, and emailed questions to representatives for each about security agencies’ access to telecom user data in Nigeria. None replied with answers by date of publication.
“You’re reporting as a journalist, which is not a crime…[but] you feel you’re being punished,” Ogundipe told CPJ, reflecting on his arrest and prosecution. “It’s very scary…it’s difficult to predict how far these guys will go.”
*Jonathan Rozen is CPJ’s senior Africa researcher. Previously, he worked in South Africa, Mozambique, and Canada with the Institute for Security Studies, assessing Mozambican peace-building processes. Rozen was a U.N. correspondent for IPS News and has written for Al-Jazeera English and the International Peace Institute. He speaks English and French.
