Month: April 2022

“Brazil is home to the Amazon and other ecosystems critical to climate change,” DiCaprio posted on Twitter on Thursday.

“What happens there matters to us all and youth voting is key in driving change for a healthy planet,” he added.

Mr Bolsonaro, who has cut environmental protections, responded with sarcasm.

“Thanks for your support, Leo! It’s really important to have every Brazilian voting in the coming elections,” the far-right leader, who took office in 2019, tweeted.

“Our people will decide if they want to keep our sovereignty on the Amazon or to be ruled by crooks who serve foreign special interest.”

DiCaprio is a champion of greater protection for the Amazon rainforest, donating $5m (£4.1m) to conservation efforts in 2019.

Mr Bolsonaro has faced widespread criticism for his government’s environmental policies, and has been accused of allowing deforestation in the region to accelerate.

Conservationists have blamed Mr Bolsonaro and his government for turning a blind eye to farmers and loggers clearing land in the Amazon, which is the world’s largest rainforest.

The country’s leader has weakened environmental protections for the region and argued that the government should exploit the area to reduce poverty.

According to government satellite data, the number of trees cut down in the Brazilian Amazon in January this year far exceeded deforestation for the same month last year.

The area destroyed was five times larger than 2021 – the highest January total since records began in 2015.

Brazil’s vast rainforest absorbs huge amounts of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, acting as what is known as a carbon sink. But the more trees cut down, the less the forest can soak up emissions.

It is not the first time the two have clashed over the issue.

In 2019, Mr Bolsonaro accused DiCaprio of “giving money to set the Amazon on fire”.

He gave no evidence but has a history of accusing NGOs critical of his policies of starting fires that ravaged the rainforest in 2019.

Last year, DiCaprio joined dozens of celebrities to urge US President Joe Biden to not sign any environmental deal with Brazil amid rising deforestation in the Amazon.

The National Weather Service (NWS) has issued severe thunderstorm warnings for Midwest states including Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska.

In the city of Wichita, the mayor said 50 to 100 structures had been damaged, especially in the suburb of Andover.

However there are so far no reports of serious injuries.

The Andover City Police Department says roads are blocked due to downed power lines and large debris.

Wichita Mayor Dr Brandon Whipple urged people not to travel.

“I’m hearing roads in Andover are closed to traffic. Please stay put if you can. Lots of large hail throughout our area. Bad visibility as well for those driving,” he posted on Twitter.

Extraordinary videos and photos posted online show the tornado tearing through Andover, destroying buildings, with debris flying in the air.

Videos posted to social media show the extent of the damage at the YMCA, with cars slammed against walls and the ceiling peeled back.

The Greater Wichita YMCA posted on Facebook: “The Andover YMCA branch suffered significant damage as a result of the storm that hit the Andover area this evening.

“We are thankful that all of the staff and members that took shelter at the branch at the time of the storm, were not injured.”

According to the Energy outage map, more than 22,000 customers are without power.

Kansas is in the heart of so-called “tornado alley” and is one of the most active regions in the world tornado-wise, according to the NWS,

Mid-to-late April through to mid-June historically has the highest tornado frequency, NSW records show.

Andover has just commemorated the 31st anniversary of a series of deadly twisters that killed 17 people and injured 225 in 1991. The EF5 tornado – the most intense rating – hit the ground for 69 miles (111km), and was one of 55 tornadoes that formed from Texas to Minnesota.

Norman Macdonald, the retiring convener of the Western Isles local authority Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, is talking about a photograph hanging on the wall of the council’s offices.

The picture, taken after the 2017 election, shows the new cohort of 29 men elected to represent the islands.

The Western Isles is not the only place where gender representation has proved to be a problem.

In the last vote to elect new councils across Scotland, which took place in 2017, only 29% of those elected were women. That was up from 24% on the election before.

Concerned by the result, and keen to address historically low levels of female representation, the comhairle held a workshop earlier this year aimed at encouraging more women to stand.

“We had 80 people in the same place having that conversation,” Mr Macdonald said.

“But the reality for us is that we now only have eight of that cohort who’ve put themselves forward”.

The low number of female candidates standing in next week’s council election has raised questions about how the long-standing issue of gender diversity can be tackled.

Zena Stewart was one of three women elected out of 31 councillors between 2012 and 2017.

She says the ban on council employees standing for election prohibits many women, given the local authority is a large employer.

Other barriers include the time required to fulfil the role. She only got involved in politics following her retirement from a career in education.

“I was working full-time, I had a family, and I could never have juggled the council work, attendance at meetings, attendance at community events, my full-time job and looking after children,” she explained.

Another obstacle is pay, with councillors earning around £18,600 a year.

“It’s not enough money to make a fulltime job out of it,” says Kirstie Anderson, owner of Sandwickhill Studios in Lewis.

“And for women who have kids, most of the meetings are in the evenings. It’s difficult for them to give it their all.”

The issue of gender diversity has been a topic of conversation at the studio’s Pilates class.

Regular Ruth Macleod points out that plenty of women in the Western Isles hold prominent roles, from business owners to community leaders.

But she says the all-male council line-up is off-putting.

“If in the back of your mind you feel ‘I’m going to be a lone voice in there, and it’s going to be a really tough journey ahead for me,’ then there’s possibly enough barriers just to say, ‘no, there’s plenty of other things I can be devoting my time to’.”

It’s a sentiment that’s shared by photographer Fiona Rennie, who says she wouldn’t consider standing for election.

“It’s quite off-putting that’s it’s all male, all of the same sort of age range,” she said.

“I don’t know how much my voice would be heard in that audience. I think my voice would probably get diluted in that company.”

The John Smith Centre at Glasgow University aims to make a positive case for participation in politics.

Its director Kezia Dugdale said: “There are so many reasons why women don’t stand for public office, not least the misogyny that still exists in so much of our political culture.

“But there are very specific reasons related to the Western Isles.

“For example you don’t have political parties being as dominant as they are in other parts of the country. It’s much harder to get elected as an independent without that reputation in the community that you can build up over a period of time.”

In 2017, 23 out of 31 councillors were independents. There were also seven SNP and one Tory councillor elected.

While the Western Isles offers a stark example of gender inequality, Ms Dugdale says it’s a more widespread problem, with women making up less than a third of councillors elected at the last local government ballot.

She says political parties have taken steps to address gender imbalance, but believes more drastic action could be required.

“I think we should be asking much bolder questions about the system,” she said.

“Should we be having quotas for female candidates? Should there be legal requirements on councils and on political parties to increase the number of women that are standing?

“That might drive more of the change at a faster pace that we really want to see.”

Zena Stewart acknowledges the presence of female candidates on the council between 2012 and 2017 made a difference when it came to decision-making.

“Women do see things from a different perspective,” she said.

“Even the way discussions go, I think people maybe respect others’ ideas more.”

But she questioned how quotas could work.

“I don’t like the idea of women being put in just because they’re women,” she said.

“It would be very difficult and I’m not sure it’s representative of the wishes of local people, and I think that’s important.”

The affected children were mostly under the age of five and therefore not eligible for the jab, health agencies monitoring the situation say.

But this hasn’t stopped the claims – and other theories around lockdown or sending children back to school – being promoted as fact.

So what are the established facts of the cases so far?

As of 21 April 2022, the World Health Organization had recorded at least 169 cases of unexplained hepatitis – inflammation of the liver – in children in 11 countries since January. Of these, 114 were in the UK.

None of the five specific viruses (labelled A – E) which usually cause hepatitis was found, but the majority of youngsters tested did show up positive for a particular adenovirus – a common family of infections responsible for illnesses from colds to eye infections.

The specific one they had causes stomach bugs.

Dr Meera Chand, director of clinical and emerging infections at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), said their investigations “increasingly” suggested the rise was linked to adenovirus infection.

“However, we are thoroughly investigating other potential causes,” she said.

The UKHSA says the Covid vaccine is the one thing they can definitively rule out – because none of the children affected had received the jab.

Nevertheless, on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and Telegram, the BBC has found false claims that these hepatitis cases were caused by the Covid vaccine.

The adenoviruses used in the vaccines are harmless transporters which have been modified so they cannot replicate or cause infection.

Not only are they completely different adenoviruses to the ones found in the affected children, but these vaccines are largely being restricted to use in people aged 40 and over in the UK.

The average age of the children developing hepatitis is three – an age group not eligible for any of the Covid vaccines in the UK, where most of the cases have been recorded.

An article from a website known to contain false and misleading information about Covid, claiming the Pfizer vaccine was to blame, was shared on Facebook in English, Spanish, Italian, Chinese and Norwegian.

It quoted a much-misinterpreted study which has also been used to make misleading claims about the vaccines and fertility.

Some have claimed high levels of Covid and sending children back to school unmasked is to blame.

Unlike the vaccine theory, which is firmly discredited, the idea that a Covid infection could play a role in these cases is still being investigated as a possibility.

Small studies have found unusual cases of hepatitis in a handful of young children who had previously tested positive for Covid in Israel, Brazil, India and the US.

This does not yet conclusively prove Covid played a role though.

Prof Anil Dhawan, a liver specialist at King’s College Hospital London, who is treating some of these children, says at the moment he does not think Covid is driving these cases.

“Because if you look at number of patients, only 16% tested positive for Covid, and this [hepatitis] is not the feature of Covid,” he said.

Hepatitis is a very rare known reaction to adenoviruses, he added.

One line of inquiry is that children who haven’t been exposed to as many infections in the early years of life because of the pandemic could be having outsized reactions to the adenovirus.

This has been seized on by some as proof lockdown was to blame for the outbreak.

But this is still a big unknown.

Dr Conor Meehan, a senior lecture in microbiology at Nottingham Trent University, agrees it is possible that not being exposed to as many bugs in their first months and years could have left these children’s immune systems more vulnerable.

“The exposure that you have to viruses is important for building your immune system, and it mostly happens in the first five years of life,” Dr Meehan explains.

“Most of these cases we see in under five-year-old kids, so they definitely haven’t had the exposure that other kids would have had that are older,” he says.

This makes its possible they could have a stronger reaction to an adenovirus infection.

But, “we would expect that stronger reaction to still just be worse versions of what we would normally see”, in other words severe vomiting and diarrhoea, but not hepatitis.

This extremely unusual reaction suggests there is something else going on, Dr Meehan thinks, like a mutated virus or an interaction between two viruses.

However, more investigations are needed before we can say for sure what’s causing these still very rare cases.

Events that are both distressing and unexplained make fertile ground for confirmation bias – when people look for information to support what they already believe – according to Prof Gina Neff, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute.

There is a lot of uncertainty in this situation and understandably people are looking for answers, she says.

“When we search online, we feel like we’re looking at a library and all the world’s information is available to us,” she explains.

But, argues Prof Neff, the results of our online searches are affected by what we’ve searched for before and by the algorithms used by search and social media companies.

It comes after a turbulent few days for the overseas territory, which saw its leader Andrew Fahie arrested in the US for alleged drug trafficking and money laundering.

After his arrest, a report was released recommending direct rule be imposed from London due to corruption concerns.

But the acting leader of the BVI has said he opposes the UK taking control.

The BVI is a British overseas territory home to more than 35,000 people and made up of more than 40 islands, located in the Caribbean to the east of Puerto Rico.

It operates as a parliamentary democracy, with the premier acting as the head of the elected government alongside the governor, who is appointed by the UK government and represents the Queen.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said Amanda Milling, the minister for overseas territories, was travelling to the territory for talks with BVI governor James Rankin and other senior figures on Saturday.

She said the UK government would outline the next steps for the island’s governance following the discussions.

Mr Rankin, who it is recommended should take over the rule of the territory, has said his main concern would be the best interests of the BVI’s population.

However, acting premier Natalio Wheatley has said the territory opposes efforts by London to impose direct rule.

“What this would mean in real terms is that there would be no more elected representatives who represent the people of the districts and the territory in the House of Assembly where laws are made for our society,” he said.

“There also would be no government ministers to advance the public’s priorities or a cabinet to approve policy. All of this authority would be vested in the governor.”

He told BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight the BVI could address governance problems without resorting to UK direct rule – and said he did not believe the BVI’s people wanted to see the constitution suspended.

“Every country in the world has challenges with governance, including the UK,” he said.

Mr Wheatley said he had had productive talks with Ms Milling and was expecting those to continue when she arrived in the territory on Saturday, although he said some conversations might be “uncomfortable”.

The crisis facing the islands was brought to a head on Thursday when it emerged Mr Fahie had been arrested by the US Drug Enforcement Agency in Miami.

He was detained alongside the head of the BVI’s ports Oleanvine Maynard, whose son was also arrested in connection with the case.

They have been charged with cocaine trafficking and money-laundering conspiracies after appearing by video link at a Florida court on Friday, US prosecutors confirmed. They will remain in custody until a bond hearing on Wednesday.

Mr Fahie is accused of agreeing a $700,000 (£560,000) payment to allow traffickers to use BVI ports with an undercover informant, charges filed in the US said.

Questions about governance in the territory pre-dated the arrests, with long-standing concerns over state corruption and misuse of taxpayers’ money, but the news expedited the release of an inquiry about how best to address them.

The report, commissioned in 2021 and led by British judge Sir Gary Hickinbottom, described the state of governance in the BVI as “appallingly bad”, but is not directly connected to the arrest of the premier.

It recommended the UK government suspend the overseas territory’s constitution and implement home rule for at least two years, meaning the islands would effectively be returned to direct rule from London.

After instructing Ms Milling to travel to the BVI, Ms Truss described the arrests as “extremely concerning” and argued they demonstrated the need for “urgent action”.

She said the inquiry showed “clearly that substantial legislative and constitutional change is required to restore the standards of governance”.

Ms Truss added that overseas territories formed a “core part of the UK family” and the government was “committed to the security and wellbeing of the people of the British Virgin Islands”.

In a televised statement on Friday, governor Mr Rankin pledged that his overriding concern would be the best interests of the people of the BVI – “ensuring transparent, honest and open governance”.

Leaks of documents known as the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers previously revealed the islands to be a popular tax haven.

British overseas territories are regions which have retained a constitutional and historical link to the UK – these include Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands.

Most are largely self-autonomous with their own governments but the UK retains responsibility for their defence and foreign relations.