Moon to align with 4 planets in early morning sky before end of April

By Brian Lada, Accuweather.com


A Pink Supermoon rises behind the Statue of Liberty from Liberty State Park in Hoboken, New Jersey, in April 2021. Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn have been lined up in the sky this month, and by the end of April the Moon will join them, astronomers say. 

File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Early risers waking up before the crack of dawn will be rewarded with great views of the planets through the end of the month, and the daily spectacle will be even more impressive at the start of next week.

Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn have lined up in the early morning sky and will continue to glow in a row throughout the rest of April. The quartet can be easily seen without a telescope in the eastern sky, and another celestial object will join the alignment early next week.

The crescent moon will appear near the four planets about an hour before sunrise on Monday, April 25, and Tuesday, April 26.

The two-day event means that folks can check the AccuWeather forecast to see which morning will have the better viewing conditions before waking up early to enjoy the sights in the eastern sky.

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A fifth planet will be hidden in plain sight near the bottom of the alignment, going unnoticed except for those with a little help.

Neptune will appear near Venus and Jupiter on April 25 and April 26 however, it will be difficult to spot as the planet is too dim to see without the help of a telescope.

People new to using a telescope will have some help finding the distant world as it will appear directly between Jupiter and Venus. Neptune will look like a small blue dot, seeing itself apart from the other planets and stars visible in this area of the sky before sunrise.

The morning planets will be worth another look on April 30 and May 1 as Jupiter and Venus pass extremely close to each other.

Astronomers refer to this type of planetary meetup as a conjunction, and it will be the closest Jupiter and Venus have appeared in the night sky since Nov. 24, 2019.

Skywatchers should also keep an eye out for shooting stars as the annual Lyrid meteor shower will remain active until April 29.

Hourly rates will not be as impressive as the 15 to 20 per hour expected on the night of Thursday, April 21, but a few meteors are still possible throughout the early morning when the planetary alignment is visible.

Bright fireball over Ontario likely left several small meteorites on the ground

April 20 (UPI) -- Canadian researchers said an unusually bright fireball that lit up the night sky over Ontario likely left numerous meteorite fragments on the ground.

The physics and astronomy department at Western University in London, Ontario, said a network of sky cameras recorded the fireball streaking across the sky at 11:37 p.m. Sunday.

The department said fragments of the meteor likely made it to the ground near the eastern shore of Lake Simcoe, near Argyle.

"This fireball was particularly significant because it was moving slowly, was on an asteroidal orbit and ended very low in the atmosphere. These are all good indicators that material survived," Denis Vida, an astronomy postdoctoral associate and meteor expert, said in a news release.

Vida said an analysis of the video indicates multiple small meteorites might have made landfall.

The Royal Ontario Museum is asking anyone who finds a suspected meteorite to contact the facility.

Vanishing act: Exploring the case of the disappearing moon

By Thomas Leffler, Accuweather.com

The relationship between the Earth, moon and sun has been documented since the beginning of time. The welcoming golden light of the sun greets humanity and serves as the dawn of a new day, while the eerie white glow of the moon sends the human race into its nightly slumber.

But what if there was a day when one occurred without the other? What if that day became weeks or even months?

Such an occurrence took place nearly a millennium ago, as Earth's moon disappeared from view during the month of May in the year 1110, with nary a reason given for the strange phenomenon. The unusual occurrence puzzled those who lived through it and continued to baffle astronomers throughout the ages. There was a belief that the moon's disappearance was the result of an eclipse.

The British astronomer George Frederick Chambers wrote about the celestial mystery in his 1899 book The Story of Eclipses. About 800 years after it happened, Chambers pegged the date of the eclipse as having occurred on May 5, during the reign of Henry I.


"The totality occurred before midnight," Chambers wrote of the moon's disappearance from the night sky, adding that it was "evident that this was an instance of a 'black' eclipse when the moon becomes quite invisible instead of shining with the familiar coppery hue."

But is that really what happened?

Finding out the root of the lunar absence became the work of a 2020 study in the journal Scientific Reports, leading to a more complex answer than originally thought.

The previously agreed-upon conclusion was that an eruption at Iceland's Mount Hekla was the culprit. Hekla, located in the southern end of Iceland, was referred to as the "Gateway to Hell" by Europeans during the Middle Ages due to its frequent eruptions.

When an eruption took place at Hekla on approximately Oct. 15, 1104, sulfur-rich particles launched into the stratosphere. For many years, this event was thought to be the catalyst for the moon's apparent disappearance.

The Scientific Reports study, led by a team from the University of Geneva in Switzerland, began to unravel new information into the moon's whereabouts. To see whether the Hekla eruption was the sole cause of the disappearance, the researchers analyzed ice cores from Iceland and Antarctica, and eventually determined that the date of the Hekla eruption did not line up with the 1110 timeline of lunar absence.

To find the true source, researchers combed through the records of medieval times for any references made to a "dark lunar eclipse" or a "black eclipse." After pouring over many a scripture, the team made a breakthrough with the following 1110 entry from The Peterborough Chronicle: "[The moon] was so completely extinguished withal, that neither light, nor orb, nor anything at all of it was seen."

Knowing the lunar absence began around 1110, the team suggests a cluster of volcanic eruptions from between 1108 and 1110 was most likely the root cause, not the 1104 Hekla eruption as previously thought.

One of these oft-forgotten eruptions took place in 1108 in Honshu, Japan. A diary entry from a Japanese statesman, uncovered by researchers and cited in the Scientific Reports study, said that an eruption of Honshu's Mount Asama began in late August of 1108 and continued through that October.

"On August 29, there was a fire at the top of the volcano, a thick layer of ash in the governor's garden, everywhere the fields and the rice fields are rendered unfit for cultivation," the entry read. "We never saw that in the country. It is a very strange and rare thing."

The 1108 eruption at Asama, known as perhaps the most significant in the volcano's history, is one of what the study called "several major volcanic events" that is consistent with the "stratospheric aerosol loading sufficient to induce" the dark eclipse. Observations of changes to the moon, such as the dark, total lunar eclipse, as well as observations of dimming or discoloration of the sun, are major corroborators of the timing of major explosive volcanic activity.

On top of the eclipse, the 1108-1110 eruptions led to several societal impacts in Europe, particularly in agriculture. The researchers' work revealed descriptions of an abundance of severe weather conditions, crop failures and famines compared to other years with similar volcanic events.Losing the lunar connection between Earth and the moon had several negative side effects, making the bright nightly appearance missed all the more.

PRISON NATION USA

Mississippi prison found to have violated inmates' Constitutional rights

A Mississippi prison violated the Constitution by subjecting its inmates to inhumane conditions, the U.S. Justice of Department announced on Wednesday, April 20, 2022. 

Photo courtesy of Mississippi Department of Corrections/Twitter

April 20 (UPI) -- A Mississippi prison violated the Constitution by subjecting its inmates to inhumane conditions, the U.S. Justice of Department announced on Wednesday.

Prisoners at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, also called Parchman, had insufficient access to mental health treatment for severe conditions, the department reports. The prison also subjected the incarcerated to prolonged solitary confinement "in egregious conditions," neglected to implement effective anti-suicide protections and failed to prevent inmate-on-inmate violence.

"The Constitution guarantees that all people incarcerated in jails and prisons are treated humanely, that reasonable measures are taken to keep them safe, and that they receive necessary mental health care, treatment, and services to address their needs," Assistant Attorney General Clarke said in a media release.

"Our investigation uncovered evidence of systemic violations that have generated a violent and unsafe environment for people incarcerated at Parchman. We are committed to taking action that will ensure the safety of all people held at Parchman and other state prison facilities."

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The department began its investigation of the facility more than two years ago, after a series of violent incidents in late 2019 and early 2020 killed nine inmates and injured several others. It's continuing to investigate conditions at three other Mississippi correctional facilities.

According to Wednesday's release, the Mississippi Department of Corrections "has been on notice of these deficiencies for years and failed to take reasonable measures to address the violations, due in part to non-functional accountability or quality assurance measures."

Parchman isn't the first Mississippi prison found to have violated the Constitution. In 2015, two other state facilities were found to have routinely failed protect prisoners from violence, kept them in filthy conditions and kept them in custody past their court-ordered release dates.

Sri Lanka police open fire at protesters; 1 dead, 13 injured

By KRISHAN FRANCIS and BHARATHA MALLAWARACHI

yesterday

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Sri Lankans hold up their mobile phone torches during a vigil condemning police shooting at protesters in Rambukkana, 90 kilometers (55 miles) northeast of Colombo, at a protest outside the president's office in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Tuesday, April 19, 2022. Sri Lankan police opened fire Tuesday at a group of people protesting new fuel price increases, killing one and injuring 10 others, in the first shooting by security forces during weeks of demonstrations over the country's worst economic crisis in decades.

 (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)


COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lankan police opened fire Tuesday at people protesting new fuel price increases, killing one and injuring 13 others, in the first shooting by security forces during weeks of demonstrations over the country’s worst economic crisis in decades.

Fifteen police personnel were also admitted to a hospital with minor injuries after clashes with protesters.

Police confirmed they shot at the protesters in Rambukkana, 90 kilometers (55 miles) northeast of Colombo, the capital, and they declared a local curfew afterward. Police spokesman Nihal Talduwa said the demonstrators were blocking railway tracks and roads and had ignored police warnings to disperse. He said protesters also threw rocks at police.

Dr. Mihiri Priyangani of the government hospital in Kegalle said 14 people were brought there with suspected gunshot wounds and one had died. Three others had undergone surgeries and were being monitored. The police in the hospital had minor injuries, possibly from being hit by stones, she said.

Sri Lanka is on the brink of bankruptcy, with nearly $7 billion of its total $25 billion in foreign debt due for repayment this year. A severe shortage of foreign exchange means the country lacks money to buy imported goods.

U.S. Ambassador Julie Chung and U.N. Resident Coordinator Hanaa Singer-Hamdy urged restraint from all sides and called on the authorities to ensure the people’s right to peaceful protest.

Chung called for an independent investigation into the shooting.

Sri Lankans have endured months of shortages of essentials such as food, cooking gas, fuel and medicine, lining up for hours to buy the very limited stocks available.

Fuel prices have risen several times in recent months, resulting in sharp increases in transport costs and prices of other essentials. There was another round of increases at midnight Monday.

Thousands of protesters continued to occupy the entrance to the president’s office for an 11th day Tuesday, blaming him for the economic crisis. At night, the crowd outside his office in Colombo held up their phones as illumination during a vigil condemning the shooting in Rambukkana.

Sri Lanka’s prime minister said Tuesday that the constitution will be changed to clip presidential powers and empower Parliament, as protesters continued to demand that the president and his powerful family quit.

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa told Parliament that the power shift is a quick step that can be taken to politically stabilize the country and help talks with the International Monetary Fund over an economic recovery plan.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the prime minister’s brother, concentrated power in the presidency after being elected in 2019.

“While looking for solutions to the economic problems, it is important that we have political and social stability in the country,” Prime Minister Rajapaksa said, adding that restoring more power to Parliament will be a start to the reforms.

The Rajapaksa brothers are likely to retain their grip on power even if the constitution is amended, since they hold both offices.

President Rajapaksa acknowledged on Monday that he made mistakes which had led to the crisis, such as delaying an appeal to the IMF for help and banning agrochemicals with the aim of making Sri Lankan agriculture fully organic. Critics say the ban on imported fertilizer was aimed at conserving the country’s declining foreign exchange holdings and badly hurt farmers.

Both the president and prime minister have refused to step down, resulting in a political impasse. Opposition parties have rejected the president’s proposal of a unity government, but have been unable to put together a majority in Parliament and form a new government.

In a Cabinet reshuffle Monday, the president appointed many new faces and left out four family members who had held Cabinet and non-Cabinet posts, in an apparent attempt to please the protesters without giving up his family’s grip on power.

Finance Minister Ali Sabry met with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva in Washington and requested a rapid financing facility for countries facing urgent balance of payment crises, the Finance Ministry said Tuesday.

It said Georgieva told Sabry that India had also backed Sri Lanka’s request for the facility.

Later, Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman met with Sabry and assured him of India’s support for Sri Lanka’s economic recovery, the ministry said.

Sri Lanka has also turned to China and India for emergency loans to buy food and fuel.

COACHING IS ABUSE

Mega dance company bred culture of sex, silence, dancers say

By JULIET LINDERMAN, MARTHA MENDOZA and MORGAN BOCKNEK

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Old tap shoes rest on a chair as Gary Schaufeld describes his time as a young performer in dance competitions, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022, at his home in Port Jefferson, N.Y. He was a teen in 2004, assisting a successful tap dancer named Danny Wallace. Schaufeld had fallen in love with tap at 7 years old, and assisting Wallace offered a chance to raise his profile and learn from one of the best. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Every year, one of the world’s leading dance competition companies sells the dream of Hollywood fame to hundreds of thousands of ambitious young dancers hoping to launch careers on television, in movies and on stage.

But behind the bright lights and pulsing music, some dancers say they were sexually assaulted, harassed and manipulated by the company’s powerful founder and famous teachers and choreographers, according to a joint investigation by The Associated Press and the Toronto Star.

The problems date back to the founding of Los Angeles-based Break The Floor Productions; as the company has grown into an industry powerhouse, its leaders perpetuated a culture of sex and silence, according to interviews with dozens of former and current staff and students.

Break the Floor’s reach extends across the entertainment industry to some of the biggest names in music, television and social media. Alumni and faculty have danced on stage with Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift, at the Oscars and the Super Bowl. Company instructors have appeared on “Dancing with the Stars,” “Dance Moms” and “So You Think You Can Dance.” When COVID-19 lockdowns suspended in-person workshops, Break the Floor enlisted social media superstar Charli D’Amelio, whose TikTok account has around 10.5 billion likes, to record instructional videos.

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This story was reported as a partnership between The Associated Press and the Toronto Star

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The company was launched 22 years ago by a charismatic dancer, Gil Stroming, who came to fame in the 1990s, performing in the off-Broadway show “Tap Dogs,” described in The New York Times as a “beefcake tap-a-thon.”

Break The Floor now draws around 300,000 dance students, some as young as 5, to packed hotel ballrooms across the U.S. and Canada for weekend workshops and competitions.

But in January, as the AP and the Star were investigating allegations of sexual misconduct against him and others involved in the company, Stroming announced that he had sold Break the Floor and stepped down as CEO.

The new owner, Russell Geyser, said the allegations have nothing to do with the current company, and that people involved with purported misconduct no longer work for Break The Floor. In his first 10 days as CEO, he said four people were “let go.”

Allegations of sexual misconduct first hit the dance company in October, when the Toronto Star revealed allegations of widespread sexual harassment and predatory behavior by Break the Floor instructors.

A Toronto-born teen alleged a famous choreographer propositioned her for sex just hours after judging her at a 2012 Break the Floor convention. An Ottawa dancer working as an assistant for the company said the same choreographer groped him in public.

An ongoing investigation by the Star in partnership with the AP now has uncovered alleged sexual misconduct that stretches back to the dance company’s early years, and involves Stroming himself.

Stroming was allegedly involved in a series of inappropriate relationships with students of the dance program he was running, according to more than a dozen former staff and students.

Of these sources, four say he sometimes brought young Break the Floor participants to parties or company events, where they were introduced as his girlfriend. Seven sources say they saw Stroming interact with students in ways that appeared intimate and inappropriate. One staff member said Stroming showed him a nude photo of one of the students.

All of these sources spoke on the condition of anonymity in fear of retaliation and damage to their careers in the tight-knit professional dance community.

One dancer said she met Stroming when she was a 16-year-old high school junior attending one of Break the Floor’s first events with her parents. Stroming was three years older, she said, a magnetic 19-year-old running the whole show. At her first company event, when she was 17, she and Stroming had oral sex, she said.

A year or so later, shortly after her 18th birthday, Stroming flew the dancer to New York, where he told her he had lined up potentially career-launching dance auditions, she says. That night, they had sex in his apartment. The next morning, Stroming left abruptly for Las Vegas and handed her $40 for a cab ride back to the airport. She says she didn’t attend any auditions, and returned home devastated.

The AP and the Star spoke to the dancer’s father, who said that in the years following, she told him about these sexual interactions with Stroming, which left her deeply upset.

Stroming declined repeated interview requests. But during a 2020 in-house training, a recording of which was reviewed by the AP and Star, Stroming addressed his own past misconduct.

“I was definitely inappropriate myself in a lot of ways,” he told his staff. “As a student I was in inappropriate relationships with teachers, and vice versa, and just looking back I was like, oh wow, I think a lot of us don’t even realize at first the power that we have in the dance world.”

In a written statement, he told the AP and Star, “I have been very upfront that when I first started the company at 19, over 20 years ago, there were issues of inappropriateness.” He didn’t respond to the specific allegations.

While not all of the complainants in this story were involved with Break the Floor at the time of the alleged incidents, the instructors and executives accused of wrongdoing have played key roles in growing the company’s revenue and popularity.

One dance instructor said she warns the children and teens she brings to conventions today to be watchful and aware of the potential for abuse of power. About two decades ago, when she was a dance teacher accompanying her students to a Break the Floor event, she said she refused Stroming’s $500 offer to join him in his hotel room.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT, ‘CONVENTION BOYFRIEND’

Break The Floor hosts conventions in cities across North America, putting on events in hotel ballrooms every weekend over the course of a six-month season. Hundreds of studios and schools from smaller communities bring teams of dancers to the events, branded by Stroming as JUMP, NUVO, 24seven, RADIX and DancerPalooza. The ultimate goal is winning first place under the spotlight at the annual Dance Awards.

In addition to competitions with cash prizes, Break The Floor conventions — which cost between around $200 to $350 per student — offer dozens of workshops, under strobing lights and thumping music. They typically end with parents on the sidelines shooting photos of their beaming children in leotards and makeup, striking poses alongside famous choreographers and dancers.

Jeremy Hudson, now a professional dancer, came of age on the convention circuit and won Outstanding Dancer of the Year at the first JUMP Nationals in 2004. Break the Floor helped launch his career, but an alleged assault by one of its star dancers continues to haunt him.

At 16, Hudson looked forward to the festive weekend gatherings. But he was uncomfortable when a dance teacher, Mark Meismer, in his early 30s, repeatedly told him how attractive he was. Still, he accepted a sought-after opportunity to assist Meismer as they toured various studios and conventions together. A year later, Hudson stayed with Meismer when he joined Break The Floor’s fledgling NUVO convention as part of its original lineup of instructors.

“He called me his convention boyfriend,” recalled Hudson. “I didn’t know how inappropriate that was.”

Meismer asked the young dancer, then 17, to come to his home.

Hudson said he was optimistic. This might just be his lucky break into professional dance. After all, Meismer was already an icon; he had toured with Britney Spears, Madonna and Paula Abdul.

But at Meismer’s house, they didn’t discuss work. Hudson alleges Meismer pushed him against a wall and performed oral sex on him. Meismer shushed him, he remembers, warning that someone was asleep in a nearby room.

In the years that followed, Hudson said Meismer continued to pursue him for sex. In dance studios, Hudson says Meismer would guide him into bathroom stalls for oral sex. On planes, Meismer would grope him in his seat, Hudson alleges. To surprise him, Hudson said Meismer would buy them matching outfits.

“I just didn’t know myself enough to understand how harmful it was,” Hudson said.

Hudson is now a famous dancer, with a resume that spans mega tours with Pink, Lady Gaga and Kylie Minogue, and appearances in more than a dozen films including “La La Land” and “FAME.” For 17 years, he kept to himself about what happened with Meismer. But after speaking with the AP and the Star in February, Hudson went public and shared his experience in an emotional Instagram video, without naming Meismer.

“I took the word of this choreographer, and thought he was helping me build a dance career. Which in fact, he wasn’t,” Hudson said in his video, viewed over 6,300 times.

The next day Meismer was removed from NUVO’s website and abruptly left the tour. He is no longer with the company, according to Break The Floor. Meismer didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment. His representatives at the MSA Agency also said they had no comment on his behalf.

Marci A. Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania professor who founded CHILD USA and is the author of “Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect its Children,” said dance is one of the last forums where adults have unsupervised access to younger students.

“Dance organizations create wide opportunities for adults to single out a child, groom them and then get them alone to sexually abuse them,” she said. “The dance world, it’s not like it’s different than any other world, it’s just that they’ve been able to keep their secrets longer.”

Hamilton also said perpetrators in many youth-focused organizations use hotel rooms — away from home — to exploit the power imbalance between teachers and students.

That’s what Gary Schaufeld says happened to him. He was a teen in 2004, assisting a successful tap dancer named Danny Wallace, who wasn’t with Break the Floor at the time, but would go on to run one of its subsidiary conventions. Schaufeld had fallen in love with tap at 7 years old, and assisting Wallace offered a chance to raise his profile and learn from one of the best.

One night, Schaufeld said, Wallace pushed him up against the wall of a hotel room they shared with a female assistant and forced oral sex on him.

“I was frozen in my own skin, I didn’t know what to do,” Schaufeld said.

Afterwards, Schaufeld said Wallace told him never to say anything; it would be bad for both of their careers. And so Schaufeld stayed quiet. But the secret ate away at him. His mental health deteriorated. He stopped eating and sleeping, and suffered from panic attacks, he said. In 2018, 14 years later, he decided to tell his family, and confront Wallace directly.

In a series of text messages between Schaufeld and Wallace, reviewed by the AP and the Star, Schaufeld laid out his accusations and Wallace said that although he couldn’t remember anything, he “couldn’t be more sorry.”

“I’m not a monster but I feel like one,” Wallace wrote, adding that he has “a lot of hazy memories and a huge list of regrets/mistakes” from that time period.

In an interview earlier this year with the AP and the Star, Wallace denied Schaufeld’s allegations and said nothing sexual or physical ever transpired between them, though he said he remembered having an “inappropriate attraction” to Schaufeld. He referred reporters to his lawyer, who didn’t respond.

Schaufeld stopped dancing years ago and has no plans to return to the studio.

“It was my church,” he said, but now “the whole dance scene feels dirty and tainted.”

CODE OF CONDUCT

By the mid-2000s, dance exploded into the mainstream with the debuts of popular television shows like So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With The Stars.

Gil Stroming’s company capitalized on all of that studio growth, an industry that reached about $4 billion in value by 2021, employing more than 120,000 people, according to market research from analysts at IbisWorld. He added new conventions, and new locations, branching into Mexico, Costa Rica and Canada.

The televised dance shows brought fame to dancers Nick Lazzarini, Travis Wall and Misha Gabriel, who became big name attractions as Break The Floor instructors. Each of them has since left the company amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

Stroming picked up Lazzarini at the height of his fame to join the convention circuit, teaching hundreds of thousands of aspiring young dancers. In 2019, Stroming quietly fired him after he posted, then quickly removed, a video of himself masturbating on Instagram, as the Star previously reported.

The Star’s prior investigation uncovered allegations that Lazzarini had subjected at least six dancers to unwanted sexual advances at Break The Floor events. Three of these dancers were under 18. One said Lazzarini groped him through a hole in his pants. Another said Lazzarini texted her a nude selfie when she was 16. A third said he and Lazzarini exchanged nude photos when he was 17.

Gabriel, another famous dancer and choreographer, allegedly sent a nude photo on Snapchat to a 16-year-old dancer who says she was so horrified she threw her phone across the room. Gabriel — who has performed with Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, Beyoncé and more — was recently removed from the JUMP faculty. His picture and profile disappeared from the website, though there was no formal announcement of his departure.

Lilli Maples had taken classes with Gabriel since she was 10 years old. She said once she turned 18, Gabriel, 29 at that time in 2017, invited her to his hotel room in a text message with a shirtless photo. After Maples showed the screenshots to friends who shared them on social media, Gabriel sent her a message threatening to ruin her career, she said.

Gabriel, when asked about Maples’ accusation, said in a written statement that he had been drinking heavily that night to control fears about serious health problems in his family. He said he must have passed out and has no recollection of sending the text. He apologized and said he himself was a victim of abuse as a teen, and that his texts to Maples were a “one time ever brief exchange.”

The AP and the Star haven’t seen these messages because Maples said they’d been deleted. Maples’ mother, however, told the news organizations that she saw the photos when they appeared on shared photo albums on their family’s home computer.

“My heart dropped,” she said.

As for the other allegation from the then 16-year-old, Gabriel denied sending the photo, saying he would never engage in “inappropriate behavior that would ever lead to sending something like this” to a teen.

Sexual abuse pervades the dance world, according to child advocates and industry leaders.

The combination of hyper-sexual dance content and the close contact between adult teachers and the young dancers creates an atmosphere ripe for abuse, said Jamal Story, a professional dancer who is co-chair of the National Dance Committee for The Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA).

“Professional dancers suffer a wide swath of sexual predation from irritating flirtation to full-out devastating attacks. And what’s egregious about seeing it in the context of conventions is that it happens to kids. Nowhere in the world of education should students feel they are underneath the predators,” he said.

Former Break The Floor instructors have been accused of abusing young dancers in other settings. Former DancerPalooza instructor, Eric Saradpon, has been charged by the Riverside County District Attorney with perpetrating lewd acts on minors in a private dance studio, and is awaiting trial. And five dancers are suing former Boston Ballet star Dusty Button and her husband, alleging sexual abuse and assault. Button taught at Radix conventions. Lawyers for Saradpon and the Buttons didn’t respond to requests for comment.

At least four people removed from Break The Floor for alleged misconduct have continued to work around kids in other settings.

Earlier this year, after Geyser took the helm as CEO, Break The Floor published a new code of conduct. It banned inviting students to hotel rooms and said instructors shouldn’t call students their “daughter” or “son.” And it encourages discretion online regarding “Religion, Social Justice, Discrimination, Politics, Love and Romance, Abuse, Mental Health, Bullying, and Terrorism.”

The new code of conduct also says educators are considered mandated reporters regarding suspected child abuse: “If you witness anything concerning, it is your duty to report it to the appropriate authorities.”

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This story was reported in partnership with the Toronto Star.

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To contact AP’s investigations team, please write to investigative@ap.org

Follow the journalists on Twitter @julietlinderman, @mendozamartha, and @mobocks

Russia’s Chernobyl seizure seen as nuclear risk ‘nightmare’

By CARA ANNA and INNA VARENYTSIA

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Trenches and firing positions sit in the highly radioactive soil adjacent to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant near Chernobyl, Ukraine, Saturday, April 16, 2022. Thousands of tanks and troops rumbled into the forested exclusion zone around the shuttered plant in the earliest hours of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, churning up highly contaminated soil from the site of the 1986 accident that was the world's worst nuclear disaster. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)


CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (AP) — Here in the dirt of one of the world’s most radioactive places, Russian soldiers dug trenches. Ukrainian officials worry they were, in effect, digging their own graves.

Thousands of tanks and troops rumbled into the forested Chernobyl exclusion zone in the earliest hours of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, churning up highly contaminated soil from the site of the 1986 accident that was the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

For more than a month, some Russian soldiers bunked in the earth within sight of the massive structure built to contain radiation from the damaged Chernobyl nuclear reactor. A close inspection of their trenches was impossible because even walking on the dirt is discouraged.

As the 36th anniversary of the April 26, 1986, disaster approaches and Russia’s invasion continues, it’s clear that Chernobyl — a relic of the Cold War — was never prepared for this.

With scientists and others watching in disbelief from afar, Russian forces flew over the long-closed plant, ignoring the restricted airspace around it. They held personnel still working at the plant at gunpoint during a marathon shift of more than a month, with employees sleeping on tabletops and eating just twice a day.

Even now, weeks after the Russians left, “I need to calm down,” the plant’s main security engineer, Valerii Semenov, told The Associated Press. He worked 35 days straight, sleeping only three hours a night, rationing cigarettes and staying on even after the Russians allowed a shift change.

“I was afraid they would install something and damage the system,” he said in an interview.

Workers kept the Russians from the most dangerous areas, but in what Semenov called the worst situation he has seen in his 30 years at Chernobyl, the plant was without electricity, relying on diesel generators to support the critical work of circulating water for cooling the spent fuel rods.

“It was very dangerous to act in this way,” said Maksym Shevchuck, the deputy head of the state agency managing the exclusion zone. He was scared by it all.

Russia’s invasion marks the first time that occupying a nuclear plant was part of a nation’s war strategy, said Rebecca Harms, former president of the Greens group in the European Parliament, who has visited Chernobyl several times. She called it a “nightmare” scenario in which “every nuclear plant can be used like a pre-installed nuclear bomb.”

A visit to the exclusion zone, more desolate than usual, found that the invasion risked a catastrophe worse than the original explosion and fire at Chernobyl that sent radioactive material into the atmosphere and became a symbol of the Soviet Union’s stumbling final years. Billions of dollars were spent by the international community, including Russia, to stabilize and secure the area.

Now authorities are working with Ukraine’s defense ministry on ways to protect Chernobyl’s most critical places. At the top of the list are anti-drone systems and anti-tank barriers, along with a system to protect against warplanes and helicopters.

None of it will matter much if Russian President Vladimir Putin resorts to nuclear weapons, which Shevchuck says he can’t rule out anymore.

“I understand they can use any kind of weapon and they can do any awful thing,” he said.

Chernobyl needs special international protection with a robust U.N. mandate, Harms said. As with the original disaster, the risks are not only to Ukraine but to nearby Belarus and beyond.

“It depends from where the wind blows,” she said.

After watching thousands of Soviet soldiers work to contain the effects of the 1986 accident, sometimes with no protection, Harms and others were shocked at the Russian soldiers’ disregard for safety, or their ignorance, in the recent invasion.

Some soldiers even stole highly radioactive materials as souvenirs or possibly to sell.

“I think from movies they have the imagination that all dangerous small things are very valuable,” Shevchuck said.

He believes hundreds or thousands of soldiers damaged their health, likely with little idea of the consequences, despite plant workers’ warnings to their commanders.

“Most of the soldiers were around 20 years old,” he said. “All these actions proves that their management, and in Russia in general, human life equals like zero.”

The full extent of Russia’s activities in the Chernobyl exclusion zone is still unknown, especially because the troops scattered mines that the Ukrainian military is still searching for. Some have detonated, further disturbing the radioactive ground. The Russians also set several forest fires, which have been put out.

Ukrainian authorities can’t monitor radiation levels across the zone because Russian soldiers stole the main server for the system, severing the connection on March 2. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Saturday it still wasn’t receiving remote data from its monitoring systems. The Russians even took Chernobyl staffers’ personal radiation monitors.

In the communications center, one of the buildings in the zone not overgrown by nature, the Russians looted and left a carpet of shattered glass. The building felt deeply of the 1980s, with a map on a wall still showing the Soviet Union. Someone at some point had taken a pink marker and traced Ukraine’s border.

In normal times, about 6,000 people work in the zone, about half of them at the nuclear plant. When the Russians invaded, most workers were told to evacuate immediately. Now about 100 are left at the nuclear plant and 100 are elsewhere.

Semenov, the security engineer, recalled the Russians checking the remaining workers for what they called radicals.

“We said, ‘Look at our documents, 90% of us are originally from Russia,’” he said. “But we’re patriots of our country,” meaning Ukraine.

When the Russians hurriedly departed March 31 as part of a withdrawal from the region that left behind scorched tanks and traumatized communities, they took more than 150 Ukrainian national guard members into Belarus. Shevchuck fears they’re now in Russia.

In their rush, the Russians gave nuclear plant managers a choice: Sign a document saying the soldiers had protected the site and there were no complaints, or be taken into Belarus. The managers signed.

One protective measure the Russians did appear to take was leaving open a line routing communications from the nuclear plant through the workers’ town of Slavutych and on to authorities in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. It was used several times, Shevchuck said.

“I think they understood it should be for their safety,” he said. The IAEA said Tuesday the plant is now able to contact Ukraine’s nuclear regulator directly.

Another Ukrainian nuclear plant, at Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine, remains under Russian control. It is the largest in Europe.

Shevchuck, like other Ukrainians, has had it with Putin.

“We’re inviting him inside the new safe confinement shelter,” he said. “Then we will close it.”

___

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

ABOLISH SCOTUS
Supreme Court denies Penobscot appeal over namesake river
April 18, 2022

Native Americans marching in support of one of several tribal sovereignty bills pass by the governor's mansion on April 11, 2022, in Augusta, Maine. On Monday, April 18, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt the Penobscot Indian Nation a blow by rejecting its appeal over ownership and regulation of the tribe's namesake river. (AP Photo/David Sharp)

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined an appeal by the Penobscot Indian Nation in its fight with Maine over ownership and regulation of the tribe’s namesake river.

It was a bitter defeat for the tribe that sued a decade ago, claiming the Penobscot River is part of its reservation.

Penobscot Chief Kirk Francis said it was a disappointing outcome in a legal case that goes to the “core identity of the Penobscot Nation.”

“We see this as a modern day territorial removal by the state by trying to separate us from our ancestral ties to our namesake river,” Francis told The Associated Press.

A federal judge previously ruled that the reservation includes islands of the river’s main stem, but not the waters. There were appeals to a panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of appeals, and then to the full appeals court.

On Monday, the nation’s top court without comment declined to hear the tribe’s appeals over river regulation.

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey and Democratic Gov. Janet Mills had no immediate comment on Monday.

The ruling came as the Maine Legislature was considering several measures that relate to tribal sovereignty.

The most far-reaching legislative proposal would restore sovereignty rights forfeited by tribes under the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act of 1980. The House enacted the bill Monday, but it was pending in the Senate. It faces a possible veto by the governor.

The Penobscots, whose reservation is on an island in the river, sued in 2012 after then-Attorney General William Schneider issued an opinion that the tribe’s territory was limited to islands.

The tribe said the lawsuit was necessary to protect tribal authority over its ancestral river and ensure sustenance rights. But state regulators argued that a win by the tribe would create “a two-tiered system” on the Penobscot that would be a detriment to the general public.

Francis said the Supreme Court’s action was probably the end of the road for the appeal but he said the tribe wouldn’t give up.

“We’ll continue to see every avenue to remedy this,” he said.

Justice Department appeals ruling lifting transit mask mandate after CDC request

Zoë Richards

Wed, April 20, 2022, 5:19 PM·2 min read

The Justice Department has moved to appeal a ruling that struck down the federal mask mandate on planes, trains and transit systems after a request by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC said, in a statement Wednesday, that “at this time an order requiring masking in the indoor transportation corridor remains necessary for the public health,” adding that it has asked the DOJ to proceed with an appeal.

Image: Florida Judge Overturns CDC's Travel Mask Mandate 

(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

Related: From airlines to Uber, where exactly should you wear a mask?

The DOJ has not asked the appeals court to block the judge’s order that lifted the federal mask mandate on transit systems, meaning passengers will be able to continue traveling maskless while the decision is litigated.

The DOJ announced earlier this week that it would appeal the ruling if the CDC decides that masks on are still required on public transportation for public health.

“As we have said before, wearing masks is most beneficial in crowded or poorly ventilated locations, such as the transportation corridor,” the CDC said Wednesday. “When people wear a well-fitting mask or respirator over their nose and mouth in indoor travel or public transportation settings, they protect themselves, and those around them, including those who are immunocompromised or not yet vaccine-eligible, and help keep travel and public transportation safer for everyone.”

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ruled that the travel mask mandate was unlawful, arguing that the CDC had overstepped its legal authority by imposing the mandate in February 2021.

The mandate, which was rolled out to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, had recently been extended to May 3 before it was struck down.

Because of the ruling, the White House said the Transportation Security Administration will no longer enforce masking on public transport and in transportation hubs.

Several airlines, including United, Delta, and American, have issued statements saying masks are now optional.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters during a news conference Wednesday that the Biden administration is “deferring to the CDC on what they believe is needed at this moment.”

The agency extended the mandate “because they felt they needed to take a look at the data, given that we’ve seen a rise in cases,” Psaki said, noting that the DOJ had signaled it would appeal the judge’s decision to empower the CDC during the public health crisis.

“We want to preserve that authority for the CDC to have in the future,” she said.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com.

Most people in US want masks for travelers: AP-NORC poll

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Travelers wait in a security line at Love Field in Dallas, Tuesday, April 19, 2022. The major airlines and many of the busiest airports dropped their mask requirements after a Florida judge struck down the CDC mandate and the Transportation Security Administration announced it wouldn't enforce its 2021 security directive. 

(AP Photo/LM Otero)

FARGO, N.D. (AP) — A majority of people in the United States continue to support a mask requirement for people traveling on airplanes and other shared transportation, a poll finds. A ruling by a federal judge has put the government’s transportation mask mandate on hold.

The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that despite opposition to that requirement that included verbal abuse and physical violence against flight attendants, 56% of those surveyed favor requiring people on planes, trains and public transportation to wear masks, compared with 24% opposed and 20% who say they are neither in favor nor opposed

Interviews for the poll were conducted last Thursday to Monday, shortly before a federal judge in Florida struck down the national mask mandate on airplanes and mass transit. Airlines and airports immediately scrapped their requirements that passengers wear face coverings, and the Transportation Security Administration stopped enforcing the mask requirement.

But the Justice Department said Wednesday it was filing an appeal seeking to overturn the judge’s order. That notice came minutes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked Justice to appeal the decision, saying “an order requiring masking in the indoor transportation corridor remains necessary for the public health.”

The poll shows a wide partisan divide on the issue. Among Democrats, 80% favor and just 5% oppose the requirement. Among Republicans, 45% are opposed compared with 33% in favor, with 22% saying neither.

Vicki Pettus, who recently moved from Frankfort, Kentucky, to Clearwater, Florida, to be near her grandchildren, said she enjoys the view of Old Tampa Bay but doesn’t like the “very lackadaisical attitude” by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, about masking. She said she will continue to wear her mask to protect against the coronavirus, including around her 55-and-older home community and on the plane when she travels to Kentucky in a few weeks.

“Especially in a plane where that air is recirculating,” said Pettus, 71, an independent who leans toward the Democratic Party. “I think people are really dumb not to wear their mask. But, hey, that’s their decision, and if they want to get sick that’s fine. I’m not going to.”

But Kriste Lee, who works in sales in South Florida, can’t wait to fly mask-free the next time she travels next month.

“I really wish I was on a plane when they made that announcement,” said Lee, 47. “I would have been dancing up and down the aisle.”

The continued public support overall for mandating masks on transportation comes even as worries about COVID-19 are among their lowest points of the past two years. Just 20% now say they’re very or extremely worried that they or a family member will be infected. That’s down slightly since 25% said the same just a month ago and from 36% in December and January as the omicron variant was raging. Another 33% now say they are somewhat worried, while 48% say they’re not worried at all.

Count Betty Harp, of Leitchfield, Kentucky, as among the “very worried” and not because she’s turning 84 next month. She said she takes care of her large house and yard by herself, does a lot of canning and is in “fantastic health for my age.” But she’s lost a lot of friends and family to the virus, which has killed nearly 1 million people in the United States.

“I know COVID is still here. It’s still around,” said Harp, who described herself as a Republican-leaning independent. “I think we should all be wearing masks for a little while longer.”

In another AP-NORC poll conducted last month, 44% of those surveyed still said they were often or always wearing face masks outside their homes, though that was down significantly from 65% who said that at the beginning of the year.

The latest poll also shows about half the people favor requiring masks for workers who interact with the public, compared with about 3 in 10 opposed. Support is similar for requiring people at crowded public events such as concerts, sporting events and movies to wear masks.

On these, too, there are significant partisan divides. Seventy-two percent of Democrats favor requiring people attending crowded public events to wear masks, while among Republicans, 25% are in favor and 49% are opposed. The numbers are similar for requiring masks for public-facing workers.

Lee, who said she doesn’t “do politics,” wondered aloud why people are complaining about the judge’s ruling and said nobody is stopping anyone from wearing masks if they want to.

“We all have our beliefs and obviously different views,” said Lee, who is unvaccinated. “Mine are definitely different from the people who are angry and upset.”

Employed people are divided on whether those working in person at their own workplaces should be required to wear masks. Thirty-four percent say they’re in favor of that requirement, 33% are opposed and 33% are neither in favor nor opposed. Among workers who are Democrats, 48% are in favor and 18% are opposed. Among workers who are Republicans, 53% are opposed and 18% are in favor.

Mike Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, said messaging over the mask mandate would have been more effective if it required N95 or KN95 respirators, which are more effective at preventing transmission of the virus.

“But you have actually created a real challenge with yourself with the public who are now being selective if not outright angry about these mandates,” said Osterholm, who added that he will continue to wear his N95 mask on planes.

More than half in US support mask mandate on planes, public transit

A new AP-NORC poll finds Americans are somewhat more likely to support a mask mandate for people traveling on planes and public transit than for those at crowded events or for workers interacting with the public.

Do you favor or oppose a mask mandate for ____ ?

Favor

Neither

Oppose

People traveling on airplanes, trains and public transit

56%

Workers who interact with the public, such as at restaurants

49%

People attending crowded public events

49%

Results based on interviews with 1,085 U.S. adults conducted April 14–18. The margin of error is ±3.9 percentage points for the full sample.

Source: AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research

___

The AP-NORC poll of 1,085 adults was conducted April 14-18 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.