Victories, Great and Fixed
NEED TO KNOW
Victories, Great and Fixed
ALGERIA
Imane Khelif returned to Algeria a hero.
The Olympic gold medalist who garnered headlines over “uninformed speculation about her sex,” wrote the Associated Press, was the star in a parade celebrating her victories in her hometown of Tiaret, around 300 miles to the south of the capital, Algiers.
“She’s the daughter of the people,” said Dhikra Boukhavouba, an Algerian who studies in Paris, in an interview with the Washington Post.
Some Algerians won’t get a chance to take to the streets to enjoy similar jubilation after the North African country’s general election on Sept. 7.
Algerian police recently arrested opposition figure Fethi Ghares, picking him up at his home. The officers said they needed him for an “interrogation,” his wife told Agence France-Presse, but they didn’t explain why or produce a warrant. Officials still have not given any reason for his detainment, but the timing was unmistakable.
A secular leftist who opposes conservative Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune of the ruling National Liberation Front political party, Ghares had recently served two years in jail for insulting the president, harming national unity, and other charges. He formerly served as head of the Democratic and Social Movement party before Tebboune banned the party, added Africa News.
Tebboune, 78, is expected to win the election, earning a second and final five-year term, reported Reuters. The president has shored up support throughout the North African country’s political elite and its major civic and corporate institutions. Energy exports have helped make him popular. An OPEC member, Algeria is a key supplier of gas to Europe. Algeria is on track to double its gas exports in the next few months as winter approaches and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to constrain supply.
To further consolidate his power, the president has also sought to control information, enacting new media laws that have resulted in more arrests of journalists, less free speech and expression, and pliant, state-owned press operations, World Politics Review explained.
Lastly, in addition to the arrest of Ghares, election officials rejected 13 candidates for the presidency, allowing only two to run against Tebboune: moderate Islamist Abdelaali Hassani and center-left socialist Youcef Aouchiche, wrote Radio France Internationale.
These efforts might be vital to Tebboune’s chances. Only 40 percent of voters turned out to cast their ballots in 2019 when he won 58 percent of the vote after pro-democracy protests weakened the longtime President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
Tebboune has barred such protests, noted Le Monde.
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Pick-a-Judge
MEXICO
Mexico’s lower house of Congress approved President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s proposal to overhaul the judiciary, a major reform that would see nearly all of the country’s judges elected by popular vote but which critics fear could put democracy at risk, Bloomberg reported.
The ruling Morena party and its allies used their two-thirds majority in the lower chamber to pass the reform early Wednesday. Lawmakers debated and voted on the plan in a sports center in Mexico City due to thousands of demonstrators who opposed the reform blocking access to the legislature.
The proposal will overhaul the current judicial system where judicial appointments are based on special training and qualifications. Under the new rules, more than 7,000 federal, state and local judges, including Supreme Court justices, will face voters.
The number of judges on the Supreme Court will be reduced from 11 to nine, and their term limits will be shortened from 15 to 12 years. Meanwhile, the minimum age requirement for judges will be abolished, and the required number of years of experience will be reduced from 10 to five.
López Obrador – whose term of office finishes at the end of the month – maintains that the reforms are needed to modernize the judiciary and instill trust in a system that has been long plagued by corruption and nepotism, the New York Times wrote.
But many critics, including judges, opposition politicians and American observers fear that it would undermine judicial independence and turn the judiciary into a politically influenced body.
Opposition lawmaker Claudia Ruiz Massieu Salinas claimed the reform aims to eliminate checks on power and accused the ruling party of attempting to concentrate its authority.
Judges and court workers walk out in protest over the proposed overhaul. On Tuesday, eight of the 11 Supreme Court justices voted to temporarily suspend sessions and join the strikes.
The reform has also caused a diplomatic row between the outgoing López Obrador and US Ambassador Ken Salazar, who called it “a major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy.”
López Obrador’s successor, President-Elect Claudia Sheinbaum, has dismissed concerns that the reform would affect the country’s trade relations or investments, emphasizing that it will bring “better rule of law and more democracy for all.”
Lawmakers still need to discuss individual articles of the bill, but the core objective remains intact. The draft law will now proceed to the upper house, where debate could begin as early as Thursday.
‘Many Failings’
UNITED KINGDOM
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer on Wednesday issued an apology over the government’s role in the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London after a long-awaited inquiry found that the 72 deaths in the blaze were “all avoidable,” the Washington Post reported.
The incident is considered the deadliest fire in the United Kingdom since World War Two.
The inferno began from a small kitchen fire on the fourth floor but quickly spread through the 24-story building due to the flammable outer layer of cladding used to refurbish the tower’s exterior.
In a report released Wednesday, the inquiry discovered there were “many failings” by various parties, including government officials, construction companies, subcontractors, regulators, and emergency responders. It criticized the companies responsible for the cladding, accusing them of manipulating testing processes and misrepresenting the safety of their products.
The report identified the US-based Arconic company as a contributor to the tragedy. It discovered that the firm manufactured and sold the flammable cladding used on Grenfell Tower through its French subsidiary.
The inquiry accused Arconic of deliberately concealing the dangers associated with their cladding. While the firm denied selling unsafe products, it acknowledged its role in the tower’s refurbishment and has contributed to settlements for those affected by the fire, CBS News added.
Meanwhile, government officials came under scrutiny for failing to take action even though they were “well aware” of the dangers posed by the combustible cladding.
The London Fire Brigade was also admonished for failing to implement lessons from a similar fire in 2009 and for initially advising residents to “stay put” instead of evacuating.
In his apology, Starmer told the victims, their families and the local community that the country “failed to discharge its most fundamental duty, to protect you and your loved ones.”
Following the report’s release, The London Metropolitan Police announced plans to review the findings in detail to consider potential criminal charges, which could include corporate manslaughter, fraud, and health and safety offenses.
The tragedy highlighted issues of social inequality, as many of the victims were immigrants, children, elderly, and low-income residents living in public housing in one of London’s wealthiest areas.
Following the Grenfell fire, many buildings in the UK with similar cladding were found to be unsafe, leaving thousands of residents trapped in dangerous homes and unable to sell their properties due to safety concerns.
A Different Approach
PARAGUAY
Paraguay unveiled a new national sex education curriculum for the first time, sparking controversy due to Paraguayans’ conservative social mores that promote abstinence, discourage contraception, and neglect LGBTQ issues, the Associated Press reported this week.
The curriculum, backed by the Ministry of Education, frames sex as “God’s invention for married people.” It will be piloted in five eastern regions in September before potentially being rolled out nationwide.
Despite supporters’ claims that it aligns with Paraguayan cultural values, critics countered that it lacks scientific rigor and perpetuates harmful stereotypes, such as suggesting that “boys don’t cry easily,” and that female puberty prepares girls to become wives and mothers.
Women’s rights advocates and sexual health educators expressed alarm, warning that it could increase misinformation and fail to provide young people with the necessary knowledge to make informed decisions about their sexual health.
The curriculum has received support from conservative religious groups and politicians who see it as a tool to uphold traditional values. Paraguay, a predominantly Catholic country with the highest teenage pregnancy rate in South America, has long avoided comprehensive sex education. This initiative marks the first major attempt to introduce it nationally.
The conservative Colorado Party, which has ruled Paraguay for most of the past 80 years, has played a significant role in shaping the country’s policies, including this new curriculum.
President Santiago Peña, elected earlier this year, has promised to give religious leaders greater influence over education, aligning with the recent rise of right-wing politics in Latin America.
DISCOVERIES
Written in the Stone
Thousands of people gather at England’s Stonehenge each solstice, enchanted by its astronomical alignment of massive stones.
Researchers have already determined that the larger stones, mostly on the outer edges of the circular layout, originated from the area, while blue stones at the center came from Wales.
Now, a team of scientists has found that the central Altar Stone, long thought to be also from Wales, was actually Scottish.
To determine the megalith’s origins, the scientists analyzed what could be called a rock’s DNA. “Much like DNA, the Altar Stone contains a vast array of mineral grains that carry information on their birth and subsequent history,” they wrote in the Conversation.
By matching the Altar Stone’s mineral grains with other stones across the United Kingdom, they found a near-perfect match in northeast Scotland.
That means the six-ton stone was carried about 466 miles from northeastern Scotland to southwestern England, their study suggested.
“It completely rewrites the relationships between the Neolithic populations of the whole of the British Isles,” Rob Ixer from the University College London told the Guardian.
Sparsely populated today, northeastern Scotland and the neighboring Orkney Islands were a commercial and cultural hub in the Neolithic era, around 4,000 years ago.
The discovery provided further evidence that Neolithic humans did not live in isolated groups – rather, they traded with each other.
But questions about the site remain unanswered, the most burning one being how humans managed to carry such a heavy stone nearly 500 miles.
Experts disagree, with some claiming the rock was transported on land and others arguing it was transported by sea, the Guardian reported.
In any case, Neolithic humans “were used to moving big stones,” Richard Bevins from the University of Aberystwyth told the newspaper.
It also probably took a very long time – but seeing that as a problem is a very modern outlook, researchers said. “Their mindset was probably very different, historic property curator Heather Sebire said. “You can think of it as a pilgrimage.”