The World Today for August 30, 2024

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Tech and Tradition

PARAGUAY

Cryptocurrency miners whose servers generate their digital product have flocked to Paraguay to take advantage of the landlocked South American country’s low taxes and cheap electricity.

But as power shortages continue to plague the capital of Asunción, many of these crypto miners also steal electricity, as the Economist wrote. Now, the government is launching a crackdown that includes 10-year jail sentences for such theft.

For example, Paraguayan authorities have seized 10,000 mining computers this year alone from these so-called “crypto cowboys,” noted the Week.

Companies have lined up to register for business in the crypto mecca rather than fleeing the country, claimed officials who operate the public power company, according to Bitcoin.com. At least one has decamped for Brazil, however, in search of friendlier climates.

These developments highlight how Paraguay is embracing future technologies while still grappling with its past, figuring out how to uphold the law and balance the power of the state with personal freedoms and civil liberties.

The brass feet sitting on a plinth in Asunción illustrate the point. The feet belong to a statue that commemorated Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, until citizens tore it down in 1989. The longest-ruling dictator in Latin America, Stroessner took power 70 years ago, killing hundreds and throwing thousands of others in jail.

As Al Jazeera explained, Stroessner was a classic strongman who deployed the military to aid his political allies in the country’s elite in their oppression of ordinary folks. His security forces would massacre people who dared claim they owned land, for example, over the objections of business leaders and others who would prefer otherwise.

The generalissimo’s legacy, like the brass feet, remains, however, in the form of his conservative Colorado political party, whose leaders continue to rule the country.

Paraguayan President Santiago Peña, for instance, is working hard to attract cryptocurrency miners, other tech companies, and foreign investment to decrease Paraguay’s dependence on agricultural exports. While on a recent trip to Argentina to boost economic development, however, his party expelled a crusading anti-corruption senator from the legislature – undermining the rule of law image Peña was trying to project.

“As Peña seeks to showcase the country’s potential on the global stage, its democratic institutions remain mired in local networks of patronage and corruption,” wrote World Politics Review.

A recent shootout between police and drug smugglers at the home of another Paraguayan lawmaker and Colorado party member also showed how connections between the country’s elite and criminals continue unabated.

Peña will need to tackle his country’s big problems, especially corruption, before he can attract more investment, say analysts. “This is entrenched through all political parties, at all levels,” said Christopher Newton, an investigator at research organization InSight Crime, in an interview with the Associated Press. “When it comes to people who have the power to make changes, a lot of those people are the ones who will likely benefit from not making changes.”

THE WORLD, BRIEFLY

The Offense

ISRAEL/ WEST BANK

Israel’s military killed a prominent Palestinian militant commander during the second day of a large-scale operation in the northern West Bank Thursday, an operation that has caused multiple deaths, severe destruction and raised concerns about escalating violence in the region, the Washington Post reported.

On Wednesday, hundreds of Israeli troops launched coordinated raids in cities that included Jenin, Tulkarm, and Tubas, resulting in mass arrests and gun battles.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that Mohamed Jaber, also known as Abu Shuja’a, a commander in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was killed inside a mosque in Tulkarm, alongside four others the IDF identified as militants. Abu Shuja’a was wanted for his role in planning and executing attacks, including a June shooting that killed an Israeli civilian in the West Bank city of Qalqilya.

The death toll from these operations has risen to at least 14 Palestinians, with 12 killed on the first day, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. More than 600 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops or settlers since the war in Gaza began last fall, CNN reported.

The IDF said the operation is aimed at preventing terrorist attacks emanating from the West Bank, an area that has seen a spike in violence in recent months, Agence France-Presse noted.

The Palestinian Authority, however, sees it as a widening of the Israel-Hamas war with the aim of perpetuating Israel’s decades-long military rule over the territory.

Meanwhile, Palestinian groups, including the Islamic Jihad and Hamas, vowed to retaliate, claiming the raids would only increase resistance and anger among Palestinians.

The raids have caused extensive damage, particularly in Tulkarm, where Israeli bulldozers uprooted streets and damaged infrastructure.

Access to health services has been severely impacted, with roads to major hospitals blocked and patients and healthcare workers trapped inside.

The United Nations has called for an immediate cessation of the hostilities, expressing concerns over the humanitarian impact and the targeting of civilian areas.

The West Bank operations occurred amidst ongoing conflict in Gaza, following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, which resulted in around 1,200 deaths and 250 people being taken hostage.

Israel’s war in Gaza has resulted in more than 40,000 Palestinian deaths and a humanitarian crisis, according to the health officials in the Hamas-controlled territory and the United Nations.

“These dangerous developments are fueling an already explosive situation in the occupied West Bank and further undermining the Palestinian Authority,” said UN chief António Guterres.

Setting an Example

HONG KONG

A Hong Kong court issued a verdict in a landmark case involving journalists in the semi-autonomous territory, a ruling that raised concerns about the deterioration of freedom of speech as Beijing tightens its grip on the city, Al Jazeera reported Thursday.

A court found the former chief editors of the now-defunct pro-democracy news outlet Stand News guilty of sedition. It was the first such trial against Hong Kong journalists since the former British colony was handed back to China in 1997.

Defendants Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam were accused of conspiring to publish seditious publications based on 17 articles, including interviews with pro-democracy figures, such as overseas-based activist Nathan Law.

Prosecutors claimed the articles promoted illegal ideologies, as well as criticized the national security law and law enforcement.

The defendants could face up to two years in prison and a fine of around $640 under a colonial-era sedition law.

Stand News was closed in 2021 following a police raid. It was one of the last organizations to openly criticize the government in the wake of a crackdown on dissent following pro-democracy protests in 2019.

The trial is also connected to the months-long protests that gripped the city five years ago. The unrest was sparked by a now-withdrawn extradition bill and was marked by widespread accusations of police brutality.

More than 10,200 people have been arrested in connection with the unrest.

Observers told Al Jazeera that the Stand News trial is seen “as a litmus test for press freedom in the city.” The outlet shut down months after other independent and pro-democracy ones, such as Apple Daily and Citizen News, shut down or ceased operations, citing a deteriorating media environment.

Hong Kong was ranked 135 of 180 territories in Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index, down from 80 in 2021.

Despite international concerns, the Hong Kong government maintains that the city still enjoys press freedom as guaranteed by its mini-constitution.

Balancing Act

ARGENTINA

Argentine pensioners clashed with police in the capital Buenos Aires this week, after protests broke out over President Javier Milei’s plan to veto a bill passed by congress to raise the minimum pension amount, the BBC reported.

On Wednesday, demonstrators marched across the city, calling for the president to refrain from using his veto, warning that it would affect their standard of living.

Video footage showed retirees scuffling with authorities, as some officers used pepper spray and batons against protesters.

The unrest came days after the opposition-controlled upper house passed a bill that would increase pensions by 8.1 percent.

The new spending would cost at least 0.4 percent of Argentina’s gross domestic product, dealing a blow to the libertarian president’s austerity measures to boost the Latin American country’s years-long troubled economy, particularly suffering skyrocketing inflation and debt defaults, according to the Associated Press.

The government emphasized a commitment to maintaining a fiscal surplus, criticizing the bill as “irresponsible, illegal, and unconstitutional.” It warned that would lead to excessive government spending without proper budget allocation, potentially requiring the state to print more money or increase taxes.

Despite resistance in the legislature, Milei received support from former right-wing President Mauricio Macri, who claimed the veto was necessary for the welfare of pensioners and their descendants, the Buenos Aires Times wrote.

Milei’s libertarian party controls less than 15 percent of congress and holds only seven out of 72 seats in the upper house. This has forced him to rely heavily on executive decrees to implement his economic reforms.

The president has faced a series of defeats in congress, including a loss in the lower house over proposed spending increases for intelligence services.

Even so, Milei managed to achieve a fiscal surplus in the first six months of his presidency by cutting state spending, halting public works and reducing provincial revenue transfers.

DISCOVERIES

Big on the Inside

Appearances can be deceiving, especially so when it comes to the South American lungfish.

This freshwater creature can grow to four feet in length. But its genome is the largest ever sequenced in a creature, a new study has found.

A research team studying the lungfish species – scientifically known as Lepidosiren paradoxa – discovered that it had a whopping 91 billion base pairs.

That’s around 30 times bigger than the human genome.

The DNA of the South American species “is the largest of all animal genomes and more than twice as large as the genome of the previous record holder, the Australian lungfish,” claimed lead author Axel Mayer in a press release. “(Eighteen) of the 19 chromosomes of the South American lungfish are each individually larger than the entire human genome with its almost 3 billion bases.”

Meyer and his colleagues explained that these copious amounts of genes are mainly “junk DNA” that don’t serve any particular purpose. They noted that this massive genome is largely attributed to the presence of autonomous transposons, also known as “jumping genes.” These sequences can copy themselves and move around within the genome, leading to rapid expansion.

Humans also have jumping genes, but we have some mechanisms to control them. That’s not the case with the L. paradoxa, whose genome grows at an extraordinary rate, adding a sequence equivalent to the entire human genome approximately every 10 million years, Smithsonian Magazine noted.

Still, this ever-growing genome is stable and proves advantageous for the creature, allowing it to quickly adapt to changing environments and drive the evolution of new genes.

Lungfish are considered the closest living relatives of tetrapods – the first four-legged creatures that moved from water to land around the epoch of the Devonian Period, 419 to 359 million years ago.

By studying the lungfish genome, scientists have gained insights into how these early vertebrates evolved limbs from fins, a crucial step in the transition from aquatic to terrestrial life.

The findings can help reconstruct the genomic and evolutionary journey from fish to tetrapods, as well as offer a glimpse into the latter’s original chromosomal architecture, added Popular Mechanics.

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