Ukraine says Russian ship carrying stolen Ukrainian grain detained by Turkey


EURACTIV.com with Reuters
Jul 3, 2022

A file photo of the Russian cargo ship Zhybek Zholy. [Twitter]

Turkish customs authorities have detained a Russian cargo ship carrying grain which Ukraine says is stolen, Ukraine’s ambassador to Turkey said on Sunday (3 July).

Ukraine had previously asked Turkey to detain the Russian-flagged Zhibek Zholy cargo ship, according to an official and documents viewed by Reuters.

Last week, a Ukrainian foreign ministry official, citing information received from the country’s maritime administration, said the 7,146 dwt Zhibek Zholy had loaded the first cargo of some 4,500 tonnes of grain from Berdyansk, which the official said belonged to Ukraine.

In a letter dated 30 June to Turkey’s justice ministry, Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office separately that the Zhibek Zholy was involved in the “illegal export of Ukrainian grain” from Berdyansk and headed to Karasu, Turkey, with 7,000 tonnes of cargo, which is a larger cargo than cited by the official.

The Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office asked Turkey to “conduct an inspection of this sea vessel, seize samples of grain for forensic examination, demand information on the location of such grain”, the letter said, adding that Ukraine was ready to conduct a joint investigation with Turkish authorities.

Reuters reporters saw the Zhibek Zholy ship anchored about 1 km from shore and outside of the Karasu port on Sunday, with no obvious signs of movement aboard or by other vessels nearby.

“We have full co-operation. The ship is currently standing at the entrance to the port, it has been detained by the customs authorities of Turkey,” Ambassador Vasyl Bodnar said on Ukrainian national television.

Bodnar said the ship’s fate would be decided by a meeting of investigators on Monday and that Ukraine was hoping for the confiscation of the grain.

Ukraine has accused Russia of stealing grain from the territories that Russian forces have seized since Moscow’s invasion began in late February. The Kremlin has previously denied that Russia has stolen any Ukrainian grain.

A Ukrainian foreign ministry official, citing information from Ukraine’s maritime administration, told Reuters on Friday the 7,146 dwt Zhibek Zholy had loaded the first cargo of some 4,500 tonnes of Ukrainian grain from Berdyansk, a Russian-occupied port in south Ukraine.

The region’s Sakarya port authority was not immediately available for comment. Turkey’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request to comment.

The UK is reportedly providing technology to allow grain to be tested to make sure it has not been stolen by Russia from Ukrainian silos and sold abroad for profit.

AUSTRALIA LESSONS FOR CANADA
Rising interest rates could spark job losses.

Is this the best system we have?

By business reporter Gareth Hutchens

Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe is expected to lift interest rates a number of times this year.(ABC News: John Gunn)

The Reserve Bank will consider lifting interest rates again today.

Some economists think we'll see a big rate rise, with more rate hikes to follow in coming months.

But will rapid rates rises cause growth to slow and unemployment to rise? And if they will, what will it mean for the unemployed?

Well, we already use unemployment to dampen inflation. That could provide a clue.
Higher unemployment to stamp out inflation?

This inflation is a global problem and experts everywhere are trying to fix it.

But a few weeks ago, American economist Larry Summers said if US policymakers wanted to get their inflation under control they'd have to allow unemployment to rise significantly in coming years.

He said there were few options available to them.

"We need five years of unemployment above 5 per cent to contain inflation — in other words, we need two years of 7.5 per cent unemployment or five years of 6 per cent unemployment or one year of 10 per cent unemployment," he said.

It's not uncommon to hear an economist speak so frankly, and Mr Summers is as mainstream as it gets.

If we're hit by stagflation, it will be different this time

The World Bank has warned the global economy will soon experience stagflation, but that doesn't mean we're returning to the 1970s, writes Gareth Hutchens.

Read more

But it was callous.

Through different periods of history, economists like him have often suggested the best "remedy" to kill inflation is higher unemployment.

According to the logic, when you take money away from people they won't have money to spend, so prices will eventually drop and the economy will re-equilibrate.

But is that the best we can do?

Wouldn't it be better to target the specific sources of inflation, rather than carpet-bombing the economy with socially destructive "remedies"?

Or is it always necessary to have a little social destruction, with a sharp contraction in spending, to prevent everyone having to experience much worse social destruction later on if high inflation becomes embedded?
Goodbye to the old paradigm

It's worth remembering where we are.

For the last 40 years, in the neoliberal era, policymakers in advanced economies have been using unemployment to keep a lid on inflation anyway.

And it's been socially destructive in its own way because it's led to the emergence of unemployment "scarring" and coincided with the rise of underemployment and growing income and wealth inequality.

Aim for full employment
Eminent economist Professor Ross Garnaut criticises Australia's policymakers for allowing hundreds of thousands of people to remain unemployed in recent years.

Read more

Why did they do that?

Because after suffering through stagflation in the 1970s, policymakers wanted to prevent stubbornly high inflation ever becoming a problem again, so they abandoned the post-war policy of "full employment".

In its place, they started trying to keep just enough "slack" in the economy to prevent serious price pressures returning.

And they decided to maintain that slack by having more unemployed people in the economy than jobs available.

It was a radical departure from the previous way of thinking.

As historian Frank Crowley put it: "The ideal of full employment was lost, possibly forever; and politicians became accustomed to a notion which would once have appalled them — an 'acceptable level' of unemployment."

However, there was clearly a moral problem with the policy.

If the unemployed were going to be used as inflation shock absorbers for the economy, shouldn't their role have been officially recognised and appropriately compensated?

And shouldn't policymakers have felt a greater obligation to protect the unemployed who were going to be living under the new, higher-unemployment regime?
Goodbye to the Commonwealth Employment Service

Two important things occurred after that change in policy.

First, after "full employment" was abandoned, the federal government began chiselling away at the institution that supported it.

That institution was the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES).

Since 1946, the CES had been responsible for linking unemployed people with job vacancies, filling labour shortages, and producing regular statistics on the labour force.

It had offices everywhere, with specialist staff that maintained relationships with employers around the country.

Back then, when politicians boasted about finding work for unemployed Australians, it wasn't rhetoric. They were responsible for the government agency that did so.

Here's an excerpt from a parliamentary debate in 1963 in which William McMahon, then minister for labour, bragged about his government's achievements:


"Last year I said during the budget debate that I thought we would have about 75,000 school leavers registering with the Commonwealth Employment Service. It turned out that there were 80,000, and nearly all of them have been found employment.

"A record number of job vacancies was registered with the Department of Labour and National Service during July. We are placing people in jobs at the rate of 7,500 a week.

"Of the eighty-odd thousand young people we had registered with us throughout the year, only 1,300 young men are on our books now, and I have increasing hope that those people, or a large number of them, will be placed in jobs in the weeks that are to come."

However, when full employment was ditched, the CES was white-anted.

CES staff, who'd spent their careers trying to help unemployed people find work, were increasingly asked to spend more time monitoring the behaviour of the unemployed to help find budget savings by cutting people off welfare for failing numerous "activity tests".

A new philosophy blew through Canberra, on winds from overseas, that saw value in attaching increasingly onerous conditions to welfare payments.

Robodebt a 'shameful chapter', judge says
A Federal Court judge delivers a withering assessment of the unlawful Robodebt recovery scheme, calling it a "massive failure in public administration" of Australia's social security scheme.

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Initially, there was strong resistance from CES staff to the new culture, but their resistance was worn down.

And things changed fundamentally in 1998 when the "employment services" the CES provided were privatised.

"This radical transformation of employment service delivery is without parallel in OECD countries," noted the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in a special paper on Australia's new labour market experiment.

"Since the introduction of Job Network in 1998, employment services are mainly offered by independent providers from the private and community sector.

"The remaining government body is offering services on the same terms and conditions as the private providers, and has retained only a relatively minor share in the market."

Fast forward to 2022, and that privatisation has proven very profitable for the private companies that win lucrative government contracts to deliver those "employment services" each year.

But it's also given those private companies power to suspend Australians' welfare payments.
An unemployment benefit below the poverty line

Second, even though full employment was discarded long ago, and the government's "employment services" were privatised, the purchasing power of Australia's unemployment benefit was also allowed to deteriorate.

In fact, it's deteriorated so much since the 1990s that the OECD has called for change.

"The income shock from falling into unemployment in Australia is much larger than in other countries and minimum income supports remain well below the relative poverty line," the OECD warned in September last year.

"One estimate suggests that 85 per cent of recipients of unemployment benefits will be in poverty.

"The government should further increase the generosity of unemployment benefits and consider indexing further increases to average wage growth," it said.

And it published the graph below.


What will happen to the unemployed?

The Reserve Bank board will decide today if it wants to lift interest rates again.

RBA governor Philip Lowe says he wants to remove inflation from the system before it becomes embedded.

Officially, he's said he believes the RBA can achieve that goal without making unemployment rise because the labour market is in such good shape.

The unemployed are team 'inflation control'

Since the 1980s, our economic policies have used thousands of unemployed people as a buffer against inflation. Were you one of them?

For evidence, he's said there's still a lot of demand from employers for workers, and households still have hundreds of billions of dollars in savings left over from the stimulus program that should be able to support their spending through the rate rises.

But put that aside for the moment.

The point is that central banks around the world are currently lifting interest rates to try to dampen inflation, knowing it could cause millions of job losses worldwide.

The priority is killing inflation and achieving some price stability.

And in Australia, some economists think the RBA will actually end up lifting rates by so much that the unemployment rate will end up rising above 4.5 per cent by the end of next year, prompting the RBA to have to cut rates again.

So, what will happen to the unemployed in that situation?

Will the people who lose their jobs be treated well by our corporate "employment service providers" or find the unemployment benefit they receive adequate?

This is the system past policymakers have built.
A windfall profits tax?

Finally, there's always the question of alternatives.

Could there be other ways to combat the current causes of inflation?

One of the main problems for the RBA, in this episode of inflation, is that its emergency-low interest rates led to property prices exploding during the pandemic, which itself was socially destructive.

Would a gas export tax push gas prices down for Australians?

Australia has blown its chance to use its vast gas fields to help the economy transition to renewable energy, says Ken Henry.

The RBA says it needs to return rates to more normal levels to stop them distorting asset prices and financial markets further.

But are there other ways to dampen consumer price inflation in these circumstances?

As some economists have noted, oil and gas companies are reaping extraordinary profits from soaring energy prices at the moment, and those soaring prices are hurting household budgets.

How will lifting interest rates push energy prices down?

Richard Denniss from the Australia Institute says a "windfall profits tax" on the gas and coal industry could be used to push down important prices in other areas of the economy, like education or child care.

And that's just one alternative idea.

It's worth thinking about others. And their impact on unemployment should be front of mind.

WE HOPE POILIEVRE THE ALIENATOR GETS IN

LILLEY: CPC leadership race still undecided after membership numbers released

Author of the article: Brian Lilley
Publishing date:Jul 04, 2022 • 

Nerd-a-thon: Federal Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre holds a campaign rally in Toronto, Saturday, April 30, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

The numbers are staggering: 675,000 Canadians now have membership in the Conservative Party of Canada.

Leadership front-runner Pierre Poilievre has claimed to have sold 311,958 memberships.

Despite all this, Poilievre isn’t guaranteed to win.

The Conservative Party has a complex voting system that gives each riding 100 points, or one point for each voting member if the riding has fewer than 100 members. To win, a candidate needs to hit the magic number of 16,901 points once the ballots are cast in each riding across the country.

Poilievre’s campaign has impressively signed up 46% of the party’s total membership, if we take his numbers at face value. Just for the record, I’ll take all the campaign claims of sales at face value until I see evidence that they aren’t telling the truth.

That said, 46% of the total party membership may not be enough to win.

Months ago, before the membership sales numbers were known — before Poilievre’s massive rallies were in the news — a veteran of CPC leadership races said that unless he gets 45% or more of the vote on the first ballot, he won’t win.

The structure of the leadership race, a ranked ballot system, makes it more difficult for the front-runner to pick up support from those eliminated early in the race. We already know that about 95,000 of the 269,000 eligible voters in the 2020 Conservative leadership race did not vote.

If 35% of Poilievre’s supporters don’t vote, that would make it difficult for him to win, despite the obvious advantage of having sold the most memberships. It’s why in conversations with campaign team members for the three front-runners – Poilievre, Jean Charest and Patrick Brown – that none of them were declaring victory.

The Charest and Brown campaigns claimed that they have a valid path to victory due to the structure of the points system. Poilievre’s campaign has been going shock and awe on his membership sales, the size of his rallies and his social media presence.

Yet, a figure put forward that was not disputed by any of these camps appears to show that two-thirds of the 675,000 memberships in the party are held in less than 100 ridings concentrated in Western Canada and rural Ontario. I’m also told that 20 ridings combined account for more than 100,000 memberships.

If true — and just as no one will deny it, no one will officially confirm these figures — this isn’t a good situation for the Poilievre campaign. It would paint a portrait of a very concentrated and inefficient vote.

“Looks real,” said one party insider familiar with the numbers and not affiliated with any campaign.

The three biggest ridings by membership are in Alberta, the two largest ridings by membership in Ontario are in Carleton — the riding held by Poilievre — and Brampton East, in the heart of Brown’s power base. Ontario alone has some 293,000 members, of which Poilievre’s campaign claims to have sold 118,000 or 40% of the total.

To win in Ontario and in Quebec, which means to win the leadership, Poilievre needs to have all the people he sold memberships to actually mail in their ballots, and he needs to take some existing party membership. Of the 33,800 points available across the country, 19,900 are in Ontario and Quebec while the Atlantic provinces with 3,200 points count almost as much as Alberta’s 3,400 points.

Bottom line, despite the shock and awe of Poilievre’s campaign numbers, this race isn’t over and both Charest and Brown have paths to victory. While those paths to victory may be narrow, they do exist much to the chagrin of Poilievre and his supporters.

Just as with general election campaigns, this race may come down to who is best able to get their vote out when it counts

Toronto Maple Leafs fans voted NHL’s ‘most annoying,' ‘most delusional’

Author of the article:

Denette Wilford

Publishing date:

Jul 04, 2022  •

Fans react during game seven of the Toronto Maple Leafs NHL playoff hockey game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, in Toronto on Saturday May 14, 2022. PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER KATSAROV /THE CANADIAN PRESS

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The Toronto Maple Leafs’ propensity for losing may be annoying, but do the team’s fans deserve to be described in the same way?

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Survey says, yes, yes they do.

Leafs fans have not only been branded “most annoying,” but they were also voted “most delusional,” according to a survey conducted by hockey analytics expert JFresh Hockey.

It’s understandable, though, given how high the Leafs get fans’ hopes up, yet don’t quite come through when it matters most.

Of the 6,500 responses it received, JFresh found that Toronto topped the “most annoying” list by a long shot. They were followed by fans of the New York Rangers, Montreal Canadiens, Edmonton Oilers and St. Louis Blues.

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The Leafs’ fanbase is also considered far more delusional than that of the Oilers, Rangers, Canadiens and Vancouver Canucks.

To pour more salt on their wounds, Leafs’ fans took the top spot in the “most unhinged and prone to melting down over next to nothing” category, once again besting the aforementioned Oilers, Rangers, Habs and Canucks.

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And in a bit of a contradiction, respondents to the question “Which NHL fanbase isn’t as annoying as its reputation,” the Leafs were on top yet again. The Boston Bruins, Carolina Hurricanes, Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightning rounded out the top five.

In case you were curious about who was quick to label Toronto as “most annoying,” blame the fans of Montreal, Edmonton, Boston, Vancouver, Tampa Bay, Winnipeg Jets, Ottawa Senators, Buffalo Sabres, Detroit Red Wings, Philadelphia Flyers and Chicago Blackhawks for the votes.

Some people were displeased, accusing JFresh of skewing the survey sample because “some fan bases are more represented than others” so it was re-scaled to address that concern.

Toronto still ended up wearing the “most annoying” crown, with nearly three times the amount of votes.

COVID IS STILL HERE

Since the pandemic began, more than 10,000 Australians have died of COVID-19 and, if this year's trend continues, it could get a lot worse

By Samantha Hawley and Flint Duxfield for ABC News Daily
Epidemiologist says many COVID-19 deaths could have been avoided through simple measures such as wearing a mask.(ABC Radio Sydney: Matt Bamford)
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An epidemiologist has warned that if current trends continue, at least another 7,500 Australians will die from COVID-19 by the end of the year.

Key points:In Australia, more than 10,000 people have died from COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic
An epidemiologist predicts another 7,500 Australians will die before the end of 2022
A decline in mask-wearing and a dip in vaccination rates are the largest factors behind the spike

On Sunday, Australia surpassed 10,000 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, and about 7,500 of those occurred in the first half of 2022.

Epidemiologist Mike Toole says a decline in mask-wearing and a dip in vaccination rates are the main factors behind the spike.

"I estimate 7 million Australians are not protected at the moment against the latest variants of Omicron because they have not had a third dose of a COVID vaccine," Professor Toole told the ABC News Daily podcast.

"Or, if they're children, they haven't even had two doses. Only 40 per cent of our kids aged 5 to 11 have had two doses of the COVID vaccine, so the other 60 per cent are totally unprotected."

Professor Toole is an associate principal research fellow at the Burnet Institute, and he has also worked for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

He said it was difficult to separate the impact of vaccinations and mask-wearing, but 

he pointed to research collated during the second wave of COVID-19 in Victoria.

It showed a 45 per cent drop in daily case numbers once mask-wearing was mandated.

"All the other restrictions played a role too, but we were able to differentiate the impact of masks," he noted.

Professor Toole said the same concept could be applied as Australia looked to reduce future deaths.

"So, we could say that up to a half of those predicted deaths could be prevented by those people not getting infected in the first place. And that's through wearing a mask," he said.

"In my own experience, I'm one of the rare people [who] continues to wear a mask indoors."

"In the medium-to-long term, we need to invest seriously in improving ventilation in indoor places, starting with schools and hospitals, of course, but eventually to all indoor retail and hospitality venues," he said.

Mask-wearing lowers transmission

Professor Mike Toole says there is much more we can do

 to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

(ABC News: Ron Ekkel)

Professor Toole says that many of the 10,000 deaths that have already occurred could have been avoided.

"You'll see that just a tiny proportion of the deaths in Victoria were among people who had four doses of a vaccine," he said.

He noted that 37 per cent of deaths in Victoria in the first six months of the year "were in people [who] had not been vaccinated at all".

"That was about 2,000 deaths that would have definitely been prevented by vaccination," Professor Toole said.

He said that a good proportion of people who died after having one or two doses of a vaccine could have been protected from the initial infection by simple measures such as wearing a mask.

"We've got a lot of data, particularly from the Burnet Institute, on the impact of wearing a mask on transmission.

"It's a measure that does not disrupt the economy.

"It may be a bit annoying, but it's certainly less disruptive than, say, a lockdown."

Australia's 'troubling' world ranking

While Australia's death toll is just a fraction of the numbers seen in nations such as the UK, where more than 170,000 people have died with COVID-19, Professor Toole said our standing in the world in terms of deaths and infection has quickly deteriorated.

"What is troubling, if you look at the last week or the last month … we're in the top five," he noted.

Excluding smaller countries, Australia currently has the third-highest weekly deaths per capita in the world, after Taiwan and New Zealand.

"And, in terms of cases per capita … we are in the top 10," Professor Toole said.

"If that keeps going, of course, the more cases there are, the more deaths there will be."

He said Taiwan and New Zealand were now also ranking much higher than ever before.

"So, you'll notice that these are countries that performed very well during the first two years of the pandemic but, in 2022, we've all more or less gone in the same direction.

"We've relied on vaccination and we've dropped just about all the other precautions that we used to take."

Australia's 10,000 grieving families

South Australian woman Paige Carter with her grandmother, who was admitted to hospital with COVID-19.(Instagram)

In January, Paige Carter's 95-year-old grandmother, Patricia, became one of the 10,000 Australians who died from COVID-19 complications.

"Our family is now a big fighting mess over what happened," Ms Carter said.

"It's not only destroyed us emotionally but it's actually destroyed our family.

"And there are 10,000 other families going through similar things that we are."

Ms Carter made headlines in January this year when she posted an impassioned plea on social media for the South Australian Premier to let her visit her COVID-positive "Nana" as she lay dying in hospital.

She was granted access to visit her grandmother the evening before she died, but she was told she couldn't enter the hospital until 8am the next morning.

By that time, Patricia was already dead and Ms Carter never got to say goodbye.

"She passed away thinking that we didn't care and now our whole family has to live with that," Ms Carter told the ABC News Daily podcast.

"She just thought we weren't coming because we didn't care."

Ms Carter said she doesn't want any more families to go through the pain of losing a loved one from COVID-19.

"Spend as much time with them as you possibly can, because now every dinner [that] I said, 'Oh, no. Sorry, Nana, I'm busy' I regret now," she said.

"It's horrible."

'TWO DOSES ARE NO LONGER ENOUGH': Canadians required to get COVID shot every nine months

Author of the article:Denette Wilford
Publishing date:Jul 04, 2022 

 Talath Shams receives her COVID-19 vaccine inside the International Conference Centre during Peel Region's "Doses After Dark" overnight vaccination clinic in Mississauga on May 15, 2021. PHOTO BY COLE BURSTON /AFP/Getty Images
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As we continue to live with COVID-19, turns out we will also have to get used to living with COVID-19 vaccinations.

Canadians will be required to get a booster shot every nine months for the foreseeable future, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos told reporters.

So if you thought you were fully vaccinated, think again.

Duclos said that the previous definitions of “fully vaccinated” makes no sense, explaining that it’s more important that shots are “up to date” and whether or not a person has “received a vaccination in the last nine months.”

He added, “We will never be fully vaccinated against COVID-19,” according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

Duclos was asked if he was preparing Canadians for the return of vaccine mandates in the fall, he reportedly replied, “We must continue to fight against COVID.”

In other words, mandates won’t be ruled out just yet.

“We want to be prepared for next fall and that requires an up-to-date vaccination which is based on the nine months.”

He clarified, “Like the virus, our immunity also evolves. Two doses are no longer enough.”

Duclos explained that “‘up to date’ means you have received your last dose in the past nine months.”

He said, “If you’ve already received a first booster, that’s great,” but suggests that Canadians check if they are eligible for a “second or third booster” to remain on top of vaccinations.

Currently, in Ontario, only those who are 60 and over, residents of First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities aged 18 and over, those who live in long-term care homes, retirement homes and congregate settings, and some immunocompromised are eligible for the next round of boosters.

Eighty-six per cent of Canadians over five years of age are fully vaccinated with two COVID-19 shots, according to NACI.

In a June 29 report, the committee recommended that boosters be offered to all other individuals from 12 to 64 years of age, regardless of the number of booster doses they have previously received.

“Cases of COVID-19, including associated hospitalizations and deaths, are currently declining in Canada,” NACI said in a release. “However, the likelihood, timing, and severity of a future wave of COVID-19 is uncertain.”

The Danger Of Seracs: Six Hikers Die After Glacier Collapses In Italy

Officials say 15 more may be missing.

The route is a popular trail. Image Credit: klikkipetra/Shutterstock.com

JACK DUNHILL
Social Media Coordinator and Staff Writer
Jul 4, 2022

At least six people have died and up to 15 people are thought to be missing after a large glacier column collapsed into a landslide in the Italian Dolomites. While hikers enjoyed the popular route at Marmolada peak, the ice cleaved off the glacier and created a huge landslide of ice and rock, crashing into a number of people along the trail and sweeping away multiple parties who were roped onto the rocks at the time.

Nine are currently injured and receiving treatment, and it is thought that foreign nationals are among the dead. 

The National Alpine and Cave Rescue Corps of Italy have since been tweeting updates about the incident, including a helpline if you have friends and family members who may not have returned from their expedition.

Helicopters and canine units are now exploring the area for survivors, though the search was paused amid fears of another glacier collapse.

It is thought the incident resulted from the collapse of a serac, a notoriously dangerous feature of glaciers typically found on high peaks. A serac is a large column or block of ice, typically many stories tall, that forms a vertical wall that is liable to collapse at any point. Their unpredictable and often catastrophic nature has gained them a reputation among the most dangerous areas of a mountain summit.

Likely the most famous series of seracs tower above the Bottleneck, an integral part of the most popular route to the summit of K2 – the second-highest mountain on Earth. The Bottleneck is a narrow couloir (a channel in a mountain) overlooked by multiple seracs from the eastern ice field. These seracs have been responsible for the vast majority of fatalities that have occurred on K2. As climbers attempt to navigate the tricky technical portion of the Bottleneck, sudden collapses of the seracs above lead to either direct impacts with climbers or the removal of safety ropes and safe routes above or below their current positions. The infamous 2008 K2 disaster was a direct result of an ice avalanche at the Bottleneck, causing the deaths of 11 mountaineers and the injury of three others.

The collapse at Marmolada peak may be partially due to extreme heat in the area, with temperatures reaching 10°C (50°F), according to local officials.

“The heat is unusual,” said Walter Milan, spokesman for the Corps, in a statement reported by the Guardian.

“That’s extreme heat. Clearly it’s something abnormal.”

Massive waterlily at Royal Botanic Gardens proves to be new species


The newly identified species, Victoria boliviana, is pictured in the wild in Bolivia. 

Photo courtesy Carlos Magdalena/Royal Botanical Gardens


July 4 (UPI) -- A massive waterlily that has been grown at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London for 177 years has been proven to be a newly identified species, researchers said Monday.

Scientists with Kew Gardens identified the species as Victoria boliviana after nearly two centuries of confusing it with Victoria amazonica, according to a Royal Botanic Gardens article on the discovery.

The giant waterlily, which can grow more than 10 feet wide and support around 176 pounds of weight, is now considered the largest waterlily species in the world. It is native to Bolivia and the largest known specimen of the species is found at the La Rinconada Gardens in the South American country.

Carlos Magdalena, a senior botanical horticulturist with the organization, had long suspected that there was a third species in the Victoria genus along with V. amazonica and Victoria cruziana after seeing a photograph of the plant at Kew Gardens.

"It was clear to me that this plant did not quite fit the description of either of the known Victoria species and therefore it had to be a third," Magdalena said in a press release.

"For almost two decades, I have been scrutinizing every single picture of wild Victoria waterlilies over the Internet, a luxury that a botanist from the 18th, 19th and most of the 20th century didn't have."

Madalena reached out to gardens in Bolivia and in 2016 began receiving donations of seeds from the suspected third species from the Santa Cruz de La Sierra Botanic Garden and the La Rinconada Gardens.

Supported by an international team of researchers, scientists at Kew Gardens then grew the seeds from the Bolivian samples and compared them with existing information on giant waterlilies by analyzing a variety of their characteristics through historical data records and DNA analysis.

Researchers said that V. boliviania is distinct from the other two species in the genus because it has a different distribution of prickles and seed shape as well as a "very genetically different" makeup.

The scientific team established the new species in a study published in the journal Frontiers in Plant science.

They said they began the research to "revisit species delimitation" in the Victoria genus and establish species hypotheses.

There were difficulties in previously identifying a new genus due in part to the fact that "Victoria is notoriously difficult to make herbarium specimens from, being big, fleshy, covered in prickles and prone to rotting in the dryer."

It helped that the three species could be grown together at Kew Gardens, a luxury that previous researchers didn't have, Magdalena said.

"Having this new data for Victoria and identifying a new species in the genus is an incredible achievement in botany," added Alex Monro, a senior author of the paper. "Properly identifying and documenting plant diversity is crucial to protecting it and sustainably benefiting from it."

LOOKING BACK IN TIME

NASA previews 'emotional' impact of James Webb images ahead of release

NASA said it plans to release the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope on July 12.

 File Photo courtesy of NASA

June 29 (UPI) -- The highly anticipated first photos from the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope provided scientists with an emotional experience, NASA officials said Wednesday, two weeks before their public release.

Thomas Zurbuchen, the head of NASA's scientific programs, said the telescope, which was launched into space in December, and its images are shedding light on "a new worldview."

He and other NASA officials spoke about the new data they're receiving from the telescope during a Wednesday briefing.

"There is already some amazing science in the can, and some [images] are yet to be taken as we go forward. We are in the middle of getting the history-making data down," he said.

The JWST is the most powerful telescope ever launched into space and will use infrared technology to view objects farther away from Earth than ever before.

It's composed of 18 hexagonal mirrors that, combined, are 21 feet across and its light-collecting area is about six times that of its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA previously released some test images the JWST took of a star in the Big Dipper known as HD 84406 as the agency worked to align the mirrors.

But on July 12, the agency will release images from the telescope's "first light" observations. Officials said the images will include the deepest-field image ever taken of the universe.

Zurbuchen said the first images nearly brought him to tears.

"It's really hard to not look at the universe in a new light and not just have a moment that is deeply personal," he said. "It's an emotional moment when you see nature suddenly releasing some of its secrets, and I would like you to imagine and look forward to that."

NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy echoed Zurbuchen's assessment of the data.

"What I have seen moved me, as a scientist, as an engineer and as a human being," she said.

NASA says its plan to bring Mars samples back to Earth is safe, but some people are worried

By Frank Kummer, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Published: July 4, 2022

PHILADELPHIA — Since September, the Perseverance rover has been picking along an ancient river delta on Mars, its robotic arms reaching out with whirling steel drill bits to core rocks, scoop soil and suck small amounts of the red planet’s atmosphere into titanium tubes.

The plan, under NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, calls for a sci-fi symphony of technology that includes launching another vehicle to Mars to bring the unsterilized samples back to Earth, drop land the samples in Utah, and shuttle them to a yet-to-be built secure facility by 2033.

There scientists will start testing for signs of ancient microbial life from about 35 samples weighing in total about one pound. The goal is also understanding the planet’s geology and climate, as well as preparing for people to one day step foot on the red planet.

But the plan gave some members of the public who attended an open hearing on the plan a bit of intragalatic agita, especially in light of the recent pandemic. That includes a retired Federal Aviation Administration engineer from South Jersey who wonders what problems an unsterilized microbe from Mars might present.

NASA is conducting its Mars Sample Return Mission with the European Space Agency and calls it one of the most meaningful missions it has undertaken.

“We also believe this to be the next logical step in our quest to eventually land humans on the surface of Mars,” Thomas Zurbuchen, an astrophysicist and head of science at NASA, said during a virtual public presentation in May. The samples collected from the ancient river delta Jezero “are thought to be the best opportunity to reveal the early evolution of Mars, including the potential” for life, Zurbuchen said.
‘Low likelihood of risk’

Some members of the public have wondered about the remote possibility that something in those samples could be alive or present a biohazard. They also wonder whether China, which has announced a similar project, and private companies will have as rigorous safeguards as NASA. Elon Musk has been enthusiastic about plans by his company Space X to explore Mars, though there is no time frame.

Public comments on NASA’s initial presentation are now closed, but a draft of an environmental impact statement on the mission is expected in the fall with another chance for the public to weigh in.,

The environmental impact statement will examine implications for both Earth and Mars regarding “recovery efforts with respect to natural, biological and cultural resources” and “impacts to the human and natural environment associated with loss of containment of Mars sample materials.”
‘Even if the risk is minimal’

Some people are nervous because NASA can’t say with 100% certainty it won’t bring back something alive or dangerous. Some of the 170 commenters in May identified themselves as scientists, doctors, or professionals. Others remained anonymous.
One commenter wrote that any samples should be “studied off-world and remotely due to the risk of planetary contamination. Even if the risk is minimal, nothing above a 0% chance should be brought back to Earth.”

Another wrote that “NASA should NOT bring samples back from Mars until we know more about how said samples will impact our safety on this planet. Test first for possible bacteria that will adversely affect our health.”

Thomas Dehel, of Gloucester Township, Camden County, was one of the scores of commenters. Retired from the Federal Aviation Administration, Dehel has a master’s degree in electrical engineering as well as a law degree. Though not affiliated with the mission, he is a Mars aficionado and operates a website devoted to the mission.

He wants NASA to proceed, but he, too, has concerns.

“We won’t know if it’s sterile or not,” Dehel said. “That’s my biggest point. We should know if we bring something back to Earth whether it’s sterile or not, to do some sort of crude test up front to see if there’s any kind of biological life.”

NASA counters that sterilizing samples first could destroy valuable information, such as biosignatures of past life. Others ask why the samples can’t be brought to the International Space Station first and examined. NASA says the space station, which is set to be decommissioned in 2031, does not have the sophisticated equipment needed for testing.

Dehel is curious why NASA put notices announcing the May hearings in only two newspapers, one in Florida and one in Utah. The agency says those newspapers are in two key areas where the mission will take place — liftoff and landing. Regardless, Dehel said the public was largely unaware, leading to low turnout in two public virtual presentations in May.

Dehel and others cite the work of Gilbert Levin, a scientist who worked as a principal investigator for a life detection experiment during NASA’s Viking mission to Mars in 1976. Levin was also named as an investigator for the Mars Sample Return Mission but died in 2021 at age 97.

Levin long maintained that tests were positive for life after Viking landers injected a nutrient solution containing radioactive carbon-14 into the Mars surface. The belief was that any living organism would emit the isotope as part of the digestion. Levin said that did occur in two locations, 4,000 miles apart.

Dehel wonders about the chance of bringing back a pathogen humans aren’t prepared to defend.

NASA, however, countered that Levin found “a substance mimicking life, but not life.” Indeed, scientists say there are other explanations for Levin’s results given that they know much more now about the chemical and mineral composition of Martian soil.

‘Remnants of past life’

Mars has a thin layer of atmosphere composed mostly of carbon dioxide and is viewed as hostile to life. But it was much different in the past when it’s believed water flowed on its surface and a thicker atmosphere would have kept the surface warmer than the current average temperature of -81 degrees, with dips to -220 degrees.

Nathan Yee, a Rutgers professor who teaches a course in astrobiology and who has worked with NASA, agrees that’s it’s unlikely anything is alive at or near the surface where Perseverance is collecting its samples.

Yee said intense UV radiation bombards Mars. UV radiation kills microbes by breaking apart their DNA. Indeed, UV sterilizers are used on Earth to kill bacteria in aquariums and drinking water. You can buy portable UV sanitizers for home use.

And unlike Earth, Mars lacks magnetic fields capable of deflecting solar winds that also carry particles with dangerous amounts of radiation.

Overall, Yee said it would be very hard for life to survive those conditions. And NASA contends meteorites from Mars have landed on Earth “without any adverse effects to our biosphere.”

Lee said that even if microbes were found alive, it’s doubtful they would pose a threat.

“There has to be a long, long time of evolution for microbes to learn how to interact and attach onto animal cells, enter animal cells, and use the machinery of an animal cell to replicate,” Yee said. “That’s a very complex choreographed dance.”

However, Yee said it’s possible samples could contain “remnants of past life.” He also said recent data suggest that the deep subsurface of Mars contains liquid water and might harbor life.