The Weekly Lift - March 10, 2022

The headlines of the last two weeks have of course, been dominated by Russia's senseless invasion of Ukraine and the resulting geopolitical and humanitarian crises caused by the conflict.

The Weekly Lift acknowledges the importance of the Ukraine crisis but still focused this week, on finding hopeful news and headlines from around the world*:

International Relations: Iran Says It Has Agreed On Roadmap With IAEA To Resolve Nuclear Issues

Reuters (UK) reports that "Iran said on Saturday it had agreed to a roadmap with the U.N. nuclear watchdog to resolve all outstanding questions about the country’s nuclear program by late June, a move seen as a latest push to revive Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with global powers.

The announcement comes as all parties involved in indirect talks between Tehran and Washington aimed at reviving the nuclear pact have said they were close to reaching an agreement in Vienna.

“We have agreed to provide the IAEA by the end of (the Iranian month of) Khordad (June 21) with documents related to outstanding questions between Tehran and the agency,” Iran’s nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami told a joint news conference with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi.

Grossi arrived in Tehran late on Friday to discuss one of the last thorny issues blocking revival of the pact, which in return for a lifting of economic sanctions limited Iran’s enrichment of uranium, making it harder for Tehran to develop material for nuclear weapons.

“It is important to have this understanding … to work together, to work very intensively,” Grossi told the televised news conference. “Without resolving these (outstanding) issues, efforts to revive the JCPOA (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) may not be possible.”

A major sticking point in the talks is that Tehran wants the issue of uranium traces found at several old but undeclared sites in Iran to be closed. Western powers say that is a separate issue to the deal which the IAEA is not a party to, several officials have said.

Grossi, who also held talks with Iran’s foreign minister before returning to Vienna on Saturday, said: “There are still matters that need to be addressed by Iran.”

The IAEA has been seeking answers from Iran on how the uranium traces got there — a topic often referred to as “outstanding safeguards issues.”

“We decided to try a practical, pragmatic approach to these issues in order to allow our technical experts to look into them in a systematic way, in a deep way, in a thorough way,” Grossi said.

Grossi’s trip has raised hopes that an agreement with the IAEA will potentially clear the way for revival of the nuclear pact that was abandoned in 2018 by former U.S. President Donald Trump, who also reimposed far-reaching sanctions on Iran.

Since 2019, Tehran has breached the deal’s nuclear limits and gone well beyond, rebuilding stockpiles of enriched uranium, refining it to higher fissile purity and installing advanced centrifuges to speed up output.

The IAEA has repeatedly reported that Iran has failed to give satisfactory explanations on the origin of the traces of processed uranium. Those traces suggest there was nuclear material there that Iran did not declare to the agency."

Justice: US Congress Passes Emmett Till Bill To Make Lynching A Hate Crime

The LA Times (US) reports that "Congress gave final approval Monday to legislation that for the first time would make?lynching a federal hate crime in the U.S., sending the bill to President Biden to sign into law.

Years in the making, the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act is among some 200 bills that have been introduced over the last century that have tried to ban lynching in America.?

It is named for the Black teenager whose?brutal killing in Mississippi in 1955 — and his mother’s insistence on an open funeral casket to show the world what had been done to her child — became a pivotal moment in the civil rights era.

“After more than 200 failed attempts to outlaw lynching, Congress is finally succeeding in taking a long overdue action by passing the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.

The bill would make it possible to prosecute a crime as a lynching when a conspiracy to commit a hate crime results in death or serious bodily injury, according to the bill’s champion, Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.). The maximum sentence under the Anti-Lynching Act is 30 years.

The House overwhelmingly approved a similar measure in 2020, but it was?blocked in the Senate.?

Last week, the House approved a revised version and the Senate passed the bill unanimously late Monday. “Lynching is a long-standing and uniquely American weapon of racial terror that has for decades been used to maintain the white hierarchy,” Rush said.?

The congressman said passage of the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act “sends a clear and emphatic message that our nation will no longer ignore this shameful chapter of our history and that the full force of the U.S. federal government will always be brought to bear against those who commit this heinous act.”

Human Rights: Palestinians Threatened With Eviction Can Stay in Their Homes — for Now

The New York Times (US) reports that "Israel’s Supreme Court handed a partial victory on Tuesday to a group of Palestinian families whose looming eviction from their homes in East Jerusalem contributed to the tensions that led to last year’s 11-day Gaza war.

After years of legal struggles, Israel’s highest court accepted the main argument of the families, allowing them to remain in their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood until the dispute over the ownership of the property is settled — a process that experts said could take years, if it gets settled at all.

In the interim, the court ruled, the four families can remain in their houses as protected tenants and pay a reduced annual rent of about $750 each into a trust account, with the money eventually going to whoever wins the ownership rights.

The court decision defused a potentially explosive issue, even as tensions in East Jerusalem remain high.

While Sheikh Jarrah is now predominantly Arab, a small Jewish community lived in the neighborhood from the late 19th century until the war leading to the establishment of Israel in 1948, after which the area fell under Jordanian control.

Israel captured the eastern part of the city, including Sheikh Jarrah, from Jordan in the 1967 war, then annexed it in a move that most countries of the world never recognized.

The Palestinian families and activists challenging the evictions argued that they were part of a wider Israeli effort to displace Palestinians from East Jerusalem in order to cement Israel’s claim to sovereignty there.

The Supreme Court judges wrote in their ruling on Tuesday that “at the core of the process lies the complex history of Jerusalem and the changes of government that took place there.”

In the 1950s, Jordan built houses for Palestinian refugee families in what had been the Jewish compound, though it never transferred ownership to the families. After Israel took control of the area, the ownership was transferred to two Jewish associations, which later sold the rights to a Jewish settlement group.

The Palestinian residents were allowed to stay on as protected tenants on the condition that they paid rent to the new owners, but many of the Palestinian families refused on principle.

For years, the Israeli courts have?treated the house-by-house ownership battle as a legalistic property dispute. But the land has powerful attachments to Palestinians and Jews.

The Jewish community in Sheikh Jarrah was centered around a shrine held by Jews to be the ancient tomb of Shimon Hatzadik, or Simeon the Just, a Jewish high priest from the days of the Second Temple. And since Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967, successive Israeli leaders have promised their capital city would never again be divided.

Palestinians have long demanded East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state.

The eviction cases have also highlighted a legal double standard: The families settled in Sheikh Jarrah by Jordan were Palestinian refugees from what is now Israel. While Jewish Israelis can reclaim land they owned in East Jerusalem before 1948, Palestinians have no similar legal recourse to reclaim homes they once owned in what became Israel.

Four months ago, the same four families?rejected a compromise proposed by the court along similar lines of the ruling on Tuesday because it did not recognize them as the owners of their homes and it would have required them to pay rent to the settler organizations.

This time, said Sami Arsheid, a lawyer representing the families, since it was a court ruling, “it was not a matter of agreeing or not.”

The families would have to respect the court decision, he said, while being given the chance to prove their ownership without the threat of imminent eviction.

Mr. Arsheid said it was up to the Ministry of Justice to decide how to proceed regarding settling the ownership rights. The process has been “frozen since 1967,” he said, and was not about to be finalized any time soon.

He added that Tuesday’s ruling could affect the cases of several other Palestinian families facing eviction, including nine more from Sheikh Jarrah that are still making their way through the courts.

Itamar Ben Gvir, a far-right member of Parliament who supports the Jewish settlers,?decried the court’s decision as a “dark, illegal, undemocratic decision that runs contrary to the values of the rule of law and constitutes a very grave precedent that will be enjoyed by squatters.”

Mr. Ben Gvir recently set up his parliamentary office in a tent in Sheikh Jarrah, in a ploy, he said, to bring more police and security to the area to protect the Jewish settlers from attack, but his presence has ratcheted up tensions there.

The court ruling could help calm the situation in Sheikh Jarrah, which has been the scene of frequent clashes, but violence has recently flared elsewhere in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Clashes between Palestinians and the police have occurred at another frequent flash point, Damascus Gate, one of the main entrances to Jerusalem’s Old City. A Palestinian girl was injured there on Monday after being hit in the jaw by a police stun grenade.

Overnight, two Palestinian men were reported killed by Israeli forces during a confrontation in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank where border police officers were conducting an arrest raid.

On Tuesday, a third Palestinian man was killed by Israeli army fire in the southern West Bank.

The Israeli military said soldiers spotted two “suspects” approaching an Israeli memorial in the West Bank and fired at them as they fled. One was later declared dead, the military said."

Society: Inmates Are Leaving Gangs, Stripping Tattoos For Jobs And Better Lives

The LA Times (US) reports that "under penalty of a beating or death, Erik Eck pledged at age 13 to adhere to the Latin Kings’ first rule: “Once a King, always a King.” Tattoos that bedeck his entire body express his fealty forever to one of the largest gangs in the U.S.

Now 36, the longtime Latin King enforcer is trying to leave anyway. He is seeking to scrub his past by erasing his gang tattoos through a new gang-cessation and jobs program he and 11 other inmates signed up for at a Chicago-area jail.

The Associated Press got exclusive access over two days to the first 12 inmates enrolled in the largely privately funded program at the DuPage County Jail and to their cellblock. For their safety, they’re isolated from the jail’s 500 other inmates, half of whom are in gangs.?

Eck, jailed on burglary charges, earned the nickname “Hollywood” on the street for his swagger. But nightmares jarred him awake for days before he recently walked into the jail’s new tattoo-removal wing.

“I used to beg businesses to hire these guys. Now they say, ‘As long as they show up for work, we don’t care what they did,’” said Beary, a longtime business owner and executive director of the nonprofit JUST of DuPage, founded by a Roman Catholic nun to develop reentry programs for inmates.

The inmates aren’t promised jobs or reduced sentences. But if they graduate, they do get help searching for work and relocating away from their gangs. A letter from the sheriff touts their participation.

To graduate, participants must have their gang tattoos removed or covered with other tats. It’s proof, said DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick, they’re serious about forsaking their old lives.

“It’s a point of no return,” he said. “It’s a commitment to themselves — and to us, that we aren’t wasting our time.”

The first tattoo Eck had covered was one on his arm of the Latin Kings’ initials. Jail-sanctioned tattooist Tom Begley inked the image of a deer over it in a four-hour session in February. Covering all of Eck’s gang tattoos will take months.?

A roaring lion — a favorite Latin Kings symbol — was recently converted to a roaring bear. Eck has to be careful to pick animals that aren’t other gangs’ symbols. A rabbit, he said, is out. It’s a symbol of Latin Kings rival Two Six Nation.?

Begley and his wife, Meagan Begley, of the suburban Electric Tattoo Parlor, jumped at the chance to lend their skills. Inmates painted a mural on a wall in the jail’s three-chaired tattoo studio. It says: “Hope, Purpose and Redemption.”?

On a previous day, Tom Begley transformed a Satan Disciples tattoo on Jaime Marinez’s forearm from a Christian cross fashioned from rifles into the image of a vulture.

Nearby, Meagen Begley removed hand tattoos of 27-year-old Latin Count leader Gilberto Rios, wielding a pen-like tool to scrape off outer skin, then injecting a saline solution. That pushes ink into a scab, which flakes away over several weeks.?

“There’s lots of crying by them,” she said, but not due to the pain. “These tattoos have been their identity. (Giving them up) is very emotional.” One she removed from Rios’ hand was a backward “D,” a symbol of disdain for Marinez’s gang.?

Affluent DuPage County isn’t considered a hotbed of gangs. Mendrick, elected sheriff as a Republican, contends violent crime in his county is often committed by gangs from Chicago, in neighboring Cook County.?

Mendrick is convinced the program, funded partly by church donations, will help reduce crime. “I am a religious man,” he said. “I feel I am answering my calling.” Beary cites religion as a motivation, too.

The program also offers classes on the Bible, anger management and decision-making. And it provides counseling to drug-addicted inmates.?

Once freed, Eck wants to own a business. He believes he can apply leadership skills honed in his gang.?He’s blunt about the perks of gang life.?

“Being a gang member in my neighborhood was better than being the president of the United States,” he said. “I wanted the cars, the women ... the power, the respect.”

The killing of his best friend two months before Eck was jailed a year ago began changing his perspective. It was an internal hit by a Latin King who coveted his friend’s higher perch in the gang hierarchy, Eck said.

“He took 16 bullets, four in the face. It was like, enough is enough,” said Eck, adding that guilt at having hurt others also began weighing on him.

Other participants also cited trauma from years of gang violence as motivation for wanting out. Chicago police say most of the nearly 800 homicides in the city last year,?the most in a quarter century, were gang-related.?

In another tattoo session, Tom Begley traced a new image over a scar on Marinez’s chest from when he was shot last year at a stoplight.?

The tattoo is of a clock set to 6:20, memorializing the date his father died of a heroin overdose on June 20, 2016. Marinez turns quiet when he mentions his dad.?The 21-year-old knows he’s putting himself in peril by spurning his gang.?“I don’t want to be doing this 50 years from now. … I know a lot of (adults) still in this life. And it’s just eating them up,” he said.

Eck credits Beary, whom he describes as a father figure, for persuading him to join the program.?“I have never had anyone come up to me and say there’s another way to live,” he said.?He wants to create a meaningful life. One more criminal conviction, he said, could send him to prison for life.?

There are already signs of his transformation.Speaking on a recent afternoon, he appeared startled when he realized what pronoun he was using to talk about the Latin Kings.?“I’m saying ‘they’ not ‘we,’” he said, looking at Beary sitting nearby and laughing.

He has stopped answering to his street name, too. When several inmates recently addressed him by it, he bristled.?“My name’s Erik,” he snapped. “Hollywood? ... I don’t know who you’re talking about.”As he struggles to reinvent himself, he says he wants nothing to do with his gang persona.?“I want to be able to wake up and not see that person anymore.”?

“This life is all I’ve ever known,” Eck said about agonizing over his decision to deface the tattoos that have been central to his identity for 20 years. “But it’s for the better.”?He added: “I feel like the change has officially begun.”

One goal is to land the inmates jobs in horticulture, welding and other fields they’re learning, said the program’s civilian director and chief architect, Michael Beary. He said there’s booming interest among businesses scrambling to address?COVID-19-driven labor shortages.

Jobs training was available previously, but the gang and tattoo emphasis was added this year."

Global Health: WHO Unveils Plans For Six Vaccine Manufacturing Hubs Across Africa

The Telegraph (UK) writes that "six African countries will establish their own mRNA vaccine production in a game-changing move for a continent that is almost entirely reliant on imported Covid-19 vaccines.

Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Egypt and Tunisia have been selected by the World Health Organisation to be the first recipients of the technology from the UN agency’s global mRNA vaccine hub.

“No other event like the Covid-19 pandemic has shown that reliance on a few companies to supply global public goods is limiting, and dangerous,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

“The best way to address health emergencies and reach universal health coverage is to significantly increase the capacity of all regions to manufacture the health products they need.”

For much of the pandemic, wealthy countries?monopolized the vast majority of global supplies of vaccines. leaving Africa to survive mainly on donations of vaccines, often close to their expiry date.?

Currently, only around 11 per cent of Africans have been fully vaccinated. Poor domestic manufacturing capacity forces Africa to import 99 per cent of its vaccines.?

The new move aims to revolutionise this dynamic. The WHO created the global mRNA technology transfer hub in South Africa last year to support manufacturers in low and middle-income countries to produce their own Covid-19 jabs.?

The mRNA vaccines use technology that delivers a small piece of genetic code, which then tricks the body into producing antibodies that give people immunity against a virus like Covid-19.?

The hub also aims to support the production of?vaccines for diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV.

The announcement signifies “mutual respect, mutual recognition of what we can all bring to the party, investment in our economies, infrastructure investment and, in many ways, giving back to the continent,” said South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.?

Over the last year, Mr Ramaphosa has been one of the most vocal critics of what he describes as the ‘vaccine apartheid’ between rich countries and the global south.?

There remains a significant debate about how best to tackle the imbalance – while some argue that waiving patents would boost production, others say this would do little to get more shots in arms and instead advocate for technology transfer agreements.?

The news comes after Afrigen, a South African company that is part of WHO’s mRNA hub, announced it?has developed its own version of an mRNA shot, based on the publicly available data of the Moderna Covd-19 vaccine earlier this month.?

During the pandemic, more than 70 per cent of mRNA shots from Moderna and Pfizer in the US and BioNTech in Germany have been delivered to wealthy nations, and the pharmaceutical giants have been under mounting pressure to do more to boost availability in lower income countries.

Earlier this week, BioNTech announced that it had developed a vaccine factory made from shipping containers which it plans to ship to several African countries to boost regional production."

*******************************************

* Certain headlines and articles may have been modified or summarized to fit the format of the newsletter.

If you have come across a positive headline or article in the last two weeks, please send to [email protected]. All comments and feedback are welcome.