Global Headlines Express | Erdogan Declares Re-election Victory; 100,000 March in London Against Brexit

Global Headlines is QDaily's new column for 2018, now in trial run — still here to help you understand more.

The Issue-Makers

Wired: Should dinosaur fossils be turning up at private auctions?

On June 4, the Aguttes auction house in Paris sold an Allosaurus skeleton for £1.7 million. The buyer stayed anonymous but promised the fossil would eventually go on public display.

Academics objected before the auction even opened. The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) wrote to the auction house asking it to call off the sale. "Specimens that end up in private hands represent a loss to the field," said SVP president David Polly. "Fossils are not ordinary works of art. A skeleton like this is unique, irreplaceable evidence of the Earth's past — it matters to all of us."

Since fossil trading caught on in the private market, at least five skeletons have sold at high prices every year. One question keeps coming back: should fossils that lay underground for tens of millions of years be traded privately, so that the public may never see them? Or should museums and public institutions, funded by the state or by big companies, get there first?

Once a dinosaur fossil falls into private hands, it usually cannot be traced again. The paleontologist Thomas Carr estimates that for Tyrannosaurus rex alone, at least 15 skeletons sit in private collections — "a big enough number to fill in some of the gaps in what we know about T. rex." He has studied about 40 T. rex skeletons in the public domain; 15 more would add an enormous amount of information.

Many collectors do lend their fossils to public institutions for display, but Carr says that means little to scholars: "The cornerstone of all science is the reproducibility of observation." If a T. rex fossil has a permanent home at a university or a museum, paleontologists can examine it whenever they want, examine it again as technology improves and yields more information, and check it against past research. A private collection guarantees none of that — a fossil out on loan can be recalled at any moment. On grounds of research ethics, the field's best journals will not publish papers based on privately held fossils.

"Commercial fossil collecting" is now seen as the biggest challenge facing paleontology. Then again, it is the fossil hunters who do the actual digging. They may hold no relevant degree, but they have all the useful knowledge, which is why they are called "commercial fossil preparators." Fossil hunters say the prices are high because the work is enormous: excavating an elephant-sized dinosaur skeleton, cleaning it and preparing it for display can take 15,000 hours. Finding one is not easy either — dinosaur fossils are not as rare as people imagine, they are simply very hard to find.

One fossil hunter says that as a rule they line up a buyer before the digging starts. In fact, 85% of the time it is a museum that commissions the dig; only sometimes does a private buyer make contact. Experienced hunters say they will not sell a scientifically important fossil to a private party.

But "scientifically important" is itself a blurry thing to define. To scholars, every fossil matters enormously. "They are nothing but information, but that information is crucial to understanding evolution, biology and everything about the species. They are like the first edition of a book — one that should be kept safe in a library, with its contents shared with everyone else forever."

Wiping out the private fossil trade altogether would bring serious consequences of its own. It would first hit the people who live off it. In a country like Morocco, people below the poverty line survive by finding, digging up and packing fossils. "Then people start making moral judgments — whether the purity of science should outweigh the needs of humans trying to make a living."

On the other side, exporting fossils is illegal in some countries, and public auctions with their tempting prices pull still more people into illegal trade chains: the market grows, and smuggling grows more brazen.

News-Makers of the Last 24 Hours

Turkish President Erdogan declares re-election victory.

Turkey's general election opened at 8 a.m. local time on the 24th, covering both the presidency and parliament. With the first round of counting nearly finished and 97.7% of votes tallied, Erdogan led the field with 53%; his closest rival, Muharrem Ince, took 31%. In the parliamentary vote, Erdogan's AKP led with 42%, against 23% for its main rival, the CHP. The pro-Kurdish HDP cleared the 10% threshold, with 11.67%, and enters parliament — which makes a parliamentary majority harder for the AKP to win alone. It has already decided to ally with the MHP.

State media put turnout as high as 87%. Erdogan said: "I hope no one will damage democracy by casting doubt on the results, or hide their own defeat."

CHP candidate Ince has reportedly conceded to the press: "This was not a fair election, but I accept that Erdogan has won."

Under last year's constitutional amendment, the winner takes on unprecedented presidential powers: full control of the cabinet, the right to appoint top judges and an unelected vice president, and the power to sign decrees that override legislation. The prime minister's powers have been cut sharply.

The election had been set for November 2019, but in April Erdogan abruptly moved it up, to get ahead of a worsening economy and catch his opponents unprepared.

Doubts about whether the vote was fair are loud. Since the failed coup of 2016, Erdogan has tightened his grip on the country, which has lived under a nationwide state of emergency ever since: 107,000 civil servants and soldiers pushed out of their jobs, 50,000 people detained, 5,000 professors fired, books of political commentary confiscated, journalists labeled "terrorists," 10,000 people arrested for using one particular chat app, university common areas closed, and any activity connected to political assembly banned.

On the eve of the vote, a rally of a million opposition supporters went unreported by the state broadcaster TRT. By observers' count, Erdogan and his allies received 181 hours of TRT airtime, opposition leaders only 16. Reports arriving this morning also included: election committee members from the opposition HDP kept out of polling stations in several places by government-backed local militias; at least two villages threatened into stopping the vote; and, in HDP's main strongholds, ballot boxes filling up before people had finished voting (ballot stuffing).

What Else Happened in the World

Two years after the Brexit referendum, 100,000 opponents of Brexit joined the "People's Vote" march, taking to the streets of London to demand a "final say." Organizers say Brexit is not settled yet and the people need to speak. Only recently, cabinet ministers Liam Fox and David Davis insisted Britain was ready to walk away without any deal with the EU. Bloomberg reported on the 23rd that "uncertainty" has already cut British economic output by 2.1%, with lost tax revenue reaching £23 billion (£440 million a week) — far more than the £350 million a week Britain once paid into the EU budget.

Trump tweeted on Sunday morning demanding that migrants be deported at once, with no trial: "We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came."

The Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission held a video conference on the 21st on the "Sharp Eyes" project. The project aims to build a public-security video surveillance system with "full territorial coverage, network-wide sharing, round-the-clock availability and control at every step." Chen Yixin, secretary-general of the Commission, said it should become a pair of "eyes that see a thousand miles" guarding the people's peace of mind, with full territorial coverage of public surveillance in place by 2020.

Saudi Arabia ended its ban on women driving at midnight on the 24th; about 2,000 women have obtained licenses so far.

Kim Jong-un has cut most references to his father and grandfather from North Korea's new national pledge. Since the 1970s, every North Korean citizen has been required to recite a ten-point national pledge. DailyNK reports that Kim Jong-un has changed its wording for the first time in 40 years, cutting the ten points to five and reducing the passages on Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung to a single short line about their "will and spirit."

A United Nations report says Venezuela's security forces killed more than 500 citizens in under two years in the name of fighting crime. Government officials have covered up most of these killings, which bypassed any legal process, and the UN has asked the International Criminal Court to step in and investigate.

A rally attended by Ethiopia's new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, was hit by a grenade attack, killing 1 person and injuring 156. Abiy comes from the Oromo, Ethiopia's largest ethnic group, which has nonetheless been pushed to the margins politically, economically and culturally. Abiy, 42, leads the Oromo Democratic Party and is hugely popular with young people, who see him as the leader most likely to bring hope.

Someone Said

"Homosexual propaganda cannot become a national goal, given that our population is shrinking and aging, and that we face the threat of invasion... Our government is spending money and using every means to help families put out new branches, so it is baffling and intolerable for a state institution to work against the will of the state — it throws many young boys into confusion, when left to themselves they would never have gone down this road."

A writer's editorial on the Hungarian right-wing news site Magyar Idők attacked the National Theatre's staging of the musical Billy Elliot, calling it "rampant homosexual propaganda" that would turn Hungarian boys gay.

Magyar Idők openly supports the right-wing prime minister Viktor Orbán and is seen as a mouthpiece for the government. Spurred by the editorial, other outlets and part of the public joined the attack. Hungary's National Theatre then canceled a third of its Billy Elliot performances — 15 of 44 — saying press coverage had already cooled public interest in the show.

Billy Elliot is adapted from the British film of the same name, released in 2000, about a boy from a poor mining family who breaks through every obstacle to chase a dream of ballet, set against the British miners' strike of 1984. Adam Cooper, who starred in the all-male Swan Lake, appears as the grown-up hero, and the film ends on a swan's leap full of masculine power. It won several BAFTAs the following year, as well as nominations for best director, best original screenplay and best supporting actress at the 73rd Academy Awards, and the stage adaptation went on to run and run in London's West End.

Things You Might Also Be Interested In

One in four of 1,006 Japanese people surveyed has wanted to kill the boss.

"Have you ever, at some moment, thought about killing your boss?" The research firm Shirabee put the question to 1,006 Japanese men and women aged 20 to 69, and 27% said yes.

The magnitude-6.1 earthquake that struck Osaka on June 18 may explain part of it. The quake halted trains and buses, leaving millions of commuters unable to get to work. When one of them asked for the day off, the company replied: "Please walk to the office to collect today's pay." A Twitter user recounted that after her boyfriend walked an hour to reach his office, staff were ordered to evacuate the building and go home — so he walked another hour back. Some pointed out that this is how a Japanese "black company," an employer that grinds its staff down, normally behaves after an earthquake: "Japan is a country full of wage slaves."

Commenters suggested that "kill the boss" should be the theme of the next Purge film. It might do very well at the Japanese box office.

Calculated one particular way, England has an 18% chance of reaching the World Cup final — but…

"They are the textbook case of a team that is worse than the sum of its parts."

The sports data consultancy 21st Club built a model from players' club form, position, minutes played, goals, assists and their effect on the team both on and off the pitch, then calculated each World Cup team's chances — two sets of results, one from individual data, one from team data. On individual data, England's odds of winning the tournament and of reaching the final are 8% and 18%; once team performance is factored in, they fall to 5% and 10%. Belgium, France, Spain and Germany are, like England, worse as a whole than as a sum of individuals. In the chart below, the vertical and horizontal axes are team and individual performance scores; the countries above the diagonal are greater than the sum of their parts.

On This Day in History

June 25, 1951: the world's first color television broadcast went out.

June 25, 1984: the philosopher Michel Foucault died.

June 25, 1998: Microsoft released the Windows 98 operating system.

June 25, 2009: Michael Jackson died.

June 25, 2010: the painter Wu Guanzhong died.

Cover image from Visual China Group.