Month: June 2024

A witness spoke on Thursday about a massive fire at an oil refinery in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil that had been raging since Wednesday night.

Fakhir Talib said he “heard an explosion” and “saw this big fire, and obviously it was the refinery that caught on fire.”

“Several fire engines and firefighter teams came but they couldn’t do anything,” he added.

At least 10 firefighters were injured from the blaze which had also destroyed three fire trucks, according to the regional civil defense department.

Many firefighters suffered from breathing difficulties due to the thick smoke.

The fire broke out at an asphalt storage facility in an oil refinery on the Irbil-Gwer main road.

More than 40 firefighter teams were battling the inferno, according to the regional civil defense department in Kurdistan.

Thick smoke from the blaze has risen high into the sky, covering part of the city.

Municipality water trucks were rushing to supply fire trucks with water.

A Kurdistan Regional Government official, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to talk to the media, told our source that the fire was caused by an electrical fault and was not deliberate.

The refinery, one of the largest in Irbil, produces gasoline, kerosene, and white oil.

It features extensive storage facilities and is a joint venture between the regional government and a private company.

A worker at the refinery told the media that there are around 40 tanks of fuel at the site, each holding 18,000 liters, and half of them are on fire.

The University of Cambridge returned 39 Ugandan items which range from tribal regalia to pottery to the East African country on Saturday (Jun. 8).

Some of the objects were shown exclusively to AP journalists on Wednesday (Jun. 12).

The items remain the property of the collection of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge, which is loaning them to Uganda for an initial period of three years, said Mark Elliott, the museum’s senior curator in anthropology.

Elliott described it as “very much a museum-to-museum collaboration” that stems from years of talks about the possibility of returning objects deemed “exceptionally powerful and exceptionally sensitive to communities whose belongings they were.”

The objects, selected by Ugandan curators, represent a small fraction of about 1,500 ethnographic objects from Uganda that Cambridge has owned for a century. Cambridge acquired most as donations from private collections, and many were given by an Anglican missionary active in Uganda in the 1890s and early 20th century.

Uganda gained independence from the UK in 1962.

The next step is to “research their contemporary significance and to help make decisions about their future,” Elliott said.

Accountability

The Uganda Museum in the capital, Kampala, is expected to put on a temporary exhibition of the objects next year.

Uganda’s agreement with Cambridge is renewable, allowing for the possibility of a permanent loan and perhaps local ownership, said Jackline Nyiracyiza, Ugandan government commissioner in charge of museums and monuments.

“Sixty years that have passed for us now to get 39 objects,” she said. “We are working now with the Cambridge team to … see that we talk to other museums and be able to repatriate others maybe next year or within the near future.”

Ugandan officials, seeking such restitution, first traveled to Cambridge in 2022 as more African governments started to demand accountability over items of aesthetic or cultural value that were looted before and during the colonial era.

Elsewhere in Africa, including the West African nation of Nigeria, there have been successful restitution events in recent years.

“This is the biggest single movement of objects returned to the African continent” in recent years, Nelson Abiti, principal curator of the Uganda Museum, said.

He hoped the move could prove exemplary for other museums with ethnographic items from Uganda.

Restitution remains a struggle for African governments, and the African Union has put the return of looted cultural property on its agenda. The continental body aims to have a common policy on the issue.

The UN Security Council on Monday (Jun. 10) adopted a resolution aimed at reaching a comprehensive ceasefire deal in three phases to end the war in Gaza.

The resolution, penned by the US, received 14 votes in favor at the 15-member Council.

Russia abstained saying there was a lack of clarity over what exactly Israel had signed up to in the resolution.

“Hamas is called upon to accept this so-called deal, but still there is no clear clarity regarding official agreement from Israel,” Nebenzia said. ”Given the many statements from Israel on the extension of the war until Hamas is completely defeated … what specifically has Israel agreed to?”

The Palestinian ambassador to the UN welcomed the reference that the occupied Palestinian territory, including the Gaza Strip, is part of the land of the State of Palestine.

The plan announced by Joe Biden on May 31 would begin with an initial six-week cease-fire and the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

“Now the burden is on the Israeli side to implement this resolution and to have the ceasefire immediately in place, and also to have the exchange, including the release of Palestinian prisoners, and to make this ceasefire a permanent ceasefire.”

Permanent ceasefire talks

Benjamin Netanyahu has said Joe Biden only presented parts of the proposal, insisting that dismantling Hamas’ is a prerequisite to any permanent cease-fire talk.

Hamas said it welcomed the adoption of the resolution and was ready to work with mediators in indirect negotiations with Israel to implement it. The group said it would continue its struggle against Israeli occupation and work on setting up a “fully sovereign” Palestinian state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Biden presented only parts of the proposal and insisted that any talk of a permanent cease-fire before dismantling Hamas’ military and governing capabilities is a nonstarter.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Israel on Monday (Jun. 10), where he urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the plan for postwar Gaza as he pushed for more international pressure on Hamas to agree to the cease-fire proposal. Netanyahu has been skeptical of the deal, saying that Israel is still committed to destroying Hamas.

Algeria’s U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative on the council, said that while the text isn’t perfect, “it offers a glimmer of hope to the Palestinians, as the alternative is (the) continuing killing and suffering of the Palestinian people.”

“We voted for this text to give diplomacy a chance to reach an agreement that will end the aggression against the Palestinian people that has lasted far too long,” Bendjama said.

What are the three phases of the plan?

The phase one includes a six-week cease-fire and the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from populated areas in Gaza and the return of Palestinian civilians to all areas in the territory.

It also requires the safe distribution of humanitarian assistance “at scale throughout the Gaza Strip,” which Biden said would lead to 600 trucks with aid entering Gaza every day.

In phase two, the resolution says that with the agreement of Israel and Hamas, “a permanent end to hostilities, in exchange for the release of all other hostages still in Gaza, and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza” will take place.

Phase three would launch “a major multi-year reconstruction plan for Gaza and the return of the remains of any deceased hostages still in Gaza to their families.”

The resolution reiterates the Security Council’s “unwavering commitment to achieving the vision of a negotiated two-state solution where two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders.”

The Security Council adopted a resolution on March 25 demanding a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, with the U.S. abstaining, but there was no halt to the war.

It also stresses “the importance of unifying the Gaza Strip with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority,” something Netanyahu’s right-wing government has not agreed to.

African elephants respond to individual names, one of the few wild animal species known to do so, according to new research published in Nature Ecology & Evolution on Monday.

These unique names are in the form of complex low rumbles that can be heard over long distances across the savannah.

African elephants address one another with individually specific name-like calls https://t.co/FSa7uPR8Ha pic.twitter.com/96Achfx28Y

— NatureEcoEvo (@NatureEcoEvo) June 11, 2024

Biologists from Colorado State University’s Warner College of Natural Resources used machine learning to detect them in recordings made in Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve and Amboseli National Park.

They then tested their results by playing the sounds back to individual elephants, who responded more energetically – flapping their ears and lifting their trunks — to those that contained their name.

Professor and co-author, George Wittemeyer, said they had to get close to the animals to record in the sounds in all their complexity.

“They speak infrasonically and sonically. About half of the sound in their call is below our level of hearing, so we actually cannot hear it. So we had to use this special microphone to record these calls,” he said.

The researchers followed the elephants in jeeps to observe both who called out and who appeared to respond. For example, if a mother called to a calf, or a matriarch called to a straggler who later rejoined the family group.

“Elephants do these really interesting behaviours where sometimes when they’re in a big group of females or a mate check of a group will give a call. The entire group will respond, they’ll group up around her or they’ll follow her,” said Wittemeyer.

“Then at other times, she gives seemingly a very similar call and nobody will respond, nobody will react, except for a single elephant. So that indicates that they have a means by which to communicate to who they want to talk to.”

It is extremely rare for wild animals to call each other by unique names.

The so-called “naming” animals – like dolphins and parrots – are also able to learn unique new sounds throughout their lives, a talent that elephants also possess.

“There’s a lot of potential to learn more about elephant calls. I think we’ve just scratched the surface of just how complex their communication is,” said the report’s lead author, Michael Pardo, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the university.

Wittemeyer said they know there is a lot of communication going on in this highly social and vocal species, but they have not been able to decipher much yet.

“It’s quite complicated, the structure of their calls and we know that if we could get inside into what they’re saying we could really get a new perception on how they think,” he said.