WASHINGTON — Hollywood actor Jake Gyllenhaal is set to star in “Extraction” fame director Sam Hargrave’s upcoming superhero movie “Prophet.”
Based on “Deadpool” creator Rob Liefeld’s Image comic book series, the project comes from Studio 8. It will be helmed by Hargrave from a script penned by Marc Guggenheim, as per reports.
Gyllenhaal will star as John Prophet, a man conscripted by Germans near the end of World War II and subjected to scientific experiments that gave him superhuman strength.
In the film, John Prophet (Gyllenhaal) volunteers for a German experiment near World War II to feed his family. After a bombing buries him alive and traps him underground for 20 years, he reawakens in 1965, where things are not great for Prophet. The world has moved on without him, his daughter resents him, and K.G.B. agents are after him to create super-soldiers from his blood.
Liefeld introduced Prophet in the pages of the Image Comics series “Youngblood” before the character headlined his own title in 1993. He could be described as anti-Captain America — a DNA-enhanced super-soldier from the World War II-era who awakens in our time after being put in cryogenic freeze for a future mission. Unfortunately, he was not supposed to wake until years down the road, making Prophet a fish out of the water, spending his time in search of a mission that does not exist.
The upcoming film will be produced by Studio 8’s Chief Executive Officer Jeff Robinov along with John Graham and Prime Universe Films’ Adrian Askarieh, Liefeld, and Brooklyn Weaver.
Studio 8 was founded by Robinov in 2014. The entertainment company is currently under production for Ben Affleck-starrer film “Hypnotic,” which will be helmed by Robert Rodriguez.
Apart from this, the studio is also developing the remake of “Nosferatu,” which is financially backed by Focus Features and New Regency Productions, and Sony Pictures’ romantic-comedy “Adulting.”
On the comic book front, the studio will adapt Black Mask Studios’ “Black.”
Gyllenhaal has experience in the comic book space, having played the villain Mysterio in 2019’s “Spider-Man: Far From Home.”
Apart from “Prophet,” Gyllenhaal has several projects in the pipeline. He will next star in Michael Bay’s directorial crime-drama film “Ambulance” alongside Yahya Abdul-Mateen II.
He will also be seen in Rawson Marshall Thurber’s action-drama film “The Division,” co-starring Jessica Chastain.
Gyllenhaal’s other projects also include “The Son,” “Suddenly,” “Francis and the Godfather,” “Combat Control,” “The Anarchists vs. ISIS,” and “Rio.”
He is represented by William Morris Endeavor (WME) Agency and attorney Carlos Goodman.
Living with a food allergy can greatly impact a child’s everyday life — from limiting participation in social activities to being treated differently by peers.
When asked a simple “yes” or “no” question about food allergy-related bullying, 17 percent of kids said they’d been bullied, teased, or harassed about their food allergy.
But when asked to reply to a multi-item list of victimization behaviors, that number jumped to 31 percent.
Furthermore, Children’s National Hospital researchers found that only 12 percent of parents reported being aware. The reported bullying ranged from verbal teasing or criticism to more overt acts such as an allergen being waved in their face or intentionally put in their food.
Researchers said identifying accurate assessment methods for this problem is critical so children can get the help they need.
“Food allergy-related bullying can have a negative impact on a child’s quality of life,” said co-author Linda Herbert, Ph.D., director of the Psychosocial Clinical and Research Program in the Division of Allergy and Immunology at Children’s National.
“By using a more comprehensive assessment, we found that children with food allergies were bullied more than originally reported, and parents may be in the dark about it.”
“The results of this study demonstrate a need for greater food allergy education and awareness of food allergy-related bullying among communities and schools where food allergy-related bullying is most likely to occur,” Herbert said.
The study looked at food allergy-related bullying among a diverse patient population and evaluated parent-child disagreement and bullying assessment methods. It included 121 children and 121 primary caregivers who completed questionnaires.
The children ranged from 9 to 15-years-old and were diagnosed by an allergist with at least one of the top eight IgE-mediated food allergies — peanut, tree nut, cow’s milk, egg, wheat, soy, shellfish, and fish.
Of the 41 youth who reported food allergy-related bullying, 51 percent reported experiencing overt physical acts such as an allergen being waved in their face, thrown at them, or intentionally put in their food.
66 percent reported bullying experiences categorized as non-physical overt victimization acts, including verbal teasing, remarks or criticisms about their allergy, and verbal threats or intimidation.
Eight percent reported relational bullying, such as spreading rumors, people speaking behind their back, and being intentionally ignored or excluded due to their food allergy.
The researchers also noted that food allergy bullying perpetrators included, but were not limited to, classmates and other students, and bullying most commonly occurred at school.
The authors found that only 12 percent of parents reported that their child had been bullied because of their food allergy. While 93 percent said, their child had reported the bullying to them.
Some parents reported being made fun of or teased themselves because of concerns about their child’s food allergy.
“It’s important to find ways for children to open up about food allergy-related bullying. Asking additional specific questions about peer experiences during clinic appointments will hopefully get children and caregivers the help and support they need,” Herbert said.
LONDON — An anti-viral gene that impacts the risk of both Alzheimer’s disease and severe Covid-19 has been identified by the research team of University College London in a recent study.
The researchers estimate that one genetic variant of the OAS1 gene increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by about 3-6 percent in the population as a whole. In contrast, related variants on the same gene increase the likelihood of severe Covid-19 outcomes.
The findings, published in “Brain Journal,” could open the door for new targets for drug development or tracking disease progression in either disease and suggest that treatments developed could be used for both conditions.
The findings also have potential benefits for other related infectious conditions and dementias.
“While Alzheimer’s is primarily characterized by the harmful build-up of amyloid protein and tangles in the brain, there is also extensive inflammation in the brain that highlights the importance of the immune system in Alzheimer’s,” said Dervis Salih, lead author (UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology and UK Dementia Research Institute UCL).
“We have found that some of the same immune system changes can occur in both Alzheimer’s disease and Covid-19.”
“In patients with severe Covid-19 infection, there can also be inflammatory changes in the brain. Here we have identified a gene that can contribute to an exaggerated immune response to increase risks of both Alzheimer’s and Covid-19,” said Salih.
For the study, the research team sought to build on their previous work, which found evidence from a large dataset of human genomes, to suggest a link between the OAS1 gene and Alzheimer’s disease.
The OAS1 gene is expressed in microglia, a type of immune cell that constitutes around 10 percent of all cells found within the brain.
Investigating the gene’s link to Alzheimer’s further, they sequenced genetic data from 2,547 people, half of whom had Alzheimer’s disease.
They found that people with a particular variation, called rs1131454, of the OAS1 gene were more likely to have Alzheimer’s disease, increasing carriers’ baseline risk of Alzheimer’s by an estimated 11-22 percent.
The new variant identified is common, as just over half of Europeans are believed to carry it, and it has a bigger impact on Alzheimer’s risk than several known risk genes.
Their findings add OAS1, an anti-viral gene, to a list of dozens of genes now known to affect a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
The researchers investigated four variants of the OAS1 gene, all of which dampened its expression (activity).
They found that the variants increasing the risk of Alzheimer’s disease are linked (inherited together) with OAS1 variants recently found to increase the baseline risk of needing intensive care for Covid-19 by as much as 20 percent.
As part of the same research, in immune cells treated to mimic the effects of Covid-19, the researchers found that the gene controls how much the body’s immune cells release pro-inflammatory proteins.
They found that microglia cells where the gene was expressed more weakly, had an exaggerated response to tissue damage, unleashing what they call a ‘cytokine storm,’ which leads to an autoimmune state where the body attacks itself.
Naciye Magusali, a Ph.D. student at UK Dementia Research Institute at UCL, said that findings suggest that some people may have increased susceptibility to both Alzheimer’s disease and severe Covid-19, irrespective of their age, as some of our immune cells appear to engage a common molecular mechanism in both diseases.”
Following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers from the UK Dementia Research Institute at UCL have pivoted their attention to investigating the long-term neurological consequences of the virus.
Using biomarkers found in the blood and fluid surrounding the central nervous system, they are aiming to track neuroinflammation and injury to the neurons.
“If we could develop a simple way of testing for these genetic variants when someone tests positive for Covid-19, then it might be possible to identify who is at greater risk of needing critical care, but there is plenty more work to be done to get us there,” said Salih.
Similarly, we hope that our research could feed into the development of a blood test to identify whether someone is at risk of developing Alzheimer’s before they show memory problems.
“We are also continuing to research what happens once this immune network has been activated in response to an infection like Covid-19, to see whether it leads to any lasting effects or vulnerabilities, or if understanding the brain’s immune response to Covid-19.”
“Involving the OAS1 gene may help to explain some neurological effects of Covid-19.”
POTSDAM, Germany — Scientists in recent observation data find a 90-fold increase in the frequency of monthly heat extremes in the past 10 years compared to 1951-1980.
Their analysis provided by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research reveals that so-called 3-sigma heat events, which deviate strongly from what is normal in a given region, now, on average, affect about nine percent of all land area at any time.
Record daily rainfall events also increased in a non-linear way — on average, one in four rainfall records in the last decade can be attributed to climate change.
Already at present, extreme events linked to human-caused climate change are at unprecedented levels, the scientists say, and they must be expected to increase further.
“For extreme extremes, what we call four-sigma-events that have been virtually absent before, we even see a roughly 1000-fold increase compared to the reference period,” said lead-author Alexander Robinson from the Complutense University of Madrid Spain, and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany.
“They affected about three percent of global land area in 2011-20 in any month.”
“This confirms previous findings, yet with ever-increasing numbers. We are seeing extremes now which are virtually impossible without the influence of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels,” Robinson said.
The term ‘sigma’ refers to what scientists call a standard deviation.
For example, 2020 brought prolonged heat waves to both Siberia and Australia, contributing to the emergence of devastating wildfires in both regions.
Both events led to the declaration of a local state of emergency. Temperatures at life-threatening levels have hit parts of the US and Canada in 2021, reaching almost 50°Celsius.
Globally, the record-breaking heat extremes increased most in tropical regions since these usually have a low variability of monthly temperatures. However, as temperatures continue to rise, record-breaking heat will also become much more common in mid-and high-latitude regions.
Daily rainfall records have also increased. Compared to what would have to be expected in a climate without global warming, the number of wet records increased by about 30 percent.
This implies that one in four records is attributable to human-caused climate change. The physics background is the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, which states that air can hold seven percent more moisture per degree Celsius of warming.
Importantly, already dry regions such as western North America and South Africa have seen a reduction in rainfall records. In contrast, wet regions such as central and northern Europe have seen a substantial increase.
Generally, increasing rainfall extremes do not help to alleviate drought problems.
Comparing the new data with the previous decade of 2000-2010, the data show that the land area affected by heat extremes of the three-sigma category roughly doubled.
Those deviations that are so strong have previously been absent, the four-sigma events newly emerged in the observations.
Rainfall records have increased a further five percentage points in the last decade. The seemingly small amount of warming in the past 10 years, just 0.25°Celsius, has thus pushed up climate extremes substantially.
“These data show that extremes are now far outside the historical experience. Extreme heat and extreme rainfall are increasing disproportionally,” said co-author Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
The scientists also affirmed that their analysis confirms that every tenth of a degree matters for the impacts of global heating on humans.
A Bronze Age sword dating back as far as 1700 B.C. was found broken in pieces in Finland this past summer by a man using a metal detector in his parents’ back garden.
The July discovery in the village of Panella in southwestern Finland was only made public recently by the Satakunta Museum and the Finnish Heritage Agency.
Matti Rintamaa had bought his first metal detector only two weeks before the sword find. When scanning his parents’ backyard, he found a few small pieces of metal a couple of inches long. Then he found a longer piece and showed a picture of it to an experienced metal-detecting friend.
Finland’s National Board of Antiquities was called, and an archeologist sent to the site uncovered more pieces of the sword.
The Satakunta Museum said in a statement that such discoveries are very rare as “less than 200 Bronze Age bronze objects” have been found in Finland. ”A total of about 25 swords or daggers belonging to the period have been found, two of which were found in Panelia,” the statement said.
The Nordic Bronze Age lasted from 1700 B.C. to 500 B.C.
Close-up photo of the double-spiral engravings on pieces of a Bronze Age sword. The engravings have been interpreted as a solar symbol. The sun cult was an important part of the Scandinavian Bronze Age religion. (Sami Raninen, Finnish Heritage Agency/Zenger)
“We believe that the sword was a stray find. It was probably originally placed in shallow water,” said Satakunta Museum archeologist Leena Koivisto. “As the sea gradually retreated, the former bay changed to marshland and finally into field. The sword was covered with layers of peat.”
Archeologists believe the sword was moved from its original location during construction work.
Sami Raninen, a photographer and curator at the Finnish Heritage Agency, pointed out the apparently solar symbol that can be faintly seen on the weapon.
“Prestigious artifacts were sometimes deposited in ground or in water. Presumably, this was an attempt to please or conciliate chthonic gods.” he said. “At the same time, there are some suggestions of a sun cult. … The Spirals are interpreted as symbols of solar divinities, and the sun cult was an important part of the Scandinavian Bronze Age religion. Perhaps there was some kind of association between the glimmering bronze and sunlight.”
Information about the period in the area is scarce. Scholars tend to concur that many of the belief systems would have been similar to those of Ancient Greece, with polytheistic cults forming the basis of what would become Norse mythology.
“But why a weapon engraved with a solar symbol was laid in a less-than-sunny domain of seawater? I don’t know, but I think the act must have resonated with mythological and cosmological beliefs of the local Bronze Age community,” Raninen said.
The sword is currently in Helsinki and cataloged in the archeological collections of the Finnish National Museum. Fundraising efforts have been launched to cover conservation costs with the aim of displaying the sword in a regional museum.
Kids who grimace when broccoli is on the dinner table have a new place to point fingers. Recent research suggests the natural chemistry of the human mouth can determine whether they like it or hate it.
A team of Australian researchers reported that the kind of bacteria that live inside a child’s mouth — what they call the “oral microbiome” — may play a role in chemical reactions that shape what certain vegetables taste like.
Chewing broccoli exposes chemical compounds to bacteria, producing sulfur compounds that can build up in children’s mouths and impact how they perceive flavors, according to Damian Frank, the lead author of the study published in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. The more sulfur compounds researchers found in a child’s mouth, the more the person hated broccoli and cauliflower.
“In children, the relationship was highly significant, meaning it couldn’t really have occurred by chance,” Frank told Zenger.
The kind of bacteria that live inside a child’s mouth — the “oral microbiome” — may play a role in chemical reactions that shape what certain vegetables taste like. (Joern Pollex/Getty Images)
Sulfur compounds are responsible for giving mustard, coffee, broccoli, cauliflower and some other foods their flavor, according to previous research published by Robert McGorrin, an expert in food and flavor chemistry. Frank’s later research tied together how the sulfur compounds could impact what people like and dislike as the bacteria in their mouth could be responsible for different levels of sulfur production.
The impetus for Frank’s study came from Astrid Poelman, the lead researcher of a larger project focused on getting children to eat more vegetables.
While previous research has shown that flavor preferences — what we like and dislike — is learned from our environment, Poelman’s project looked for links between biology and flavor perception, specifically the role of genetics and the oral microbiome.
“There’s quite a bit of evidence that there is a bitter taste gene that has a relationship to your acceptance of vegetables,” Poelman told Zenger, “and we also looked at a specific type of taste buds and the relation of how many you have in your mouth and vegetable acceptance.”
At first, the goal of Frank’s research was to find out whether children had different amounts of sulfur compounds in their mouths than adults while eating broccoli and cauliflower. Children and parents came to Australian government-funded facilities to be tested. Researchers asked them to report the smell and taste of the vegetables as well as provide a saliva sample.
While there was not much of a difference in the sulfur compounds in children compared to adults, there was a difference found between people who hated the flavor of cauliflower and those who did not. This was particularly evident among children. So a child who hates eating her vegetables would be more likely to also have a greater amount of sulfur compounds in her mouth.
“They can be quite different, and we don’t know why,” Frank said, “but what we found was when we looked at the level of sulfur [compounds] produced, those that had the highest amount of sulfur [compounds] produced tended to like cauliflower the least.”
Kids who hate broccoli and cauliflower may not just be picky eaters, they may be tasting more sulfur compounds than other children, according to new research. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
While this finding was true for most children, the data did not show much of a trend in adults. Frank mentioned that the data did not suggest a “causation.” This means that while the children with higher amounts of sulfur compounds also disliked the cauliflower, the data doesn’t necessarily mean that the sulfur compounds caused their dislike.
There are “lots of questions to be answered, but this is certainly a new aspect of why people potentially don’t have a great relationship with brassicavegetables — especially kids,” Frank said.
More research will be needed to completely understand the oral microbiome, but Poelman explained why understanding the biology behind what vegetables people like could be useful.
“We know that repeated exposure is a very effective way of increasing acceptance, which is just repeatedly exposing a child to a small amount of vegetables,” she said while pointing out that understanding the biology behind flavor acceptance could lead to “developing tailored interventions.”
“I think the findings that are relevant for parents is really understanding … that refusal of certain foods and vegetables is a normal part of development, and that it is not a ‘one-size-its-all’ approach. But experimenting with different preparation methods might appeal to a child because it aligns better with their biology,” Poelman said.
Scientists from the University of Buffalo have developed a new treatment for inflammatory pain with minimal adverse side effects that may be an alternative to addictive opioids.
Writing in Nature Communications, they described how their research into the origins of pain focused on sensory neurons called nociceptors, which activate in response to pain caused by injury.
“Pain neurons transmit their information to the brain, informing the brain of both the location of the injury and the severity of the injury,” said study co-author Arin Bhattacharjee, a pharmacologist and associate professor at the Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences.
“The research is helping unravel how tissue injury signals to pain-sensing neurons,” he said. “If we can understand this at the molecular and cellular level, we can then identify novel pain-killing targets.”
The prescription medicine OxyContin is a powerful opioid painkiller and can be addictive, producing a high similar to heroin. Now, scientists have developed an alternative treatment that provides long-lasting pain relief without the addictive quality of opioids. (Darren McCollester/Getty Images)
The research team’s findings led to patents being filed on two lab-produced peptides that are injected at the site of injury.
Human peptides are strings of amino acids that form the building blocks of protein. They are mimicked by lab-produced peptides for use in medications.
“Our small peptides are able to penetrate nerve endings and provide long-lasting pain relief after a single administration,” said Bhattacharjee.
After local delivery at the pain site, Bhattacharjee said, many drugs tend to wear off. The new technology solves the problem by “getting into nerve endings and staying there,” he added, thus resulting in long-lasting relief.
The researchers discovered that a specific type of pain neuron requires what is called endocytosis, a process in which substances are brought into the cell to signal pain. In this process, cells engulf materials at the membrane. Known as calcitonin-gene-related peptide-containing pain neurons, they produce AP2A2, a protein that other sensory neurons do not.
Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and its owners, the Sackler family, faced hundreds of lawsuits across the country for the company’s alleged role in the opioid epidemic that has killed more than 200,000 Americans over the past 20 years. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
According to the study, this finding about these particular AP2A2-producing neurons may reveal their importance in inflammatory pain seen in humans and rodents. The researchers determined that endocytosis in these neurons is essential for sensing inflammatory pain.
“By inhibiting endocytosis, we are able to prevent pain-sensing neurons from relaying pain information to the central nervous system,” said study coauthor Rasheen Powell. The researchers found that even under conditions when pain neurons are highly stimulated, they could significantly reduce the sensation of pain with the novel peptide molecule.
The researchers also found that pain is perceived differently according to sex. In studies on animals, they determined that when pain was already established, females did not respond as well to the peptide compared to males. But if administered at the time of injury, females had a much better reduction in pain than males.
Bhattacharjee said that the results resemble findings in humans, where there are sex differences in the sensation of chronic inflammatory pain and post-operative pain, thus underscoring “the importance of gender considerations” in developing pain relief.
A new study has revealed how dragonflies that are not even two inches long are able to fly nonstop for over 1,000 miles in the longest migration relative to size in the animal kingdom.
The journey, which sees globe skimmer dragonflies (Pantala flavescens) travel from India to Africa, is just one of many crucial migration routes now under threat from climate change, scientists say.
An international research team led by Lund University in Sweden has detailed how these dragonflies are capable of migrating from India to the Maldives. The team published their findings in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
The dragonflies, which are just 1.7 inches (4.5 centimeters) long with a wingspan of around 2.8 inches (7.2 centimeters), cross the Indian Ocean in a journey that spans over 1,242 miles (2,000 kilometers).
Globe skimmer dragonflies (Pantala flavescens) travel from India to Africa, but their migration route is now under threat from climate change, scientists say. (Johanna Hedlund/Zenger)
Trying to study the migration of the insects is complicated as, unlike birds, they are too small to be fitted with a tracking device.
Researchers ran simulations based on the physical capabilities of the dragonflies, such as their fat reserves and the effect of wind on their ability to fly.
Experts found that the dragonflies are only capable of making the journey with the help of favorable wind conditions.
The simulations found that only 15 percent of dragonflies could complete the journey from India to Africa in the spring, but 40 percent could make the journey in the opposite direction in the autumn due to more favorable weather conditions.
“We have [gotten] a lot closer to solving the mystery of how a tiny dragonfly, which only weighs 300 milligrams [0.01 ounces], can cross 2,000 kilometers of open sea,” said Johanna Hedlund, a researcher at Lund University and lead author of the study.
“The globe skimmer dragonfly can’t manage it using only the fat it can store in its body. It also requires favorable winds, and these are present during certain periods of the year,” she said.
An Amur falcon in Pune, Maharashtra, India. Apart from globe skimmer dragonflies, Amur falcons and Jacobin cuckoos also make the long journey across the Indian Ocean. Any interruption to these migrations due to climate change would impact ecosystems that depend on them, scientists say. (Sagar Paranjape/Unsplash)
The study noted that dragonflies are not the only organisms that depend on consistent environmental conditions to migrate long distances across the Indian Ocean.
The Amur falcon and the Jacobin cuckoo also make a similar crossing and depend on the winds to carry them over thousands of miles of open water.
The researchers are concerned that climate change will alter wind patterns as the oceans’ temperatures rise, potentially disrupting migratory routes that are crucial to the stability of ecosystems.
CONAKRY, Guinea — A military coup d’état in Guinea last month — the country’s third since independence in 1958 — became just the latest data point in a resurgence of unconstitutional power grabs in West Africa. The return of the plight of coups has raised fears of democratic backsliding in one of Africa’s turbulent hotspots.
On Sept. 5, the 41-year-old Colonel Mamady Doumbouya deposed Guinea’s 83-year-old President Alpha Condé, after declaring it was “the duty of a soldier is to save the country.” It was West Africa’s second successful coup in 2021, following another in Mali on May 24 and a failed attempt March 31 in Niger.
Meanwhile, when Chadian strongman Idris Déby died in April while fighting rebels, the army installed his son Mahamat as de facto president, a move opponents termed a “military power grab.”
Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, the chairman of the Transitional Military Council of Chad, addresses the United Nations General Assembly via video on Sept. 23, 2021. (Timothy A. Clary – Pool/Getty Images)
Since 2010, Africa has had eight successful coups and at least 29 attempts, according to an ongoing project to track global coups maintained by American researchers Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne. The pair have documented over 200 coup attempts in Africa since the late 1950s, with the landlocked West African nation of Burkina Faso leading with seven successful and one failed coup.
Almost all instance, they note, are justified by their perpetrators in name of “the people” to end autocratic regimes and seek economic and social justice — even if such good intentions are rarely, if ever, achieved.
“Africa’s deep-rooted social, political and economic problems in the 21st century cannot be resolved … by coups nor with greedy heads of states conniving with lawmakers to tweak constitutions to legitimize their stay in power,” David Otto, director of Geneva Centre for Africa Security and Strategic Studies, told Zenger.
Despite adopting democracy as their system of government, states in Central Africa and the Sahel region also remain a major global epicenter of 21st-century military coups.
Experts like Otto say that is because they adopted democratic structures without developing relevant supporting institutions.
“Leaders must rely on strong institutions and respect the rule of law while in power,” he said. “The military and other security agencies must not be brought too close to politics and used to intimidate citizens into keeping leaders in power. It allows the military to take power by force citing corruption, intimidation, economic downturn, instability, and bad governance from sitting presidents as justification.”
Guinean President Alpha Condé greets German Chancellor Angela Merkel upon his arrival for the G20 Compact with Africa conference in Nov. 2019 (Michele Tantussi/Getty Images)
Condé, the ousted president of Guinea, had been a longtime opposition leader in the country before becoming its first democratically elected president in 2010. He won a second term in 2015. After amending the constitution through a controversial referendum in March 2020, he secured a third term in office after an Oct. 2020 presidential election that was marred by violence.
The coup leader, Doumouya, in turn deposed a man who had once blessed his career, after asking him in 2018 return to Guinea to lead the newly established elite Special Forces Group. The coup leader is a former French legionnaire who trained in France, Israel, the United Kingdom, Senegal and participated in the United States special forces exercises.
After the coup, Doumouya proclaimed: “The duty of a soldier is to save the country”— a phrase beloved by Africa’s military strongmen who cast themselves as “saviors” of their people.
“We saw the same with Thomas Sankara,” said Sam Amadi, director of the Abuja School of Social and Political Thought, referring to the leader of Burkina Faso’s 1983 coup, who was killed by military allies in 1987. “When the conspiracy gets to the point of enlisting the president’s closest aides, the deed is done. It illustrates the lesson that dictators don’t have trusted people, and their hold on the so-called enablers is tenuous at best.”
Sam Amadi, director of the Abuja School of Social and Political Thought, says Condé may have paid the price for his infamy.(Courtesy of Sam Amadi)
But even coups have their apologists, who argue they are often necessary to end unjust governments.
“Regional organizations should first condemn prolonged stay in power,” Wilson Tamfuh, professor of Public and International Law at the University of Buea in Cameroon, told Zenger.
“There is what you call military democracies and civilian dictatorships. We also have a coup of necessity which usually happens when a civilian dictator has brought a country to its knees. There is a need for such a coup, especially if the plotters are doing it in good faith: to reorganize the government, conduct elections, and see that a good constitution is drafted for the country to go back to democracy.”
“That is what the coup leaders in Guinea are saying.”
Meanwhile, Otto noted that coups can be difficult event to discourage, as the international community has few useful options to punish militaries who have taken control of the levers of a state. He said continent and regional bodies like the African Union and Economic Community of West African States have only one primary tool to deter such coups: ineffective economic sanctions.
“This is not enough to deter putschists who understand how these economic sanctions have been applied unsuccessfully in the past,” Otto said. “They understand how to circumvent these measures. For example, they’ll appoint a transitional government that they control. The Economic Community Of West African States has so far failed to bring back any deposed leader.”
That has regional consequences, too, according to Amadi, who attributed the military coup in Guinea to “the crisis of political legitimacy growing in the region.”
“Many of the regimes are facing existentialist challenges of legitimacy,” he said.
“The result of failed transitions and rigged elections is showing. The so-called democratic governments are transitioning into military regimes. This marks an ugly phase that tends to increase violent conflict over control of political power. In turn, this will increase refugee crisis and starvation.”
Then there is Africa’s ever-present “resources curse.”
Guinea is blessed with abundant natural resources, including large quantities of bauxite, iron, gold, and diamonds, and mineral wealth, which gives it the potential to be one of Africa’s wealthiest countries. But its people are among the continent’s poorest — it’s estimated that 43.7 percent of Guinea’s population of 13 million people live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank.
Otto said it was not surprising that younger army colonels were now trying to secure their share of spoils, after being forced to watch their corrupt leaders monopolize them for years.
“These young military officers have had the opportunity to hang around these older leaders and seen how vulnerable they are and in most cases very self-seeking, greedy and selfish,” he said.
In the end, said Tamfuh of University of Buea, that means Guinea’s coup should be seen as a warning.
“Citizens in failing civilian dictatorships are in sinking ships, and if there are no captains bold enough to take the steering wheels, then the ships will all drown with all of us,” he said. “We are not promoting the coups, but we are saying that current hardliners in Africa should learn from what has happened in Guinea.”
The jobs are out there, but not many are taking them.
That’s the conclusion economists drew from a lackluster U.S. employment report released on Friday, which they view as further proof jobless Americans are still slow to return to the workforce.
In addition to creating just 194,000 new jobs in September, the payroll report released Friday from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also showed that the unemployment rate dropped from 5.2 percent to 4.8 percent in that month.
President Joe Biden chose to focus on the latter statistic, noting it’s the first time unemployment has been below 5 percent since March 2020. “While progress could be faster, he said in remarks on Friday, “it’s steady and in the right direction.
“It’s a sign that our economy is moving forward, even in the face of a COVID pandemic,” Biden said of the dismal jobs numbers, adding that a continual drop in COVID cases will also help improve economic conditions. “There’s more to do, but it’s great progress. The monthly total has bounced around, but if you take a look at the trend, it’s solid.”
But while the unemployment rate may have fallen, economists were by-and-large gloomy about the outlook for the American workforce and the weak hiring numbers. University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers said that the 194,000 new jobs reported was well shy of the 500,000 jobs economists expected.
“The recovery has stalled,” Wolfers wrote on Twitter. “We’re missing about 8 million jobs, and at this rate, we’re not bringing them back any time soon.”
The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 4.8 percent in September 2021, the lowest it’s been since March 2020. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
After a torrid June and July, where employment gains averaged more than 1 million each month, August numbers dipped to just 366,000 jobs, before dropping to fewer than 200,000 new jobs in September. The economy is still more than 7 million jobs behind pre-pandemic projections, economists noted.
Economists also note that despite the recent end of extended federal unemployment benefits, which stopped being paid out in early September, the labor participation rate declined. Some economists tied the latter situation to the effects of the Delta variant of the coronavirus.
“All that talk of the end of unemployment insurance being a big driver. It’s a nothingburger,” Wolfers wrote. “The real issue is — and remains — the virus.”
The market-participation rate, which measures how many people are actively seeking work, remains abnormally low, economists noted. In total 2.2 million fewer people are in the labor force than would be expected given the overall state of the economy, reported economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Those experts also described the current labor market as “very tight,” noting that there were about 8 million people looking for work while there are nearly 12 million job openings. That’s the largest such gap ever recorded.
“One sign of the tightness of labor markets is the fact that job openings and quits have remained elevated in recent months, showing both that jobs are plentiful and also that people have the confidence to quit their jobs knowing they will be able to find new ones,” wrote economists Jason Furman, a Harvard University professor, and Wilson Powell III, a researcher at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Despite ending extended unemployment benefits in early September, the number of people looking for work remains below pre-pandemic levels. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Economist Diane Swonk noted that women have been disproportionately displaced in the labor market through the pandemic lockdowns and subsequent economic recoveries. She noted that the labor market was still missing 3 million workers from February 2020 levels, and 64 percent of that are women.
“Sadly, women dropped out as schools went into quarantines,” wrote Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton. “Single moms have been really hammered by uneven school reopening, quarantines and loss of what little childcare is left.”
In fact, University of Michigan economics professor Betsey Stevenson said the lackluster employment for women has been a significant drag on the current recovery.
“Women’s employment growth has driven every recovery and it’s women’s employment growth that has nearly ground to a halt and has slowed our recovery,” she wrote.
But while the report’s job gains were worse than expected, Furman and Powell described Friday’s payroll report as “better than it looked,” noting that much of the other data in the report was more positive.
Wages continue to soar, they wrote, and at 0.6 percent, rose faster in September than any other month this year. It’s the fastest growth in wages for U.S. workers since the early 1980s. The rising wage data shows that employers are increasingly dependent upon higher pay to attract the labor they need to run their businesses.
“Many employers bet wrong that they could avoid raises if they could limp through summer. They preferred paying overtime on a few extra hours past 40 rather than increases to everyone’s base wage or to hiring at the wage required,” wrote Roosevelt Institute economist Aaron Sojourner, noting many believed that once unemployment extensions ended and schools reopened, more workers would be available.
While the unemployment rate fell, many economists worry not enough people are returning to work. A “Now Hiring” sign hangs near the entrance to a Winn-Dixie Supermarket in Hallandale, Florida, on Sept, 21. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
And the hiring issues for employers are likely to persist, noted Daniel Zhao, chief economist for job-search site Glassdoor.
“It’s instructive that many large employers were starting wage increases pretty early in the spring, before many small businesses followed suit,” he wrote on Twitter. “Larger employers have more data to work with and based on their actions, they clearly think hiring difficulties are going to persist.”
The latest payroll report will also be significant for federal policymakers, who will use the data to decide whether to reduce federal assistance to financial markets. After the pandemic started, the Federal Reserve began buying $120 billion a month in U.S. treasury and mortgage debts to help keep financial markets sound, thereby helping slow the job-growth numbers.
The September numbers are the last ones the Federal Reserve Board will see before its next meeting, on Nov. 3, when it will decide whether to reduce (or “taper”) its bond-buying program.
