Time’s Up: Colombia’s Leader is Gambling on a Legacy
NEED TO KNOW
Time’s Up: Colombia’s Leader is Gambling on a Legacy
COLOMBIA
Colombian President Gustavo Petro was in Haiti recently to highlight relations between the two countries. For Petro, a leftist and former insurgent who has fewer than 10 months left on the single term that he is allowed under the law, the visit was a chance to “elevate his international stature as a champion of social justice,” the Miami Herald wrote.
Haiti spiraled into chaos after 17 former Colombian soldiers allegedly killed the late President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. Now, Petro is trying to help the impoverished Caribbean nation rebound. Around 1,000 Haitians, for instance, are now training in Colombia in the hopes that they will help bring more security to their native land.
Such international trips often occur when heads of state face uphill battles abroad and a lack of progress on their agendas at home, observers say.
A proud member of a cohort of leftist leaders now in power in South America – think Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and President Gabriel Boric of Chile – Petro is a vocal critic of American President Donald Trump and US-style free-market capitalism, according to Colombia One. Since he was elected in 2022, however, Petro has failed to usher in the sweeping changes he promised.
Still, in a rare victory in realizing part of his campaign pledge to overhaul pensions, the health-care system, and labor laws, and reduce inequality in the country, Petro recently enacted new labor reforms that tilted the balance of power to workers but drew the ire of the international business community, the Associated Press reported.
The reforms included paying more for work on Sundays and late evening shifts, and a raft of worker protections, including requiring delivery apps to employ workers as full-time employees or contract-based freelancers rather than under the table.
Employers warned that the reforms would increase costs and result in layoffs, noted Bloomberg. Analysts told the Dialogue that Petro steamrolled the reforms through Congress by threatening to bypass lawmakers, and now wants a referendum to achieve his aims.
Petro also pledged to establish “Total Peace” by negotiating with all armed groups in the conflict-riven country. However, a surge in violence by illegal armed groups has gripped the country, added United Press International. This rise in violence comes despite a peace deal signed by the central government in 2016 with some rebel groups.
In early June, Miguel Uribe, a right-wing senator and candidate for presidential elections next year, was shot in the head in the capital, Bogotá. Days later, armed groups killed at least seven people in and around Cali, the third-largest city.
“We made a lot of sacrifices so that Petro could become president,” a local leader from Catatumbo, a violent region, told the Economist, adding that his sacrifices may have been in vain. In January, he was forced to flee his home due to the violence.
“‘Total Peace’ looks battered,” wrote the Economist.
Now, the president has less than a year to leave his successor with a country that secures, rather than discredits, his ideological vision and cements his legacy. In June, however, he announced that he would include a vote on whether to call a constituent assembly in next year’s general elections.
Such an assembly hasn’t been called since the constitution was established in 1991, a document which enshrines many social rights. Yet Petro’s proposal to create an assembly to rewrite the constitution is unusual, analysts say, and many are worrying what he intends to change, possibly those reforms he couldn’t get lawmakers to approve.
“If the institutions that we have in Colombia today are not capable of living up to the social reforms that the people, through their vote, decreed … then Colombia must go to a national constituent assembly,” he said in a speech last year.
But lawmakers, justices, and many legal experts oppose such a move.
“The Constitution of 1991 still works,” a legal analyst at the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia told EFE, a Spanish-language news agency. “Rewriting it is not a legal shortcut, it’s a political gamble.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Australia to Ban YouTube for Teenagers
AUSTRALIA
Australia will add YouTube to a list of social media platforms banned for use by teenagers, reversing a previous decision to spare the video-sharing site from the ban, and potentially paving the way for a legal challenge, Reuters reported.
The move follows a recommendation by the Internet regulator last month, urging the government to review its stance on YouTube, citing a survey in which 37 percent of minors reported harmful content on the platform – the highest rate among the social media platforms surveyed.
The ban, the first of its kind in the world, will forbid individuals under 16 from having an account, although they will still be able to watch YouTube while logged out. Parents and teachers will still be permitted to show YouTube videos to minors.
YouTube Kids, which is more strictly moderated, will remain exempt from the ban, which is scheduled to take effect in December, the Guardian noted.
“I want Australian parents to know that we have their backs,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement, emphasizing the harmful impact online platforms have on Australian children and calling on social media companies to fulfill their social responsibility.
The ban requires social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to prevent Australians under 16 from opening accounts, or they risk a fine of about $30 million.
Some major tech companies have privately expressed concerns about unclear guidelines on compliance with the “reasonable steps” requirements, including what new verification measures or barriers they are required to implement.
Last year, after the government said it would not ban YouTube because it is widely used by teachers, the owners of platforms under the ban, such as Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, complained, saying YouTube is similar to their products, including features that allow user interaction and content recommendations driven by algorithms based on user activity.
Meanwhile, the Google-owned YouTube, used by nearly three-quarters of Australians between the ages of 13 and 15, argued it should not be considered as social media given that its main role is to host videos, which are increasingly watched on TV screens.
This is not the first instance in which Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and Australia have been at odds: The company had threatened to withdraw some Google services from the country in 2021 to sidestep a law requiring it to compensate news outlets for content shown in search results.
Iran, Under Pressure, Withdraws Bill to Counter ‘Fake News’
IRAN
The Iranian government withdrew a controversial law aiming to counter fake news after critics argued that it would further suppress freedom of expression in the country, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
The government announced the decision Wednesday, writing on X that the administration of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian decided to withdraw the bill “to maintain national unity.”
The 22-article bill – formally titled the “Bill To Counter The Publication Of Fake News Content In Cyberspace” – was prepared by the government and the conservative judiciary and was submitted to parliament last week. Lawmakers voted 205 to 49 to fast-track its review, while three members abstained.
If the bill became law, those accused of publishing “fake news” would risk prison sentences of up to 15 years. Legal experts noted how such a punishment is, in some cases, more severe than those for more serious offenses such as espionage or kidnapping.
Critics nicknamed the law “bill of suffocation” and cautioned that broad expressions like “disturbing public opinion” and “content against state security” could be used as justifications for sweeping and arbitrary repression of press freedom and dissent.
Meanwhile, supporters said the law was necessary to protect the public and national security and to maintain order, especially considering that misinformation spreads quickly online.
Iran already ranks at the bottom of global press freedom indexes.
Outrage after German Zoo Culls Healthy Baboons Due to Lack of Space
GERMANY
A zoo in the southern German city of Nuremberg on Tuesday killed 12 healthy Guinea baboons and fed them to predators due to overcrowding, prompting animal rights groups to protest and also file criminal complaints against the zoo’s management, Deutsche Welle reported.
Seven animal rights activists were arrested Tuesday after breaking into the Tiergarten Nürnberg to protest the killing. Other protesters chained themselves to the entrance and the baboons’ enclosures. One woman glued her hands to the ground near the entrance, the BBC wrote.
Zoo officials said overcrowding had led to increased conflicts between the baboons, and after failed attempts to transfer the animals to other zoos and unsuccessful contraception measures to slow group growth, culling them was the only option.
Animal rights groups strongly opposed the move and threatened to sue the institution’s management, arguing that overcrowding was the result of “irresponsible and unsustainable breeding policies” and that the culling was “avoidable and illegal.”
Several groups have already filed criminal complaints for killing baboons that were in “perfect health.” They have asked lawmakers to implement stricter oversight of zoos and their breeding practices.
The zoo had already announced the culling plan in February 2024, saying its troop of baboons had grown to 40 but the zoo’s facilities were only equipped to house 25 primates.
Zoo director Dag Encke specified that neither expanding the space nor releasing the animals into the wild was an option and defended the decision, saying it was taken under criteria set out by the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA), according to which killing the animals can be a “legitimate last resort to preserve the population.”
The German Animal Protection Association warned in a statement that other animals could be culled, arguing that the zoo is responsible for the well-being of its animals and needs to ensure that well-being even in case of overcrowding.
Encke also noted that animals are regularly culled and fed to predators like lions and tigers, with some being bred solely for that purpose.
Other zoos in Europe have previously sparked outrage and legal complaints for killing animals. In 2014, a zoo in Copenhagen culled a giraffe because its genetic makeup was too similar to other giraffes in its breeding program, a move that was heavily criticized around the world.
DISCOVERIES
Bred For Tributes
Before cats became adored companions and Internet royalty, their early relationship with humans may have had darker origins, namely, mass ritual sacrifice, according to two new studies.
Scholars have long believed that feline domestication began with wildcats loitering around the first Neolithic farms as they hunted rodents.
But the recent findings – still awaiting peer review – suggest that the first domestic cats (Felis catus) appeared in Egypt around 3,000 years ago and were raised in vast numbers for mass ritual sacrifice.
In the first paper, lead author Sean Doherty and his team reassessed cat remains from archaeological sites across Europe and North Africa using radiocarbon dating, morphology, and genetic comparisons.
They found that remains once thought to belong to early domesticated cats – such as those from a 9,500-year-old site in Cyprus – turned out to resemble wildcats or had been misdated, often due to small feline bones shifting in soil layers over time.
Doherty told BBC Science Focus that the new findings upend the long-held theory that cats began domesticating themselves in Europe during the Neolithic period.
“It is often said that the wild progenitor of the domestic cat – the North African wildcat – was domesticated during the Neolithic,” he explained. “We argue that domestication of the cat began in Egypt around the second to first millennium (BCE).”
The research team suggested ancient Egyptians began domesticating cats when they became central to the cult of Bastet, an ancient Egyptian goddess associated with fertility. The animals were bred to be more docile and social for mummification, according to ScienceAlert.
“The Egyptian goddess Bastet … first appeared in the 3rd millennium BCE depicted with a lion’s head, but during the ninth to seventh centuries BCE, she was increasingly represented with the head of an African wildcat,” Doherty and his team wrote in their paper. “This transformation was coincident with the rise of cat sacrifice, whereby millions of free-ranging and specifically-reared cats were mummified as offerings to the goddess.”
A second study further supported the initial findings with another team – including Doherty as co-author – conducting a genetic analysis of 87 cats spanning ancient to modern times.
Researchers found no evidence of F. catus arriving in Europe with Neolithic farmers. Instead, their data suggested that cats began spreading from North Africa into the Mediterranean only from the 1st millennium BCE onward.
“Our results demonstrate that the dispersal of present-day domestic cats can be traced back not to the Neolithic or from the Fertile Crescent, but … most likely from North Africa,” the authors of the second study wrote, as reported by ScienceAlert.
The second study also identifies two waves of feline migration: One that brought wild populations to the Mediterranean island of Sardinia around the first millennium BCE, and another that spread domestic cats across Europe and beyond. According to the findings, cats didn’t reach China until about the eighth century CE.
While other early human-cat relationships likely existed, the two papers propose that these may not represent the direct ancestors of modern domestic cats.
If confirmed, the studies suggest that cats’ road to domesticity was shaped more by cults than cuddles.
And given their divine status in ancient temples, it’s hardly surprising that today’s cats still act like they rule the world.