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The Week In News

7.8 Billion on This Earth

The U.S. Census Bureau has reported an increase of 74 million in the world’s population this past year.

The Bureau also predicted that by January 1, 2022, the world’s population would be 7.8 billion, representing a 0.9% growth rate, or an increase of 74 million people, from the same day last year. During 2022, 4.3 births and two deaths are predicted to occur every second.

At the same time, the U.S. itself grew by nearly 707,000 people during 2021, and its estimated population on January 1, 2022 was 332.4 million residents, the Bureau said. That represents a growth rate of 0.2% since January 1, 2021.

During 2022, one death is expected in the U.S. every 11 seconds, and one birth is expected to occur every nine seconds.

Bee Strike in Chile

Beekeepers in Chile want government reform to improve honey prices or provide subsidies to honey producers. Honey production in the country has been hurt by a long-term drought that has withered flowers and crops that are bees’ food sources. This week, beekeepers set around 60 beehives – with around 10,000 bees – in front of the presidential palace in Santiago. They had wanted to meet with President Sebastian Pinera.

Four beekeepers were detained during the protests. Seven police officers were stung.

One of the beekeepers, Jose Iturra, said that the drought in the Colina commune north of Santiago was killing the local bee population.

“Bees are dying,” Iturra said. “There would be no life if the bees die. That’s what we wanted to highlight with this demonstration.”

A representative for the Ministry of Agriculture in the Santiago region said the agency was also concerned about the effect the drought was having on the bees. The government has been providing aid for months to 20 communities experiencing severe water shortages.

Droughts and rising temperatures have affected bee populations worldwide. A 2020 study published in the journal Science found that bee populations fell by around 50% in North America and 17% in Europe in one generation.

China Shames Rule Breakers

Videos of COVID-19 rule-breakers being paraded in the streets in China have gone viral and have attracted criticism worldwide.

Viewed over seven million times, the footage on Weibo showed heavily armed police and other officers, dressed in Hazmat suits, escorting four men through the southern Chinese city of Jingxi, as the four carry large printouts of their own mug shots. Another video shows the four standing on a public square in front of a large crowd.

According to Zhengguan News, the public shaming event took place on Tuesday and involved four people who were caught smuggling foreigners into China, in violation of the country’s COVID-19 rules.

On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Jingxi’s Public Security Bureau said that the event was organized by

officials in the township of Anning. Another spokesperson said that there was “nothing inappropriate” about the suspects, who had violated the law and were therefore “punished accordingly.”

Separately, Jingxi’s People’s Procuratorate on Tuesday announced the arrest of two local residents accused of smuggling two Vietnamese into China on October 19. One of the Vietnamese later tested positive for COVID-19, sending nearly 50,000 people into quarantine, the public prosecutor said.

It is not clear if those two were among the four paraded through Anning.

Mannequin Beheadings by the Taliban

According to the Taliban in Afghanistan, mannequins in stores (and in other places) need to have their heads chopped off; a mannequin with a head on is considered a “idol,” which is forbidden by Islam. As such, shopkeepers in the western Afghan province of Herat were told to remove the heads of female mannequins by The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice this week.

Those who ignore the order face severe punishments, warned the local department of the ministry. Ministers say that people are worshipping the mannequins as idols, an unforgiveable sin.

Additionally, the director of the local ministry said that even looking at the face of a female mannequin is against Sharia law.

Initially, the order was given for the removal of all mannequins. A compromise allowed for the beheaded mannequins in shops to be allowed to stay.

The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Afghanistan was reinstated in September after the Taliban took over. The all-male ministry replaced the former Ministry of Women Affairs, stoking fears that the Taliban’s moral police would decimate women’s rights in the country. This week, Sky News reported that the ministry told taxi drivers they should not take women on long journeys if they do not have a male chaperone.

Iran’s Failure to Launch

Iranian media on Thursday reported that the country had successfully launched three satellites into space but did not detail when the launch occurred. The launches did not enter orbit.

Ahmad Hosseini, a spokesman for Iran’s Defense Ministry, said the rocket used was a Simorgh and the “performance of the space center and the performance of the satellite carrier was done properly.”

An unnamed Defense Ministry spokesperson confirmed to Iran’s Tasnim, “The satellite-carrying Simorgh rocket successfully launched three devices into space.

“For the first time, three devices were launched simultaneously to a distance of 470 kilometers (292 miles) at a speed of 7,350 meters per second.”

On Friday, Tehran acknowledged that the launch had failed, with a Defense Ministry spokesperson explaining, “For a payload to enter orbit, it needs to reach speeds above 7,600 (meters per second). We reached 7,350.”

Attempted “Coup” in France?

According to France’s intelligence agency, DGSI, The Overthrow is a far-right network seeking to topple the French government. Its mastermind is Rémy Daillet-Weidemann, a former regional councilor in France, who was “setting up a hierarchical structure whose objective was to overthrow the government”

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko played a hockey game together on Wednesday after meeting for diplomatic talks — and scored a combined nine goals in the match

and attack the head of state.

The alleged coup d’etat plot – nicknamed “Operation Azur” by its members, according to French news magazine Le Parisien – was first reported by the magazine’s Jérémie Pham-Lê on October 27. It never came to fruition. French security services said they shut it down before the plotters could act.

In October, Daillet-Weidemann was placed under formal investigation by French authorities – alongside 13 others – for allegedly planning violent actions, “association with terrorist wrongdoers” and “provoking a terrorist act by a third party through public telecommunications.”

Daillet-Weidemann’s attorney, Jean-Christope Basson-Larbi, asserts he had “never proposed anything other than a peaceful overthrow – that is to say without violence and popularly supported, that’s to say with the support of the majority of the French population – of the current political regime.”

Basson-Larbi said that “Operation Azur” was the product of “fantasies” that were not those of his client, and of which Daillet-Weidemann had no knowledge. Daillet-Weidemann is still in custody.

The DGSI report stated that Daillet-Weidemann, who allegedly “envisages the use of violent action” to enact the coup d’etat, recruited members and exercised command over the cells in his network, including at least two men who planned to manufacture explosives.

“The discovery of arms, munitions, hit lists [and] explosive recipes had nothing to do with Mr. Daillet,” who was living in Malaysia at the time, Basson-Larbi added. He said his client was not responsible for the “potentially criminal or violent” projects of individuals who “invoke certain of [Daillet-Weidemann’s] ideas or pretend to have been part of his movement or claim to adhere to his political ideas.”

In June, Daillet-Weidemann was placed under formal investigation – along with 10 others – over the kidnapping of an eight-year-old girl, Mia, who went missing from her grandmother’s house in mid-April 2021, according to documents from the Nancy prosecutor.

Prosecutors allege that members of Daillet’s network, The Overthrow, abducted the child before fleeing to Switzerland in a “military-type operation” on behalf of her mother, Lola Montemaggi.

At the time she was kidnapped, Mia was being cared for by her grandmother, after her mother lost custody. Mia was found safe in Switzerland, with her mother, five days after she was taken.

Daillet-Weidemann has become a lightning rod for conspiracy theories in France, “an emblematic figure of conspiracy,” the DGSI analysis said.

While he espoused no concrete ideology of his own, barring allegedly calling for the overthrow of the French state, he “wanted to present himself as the leader of an insurrectionary movement surfing on these various theories in order to reach a large audience,” according to the DGSI’s analysis.

The report said Daillet-Weidemann was a “charismatic, intelligent and manipulative leader,” in “the very opaque world” of conspiracy, who “quickly became an exception by showing himself openly and under his true identity,” which only increased his ability to gather support, the DGSI report said.

“The Daillet-Weidemann movement is a ‘catch-all’ movement, emerging from the extreme rightwing movement, allowing everyone to recognize themselves in what he proposes,” the DGSI documents noted.

$8.7 Million of Drugs Found in Mayor’s Truck

Police in northern Niger have seized more than 200 kilograms of cocaine worth around $8.7 million that was being transported in the local mayor’s official truck.

The mayor and his driver, who were in the vehicle at the time, were arrested with 199 bricks of cocaine at a checkpoint on the road heading north out of the desert trading hub of Agadez on Sunday.

West Africa – most often a transit route for illegal drugs on the way from South America to Europe – has registered a series of record busts in recent years.

Senegal seized more than two tons of pure cocaine from a ship off its Atlantic coast in October, and Gambian authorities seized nearly three tons last January from a shipment originating in Ecuador.

After 16.7 tons of cannabis resin worth around $37 million were seized in Niger last May, Interpol’s drug unit coordinator, Jan Drapal, noted that drug kingpins were sending larger shipments in response to increasing European demand.

$402 Billion More in 2021

The world’s 10 richest people are now each worth over $100 billion, Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index reported. Together, the quorum gained $402.17 billion in net worth over the course of the past year.

Leading the list is Elon Musk, worth $277 billion. Musk, co-founder of Tesla, gained $121 billion in 2021. Tesla shares rose around 60% last year, with the company reaching a $1 trillion market cap in October.

In second place on the list with the world’s fattest wallets is Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, with $195 billion. Bezos, who stepped down as CEO of Amazon in July, gained $5 billion in 2021.

With $176 billion, Bernard Arnault takes third place, having added $61 billion in 2021. Arnault is CEO of LVMH, which owns luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, and Givenchy. He is Europe’s richest man.

In places four through ten onthe list are Bill Gates with $139 billion, who gained $7 billion in 2021; Larry Page with $130 billion, who earned $47 billion in 2021; Mark Zuckerberg with $128 billion, who garnered $24 billion in 2021; Sergey Brin, worth $125 billion, whose net worth grew $45 billion in 2021; and Steve Ballmer, worth $122 billion and who added $41 billion to his fortune last year. Bringing up the tail end of the list are Larry Ellison, whose $29 billion gain brought him to $109 billion, and Warren Buffett, whose $21 billion gain netted him to $109 billion in 2021.

Afghan Pres. Had “Minutes” to Flee

Afghanistan’s ex-president Ashraf Ghani on Thursday spoke about his decision to flee the country following the Taliban takeover in late 2021. In an interview with BBC’s Radio 4 “Today” program, Ghani recounted that on the morning of August 15, he had

“no inkling” that it would be his last day in the country. By that afternoon, however, security at his palace had “collapsed.”

In the interview, conducted by the UK’s former Chief of Defense Staff General Nick Carter, Ghani said, “If I take a stand, they will all be killed, and they were not capable of defending me.”

He added that Hamdullah Mohib, his national security adviser, was “literally terrified.”

“He did not give me more than two minutes,” Ghani said, noting that the instructions had originally been to fly by helicopter to Khost. But Khost, as well as Jalalabad, had both fallen to the Taliban.

“I did not know where we will go,” he told Radio 4. “Only when we took off did it become clear that we were leaving.”

Ghani, who has been in the United Arab Emirates since he fled Afghanistan, also denied the allegations that he took millions of dollars with him when he left.

Leaving, he emphasized, was “the hardest thing.”

“I had to sacrifice myself in order to save Kabul and to expose the situation for what it is: a violent coup, not a political agreement,” Ghani explained. “Unfortunately, I was painted in total black. It became an American issue. Not an Afghan issue.”

He added, “My life work has been destroyed, my values have been trampled on, and I’ve been made a scapegoat.”

Ghani also said that his countrymen “rightly” blamed him, emphasizing in his conclusion, “I completely understand that anger, because I share that anger.”

North Korea’s “Food Problem”

North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un spoke in an end-of-theyear speech about the country’s “food problem.” The speech marked the end of a five-day meeting with his party, the Korean Worker’s Party.

On Saturday, KCNA summarized the speech, which focused on the need to boost agricultural productivity, and praised recent military advances, as well as briefly referencing “emergency epidemic prevention work.”

Kim also acknowledged the “unfavorable conditions this year,” stressing his desire to “increase the agricultural production and completely solve the food problem of the country.”

Last year, the World Food Organization warned that North Korea was likely to experience a severe food shortage during 2021.

A “Tobacco-Free Generation” in New Zealand?

A new plan to ban young people from ever purchasing smoking products may soon go into effect in New Zealand. A similar program has been implemented across the globe in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Last month, New Zealand unveiled a new plan intended to prevent people born after 2008 from ever being able to purchase or receive tobacco. The proposal would also raise the legal smoking age by one year, starting in 2027.

Meanwhile, in Brookline, Massachusetts, a bylaw went into effect in September 2021 banning anyone born after January 1, 2000 from ever purchasing vape or tobacco products.

Katharine Silbaugh, a co-sponsor of Brookline’s ban, who also serves as a professor of law at Boston University and an elected official in Brookline’s town government, explained, “There are definite benefits to doing what they’re doing because a person who’s really determined to buy tobacco can go across town lines here. But there is terrific evidence that accessibility to substances increases use, so it’s not the case that what Brookline did will have no effect. It will have an effect.”

She added, “As we’ve crafted it, no one who can currently buy tobacco will ever be prohibited from buying tobacco,” she said. “It really only affects the future.”

Meanwhile, New Zealand is facing challenges as politicians and advocacy groups consider the proposal’s effect on businesses.

Sunny Kaushal, who heads an organization representing small-business owners, predicted a “devastating impact” on convenience stores and brought figures from gas station retailer Z Energy claiming that tobacco made up nearly half of in-store sales.

In Kaushal’s opinion, businesses which are affected by the change should receive compensation.

Elias Aud, who with his son owns two Mobil gas stations in Brookline, said, “It’s not statewide. It’s not nationwide. It’s just Brookline. I think the town of Brookline is picking on the type of industry we’re in.”

His son Omar added, “Why can’t they buy a cigarette pack at 21 when they can go to a bar, they can go to nightclubs? It does not sound right at all. It sounds like the town has taken their civil rights away and put us on the front line of dealing with their frustration.”

In a statement, Philip Morris International said that it was reviewing New Zealand’s proposal.

Hundreds Trample U.S., Israeli Flags in Baghdad

Hundreds rallied in Baghdad, Iraq, on Saturday, marking the first anniversary of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani’s death.

At the rally, participants chanted anti-American slogans and trampled on American and Israeli flags strewn on the ground. They also called for