Month: October 2023

In what Guatemalan authorities described as a national security incident, hackers affiliated with the activist group Anonymous disabled multiple government webpages Saturday.

The attacks were in support of demonstrations led by Indigenous organizations in the Central American country.

For almost two weeks, demonstrators have been calling for the resignation of Guatemalan Attorney General Consuelo Porras, saying she has tried to undermine the popular vote that made progressive Bernardo Arévalo the president-elect.

Posting on the social media website X, formerly known as Twitter, hackers under the handle @AnonGTReloaded announced, “This October 14 #Anonymous will attack the Government of Guatemala, but this time we do not come alone.”

The hackers targeted government webpages with floods of automated traffic until they crashed, a technique known as distributed denial-of-service attacks.

Webpages for Guatemala’s judicial branch, Department of Agriculture and the General Secretary of the president were targeted, among others. Some pages were quickly reinstated, but others remained down.

Guatemalan authorities said the hacking was a matter of “national security” and they are responding.

The attacks come after 13 days of protests and road closures. Thousands of Indigenous people have demanded that Porras and prosecutors Rafael Curruchiche and Cinthia Monterroso, as well as Judge Fredy Orellana, all resign, accusing them of endangering the country’s democracy.

Demonstrators maintain that after Arévalo’s victory in the August runoff election, Porras mounted an undemocratic challenge against Arévalo, his left-wing Seed Movement party and electoral authorities.

A representative of Anonymous involved in the cyberattack, who agreed to talk about the hacking only if not identified to avoid legal repercussions, said, “Everything we do is to support humanity and, now in Guatemala, in support of the people who are in the streets, fighting against corruption and impunity.”

Also on Saturday morning, Miguel Martínez, former official and personal friend of current President Alejandro Giammattei, was surrounded by a throng of protesters as security officers escorted him from a Mass in Antigua, Guatemala.

In footage posted on social media, protesters appeared to accuse Martínez of corruption. He is not currently known to be under investigation by the prosecutor’s office.
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As more children emerge from the pandemic grappling with mental health issues, their parents are seeking ways for them to build emotional resilience. 

And toy companies are paying close attention. 

While still in its early phase, a growing number of toy marketers are embracing MESH — or mental, emotional and social health — as a designation for toys that teach kids skills like how to adjust to new challenges, resolve conflict, advocate for themselves, or solve problems. 

The acronym was first used in child development circles and by the American Camp Association 10 years ago and gained new resonance after the pandemic. Rachele Harmuth, head of ThinkFun, a division of toy company Ravensburger, and resilience expert and family physician Deborah Gilboa, formed a MESH taskforce earlier this year with the goal of getting manufacturers to design toys with emotional resilience in mind and to have retailers market them accordingly. 

“We just need to educate parents and educators just a little bit to know that we could be using their play time a little bit intentionally,” Gilboa said. 

The plan is to certify MESH toys by mid-2024 the same way the Toy Association did for STEAM toys, which emphasize science, tech, engineering, arts, and math. Adrienne Appell, a spokeswoman at the Toy Association, notes that MESH is an area it will continue to monitor as it evolves. 

Many toys that could be considered MESH happen to already be in children’s toy chests — like memory games, puppets, certain types of Legos, Pokémon trading games, and Dungeons & Dragons. The concept was highlighted at the toy industry’s recent four-day annual show in New York, which featured an abundance of toys from the likes of hand2mind and Open the Joy that encourage children to express their feelings with mirrors or puppets. 

James Zahn, editor- in-chief of the trade publication the Toy Book, noted the bulk of the new toys being developed with MESH in mind will be out starting next year. 

But some worry the MESH approach might end up promising parents something it can’t deliver. There’s also a risk of companies preying on parents’ anxieties about their kids’ mental health. 

“My fear is that MESH will be used as the next marketing gimmick,” said Chris Byrne, an independent toy analyst. “It will create a culture of fear that their children are not developing socially and emotionally. And that’s not really the job of the toy industry. ” 

Experts say childhood depression and anxiety were climbing for years, but the pandemic’s unrelenting stress and grief magnified the woes, particularly for those already grappling with mental health issues who were cut off from counselors and other school resources during remote learning. Many educators began emphasizing social emotional learning in response, which teaches children soft skills like helping them manage their emotions and create positive rapport with others. 

Dave Anderson, vice president of school and community programs and a senior psychologist in the ADHD and Behavior Disorders Center at the Child Mind Institute, applauded the toy industry’s efforts to likewise address emotional resilience. But he said parents need to be careful about claims that companies may be making. While there’s evidence that skills highlighted by the MESH taskforce can build resilience, there’s no evidence that the toys themselves will, he said. 

“The concepts are evidence based; the toys themselves are not,” he said. 

Bryne notes that the skills being highlighted by the MESH taskforce are the basics of play, whether it’s skateboarding that builds perseverance or learning how to share toys to help with conflict resolution. 

“In my opinion, if you live in a healthy home and you’re having healthy play and your parents are engaged, the MESH stuff kind of happens automatically, ” he said. 

The U.S. toy industry itself has been in need of a jolt following a weak year, particularly a lackluster holiday 2022 season when retailers were stuck with a surplus of toys after enjoying a pandemic-induced toy splurge by parents. The malaise has continued so far this year, with toy sales in the U.S. down 8% from January through August, based on Circana’s retail tracking service data. 

For its part, the MESH taskforce is initially working with specialty stores like Learning Express and small toy companies like Crazy Aaron’s, which has expanded beyond its Thinking Putty to add activity kits that teach kids problem solving like how magnets work with putty. One game ThinkFun is marketing: Rush Hour, a sliding block logic game that has kids battle traffic gridlock. 

But large retailers like Amazon are also waking up to the MESH approach. 

“The rising popularity of MESH toys speaks to the power of play and the important role that toys play in our lives,” said Anne Carrihill, Amazon’s director of toys and games. 

Richard Derr, owner of the Learning Express franchise in Lake Zurich, Illinois, said that he trained his workers on helping parents this past spring to pick the right toys. But the challenge is not to scare parents. 

“You don’t want to rush up to somebody and say, ‘Hey, how’s your mental health today of your kids?'” Derr said. “That’s why local toy stores are a great place to start because of our relationships with the community, customers and teachers.” 

But he noted toymakers can’t be overusing the word MESH without any meaning. 

Sarah Davis, the mother of three boys ages 3, 6 and 9, is open to the idea of MESH toys. The Great Falls, Virginia resident said her 6-year-old had delayed speech because he was wearing a mask during the heart of the pandemic, while her 9-year-old son has some issues with social interaction after being isolated and glued to his laptop. 

“My kids don’t have an issue with anxiety in terms of school,” she said, but added. “I still worry about the long-term effects of what that was like.” 

More than the promise of building emotional resilience through MESH is whether the toys themselves will actually be fun. 

“Are my kids going to ask for those kind of toys for Christmas?” Davis asked. “I’m going to be really curious and I will keep an eye out for them.” 
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First came the darkening skies, then the crescent-shaped shadows on the ground, and finally an eruption of cheers by crowds that gathered Saturday along the narrow path of a rare “ring of fire” eclipse of the sun. 

It was a spectacular show for some parts of the western United States as the moon moved into place and the ring formed. 

There were hoots, hollers and yelps for those with an unfettered view in Albuquerque, where the celestial event coincided with an international balloon fiesta that typically draws tens of thousands of spectators and hundreds of hot air balloon pilots from around the world. 

They got a double treat, with balloons lifting off during a mass ascension shortly after dawn and then the eclipse a couple hours later. Organizers had 80,000 pairs of view glasses on hand for the massive crowd and some pilots used their propane burners to shoot flames upward in unison as the spectacle unfolded. 

Allan Hahn of Aurora, Colorado, has attended the festival for 34 years, first as a crew member and then as a licensed balloon pilot. His balloon, Heaven Bound Too, was one of 72 selected for a special “glow” performance as skies darkened. 

“It’s very exciting to be here and have the convergence of our love of flying with something very natural like an eclipse,” he said. 

Unlike a total solar eclipse, the moon doesn’t completely cover the sun during a ring of fire eclipse. When the moon lines up between Earth and the sun, it leaves a bright, blazing border. 

Saturday’s path: Oregon, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Texas in the U.S., with a sliver of California, Arizona and Colorado. Next: Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Brazil. Much of the rest of the Western Hemisphere gets a partial eclipse. 

Viewing all depends on clear skies — part of the U.S. path could see clouds. NASA and other groups livestreamed it. 

The event brought eclipse watchers from around the U.S. to remote corners of the country to try to get the best view possible. At Bryce Canyon National Park in southern Utah tiny lights could be seen along a well-known trail that snakes through a valley of red rock hoodoos as eclipse enthusiasts hit the trail before sunrise to stake out their preferred spots in nooks and crannies along the way. 

With the ring of fire in full form, cheers echoed through the canyons of the park as if the home team just hit a home run. 

“I just think it’s one of those things that unites us all,” said John Edwards, a cancer drug developer who traveled alone across the country to try to watch the eclipse from Bryce Canyon. “I just think it’s seeing these unique experiences that come rarely is what got me here. This is about as rare as it gets.” 

Kirby James and Caroline McGuire from Toronto didn’t realize they would be in a prime spot to watch the eclipse when they planned their trip to southern Utah. Their luck led to what McGuire called an “epic, epic” at the national park. 

“Nothing that you can read could prepare you for how it feels,” said Kirby James, 63, a co-founder of a software company. “It’s the moment, especially when the ring of fire came on, you realized you were having a lifetime experience.” 

For the small towns and cities along the path, there was a mix of excitement, worries about the weather and concerns they’d be overwhelmed by visitors flocking to see the annular solar eclipse. 

As totality began in Eugene, Oregon, oohs and ahs combined with groans of disappointment as the eclipse was intermittently visible, the sun’s light poking through the cloud cover from behind the moon only at times. 

Koren Marsh and her parents drove five hours from Seattle to be within the path of the eclipse. Making the trip to see the ring of fire was part of the celebrations for her 16th birthday. Despite the poor viewing weather, she said it was still cool to witness totality as it peeked between the clouds. 

“I’m underwhelmed but I wouldn’t say I’m disappointed,” she said. “It was worth it to me because I like science.” 

Viewers on the East Coast were prepared to see less of the event — close to a quarter eclipse around midday in some areas, such as New York City — but were nonetheless geared up to watch the skies. In Maine, viewers expected to see only about 12% of the sun covered, but the Clark Telescope on the grounds of the Versant Power Astronomy Center at the University of Maine was open to the public. 

“As the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, it casts its shadow on our planet. In a very real sense, solar eclipses are ‘made in the shade’ of the moon,” said Shawn Laatsch, director of the Versant Power Astronomy and the Maynard Jordan Planetarium. 

Colombia’s Tatacoa desert was playing host to astronomers helping a group of visually impaired people experience the eclipse through raised maps and temperature changes as the moon blots out the sun. 

At the Cancun Planetarium, young visitors built box projectors to indirectly and safely view the ring of fire. The ancient Maya — who called eclipses “broken sun” — may have used dark volcanic glass to protect their eyes, said archeologist Arturo Montero of Tepeyac University in Mexico City. 

Brazil’s Pedra da Boca state park, known for its rocky outcrops for climbing and rappelling was expecting crowds. 

The entire eclipse — from the moment the moon starts to obscure the sun until it’s back to normal — is 2 1/2 to three hours at any given spot. The ring of fire portion lasts from three to five minutes, depending on location. 

Next April, a total solar eclipse will crisscross the U.S. in the opposite direction. That one will begin in Mexico and go from Texas to New England before ending in eastern Canada. 

The next ring of fire eclipse is in October next year at the southernmost tip of South America. Antarctica gets one in 2026. It will be 2039 before another ring of fire is visible in the U.S., and Alaska will be the only state in its direct path. 
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In an ongoing legal battle with the Biden administration over a Nevada lithium mine, environmentalists are poised to return to court with a new approach accusing U.S. wildlife officials of dragging their feet on a year-old petition seeking endangered species status for a tiny snail that lives nearby.

The Western Watersheds Project said in its formal notice of intent to sue that the government’s failure to list the Kings River pyrg as a threatened or endangered species could push it to the brink of extinction.

It says the only place the snail is known to exist is in 13 shallow springs near where Lithium Americas is building its Thacker Pass Mine near the Oregon line.

President Joe Biden has made ramped-up domestic production of lithium a key part of his blueprint for a greener future. Worldwide demand for the critical element in the manufacture of electric vehicle batteries is projected to increase six-fold by 2030 compared with 2020.

Past lawsuits filed by conservationists and tribes have taken aim — largely unsuccessfully — at the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, which they accused of cutting regulatory corners to expedite approval of the mine itself in 2021.

The new approach targets the department’s Fish and Wildlife Service, charged with ensuring protection of fish and wildlife habitat surrounding the mine site 321 kilometers northeast of Reno.

Western Watersheds Project says groundwater pumping associated with the mine’s 113-meter open pit will reduce or eliminate flows to the springs that support the snails.

In the formal 90-day notice of intent to sue sent to Interior Secretary Deborah Haaland last month, they say her agency’s failure to make a 12-month finding on the listing petition filed in September 2022 is a violation of the Endangered Species Act.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service isn’t supposed to sit on its hands while species are in imminent danger of extinction, but the fact that it hasn’t met the deadlines on the pyrg raises questions about why they might be delaying,” Adam Bronstein, the project’s Nevada director, said in a statement.

“It would be absolutely unacceptable if the Biden Administration is waiting until it’s too late to save the species so as not to interrupt the construction of a lithium mine,” he said.

Interior Department spokesperson Melissa Schwartz said in an email Thursday the department had no comment on the group’s intent to sue.

Western Watersheds Project said time is of the essence because the snails were imperiled even before any new mining was contemplated due to livestock grazing, round-building and, increasingly, the anticipated impacts of climate change.

“The species has no regulatory protection whatsoever … because it is not an endangered species, or even a Bureau of Land Management-listed Sensitive species, and has no state law protections,” the notice said.

Conservationists and tribal lawyers claimed a partial victory last year when U.S. District Judge Miranda Du concluded the bureau failed to fully comply with new interpretations of the 1872 Mining Law. But she stopped short of blocking the project, allowing construction to begin as the bureau shored up plans for disposal of waste rock.

The opponents appealed, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Du’s ruling in July.

The tiny snail’s shell is less than 2 millimeters tall. By comparison, a U.S. nickel coin is 1.95 millimeters thick. They’ve managed to survive in isolated springs, which are remnants of extensive waterways that have covered what is now dry land only to recede many times over the last 2 million years, the listing petition said.

The project says three of the springs are within a 1.6-kilometer buffer zone, the bureau established in its review of potential impacts of a 3-meter drawdown of the groundwater table, and the rest are less than 4.8 kilometers away.

“As drought frequency increases with climate change, the Kings River pyrg will be at high risk of extinction,” the letter to Haaland said. It notes that the Nevada Department of Wildlife considers the pyrg “extremely vulnerable to climate change.”

Lithium Americas had no comment on the notice of intent to sue the Fish and Wildlife Service, spokesperson Tim Crowley said. The company said when the listing petition was filed last year that it’s done extensive work to design a project that avoids impacts to the springs.

The Bureau of Land Management said earlier its environmental review of the project that it didn’t detect any of the snails “within the direct footprint of the project or any area likely to be adversely affected by the project.”
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Malawi launched its first-ever Centre for Artificial Intelligence and STEAM — Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics — Friday at the Malawi University of Science and Technology. Established with support from various U.S.-based universities, the center aims to provide solutions to the country’s innovation and technology needs.

The project’s leader, Zipangani Vokhiwa, a science professor at Mercer University in the U.S. and a Fulbright scholar, says the center will help promote the study and use of artificial intelligence, or AI, and STEAM for the socioeconomic development of Malawi and beyond.

“Economic development that we know cannot go without the modern scientific knowledge and aspect so the center will complement vision 2063 for Malawi as a country that needs to be moving together with the country developments in science,” Vokhiwa said. “Not to be left behind.”

Vokhiwa said the center, known by its acronym, CAIST, will offer educational, technical, policy, and strategy products and services in emerging technologies such as AI.

He said it will also offer machine learning, deep learning, data science, data analytics, internet of things and more that are based on humanistic STEAM education and research.

A consortium of various U.S. universities provided the center with pedagogical and technical support.

These include Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Tech University, Morehouse College, Colorado University, Georgia Southern University, Clemson University, New York University and Mercer University.

There are fears worldwide, however, that the introduction of AI will result in loss of jobs.

CBS news reported  that AI eliminated nearly 4,000 jobs in the U.S. in May.

But Vokhiwa said the advantages and disadvantages of AI are still debatable.

“As has been said by the experts, AI has both positive elements and negative elements,” he said. “But knowing fairly well that we cannot run away from digitization of what we do, AI will be needed, and Malawi does not need to lag behind.”

Vokhiwa said AI has helped create employment because it needs people to run the AI machines.

Malawi’s Minister of Education, Madalitso Kambauwa Wirima, officially opened the AI center at the Malawi University of Science and Technology.

She said the launch of the AI center has set the tone and laid the foundation for the country to explore the opportunities that come with new technologies.

However, she said, while AI has the potential to transform the country, there is also a need to address its downside.

“For this to happen, the government will be looking to CAIST for knowledge and expertise so that we can together facilitate the development of the necessary policy and regulatory frameworks governing responsible use of AI,” she said. “The earlier we do this the better, because AI is already here, and we are all using it. Some of us with enough knowledge, but many of us surely without full knowledge of it.”

Kambauwa Wirima said that whatever the case, AI is something that Malawi cannot avoid, mentioning that the intergovernmental Southern African Development Community is already addressing the issue.

“We adopted a decision to develop regional guidelines on the ethics of artificial intelligence to be domesticated and implemented by member states,” she said. “Therefore, Malawi cannot sit on the fence.”

Address Malata, the vice chancellor for Malawi University of Science and Technology, said the university is strategizing its operations to align them to various development agendas including Malawi 2063, Africa Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals, so that whatever the center does, it should benefit everyone.
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Pfizer slashed its full-year revenue forecast by 13% and said Friday it will cut $3.5 billion worth of jobs and expenses due to lower-than-expected sales of its COVID-19 vaccine and treatment.

Pfizer earned record revenue in 2021 and 2022, topping $100 billion last year, after developing its vaccine Comirnaty with German partner BioNTech SE and antiviral treatment Paxlovid on its own. Last year, revenue from those two products exceeded $56 billion.

But annual vaccination rates have dropped sharply since 2021 and demand for treatments has dipped as population-wide immunity has increased from vaccines and prior infections. Pfizer and rivals have begun selling an updated COVID vaccine for this fall.

“We remain proud that our scientific breakthroughs played a significant role in getting the global health crisis under control,” Pfizer CEO Albert Boura said in a statement. “As we gain additional clarity around vaccination and treatment rates for COVID, we will be better able to estimate the appropriate level of supply to meet demand.”

The drugmaker said it now expects 2023 revenue of between $58 billion and $61 billion, down from its prior forecast of $67 billion to $70 billion. It said the reduction was solely due to lowered expectations for its COVID-19 products.

Pfizer said it will take a noncash charge of $5.5 billion in the third quarter to write off $4.6 billion of Paxlovid and $900 million of inventory write-offs and other charges for the vaccine.

The cost-cutting program, which will target savings of at least $3.5 billion annually by the end of 2024, will include layoffs, the company said, without providing details on how many jobs will be cut or from what areas. One-time costs to achieve the savings are expected to be around $3 billion.

Shares of the New York-based company were down about 7% in extended trading.

Pfizer slashed its forecast for sales of its antiviral COVID treatment Paxlovid by about $7 billion, including a noncash $4.2 billion revenue reversal, as it agreed to allow the return of 7.9 million courses purchased by the U.S. government. It had previously expected Paxlovid revenue of about $8 billion for the year.

Pfizer said that under a deal with the U.S. government, a credit for the returned Paxlovid doses will underwrite a program to supply the drug free-of-charge to uninsured and underinsured Americans through 2028 and to patients insured under the government’s Medicare and Medicaid programs through the end of next year.

Pfizer will also provide the U.S. government 1 million courses of Paxlovid for the Strategic National Stockpile.

The company expects the drug will become commercially available to people with private insurance on January 1.

Pfizer also cut full-year revenue expectations for the COVID vaccine by about $2 billion due to lower-than-expected vaccination rates.

Pfizer said its non-COVID products remain on track to achieve 6% to 8% revenue growth year over year in 2023.
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Following another month of record-breaking temperatures throughout the globe in September, the year 2023 is all but certain to be the warmest on record, a U.S. agency said Friday.

The unwelcome news comes as world leaders prepare to meet for the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubai in late November where phasing out fossil fuels, the main driver of human-caused climate change, will be top of the agenda.

“There is a greater than 99% probability that 2023 will rank as the warmest year on record,” the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in its monthly update.

The calculation was based on data gathered through September and on simulations of possible outcomes based on the historical record, from 1975 to present.

“September 2023 was the fourth month in a row of record-warm global temperatures,” said NOAA chief scientist Sarah Kapnick in a statement.

“Not only was it the warmest September on record, it was far and away the most atypically warm month of any in NOAA’s 174 years of climate keeping. To put it another way, September 2023 was warmer than the average July from 2001-2010.”

Significant climate anomalies and events included Storm Daniel, which brought strong winds and unprecedented rainfall to eastern Libya, triggering widespread destruction including burst dams that killed more than 10,000 people.

An extratropical cyclone dumped more than 300 millimeters (12 inches) of rain in 24 hours over Brazilian states, triggering landslides and flooding that killed 30.

The average global temperature for September was 2.59 degrees F (1.44 degrees C) above the 20th-century average of 59.0F (15.0C), according to the NOAA data. It was 0.83F (0.46C) above the previous record from September 2020.

Holding long-term warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is seen as essential to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change.

Africa, Europe, North America and South America each had their warmest September on record; Asia had its second warmest, while Oceana had its third warmest, according to the NOAA data.

In the poles, Antarctica had its warmest September, while the Arctic saw its second warmest.

September 2023 also set a record for the lowest global September sea ice extent on record.

The oceans, too, experienced record-high monthly global ocean surface temperatures for the sixth consecutive month.

Despite increasing extreme weather events and record-shattering global temperatures, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise and fossil fuels remain subsidized to the tune of $7 trillion annually.
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The U.S. space agency, NASA, launched a rocket Friday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The rocket carried a probe designed to study a metal-rich asteroid that scientists think might be the remnants of small planet or planet-like object. 

The rocket, built by the private space company SpaceX, took off early Friday, starting NASAs Psyche probe on a 3.5-billion kilometer, six-year journey to the asteroid of the same name, orbiting between the planets Mars and Jupiter. 

Using Earth-based radar and optical telescope data, scientists hypothesize that the asteroid Psyche could be part of the metal-rich interior of a “planetesimal,” a building block of a rocky planet that never formed.  

NASA scientists say Psyche may have collided with other large bodies during its early formation and lost its outer rocky shell. Examining such an asteroid could provide unprecedented insights into the history of violent collisions and the accumulation of matter that created planets like Earth. 

The probe is powered by a pair of massive solar arrays which unfurled after the craft reached space and was released from the launch vehicle. Its unique solar electric propulsion system creates thrust by creating electric and magnetic fields, which accelerate and expel charged atoms, or ions, of a propellant called xenon at a high rate of speed. 

Xenon is a gas used in automobile headlights and plasma televisions and will emit a blue glow behind the probe as it travels through space. The voyage to Psyche marks the first mission to use the propulsion system — known as Hall-effect thrusters — in deep space.  

NASA expects the probe to reach its namesake asteroid in 2029.  

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 
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Africa is the site of a new battle for influence as Washington ramps up efforts to build an alternative critical minerals supply chain to avoid reliance on China. Beijing dominates the processing of critical minerals such as cobalt, lithium and other resources from the continent that are needed for the transition to clean energy and electric vehicles.

But at the Green Energy Africa Summit this week in Cape Town, which was held on the sidelines of Africa Oil Week, few were willing to talk about it directly.

Asked whether the U.S. was playing catch-up with China, one of the panel’s speakers, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources Kimberly Harrington, said simply that Washington was looking to “diversify.”

For his part, fellow panelist Chiza Charles Newton Chiumya, the African Union’s director for industry, minerals, entrepreneurship and tourism, told VOA he didn’t want to use the term “competing” to describe the relative approaches of the West and China but agreed there is “lots of interest” in Africa’s critical minerals.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington was also circumspect when asked whether it sees itself in competition with the U.S. for the natural resources.

“The tangible outcomes of China-Africa practical cooperation throughout the years are there for all to see,” spokesperson Liu Pengyu wrote in an emailed response.

“Supporting Africa’s development is the common responsibility of the international community. We welcome stronger interest and investment in Africa from all quarters to help increase the continent’s capability to achieve self-driven sustainable growth and move forward towards modernization and prosperity.”

Independent analysts, however, had a different take. The Chinese made it a “priority to corner the market for critical minerals about two decades ago and supported that strategy with massive public diplomacy and infrastructure investments into Africa — most of which [came] via long-term debt,” said Tony Carroll, adjunct professor in the African studies program at Johns Hopkins University, told VOA earlier this year.

“The West woke up to this strategy too late and have been scrambling ever since.”

Part of that response has been the Minerals Security Partnership set up by U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration last year as a way of diversifying supply chains. Partners include Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Japan, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the European Union.

“We see anywhere from three to six times demand growth for critical minerals across the world. … So, I think our sense is that no single government, no single company, can create resilient supply chains,” said Harrington at the Green Energy Africa Summit.

“If the COVID-19 pandemic showed us anything…one of the primary things it showed us is that if we are too overly reliant on any one source in a supply chain … it creates vulnerabilities, and so I think our approach overall on this issue is to make sure that we have diversity,” she told VOA during a Q&A after the panel.  

“When it comes to China in general, our secretary of state has been crystal clear, we have areas in which we cooperate with China, we have areas in which we compete with China, and that’s not going to change,” she said. “This is a complex and consequential relationship and we see it as such.”

The view from Africa

While he didn’t want to use the word “competition” to describe the outside interest in Africa’s critical minerals, the AU’s Chiumya stressed during the panel discussion that Africa must benefit from its mineral wealth.

“This is not the first time that Africa is sitting at the frontier of having critical minerals. … In the past we have lost a chance,” he said, referring to the continent’s vast gold and diamond deposits. “This time around we want to do things different.”

“For a long time, our governments have not been able to effectively exploit the mineral wealth that is there and ended up effectively going into very bad deals” which have not contributed to the social and economic development of the African people, Chiumya added.

Democratic Republic of the Congo President Felix Tshisekedi has been among the African leaders demanding better terms from China for several years. His country produces some 70% of the world’s cobalt but remains one of the world’s least developed nations.

Tshisekedi complained in January that the Congolese people have not benefited from a $6.2 billion minerals-for-infrastructure contract with China that was signed by his predecessor.

Meanwhile in Zimbabwe, which has large lithium deposits, the government has imposed a ban on exports of raw lithium ore, insisting that it be processed at home. A Chinese company has since built a large lithium processing plant in the country.

U.S. critical mineral plans

Washington says environmental, social and governance standards are a key consideration for the U.S. when it comes to its dealings with the continent regarding critical minerals.

“We want to do our part to ramp up our efforts with like-minded partners in Africa to promote sustainable clean energy supply chains in mining,” said Harrington. She said it is also important to help countries “do some domestic processing and refining, because it’s really the value-added, that’s how you create jobs, that’s how you create local capacity.”

At the U.S.-Africa Summit in Washington in December, the DRC, the U.S. and Zambia — another major source of minerals — signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a supply chain for electric car batteries, in what was widely seen by analysts as a move to counter China.

Harrington said the MOU had “the overall goal of a lot of an EV (electric vehicle) battery being processed and refined locally,” even if some further refinement might need to be done in a third country. 

Additionally, on the sidelines of last month’s G20 summit, the U.S. and E.U. pledged to develop the partially existing Lobito Corridor — a railway connecting the DRC’s cobalt belt to Zambia’s copper belt and on to Angola’s port of Lobito, from where it can be shipped to international markets.
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Thousands of people marched the streets of Ghana’s capital last week to raise awareness of breast cancer. Event organizers aimed to dispel myths about breast cancer in Africa and encourage early detection for a cure. Senanu Tord reports from Accra. (Camera: Senanu Tord and Samuel Mintah)
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As Hamas militants and rockets entered Israel Saturday, so too did a barrage of disinformation. The conflict is being fought not only on the ground but also on the internet. VOA’s Robin Guess has the story. Liam Scott contributed to this report.
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The European Union has expanded its warnings that tech companies must remove illegal content from their platforms, or risk facing severe legal penalties.

Following the militant Islamist group Hamas’ attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, social media firms have seen a surge in misinformation related to the conflict, including doctored images and mislabeled videos, alongside images of graphic violence.

On Tuesday, EU industry chief Thierry Breton told Elon Musk to curb disinformation on his messaging platform X, warning it was being used to disseminate illegal content and false information in the wake of recent violence in the Middle East.

Breton issued a similar warning to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, urging the company to ensure strict compliance with European law.

In his letters to Musk and Zuckerberg, Breton said their companies had 24 hours to inform the EU how they were stopping harmful content on their platforms.

Now, the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, has sought to remind all social media companies they are legally required to prevent the spread of harmful content related to Hamas.

“Content circulating online that can be associated to Hamas qualifies as terrorist content, is illegal, and needs to be removed under both the DSA [Digital Services Act] and TCO [Terrorist Content Online Regulation,” a commission spokesperson told Reuters.

“The commission will fully apply the DSA and monitor the full implementation of the TCO. The commission urges online platforms to fully comply with EU rules.”

The recently implemented DSA requires large online platforms, including X and Meta’s Facebook, to remove illegal content and to take measures to tackle the risks to public security and civic discourse.

Any firm found in breach of the DSA faces a fine worth up to 6% of global turnover. Repeat offenders could even be banned from operating in Europe altogether.

It is unclear if Breton has sent similar messages to other social media companies designated under the DSA.
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