IAEA calls for safety zone around Ukraine nuclear plant


IAEA officials inspect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine last Thursday. Photo by IAEA Press Office/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 6 (UPI) -- United Nations inspectors on Tuesday called for the immediate establishment of a nuclear safety and security protection zone around Europe's largest nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine, saying it was gravely concerned about the situation.

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency went to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant last week, checking critical safety systems and assessing damage at the facility. In their report, they said that shelling should be stopped immediately.

"While the ongoing shelling has not yet triggered a nuclear emergency, it continues to represent a constant threat to nuclear safety and security with potential impact on critical safety functions that may lead to radiological consequences with great safety significance," the report said.

"There is an urgent need for interim measures to prevent a nuclear accident arising from physical damage caused by military means," the IAEA added. "This can be achieved by the immediate establishment of a nuclear safety and security protection zone."

Ukraine's main energy utility said it deliberately took the plant's final nuclear reactor offline so crews could extinguish a fire that had broken out due to fighting near the facility. It was the second time in two weeks that the plant became entirely disconnected from the main power grid, which forces the plant to use temporary power generators.

The Zaporizhzhia plant is the largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine and all of Europe.

Fighting near the facility continued on Tuesday, heightening danger and concern for the plant. Russian forces have controlled the facility, which is located on the banks of the Dnipro River, since they took control of the city of Zaporizhzhia months ago.

Meanwhile, Ukraine kept up its counteroffensive in the south on Tuesday as Russian forces maintained attacks in the east. Russia's military also struck an oil depot in central Ukraine, officials said. State-run Russian media also reported Ukrainian attacks in the southern town of Kakhovka along the Dnipro River.

A Ukrainian policeman inspects debris from a rocket near a recently 

shelled school in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Saturday. 

Photo by Sergey Kozlov/EPA-EFE

Vladimir Leontiev, the Russian-supported head of the local administration, said air defenses shot down most of the Ukrainian missile attacks late Monday and early Tuesday.

Leontiev said that Ukraine's attacks struck road infrastructure and a hydroelectric power station in the area. Ukrainian airstrikes and shelling attacks targeted a nearby Russian-held bridge to disrupt supply lines.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said that the counteroffensive has expanded to the east and southeast.

"Since the beginning of the operation to liberate the south of Ukraine, our military has liberated several settlements on the western bank of the Dnieper," Arestovych said according to The Guardian.

"These are subtle movements on the map. But the beginning of counteroffensive actions on different sectors of the front on our part speaks of a change in the situation as a whole."

Heavy fire and a Russian missile attack were reported Tuesday at an oil depot in Kryvyi Rih. Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration head Valentyn Reznichenko said firefighters and a fire truck responded to the attack.

Despite repeated Russian attacks in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian officials say there has been no change in territorial control.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that U.S. intelligence said in a newly declassified report that Russia is buying weapons from North Korea due to a shortage of artillery.

Russia has already received drone equipment from Iran, which reflects the difficulty it faces in strengthening supply chains in light of sanctions from the United States and western Europe.

IAEA report on Zaporizhzhia: 'The Russian side is really playing it to their advantage'

AFP
Issued on: 07/09/2022 - 
Video by: Mark OWEN

https://vod-france24.akamaized.net/en/vod/2022/09/06/EN_20220906_220336_220711_CS.mp4

For more analysis on IAEA's call for a security zone at Ukraine's frontline nuclear plant, FRANCE 24 is joined by Mariana Budjeryn, Senior Research Associate with the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center. FRANCE 24's Mark Owen asks our guest if it would be a "logical" solution to put in charge a team of UN peacekeepers at Zaporizhzhia to protect it and designate it neutral territory. While Ms. Budjeryn does believe "that would be a very logical and much-needed solution," she does not see that as a "feasible solution" for the simple reason that Russia will never agree to such a mission. "The problem there is that the authorization for any sort of peacekeeping mission of the UN has to be granted by the UN Security Council on which Russia wields a veto power."

What’s happening with Ukraine’s threatened nuclear plant
By The Associated Press

today

 A Russian serviceman guards an area of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in territory under Russian military control, southeastern Ukraine, May 1, 2022. Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant , built during the Soviet era and one of the 10 biggest in the world, has been engulfed by fighting between Russian and Ukrainian troops in recent weeks, fueling concerns of a nuclear catastrophe. 

(AP Photo, File)

Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, built during the Soviet era and one of the 10 biggest in the world, has been engulfed by fighting between Russian and Ukrainian troops in recent weeks, fueling concerns of a nuclear catastrophe.

Here is a look at the current situation:

WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW

The plant has six reactors, only one of which was operational as of Saturday.

The shelling so far hasn’t damaged the plant’s reactors or spent nuclear fuel storage, but has repeatedly struck some auxiliary equipment.

On Monday, the plant was knocked off Ukraine’s electricity grid after its last transmission line was disconnected because of a fire caused by shelling.

Pending repairs, the plant’s only operational reactor was generating the power the plant needs for its own safety in so-called “island mode.”

Two inspectors from the U.N.’s atomic watchdog have remained at the plant following a visit by a larger team last week.

WHAT ARE THE POTENTIAL THREATS

Fighting near the plant has fueled fears of a disaster like the one at Chernobyl, where a reactor exploded and spewed deadly radiation, contaminating a vast area in the world’s worst nuclear accident.

Nuclear experts say while the buildings housing Zaporizhzhia’s reactors are protected by reinforced concrete that could withstand an errant shell or rocket, a disruption in the electrical supply could knock out cooling systems essential for the reactors’ safety. Emergency diesel generators can be unreliable.

“If power is lost in the fog of war, then we are in unchartered territory,” says Paul Dorfman, a nuclear safety expert at the University of Sussex in England.

WHAT IS “ISLAND MODE”

Functioning in “island mode” supplies power for the residual heat removal of the reactor cores and the spent fuel pools.

Experts say it is very unreliable.

Mycle Schneider, an independent policy consultant and coordinator of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, said if the diesel generators fail, a core meltdown could occur within hours.

If the reactor is already turned off, the risk depends on the time since shutdown. The less time has passed, the more cooling is required, said Schneider.

While the pool containing Zaphorizhzha’s spent fuel is located inside the plant’s containment area, a serious reactor accident would likely affect the pool as well.

“Irradiated fuel overheats and catches fire spontaneously if it exposed to air and not cooled anymore,” said Schneider.

___

UN agency calls for safety zone around Ukraine nuclear plant

By HANNA ARHIROVA

yesterday

1 of 10

A Ukrainian soldier fires on the front line in the Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, Sat. Sept. 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Kostiantyn Liberov)


KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The U.N. atomic watchdog agency urged Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday to establish a “nuclear safety and security protection zone” around the Zaporizhzhia power plant amid mounting fears the fighting could trigger a catastrophe in a country still scarred by the Chernobyl disaster.

“We are playing with fire, and something very, very catastrophic could take place,” Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned the U.N. Security Council, days after leading an inspection visit to the plant.

In a detailed report on its visit, the IAEA said shelling around the Europe’s largest nuclear power plant should stop immediately. “This requires agreement by all relevant parties to the establishment of a nuclear safety and security protection zone” around the plant, it said.

At the Security Council meeting, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres likewise demanded that Russian and Ukrainian forces commit to halting all military activity around the plant and agree on a “demilitarized perimeter.”

Guterres said this would include “a commitment by Russian forces to withdraw all military personnel and equipment from that perimeter and a commitment by Ukrainian forces not to move into it.”

Asked by reporters about establishing a demilitarized zone, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said the proposal “is not serious.”

“The Ukrainians will immediately step in and ruin the whole thing. We’re defending, we’re protecting the station,” he said. “In fact, it is not militarized. There is no equipment at the station.”

Speaking to journalists later, Nebenizia said Russia wanted to see details of the proposals for demilitarized and protection zones.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country needs to look at the specifics of the protection-zone proposal and could support the measure if it envisions the demilitarization of the plant.

In his nightly address to the nation, Zelenskyy praised the IAEA report’s “clear references” to the presence of Russian troops and military equipment at the plant. He urged the agency to explicitly back Kyiv’s long-held position that Russian forces need to withdraw from the facility and its surroundings.

Shelling continued around the plant on Tuesday, a day after it was again knocked off Ukraine’s electrical grid and put in the precarious position of relying on its own power to run its safety systems.

Normally the plant relies on power from the outside to run the critical cooling systems that keep its reactors and its spent fuel from overheating. A loss of those systems could lead to a meltdown or other release of radiation.

“For radiation protection professionals, for the Ukrainian and even the Russian people, and those of central Europe, this is a very worrying time — and that’s an understatement,” said Paul Dorfman, a nuclear safety expert at the University of Sussex in England.

Russia and Ukraine accused each other of shelling Enerhodar, the city where the plant is situated. The Ukrainians also charged that the Kremlin’s forces fired on a town across the Dnieper River from the power station.

The Ukrainian mayor of Enerhodar, Dmytro Orlov, reported a powerful blast in the city around midday. The explosion left the city of 53,000 cut off from its power and water supplies. It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the blast.

World leaders have called for the demilitarization of the plant, which has been occupied by Russian forces since the early days of the war but is being run by Ukrainian engineers.

In its report, the IAEA did not assign blame for the shelling at the plant. The agency has sought to keep out of the political fray.

It did note that on several occasions, the plant lost, fully or in part, its off-site power supply because of military activity in the area. The U.N. agency said a backup power supply line should be reestablished and asked that “all military activities that may affect the power supply systems end.”

In addition, the IAEA warned that the Ukrainian staff operating the plant under Russian military occupation is “under constant high stress and pressure, especially with the limited staff available” — a situation that could “lead to increased human error with implications for nuclear safety.”

It recommended that “an appropriate work environment, including family support,” be reestablished.

The IAEA also said the staff is not being given unrestricted access to some parts of the plant and must get permission from the Russian occupying forces to reach the cooling ponds where spent fuel is kept. Grossi expressed concern that that could hamper the staff’s response in an emergency.

The report said the team saw Russian military personnel, vehicles and equipment at various locations, including several military trucks on the floor of two turbine halls. It called for “the removal of vehicles from areas that could interfere with the operation of safety and security systems and equipment.”

Two inspectors from the IAEA mission remained at the plant, a decision welcomed by Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak.

“There are Russian troops now who don’t understand what’s happening, don’t assess the risks correctly,” Podolyak said. “There is a number of our workers there, who need some kind of protection, people from the international community standing by their side and telling (Russian troops): ‘Don’t touch these people, let them work.’”

On Monday, the IAEA said Ukrainian authorities reported that the plant’s last transmission line linking it to the nation’s power grid was disconnected to allow workers to put out a fire caused by shelling.

Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko told Ukrainian television: “Any repairs are impossible at this point — there are ongoing hostilities around the plant.”

In the meantime, the plant’s only remaining operational reactor will “generate the power the plant needs for its safety and other functions,” the IAEA said.

Mycle Schneider, an independent analyst in Canada on nuclear energy, said that means the plant was probably functioning in “island mode,” or producing electricity for its own operations.

“Island mode is a very shaky, unstable and unreliable way to provide continuous power supply to a nuclear plant,” Schneider said. He said that “many if not most islanding attempts fail.”

The Zaporizhzhia plant has diesel emergency backup generators to produce power to run the place if the outside source is disrupted. But Schneider said the plant’s operators may have decided to go into island mode first.

If the plant turns to the diesel generators as a last resort and they fail, the reactor and the spent fuel could rapidly overheat, he said.

Experts say the reactors at Zaporizhzhia are designed to withstand natural disasters and even plane crashes, but the unpredictable fighting has repeatedly threatened the cooling systems. Ukraine in 1986 was the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident, the explosion at Chernobyl.

Ukrainian intelligence reported that residents of Enerhodar were fleeing the city out of fear. Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Russia should organize safe corridors for women and children living nearby.

“People en masse are reaching out to us for help. They are trying to leave the dangerous territory, but there are no corridors,” Vereshchuk told Ukrainian TV.

Meanwhile, gunfire and explosions were heard Tuesday afternoon in the Russian-occupied city of Berdyansk in southastern Ukraine, with Russia’s state-run media reporting that the car of the Kremlin-installed “city commandant” had been blown up. The RIA Novosti news agency said that the official, Artem Bardin, was in serious condition and that a shootout followed the assassination attempt.

The agency quoted Russian-backed local officials as saying they had launched a manhunt for the “Ukrainian saboteurs” responsible.

___

Associated Press writers Frank Jordans in Berlin and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

___

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

Stone Age skeleton missing foot may show oldest amputation
By MADDIE BURAKOFF

an hour ago

Dr Tim Maloney and Andika Priyatno work at the site in a cave in East Kalimantan, Borneo, Indonesia, March 2, 2020. The remains, which have been dated to 31,000 years old, mark the oldest evidence for amputation yet discovered. And the prehistoric “surgery” could show that humans were making medical advances much earlier than previously thought, according to the study published Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2022 in the journal Nature.(Tim Maloney/Griffith University via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — The 31,000-year-old skeleton of a young adult found in a cave in Indonesia that is missing its left foot and part of its left leg reveal the oldest known evidence of an amputation, according to a new study.

Scientists say the amputation was performed when the person was a child — and that the “patient” went on to live for years as an amputee. The prehistoric surgery could show that humans were making medical advances much earlier than previously thought, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Researchers were exploring a cave in Borneo, in a rainforest region known for having some of the earliest rock art in the world, when they came across the grave, said Tim Maloney, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Australia and the study’s lead researcher.

Though much of the skeleton was intact, it was missing its left foot and the lower part of its left leg, he explained. After examining the remains, the researchers concluded the foot bones weren’t missing from the grave, or lost in an accident — they were carefully removed.

 

 

The remaining leg bone showed a clean, slanted cut that healed over, Maloney said. There were no signs of infection, which would be expected if the child had gotten its leg bitten off by a creature like a crocodile. And there were also no signs of a crushing fracture, which would have been expected if the leg had snapped off in an accident.



The person appears to have lived for around six to nine more years after losing the limb, eventually dying from unknown causes as a young adult, researchers say.

This shows that the prehistoric foragers knew enough about medicine to perform the surgery without fatal blood loss or infection, the authors concluded. Researchers don’t know what kind of tool was used to amputate the limb, or how infection was prevented — but they speculate that a sharp stone tool may have made the cut, and point out that some of the rich plant life in the region has medicinal properties.

Also, the community would have had to care for the child for years afterward, since surviving the rugged terrain as an amputee wouldn’t have been easy.

This early surgery “rewrites the history of human medical knowledge and developments,” Maloney said at a press briefing.

Before this find, the earliest example of amputation had been in a French farmer from 7,000 years ago, who had part of his forearm removed. Scientists had thought that advanced medical practices developed around 10,000 years ago, as humans settled down into agricultural societies, the study authors said.

But this study adds to growing evidence that humans started caring for each other’s health much earlier in their history, said Alecia Schrenk, an anthropologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who was not involved with the study.

“It had long been assumed healthcare is a newer invention,” Schrenk said in an email. “Research like this article demonstrates that prehistoric peoples were not just left to fend for themselves.”

———

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Elected officials, police chiefs on leaked Oath Keepers list

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

today

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, center, speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington, June 25, 2017. A new report says that the names of hundreds of U.S. law enforcement officers, elected officials and military members appear on the leaked membership rolls of a far-right extremist group that's accused of playing a key role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism pored over more than 38,000 names on leaked Oath Keepers membership lists to find more than 370 people it believes are currently working in law enforcement agencies.

(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)


The names of hundreds of U.S. law enforcement officers, elected officials and military members appear on the leaked membership rolls of a far-right extremist group that’s accused of playing a key role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, according to a report released Wednesday.

The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism pored over more than 38,000 names on leaked Oath Keepers membership lists and identified more than 370 people it believes currently work in law enforcement agencies — including as police chiefs and sheriffs — and more than 100 people who are currently members of the military.

It also identified more than 80 people who were running for or served in public office as of early August. The membership information was compiled into a database published by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets.

The data raises fresh concerns about the presence of extremists in law enforcement and the military who are tasked with enforcing laws and protecting the U.S. It’s especially problematic for public servants to be associated with extremists at a time when lies about the 2020 election are fueling threats of violence against lawmakers and institutions.

“Even for those who claimed to have left the organization when it began to employ more aggressive tactics in 2014, it is important to remember that the Oath Keepers have espoused extremism since their founding, and this fact was not enough to deter these individuals from signing up,” the report says.

Appearing in the Oath Keepers’ database doesn’t prove that a person was ever an active member of the group or shares its ideology. Some people on the list contacted by The Associated Press said they were briefly members years ago and are no longer affiliated with the group. Some said they were never dues-paying members.

“Their views are far too extreme for me,” said Shawn Mobley, sheriff of Otero County, Colorado. Mobley told the AP in an email that he distanced himself from the Oath Keepers years ago over concerns about its involvement in the standoff against the federal government at Bundy Ranch in Bunkerville, Nevada, among other things.

The Oath Keepers, founded in 2009 by Stewart Rhodes, is a loosely organized conspiracy theory-fueled group that recruits current and former military, police and first responders. It asks its members to vow to defend the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” promotes the belief that the federal government is out to strip citizens of their civil liberties and paints its followers as defenders against tyranny.

More than two dozen people associated with the Oath Keepers — including Rhodes — have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack. Rhodes and four other Oath Keeper members or associates are heading to trial this month on seditious conspiracy charges for what prosecutors have described as a weekslong plot to keep then-President Donald Trump in power. Rhodes and the other Oath Keepers say that they are innocent and that there was no plan to attack the Capitol.

The Oath Keepers has grown quickly along with the wider anti-government movement and used the tools of the internet to spread their message during Barack Obama’s presidency, said Rachel Carroll Rivas, interim deputy director of research with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project. But since Jan. 6 and Rhodes’ arrest, the group has struggled to keep members, she said.

That’s partly because Oath Keepers had been associated so strongly with Rhodes that the removal of the central figure had an outsized impact, and partly because many associated with the group were often those who wanted to be considered respectable in their communities, she said.

“The image of being associated with Jan. 6 was too much for many of those folks,” she said.

Among the elected officials whose name appears on the membership lists is South Dakota state Rep. Phil Jensen, who won a June Republican primary in his bid for reelection. Jensen told the AP he paid for a one-year membership in 2014 but never received any Oath Keepers’ literature, attended any meetings or renewed his membership.

Jensen said he felt compelled to join because he “believed in the oath that we took to support the US Constitution and to defend it against enemies foreign and domestic.” He wouldn’t say whether he now disavows the Oath Keepers, saying he doesn’t have enough information about the group today.

“Back in 2014, they appeared to be a pretty solid conservative group, I can’t speak to them now,” he said.

ADL said it found the names of at least 10 people who now work as police chiefs and 11 sheriffs. All of the police chiefs and sheriffs who responded to the AP said they no longer have any ties to the group.

“I don’t even know what they’re posting. I never get any updates,” said Mike Hollinshead, sheriff of Idaho’s Elmore County. “I’m not paying dues or membership fees or anything.”

Hollinshead, a Republican, said he was campaigning for sheriff several years ago when voters asked him if he was familiar with the Oath Keepers. Hollinshead said he wanted to learn about the group and recalls paying for access to content on the Oath Keepers’ website, but that was the extent of his involvement.

Benjamin Boeke, police chief in Oskaloosa, Iowa, recalled getting emails from the group years ago and said he believes a friend may have signed him up. But he said he never paid to become a member and doesn’t know anything about the group.

Eric Williams, police chief in Idalou, Texas, also said in an email that he hasn’t been a member or had any interaction with the Oath Keepers in over 10 years. He called the storming of the Capitol “terrible in every way.”

“I pray this country finds its way back to civility and peace in discourse with one another,” he said.

___

Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington contributed to this report.

U.S. Marshals search for 'Fat Leonard' following escape from house arrest

Sept. 6 (UPI) -- U.S. Marshals in California were searching overnight and into Tuesday for a foreign defense contractor known as "Fat Leonard" who escaped from house arrest where he was awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to a massive corruption scandal involving Navy officials.

Leonard Glenn Francis escaped his San Diego home Sunday morning after cutting off his GPS monitoring bracelet, the U.S. Marshals Service San Diego tweeted late Monday.

"As of now, Leonard Francis is wanted for violating the conditions of his pretrial release," USMS said in a statement announcing that the San Diego Fugitive Task Force has been deployed to find the Malaysian.

Circumstances surrounding his escape were not immediately available.

Francis' escape comes weeks before he was to be sentenced after he pleaded guilty in January of 2015 to charges stemming from what has come to be known as the Fat Leonard Scandal.

In his plea deal, Francis admitted to defrauding the U.S. Navy of tens of millions of dollars through over billing it for years for services that ranged from fuel to sewage disposal.

Francis said in the agreement that for steering contracts to his company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, he bribed officials with millions of dollars in cash and goods, including $500,000 in cash as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in prostitute services and associated expenses.

He identified seven Navy officials who accepted his bribes and said some of them also provided him with classified and proprietary information.

 

Fat Leonard’s escape as stunning as his Navy bribery case

By JULIE WATSON

today



This wanted poster provided by the U.S. Marshals Service shows Leonard Francis, also known as "Fat Leonard," who was on home confinement, and allegedly cut off his GPS ankle monitor and left his home on the morning of Sept. 4, 2022. Multiple agencies were searching for Francis on Tuesday Sept. 6, but they acknowledged he may already be in Mexico with the border only a 40-minute drive from his home. (U.S. Marshals Service via AP)


SAN DIEGO (AP) — Three weeks before he faced sentencing, the Malaysian defense contractor at the center of one of the biggest bribery investigations in U.S. military history made an escape as stunning and brazen as the case itself: U-Haul trucks were seen at his home in a tony San Diego neighborhood before Leonard Glenn Francis, known as “Fat Leonard,” snipped off his ankle monitor and disappeared.

Nearly a dozen U.S. law enforcement agencies were searching for Francis on Tuesday. But officials acknowledged he may already be in Mexico, and possibly on his way back to Asia.

Four years ago, U.S. District Court Judge Janis Sammartino feared Francis might run off when she turned down his lawyer’s request to allow him to be under house arrest without round-the-clock security guards watching the ailing defense contractor. At the time, Francis was cooperating with prosecutors as they pursued charges against dozens of Navy officials who accepted bribes in exchange for classified information that gave Francis’ ship servicing business in Asia an edge in getting military contracts.
When asked about the bold escape Tuesday, his lawyer, Devin Burstein, who pushed for more leniency for his client, said: “At this time, I have no comment, sorry.”

Sammartino repeatedly maintained that Francis, who was in poor health and needed medical care, could only remain under house arrest if private security guards were on site. At one point she expressed concern that if he were to escape and ended up “back in Malaysia for whatever reason,” her name would come up if anyone asked “who let somebody do this without any security,” according to a transcript of a closed-door hearing in February 2018 that was unsealed in January.

She raised similar concerns in another hearing on Dec. 17, 2020, after receiving a report that the home was left without anyone guarding it for nearly three hours, according to the court transcript. The guard said he had been on a long lunch break, and Francis apologized to the judge for the mishap.

It was unclear if round-the-clock security guards were still in place this weekend.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in San Diego declined to comment, referring calls to the U.S. Marshals Service. Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal, Omar Castillo, said his officers found no security officers at the home when they arrived Sunday afternoon, nearly seven hours after Francis is believed to have removed his ankle monitor with heavy scissors. The device was found in the home.

Castillo said someone called the San Diego police department, which sent officers to the home shortly before 2 p.m. to check on it. Castillo said he did not know who made the call. After finding the home empty, police contacted U.S. Pre-Trial Services, the federal agency in charge of his confinement, which then called the U.S. Marshals Service.

Castillo said he did not know if security guards were still ordered to be there. He said neighbors reported seeing U-Haul trucks coming and going from the home one or two days before the escape. Pre-Trial Services declined to comment or answer questions.

The home is about a 40-minute drive from the Mexican border, where vehicles stream into Tijuana and are only stopped randomly. Castillo said Mexican authorities have been put on alert and 10 U.S. law enforcement agencies at local, state and federal levels were searching for Francis on Tuesday.

Castillo said GPS ankle monitors are easy to remove and do not stop people from escaping. He added that he would not be surprised if Francis was already in Mexico since it is easy to drive into the country and not be stopped.

“That’s the risk that is taken when defendants are on GPS monitoring, you know,” he said. “They don’t all cut off their GPS bracelets, but this can happen.”

It was a surprising turn in a case already full of shocking revelations.

Nearly a decade ago, Francis was arrested in a San Diego hotel as part of a federal sting operation. Investigators say he and his company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, bilked the Navy out of more than $35 million by buying off dozens of top-ranking Navy officers with booze, sex, lavish parties and other gifts. In exchange the officers, including the first active-duty admiral to be convicted of a federal crime, concealed the scheme in which Francis would overcharge for supplying ships or charge for fake services at ports he controlled in Southeast Asia.

The case, which delved into salacious details about service members cheating on their wives and seeking out prostitutes, was an embarrassment to the Pentagon. It was prosecuted by the U.S. attorney’s office, which offered an independent authority from the military justice system.

Francis was scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 22 after working with prosecutors for years, leading to dozens of convictions.

All that cooperation will mean nothing now, but Francis may be hard to catch, given his wealth and vast worldwide connections, said Jason Forge, a former federal prosecutor in San Diego who worked on a number of high-profile corruption cases.

“He doesn’t strike me as the type of person under these circumstances to make a spontaneous decision,” Forge said. “I’m assuming this means he has planned things out and he has the wherewithal to do so. He will probably be a free bird for awhile.”

HEALTHCARE FOR PROFIT NOT PEOPLE

Pharmacy chain CVS buys home health company Signify for $8 billion

CVS' new company, Signify Health, is expected to connect -- in person and remotely

 -- with nearly 2.5 million unique members this year in the home

. File Photo by Northfoto/Shutterstock

Sept. 6 (UPI) -- CVS Health has announced that it's acquiring home health service Signify Health for about $8 billion.

The pharmacy chain said the deal includes buying the company at $30.50 per share. The move has already been approved by the boards of both companies.

In Signify, CVS gets access to the company's network of clinician physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants who make home-based visits.

Signify Health clinicians are expected to connect -- in person and remotely -- with nearly 2.5 million unique members this year in the home.

"Signify Health will play a critical role in advancing our health care services strategy and gives us a platform to accelerate our growth in value-based care," CVS Health President and CEO Karen Lynch said in a statement.

"This acquisition will enhance our connection to consumers in the home and enables providers to better address patient needs as we execute our vision to redefine the health care experience."

Lynch added that Signify will help CVS expand and develop new product offerings for home healthcare.

CVS and Signify said they expect the deal to be completed in 2023.

Last month, CVS was one of three pharmacy chains that were ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars related to the opioid crisis in Ohio. A judge in the case said that CVS, Walgreens and Walmart played a role in the crisis in two Cleveland-area counties.

UP FROM $1.7 MILLION

Japan says state funeral for assassinated former PM Shinzo Abe will cost $12 million


Shinzo Abe, then-deputy secretary-general of the Liberal Democratic Party, speaks to the media after a four-day trip to India at the LDP head office in Tokyo on March 23, 2005. He emphasized the importance of better relations with India. Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo


Sept. 6 (UPI) -- The state funeral for former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated in July, will cost more than $10 million when its held later this month, according to a government estimate Tuesday.

Abe was campaigning for another political candidate at a train station in Nara on July 8 when he was shot at close range by the assailant. The shooting and the aftermath were captured on video. Nara is about 235 miles southwest of Tokyo.

Abe's state funeral is scheduled for Sept. 27 and the Japanese government said Tuesday that it will cost about $12 million. The government had authorized $1.7 million for the funeral late last month, but that amount didn't account for security measures and other logistical expenses required for a state funeral.

About 6,000 people are expected to attend the requiem for Abe during the funeral at Nippon Budokan Hall in Tokyo. Thousands of people turned out to pay tribute to Abe during a private funeral in mid-July.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had called for the state funeral to honor Abe after he was killed and his cabinet later approved that plan.

Chief cabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno initially tried to keep the cost private due to uncertainty about the number of foreign dignitaries who would attend. But he faced increased public pressure in recent days to disclose the figure.

The idea of spending $12 million on Abe's funeral has increasingly soured with the public, with opinion polls showing the majority of Japanese citizens firmly opposing the plan. Some opponents say the government lacks solid legal standing to hold a state funeral and have called for the ceremony to be canceled outright.

Matsuno noted, however, that a state funeral was held for former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone after he died in 2020.

Much of the funding is needed to pay for security and accommodations for foreign visitors. An honor guard is also part of the projected cost.

"It became possible to provide certain estimates based on the outcome of our talks with diplomatic missions of other countries, in addition to our policy of offering detailed explanations about the event," he said according to the Asahi Shimbun.

An official with the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan said an upcoming hearing on the funeral would take a closer look at whether enough dollars had allocated for security.

"We will ask for more detailed figures ahead of a scheduled meeting with Kishida while the Diet is in recess since the basis for the government calculations is ambiguous," Jun Azumi said according to the Asahi Shimbun.

SURPRIZED IT TOOK THIS LONG

Instagram removes Pornhub's account

Instagram removed the account of adult website Pornhub on Saturday. 

Photo by LoboStudioHamburg/Pixabay.

Sept. 6 (UPI) -- Pornhub's widely followed Instagram account was removed by the social media company for allegedly violating its community guidelines.

Pornhub had 13.1 million followers and more than 6,200 posts. Its removal comes as some activists have lobbied against the adult website, accusing it of circulating child pornography.

"Instagram was right to remove Pornhub from its platform for violating its community standards given the increasing reports of Pornhub hosting child sexual abuse material (CSAM), sex trafficking, filmed rape, and non-consensual videos and images," Dawn Hawkins, CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said in a statement. "We are grateful that Instagram has heard the voices of sexual abuse survivors who have been personally harmed by Pornhub's insatiable appetite for profit."

Last month, Pornhub's advertising arm TrafficJunky was cut off from accepting payments from Mastercard and Visa. The financial firms had previously suspended credit card services in December 2020 after Pornhub was found to be circulating child pornography and sex-trafficking videos.

Hawkins also said in her statement that other partners of Pornhub should follow Instagram's lead.

"Instagram is courageously choosing to stop partnering with Pornhub and it is time for all corporate entities to follow its example," Hawkins said.

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Vote.org announces $10M campaign to register young voters


Voter registration organization Vote.org announced a $10 million registration effort on Tuesday. 

File Photo by Leigh Vogel/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 6 (UPI) -- Voter registration organization Vote.org announced it will launch a $10 million campaign to engage young voters before the November midterm elections.

The "Vote Ready" campaign aims to reach more than 4 million voters between the ages of 18 and 30, with a focus on young voters of color, Politico reported.

Vote.org has registered over 381,000 new voters since the 2020 election and it hopes to reach 1 million by Nov. 8.

"One of the big things is to meet people where they already are," Vote.org CEO Andrea Hailey said, according to Politico. "We want to reach out through the influencers and people that they already are following to make sure they're receiving all the voting information they need."

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The new registration drive will target key states such as Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania. According to Hailey, these states were chosen because they have large communities of color and high populations of young people.

While youth voter turnout was higher in 2020 than previous presidential elections, midterm elections generally have lower voter turnout. However, Hailey said the aim is to encourage people who came out to vote in 2020 to also vote in November.

"If you don't have a voting history, then people don't reach out to you and ask for your vote," she said. "Our thought is that people want to participate, they just need to be included ... and they just need access to the information."

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In April, the Harvard Institute of Politics released a poll showing that youth voter turnout was on track to match the record for a midterm election, which was set in 2018.

NASA, ESA release new images of Phantom Galaxy

New images jointly published by NASA and the European Space Agency
show the inner workings of Phantom Galaxy, M74. 

Photo by NASA

Aug. 30 (UPI) -- New images jointly published by NASA and the European Space Agency show the inner workings of Phantom Galaxy, M74.

The images were published on Monday and produced using both the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope to "complement each other to provide a comprehensive view of the galaxy," the agencies said in a statement.

The Phantom Galaxy, located in the constellation Pisces, is roughly 32 million light-years away from Earth and is nearly a direct line -- or face-on -- to Earth.

The galaxy's proximity and placement along with its well-defined spiral arms, make it a favorite target for astronomers studying galactic spirals

New images, released on Monday, show the heart of M74, otherwise known as the Phantom Galaxy while showcasing the power of space observatories working together in multiple wavelengths. 

Photo by NASA | License Photo

The M74 Phantom is a type of spiral galaxy known as a grand design spiral, meaning its spiral arms are prominent and well-defined, which differs greatly from the often ragged and ragged structure seen in some spiral galaxies.

"Webb's sharp vision has revealed delicate filaments of gas and dust in the grandiose spiral arms of M74, which wind outwards from the centre of the image," ESA researchers said in a press release.

This image, released Monday by NASA, from the James Webb Space Telescope, shows the heart of M74, otherwise known as the Phantom Galaxy, which is about 32 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pisces.

 Photo by NASA | License Photo

"A lack of gas in the nuclear region also provides an unobscured view of the nuclear star cluster at the galaxy's center," the researchers said.

The addition of the Webb telescope's "crystal-clear" observations using its Mid-InfraRed Instrument to existing data from the Hubble "will allow astronomers to pinpoint star-forming regions in the galaxies, accurately measure the masses and ages of star clusters, and gain insights into the nature of the small grains of dust drifting in interstellar space."

WHAT OF THEIR PRIVACY RIGHTS

Facial recognition may reveal Maine harbor seal lifestyles

Harbor seals lounge on the seaweed-covered rocks of the Maine coast. 

Photo by Krista Ingram/Colgate University

BANGOR, Maine, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- Once scarce, harbor seals are now plentiful in the Gulf of Maine and along the Pine Tree State's rocky coast.

Despite their ubiquity, the life of the harbor seal isn't well understood. And while seal numbers have been dropping, the concern remains whether too many exist.

Now, new machine learning software designed to recognize the faces of individual seals could help scientists answer questions about the social behavior, site fidelity and movement of harbor seals.

Human facial recognition technology is frighteningly good, and scientists have had some success tweaking photo-reading algorithms to identify and recall the faces of primates.

"Seals are one step further away from the human face, so I wasn't sure if this would work," Krista Ingram, professor of biology at Colgate University, told UPI. "But I thought it was worth a try."

The try was successful, with much of the credit, according to Ingram, going to her research partner, Ahmet Ay, an associate professor of biology and mathematics at Colgate.

By looking more closely at where individual seals move, 

scientists may be able to discern where sharks are likely to migrate. 

Photo by Krista Ingram/Colgate University

Training AI to recognize faces

To build their program, dubbed SealNet, Ay tweaked and refined the code of machine learning algorithms intended to recognize primates.

"We looked at a few other programs that were out there, and we took bits and pieces and combined them," Ingram said.

But Ingram said the result of Ay's algorithmic amalgamation is a machine learning program that's much more powerful than what came before.

"He doesn't just want to copy from someone else. He wants to improve it," Ingram said.

With the help of student researchers Zachary Birenbaum and Hieu Do, the research team trained the new algorithm -- using dozens of photographs collected from a haul-out in Maine -- to spot seal faces and differentiate between individual harbor seals.

The program works by identifying and recognizing facial patterns, like the shapes and arrangement of eyes and nose.

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Previously, when scientists used a primate-spotting program called PrimeNet to identify seal faces, the software achieved 88% accuracy.

When researchers used 1,752 photos of 408 individual seals to test their SealNet software, the program proved 95% accurate.

A better understanding of how exactly seals are using environmental resources could help alleviate concerns that local seal populations have grown too large, scientists say. 

Photo by Krista Ingram/Colgate University

Seal population changes

In the 19th and 20th centuries, seals were blamed for declines in commercial fish stocks. Maine and Massachusetts paid bounties for killed seals. Thousands were killed, and gray and harbor seal populations in the Gulf of Maine and around New England shrank dramatically.

Ingram says that when she first start visiting Maine several decades ago, seals were a rare sight.

"Now, they are becoming a major ecological factor here in Casco Bay," she said.

Harbor seals have experienced a strong rebound since the Marine Mammal Protection Act became law in 1972. Along Maine's cragged shores, the harbor seal has become omnipresent.

But scientists aren't sure whether they've reached full recovery, or perhaps, surpassed it.

"We don't have a good sense of how many seals there were in the Gulf of Maine historically," Kristina Cammen, assistant professor of marine mammal science at the University of Maine, told UPI.

"We know they were here in significant numbers, but we really don't know what that baseline before exploitation was."

Behaviors, impacts studied

While SealNet won't be able to reveal the size of historic seal populations, scientists hope the software can help them answer questions about seal behaviors, as well as the marine mammal's environmental and ecological impacts.

"I think [facial recognition software] will give us a better sense of seals as individuals, and that can offer us a better sense of their ecologies and behavioral patterns," Cammen said.

Scientists have a pretty good sense how many seals are living in Maine's waters. They also have a fair understanding of the marine mammal's life cycle and general movement patterns.

But less is known about how individual seals interact with one another at haul-out sites and when they hunt for fish.

"We know very little about whether they aggregate with the same seals or if it's totally random," Ingram said. "On top of that, that will inform more ecological-level population dynamic questions, like whether they are using the same resources year after year."

While seals do consume some of the same fish and shellfish targeted by fishers, they enjoy a rather diverse diet.

"Seals in the Gulf of Maine are fairly opportunistic. They tend to consume what's readily available and easy to catch," Cammen said.

Benefits of facial recognition

A better understanding of how exactly seals are using environmental resources could help alleviate concerns that local seal populations have grown too large.

Researchers suggest SealNet also could help scientists study links between the region's growing seal population and an increase in white shark sightings.

"In our photographs, we can see the bites of sharks on the bodies of seals," Ingram said. "So you can kind of track the increase in seal-shark interactions in the Gulf of Maine."

By looking more closely at where individual seals move, scientists may be able to discern where sharks are likely to migrate.

More precise movement data could also aid researchers like Michelle Berger, who uses seals to measure the prevalence of environmental toxins.

"Pretty much every chemical that we've looked for, we've found in the harbor seals," Berger, associate scientist at the Shaw Institute, told UPI. "They really integrate their exposure from everywhere they go throughout their lifetimes."

"And scientists still don't fully know where these individual seals move throughout the year," Berger said.

"If there was a way to track individual seals over an extended period of time using cameras and facial recognition technology, and to show where they were going and when, that's pretty exciting."