Metastasis
NEED TO KNOW
Metastasis
SWEDEN
Criminals in Sweden are making big money selling strawberries at roadside stands. These allegations might seem silly, but as the Week detailed, many strawberry sellers likely have links with gang leaders like Ismail Abdo, a drug dealer who allegedly has ordered killings in turf wars with his rivals.
As the National reported, Abdo might even have connections to Iranian intelligence, which has hired criminal gangs to attack Israelis, Iranian dissidents and other foreign nationals in Sweden. Abdo and his ilk are also suspected of hiring minors, or “child soldiers”, to assassinate people, added Foreign Policy, noting that 93 teens aged 14 and younger were implicated in murder cases in Sweden.
These developments are why the number of fatal shootings has doubled in Sweden compared with 2013 as drug- and gun-related crimes have also increased, the Guardian reported. Last year, gunmen killed 55 people in 363 separate shootings, according to Reuters.
Many Swedes, especially conservative politicians, have blamed migrants who have come to Sweden in the past decade to flee violence at home and seek out opportunities in Europe. Others have argued that much of the violence occurs in the country’s poorest districts, suggesting migrants and other underclass communities are also the victims of this scourge.
Then there are those who wonder if the Swedish state is to blame. Many of the kids involved in these crimes lived in youth care homes, where Swedish authorities often send minors who, under Swedish law, can’t be tried as adults, Reuters explained.
The origins of Sweden’s crime wave are debatable. A bigger problem, meanwhile, is that the Scandinavian country is exporting this violence to its neighbors.
Norwegian police, for example, believe Swedish gangsters were to blame for a recent bombing in Drøbak near the two countries’ border, Politico reported. “It is serious,” said Kjetil Tunold, who oversees organized crime at the Norwegian National Bureau of Investigation, in a Euractiv story. “We are afraid that the development we have seen in Sweden will infect us.”
Meanwhile, Denmark recently announced new border controls with Sweden after Swedish teenagers were involved in shootings in the Danish capital Copenhagen, the National Review wrote.
Swedish crime has even spread more than 1,200 miles away to Iceland, the North Atlantic island with a population of around 400,000, which has seen an average of fewer than one murder a year – until recently, with seven people murdered just from January until mid-September this year, the European Conservative wrote. It was Sweden-based criminals that recently set a car on fire in the country. Some wonder if crime will rise, undercutting Iceland’s status as one of the happiest countries in the world, wrote the Reykjavíck Grapevine.
In Sweden, the trend could cost the country much more, wrote Stratfor, a think tank: “If unresolved, rising violent criminal activity could exacerbate social tensions, cause political instability and lead to a gradual deterioration of the country’s business environment.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Ganging Up
HORN OF AFRICA
The leaders of Egypt, Eritrea and Somalia agreed to boost cooperation and reinforce stability in the Horn of Africa, an agreement cementing “an axis against Ethiopia” that could exacerbate tensions in the region, Al Jazeera reported over the weekend.
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki hosted Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi in the capital Asmara for a three-way summit last Thursday.
Afterward, in a joint statement, the three presidents agreed to improve ties and discussed ways of “confronting interference in the internal affairs of the countries of the region under any pretext or justification.”
Analysts told the Africa Report that the summit comes as relations between the three countries and Ethiopia have grown increasingly rocky over the past few years. They added that the security agreement between the three could isolate land-locked Ethiopia.
It follows months of tensions between Ethiopia and Somalia after the former signed an agreement with Somaliland to lease a strip of coastline to build a naval base in the breakaway region.
The move infuriated Somalia, which considers Somaliland part of its territory. In response, Somalia has threatened to expel Ethiopian forces that are part of the African Union’s peacekeeping mission to combat Islamist insurgents, Business Insider Africa noted.
The row prompted Egypt to exert more pressure on Ethiopia. The two countries have been at odds for years over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile that Cairo views as a threat to its water supply.
In August, Egypt and Somalia signed a military cooperation deal, which saw the latter receive two caches of weapons from Egypt.
Meanwhile, Eritrea has voiced concerns over Ethiopia’s maritime intentions, even though both countries signed a peace deal in 2018.
Ethiopia previously had access to the sea, but lost it following Eritrea’s independence in 1993.
Observers suggested that the Eritrean leader was also slighted by his country’s exclusion from peace talks following the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region from 2020 to 2022, in which Ethiopian and Eritrean forces fought against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.
Although the summit reflects increased hostility toward Ethiopia, security analysts said that direct military confrontation seems unlikely in the near future because Somalia lacks the strength to challenge Ethiopia militarily, while Egypt is grappling with intense economic challenges.
Human Missiles
POLAND
Poland will temporarily stop granting asylum, officials said over the weekend, a move aimed at halting the number of migrants entering the country that it says are part of a plot by Russia and Belarus to destabilize the European Union, the BBC reported.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk proposed a new migration policy during a meeting Saturday of his center-right Civic Coalition political grouping, saying the measures would include “the temporary territorial suspension of the right to asylum.”
He accused human traffickers, aided by Russia and Belarus, of abusing the asylum system, adding that Poland “must take back 100 percent control” over who enters the country.
The new measures will be presented Tuesday, with Tusk noting that he will “demand recognition” in the EU for decision, which observers predict will spark pushback from the bloc.
International law stipulates that nations are obliged to offer people the right to claim asylum.
Since 2021, Poland has been handling a migration crisis at the border with Belarus. Tens of thousands of refugees – primarily from the Middle East, Africa and Asia – have been crossing the country illegally via that crossing for the past three years.
Poland and other EU countries have described the situation as a strategy of “hybrid warfare” by Russia and its ally Belarus to destabilize the 27-nation bloc.
Both countries have denied involvement, but Belarus is alleged to be offering visas to individuals and families from war-torn nations, such as Syria, and encouraging them to fly to Belarus as a transit stop on the way to the EU, according to Politico.
Amnesty International has warned that many asylum seekers have been beaten and physically abused by Belarusian security forces.
Even so, Tusk’s ruling coalition has surprised many with its tougher stance on migration policy.
In July, the Polish government passed a bill that would allow security forces to use firearms in self-defense following the fatal stabbing of a 21-year-old soldier by migrants at the border.
European officials and human rights advocates have expressed concerns about the measures, with some calling them “a new low.”
Still, opinion polls show that much of the Polish public supports the tougher measures, with 86 percent of respondents supporting the use of weapons in self-defense by members of the security services.
Reports of My Death …
CAMEROON
The Cameroonian government banned all public discussions about President Paul Biya’s health, calling it a matter of “national security” after the 91-year-old leader’s absence from public events has fueled rumors about his passing and concern about the country’s stability, the Guardian reported.
Late last week, Interior Minister Paul Atanga Nji issued a directive instructing regional governors to enforce the ban, warning that media outlets and social media users who violate it will face prosecution.
The move came amid persistent rumors regarding Biya’s health and even death after he missed a number of prominent international events, including last month’s United Nations General Assembly and the La Francophonie summit in France in early October.
The government has dismissed these rumors as “pure fantasy” and maintained that the president was in good health and currently on a private visit to Europe, Reuters wrote.
Biya, in power since 1982, has often spent extended periods abroad.
His most recent public appearance was at the China-Africa forum in Beijing in early September, and he reportedly left Cameroon in July to go to France prior to the China trip. Although Biya’s absences have become routine, they have revived questions about his ability to lead with many Cameroonians worrying about the lack of a clear succession plan, according to Africanews.
Cameroon is grappling with various internal conflicts, including a separatist war in its Anglophone regions and an ongoing insurgency by Islamist group Boko Haram in the north.
Analysts warned that Biya’s eventual passing could lead to instability in a region already struggling with political upheaval – there have been eight coups in West and Central Africa since 2020.
Despite concerns over his health, some political leaders have called on Biya to seek another term in 2025, maintaining a longstanding tradition of support for his candidacy.
DISCOVERIES
Simple Solutions
Back in 2013, climate scientist Ning Zeng and his team were in the middle of a wood-burying experiment in Quebec, aiming to study the effects of entombing biomass under clay soil.
But during the dig, they made an unexpected discovery: A twisted, 3,775-year-old Eastern red cedar log, buried 6.5 feet under the surface in a dense layer of blue clay.
“I remember standing there just staring at it,” Zeng told Science News. “Wow, do we really need to continue our experiment? The evidence is already here, and better than we could do.”
Afterward, researchers studied the well-preserved log using carbon dating and microscopic analysis, and found that the millennia-old wood had retained 95 percent of its carbon.
This discovery is very significant, the team explained, because it could provide a novel climate solution for storing carbon: Wood vaulting.
The idea behind wood vaulting is simple: Waste wood and other woody materials could be buried under impermeable clay soil to stop decomposition and prevent the release of carbon dioxide, Live Science noted.
The researchers found that in this oxygen-deprived environment, the log’s carbon remained virtually untouched for nearly 4,000 years.
“This kind of soil is relatively widespread,” Zeng explained. “You just have to dig a hole a few meters down, bury wood, and it can be preserved.”
Wood vaulting could be a low-cost and scalable solution, with costs estimated between $30 and $100 per ton of carbon dioxide compared with $100 to $300 per ton for direct air capture technology.
The potential is enormous. If implemented widely, wood vaulting could sequester up to 10 gigatons of carbon annually – enough to cover a significant portion of the world’s emissions goals.
And these vaults could later serve other purposes, such as agriculture or solar farming, making them versatile as well as effective.
“There is a lot of geological and archeological evidence of preserved wood from hundreds to millions of years ago, but the focus of those studies was not ‘How we can engineer a wood vault to preserve that wood?’” Zeng said in a statement. “And the problem with designing a new experiment is that we can’t wait 100 years for the results.”