It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, December 15, 2022
Trump’s Badly Photoshopped NFTs Appear to Use Photos From Small Clothing Brands
Kyle Barr Thu, December 15, 2022 Several images of Trump in different poses, including one with his eyes on fire and another of him decked out in hunting outfit
Betcha couldn’t get enough of this mug, huh? Only thing is, this photoshop job seems to be very haphazardly edited using images taken directly from the internet.
Over the last 24 hours, fans of ex-President Donald Trump have sat huddled in their chairs, waiting with bated breath for a supposed announcement the once tweeter-in-chief promised would blow their socks off. He posted a video to his Truth Social page showing an image of him in a kind of superhero garb, sporting pecs he most certainly does not have, as laser beams shoot from his eyes. What could this mean? What apocalypse was coming?
On Thursday the grand surprise was finally revealed and it was nothing but another horrific NFT project that, in Trump’s words, featured “amazing ART of my Life & Career!” These “digital trading cards” are indeed just another cash grab NFT project, but the low quality images and the company in charge of the project are a more complicated enigma.
Each NFT sells for a total $99, and some are limited as single copies, while other NFTs are available in two, five, seven, or 10 copies. There are a total of 45,000 cards in the initial release, but even more, one big fan of Mr. Trump will be “guaranteed” a ticket to some future gala dinner with him, ostensibly at his Mar a Lago residence in South Florida. The auction even promised to pay for transportation. So yes, spend $4,455 and you too can have a sit down with the former president himself. Although we can guarantee you he will not look nearly as slim as he does in these trading cards.
The images were so lazy that based on reverse image searches they were edited photos scraped off the internet. It’s unclear if they were edited by hand or perhaps crafted using AI image generation, though the one image of Trump in hunter garb bears a very distinct resemblance to waders crafted by Banded, a hunting apparel company.
This image of a fake Trump in a hunting outfit seems to be an edited image of one company’s duck hunting gear.
Trump’s cowboy outfit appears to match a leather duster made by Scully Sportswear, a California-based costume and western garb shop.
The left image bears an obvious resemblance to this small California shop’s duster.
Gizmodo reached out to both companies to see if they had had any agreement with the NFT project to seemingly use their products, but we did not immediately hear back.
The whole thing is bizarre in so many different ways. In a video featuring Trump promoting the project, Trump claims he’s “better than [Abraham] Lincoln, better than [George] Washington.” He then says “each card comes with an automatic chance to win amazing prizes like dinner with me. I don’t know if that’s an amazing prize but it’s what we have.”
And while your first assumption would be that all this money would go toward supporting Trump’s reelection campaign, you would be wrong, at least according to the company’s page. NFT INT LLC, the company listed as hosting the NFT auction, wrote:
“These Digital Trading Cards are not political and have nothing to do with any political campaign. NFT INT LLC is not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Digital LLC or any of their respective principals or affiliates. NFT INT LLC uses Donald J. Trump’s name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Digital LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.”
Gizmodo reached out to NFT INT to get some better understanding of how this all came together, but we did not immediately hear back.
Things get even stranger when looking at the company that’s running the auction. The company, NFT INT LLC, lists its address to a kitschy strip mall in Utah that contains a few shops and restaurants, a dry cleaners, as well as a UPS store. As Gizmodo has previously reported, companies affiliated with attempts to buy Trump’s favored social media platform Truth Social have had similar arrangements by being based out of a UPS Store mailbox.
It’s even more unclear who is operating behind the scenes. Gizmodo found two companies called NFT INT registered in California and in Delaware, which, of course, neither are located in Utah. We reached out to the individual listed as the CEO of the California-registered NFT INT LLC who told us their company was not affiliated with this project.
The Salt Lake Tribune’s report on the NFTs confirmed the strangeness surrounding the UPS Store mailbox. The Tribune also noted that while the Twitter account for the NFT project lists Florida as its business residence, there are 20 businesses in Florida listing the Utah UPS mailbox as their residence.
So if you’re really into the idea of a Trump NFT, for some reason, just be aware the NFTs are “non-refundable” and “non-returnable.” Of course, you can just do what we did and right click and “save-as,” but that would defeat the purpose of digital scarcity, now wouldn’t it?
Update 12/15/2022 at 11:00 p.m. ET: This post was updated to include info about the California-based NFT INT LLC and add additional info from the Salt Lake Tribune.
She Went Undercover to a Crisis Pregnancy Center. They Told Her Abortion Is Reversible.
Kylie Cheung
JEZEBEL Thu, December 15, 2022 Screenshot: Mayday Health
In October, investigative reporter Olivia Raisner visited five anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers—clinics that often receive state funding, despite providing no medical services and pushing disinformation to dissuade pregnant people from choosing abortion—in Indiana. She entered each clinic armed with her pregnant friend’s urine, a button on her shirt that secretly doubled as a camera, and scheduled appointments. There, she declined to sign any paperwork that asked her not to record conversations to “make sure everything I did was legal,” Raisner told me in a phone interview. “The anti-abortion movement has been filming, not legally, for years now, and we don’t want to stoop to their level,” Raisner said.
On Thursday, Mayday Health posted a video capturing Raisner’s experiences at the CPCs. In one clip, after she turns in a positive pregnancy test and says she’s considering abortion, an employee immediately begins spewing a steady stream of easily disproven lies. The staffer warns Raisner, without any evidence, that “there’s been a lot of suicides” after abortion and that “it is a very common problem.” Ironically enough, research has shown that being denied an abortion negatively impacts someone’s mental health, and over 95 percent of people who have abortions don’t regret the decision. Nonetheless, the employee sternly claims that other mental health issues could arise, warning Raisner that having an abortion could even cause her to develop an eating disorder. She told Jezebel that several clinics said this.
The clinic worker featured in Mayday’s video specifically emphasized the (false) claim that if Raisner used medication abortion, she had the option to “reverse” the abortion through a special pill, via a dangerous, non-proven method called “abortion pill reversal.” Raisner told Jezebel that as medication abortion becomes more widely used, given its continued availability in all 50 states, anti-abortion activists are increasingly pushing this bogus, medically dangerous claim.
Even as Raisner had the facts going into the anti-abortion clinics, she said it still required significant effort to “keep my emotions and anger at bay” as clinic staff members lied to her face. “I knew that the longer I was able to stay in there, and really sell my story as a pregnant person, the more I would be able to record,” she explained. “I needed to show the interactions that are taking place countless times a day across the country, for all the pregnant people who go to these centers and don’t have the information.”
As Raisner explains in the video, it’s common for staff at crisis pregnancy centers to pose as actual doctors in order to push random, inaccurate medical claims about abortion—almost like anti-choice improv. The staffer Raisner interacts with proceeds to run through all the hits, including that abortion causes infertility (it doesn’t) and medication abortion pills are unsafe because of “high levels of estrogen and progesterone” (they don’t have either.) “They offer free ultrasounds, financial assistance, all the resources necessary, and make it very tempting to lean on them,” Raisner told Jezebel. “Unfortunately, we know they’re fake medical clinics whose only agenda is to spread lies, to shame people away from abortion.”
At the five clinics Raisner visited, she said it was as if all the employees were reading from the same pre-written “script,” with different anecdotes subbed in. “Conversations were almost identical—when I told them I was thinking about abortion, they all led with ‘suicide’ and the risk of that,” Raisner said. This sounds like the worst possible co-optation of heightened public awareness around mental health.
Advocates performing undercover sting operations around abortion aren’t uncommon—but famously, they’re more often perpetrated by anti-abortion activists going into abortion clinics and collecting and doctoring footage to galvanize cultural panics about “Planned Parenthood selling baby parts.” (The summer of 2015 feels like just yesterday.)
To prepare to perform her own undercover operation, Raisner researched local crisis pregnancy centers, made calls describing her made-up “situation,” and booked appointments. In advance of these appointments, she said she “practiced using this little remote control” to operate the button-camera and prepared questions that pregnant people typically ask—for example, about the safety of abortion and possible concerns. Of course, as Mayday Health’s video asserts, medication abortion results in fewer extreme complications than Tylenol.
Across the country, even before Roe v. Wade was overturned and several states immediately banned abortion, crisis pregnancy centers outnumbered actual abortion-providing clinics by a three-to-one ratio, and many centers receive state and federal funding. Further, because they aren’t actual health care centers, they aren’t bound to the same privacy standards set by HIPAA that actual health providers must abide by. Yet, they collect all of the same private and personal information that health providers do, with the freedom to share this information as they see fit.
Raisner told Jezebel that clinic staff took her driver’s license, her address, and asked about her job and her family and friends. “They very purposely try to identify other people in your life who could supposedly help you raise this baby,” she recalled. After she left the clinic saying she was unsure whether she’d get an abortion, CPC employees followed up several times and asked her to come back.
Several victims of crisis pregnancy centers have told the Expose Fake Clinics campaign about similar experiences, including one who said that after she left a clinic, a CPC worker “began calling her almost daily and telling her that she would die, or end up in hell, or get very sick if she were to go through with the abortion.” Some said they were forced to sign contracts pledging to not have an abortion before leaving the clinic.
“They just want you to give birth, and they’ll say anything for that—they offered me money, gave me baby blankets, they invite the premise that they’ll be supporting me,” Raisner said. But it’s all just words. “It’s clear that that support really stops after that person gives birth.”
Closing of Jesuit abuse case left victims feeling betrayed, expert says Father Hans Zollner, the Vatican's Chair of the Steering Committee of the Centre for the Protection of Minors, looks on as he attends a news conference at the Pontificial Gregorian University in Rome
Wed, December 14, 2022 By Philip Pullella
ROME (Reuters) -One of the Catholic Church's top sexual abuse experts has called for a review of how his own Jesuit order and the Vatican handled allegations against an internationally known priest and artist.
The case of Father Marko Ivan Rupnik has rattled the Jesuit order, of which Pope Francis is a member, and prompted criticism of the Vatican doctrinal department for not pursuing it further.
"I can understand how victims feel betrayed," Father Hans Zollner, a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and the head of Rome's Gregorian University Centre for the study of abuse, told Reuters.
Following Italian media reports that Rupnik had sexually and psychologically abused nuns when he was their spiritual director in his native Slovenia three decades ago, Jesuit headquarters issued a statement on Dec. 2 saying he had been disciplined.
It said it had commissioned an unnamed, non-Jesuit to investigate Rupnik, 68, after the Vatican's doctrinal department received a complaint last year. No minors were involved in the alleged abuse.
The Jesuits gave the results of the investigation to the Vatican department, which closed the case in October, citing the statute of limitations, which automatically halts legal proceedings if they exceed a set time limit from when an alleged crime took place.
"I understand that legally speaking, the statute of limitations applies, but the legal question is not the only one," Zollner said in the offices of the anti-abuse centre. "This is why I ask why the statute was not lifted".
A Vatican source said the doctrinal department had lifted the statute in similar cases before.
Repeated attempts to reach Rupnik through his school for religious art in Rome were not successful and he did not return calls. The Vatican spokesman said he had no comment on the case. EARLIER COMPLAINT
Father Arturo Sosa, the head of the Jesuit order since 2016, has defended its handling of Rupnik. "Any case like this is painful ... but we have not hidden anything," he told two Portuguese religious media outlets last week.
Sosa said the Jesuits had maintained restrictions against Rupnik even though the Vatican had closed the case "because we want to go further into the matter, to see how we can help everyone involved".
On Wednesday night, Sosa told reporters that Rupnik had incurred automatic excommunication on himself when he granted "absolution to an accomplice" in confession, referring to when a priest has sex with someone and then absolves the person of the sin. The excommunication was later lifted after Rupnik repented, Sosa said.
Rupnik, a mosaics master who has designed chapels around the world, including in the Vatican, is barred from hearing confessions or presiding at spiritual exercises.
Zollner said an alarm had been raised before 2021, referring to a complaint that he said the Jesuit order had received from a nun in 1998 when Rupnik was completing work on a Vatican chapel for Pope John Paul II.
"For the sake of transparency, we need to know who knew something, what and when, and what happened after that," Zollner said. "We could have found out about the different levels of responsibility, which could have prevented all of this," he said, referring to the 2021 complaint.
"I ask myself, and I ask my community, the Jesuits: Who could have known? Who did know? Who perceived something was wrong and did not go further?" Zollner said.
Asked about the 1998 complaint, Father John Dardis, the Jesuits' spokesman, told Reuters that the order had looked into reports about it but had found "nothing in the files".
Zollner said: "Probably we will never know. In most cases there are no documents."
(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Rosalba O'Brien)
Jesuits admit artist excommunicated before new abuse claims
Arturo Sosa Superior General of the Society of Jesus - The closed Basilica of Lourdes is pictured May 8, 2020, in Lourdes, southwestern France. The Vatican came under pressure Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2022, to explain why it didn’t prosecute a famous Jesuit artist and merely let his order restrict the priest's ministry following allegations that he abused his authority over adult women. Mosiacs by Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik decorate several churches and chapels, including the Lourdes basilica. (AP Photo/Bob Edme, File)More
NICOLE WINFIELD Wed, December 14, 2022
ROME (AP) — The head of Pope Francis’ Jesuit religious order admitted Wednesday that a famous Jesuit priest had been convicted of one of the most serious crimes in the Catholic Church some two years before the Vatican decided to shelve another case against him for allegedly abusing other adult women under his spiritual care.
The Rev. Arturo Sosa, the Jesuit superior general, made the admission during a briefing with journalists that was dominated by the scandal over the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik and the reluctance of both the Vatican and the Jesuits to tell the whole story behind the unusually lenient treatment he received even after he had been temporarily excommunicated.
Rupnik is unknown to most Catholics but is a giant within the Jesuit order and the Catholic hierarchy because he is one of the church’s most sought-after artists. His mosaics depicting biblical scenes decorate the basilica in Lourdes, France, the Vatican’s own Redemptoris Mater chapel, the John Paul II institute in Washington and are due to grace the new basilica in Aparecida, Brazil.
The scandal involving Rupnik erupted last week when three Italian blogs — Silere non Possum, Left.it and Messa in Latino — began revealing allegations of spiritual, psychological and sexual abuse against Rupnik by women at a Jesuit community with which he was affiliated in his native Slovenia.
The Jesuits initially responded with a statement Dec. 2 that confirmed a complaint had been received in 2021 but said the Vatican’s sex abuse office had determined that the allegations, dating from the 1990s in Slovenia, were too old to prosecute. The Jesuits said they decided nevertheless to keep in place “precautionary restrictions” on his ministry that prohibited him from hearing confessions, giving spiritual direction or leading spiritual exercises.
The statement posed more questions than it answered and entirely omitted the fact — first reported by Messa in Latino and later confirmed by The Associated Press — that Rupnik had been convicted and sanctioned by the Vatican after a 2019 complaint that he had absolved a woman in confession of having engaged in sexual activity with him.
The so-called absolution of an accomplice is one of the most serious crimes in the church’s canon law and brings with it automatic excommunication for the priest that can only be lifted if he admits to the crime and repents — something Rupnik did, Sosa said in response to a question from the AP.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith "said it happened, there was absolution of an accomplice,” Sosa said. “So he was excommunicated. How do you lift an excommunication? The person has to recognize it and has to repent, which he did.”
Sosa had previously insisted the Jesuits weren't hiding anything else about Rupnik. Asked why the Jesuits hadn't revealed the confession-related conviction, Sosa said Wednesday that “they were two different moments, with two different cases.”
Sosa then contradicted the Jesuits’ earlier statement and said the restrictions on Rupnik’s ministry actually dated from that confession-related conviction, and not the 2021 allegations that the Vatican’s sex crimes office decided to shelve because they were deemed too old to prosecute.
There has been no explanation for why the office, which regularly waives statute of limitations for abuse-related crimes, decided not to waive it this time around, especially considering the previous conviction for a similarly grave offense against an adult woman. The office, now called the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, is headed by a Jesuit, has a Jesuit sex crimes prosecutor and had as its No. 2 at the time someone who lived in Rupnik’s Jesuit community in Rome.
Sosa was asked what, if anything, Francis knew about Rupnik's case or whether he intervened. Sosa said he “could imagine” that the prefect of the dicastery, the Jesuit Cardinal Luis Ladaria, would have informed the pope of such a decision.
Officials at the Dicastery either didn’t respond to emails seeking comment or declined to comment, referring questions to the Vatican spokesman, who in turn referred questions to the Jesuits.
Exclusive-The global supply trail that leads to Russia’s killer drones An undated handout image provided to Reuters by the Centre for Defence Reforms Ukraine shows a circuit board recovered in Ukraine from a Russian Orlan 10 drone
Thu, December 15, 2022 By Stephen Grey, Maurice Tamman and Maria Zholobova
(Reuters) - The hundreds of Russian drones hovering ominously over the Ukrainian battlefield owe their existence to an elastic, sanctions-evading supply chain that often runs through a shabby office above a Hong Kong marketplace, and sometimes through a yellow stucco home in suburban Florida.
The "Sea Eagle" Orlan 10 UAV is a deceptive, relatively low-tech and cheap killer that has directed many of the up to 20,000 artillery shells that Russia has fired daily on Ukrainian positions in 2022, killing up to 100 soldiers per day, according to Ukrainian commanders.
An investigation by Reuters and iStories, a Russian media outlet, in collaboration with the Royal United Services Institute, a defence think tank in London, has uncovered a logistical trail that spans the globe and ends at the Orlan's production line, the Special Technology Centre in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Based on Russian customs filings and bank records, the investigation marks the first time a supply route for American technology has been traced all the way to a Russian manufacturer, whose weapon system is used in Ukraine.
The Special Technology Centre, which once made a variety of surveillance gadgets for the Russian government and now focuses on drones for the military, was first targeted by U.S. sanctions after President Barack Obama said it had worked with Russian military intelligence to try to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The sanctions, which took effect in 2017, barred any American citizen or resident or U.S. company from supplying anything that might end up with the Special Technology Centre. In March of this year, the U.S. government tightened those restrictions by blocking all sales of any American products for any military end user, and effectively blocked all sales to Russia of high-technology items like microchips, communications and navigation equipment.
None of that has stopped the production of the Orlan drone.
The Special Technology Centre did not respond to a written request for comment. But one top scientist, who is also a major shareholder, said in an interview with Reuters that the company was experiencing a "high demand" for its drones.
Russia's Ministry of Defence did not respond to questions from Reuters about the impact of sanctions and its relationship to the Special Technology Centre.
The U.S. Department of Commerce, which enforces controls on the export of US technology, would not comment on its knowledge of the Special Technology Centre, or of U.S. parts supplying Russia's drone program.
In a statement to Reuters, a Commerce spokesperson said the department cannot comment on the existence or non-existence of investigations. The spokesperson added: "We will not hesitate to use all the tools at our disposal to obstruct the efforts of those who seek to support Putin's war machine."
Among the most important suppliers to Russia's drone program has been a Hong Kong-based exporter, Asia Pacific Links Ltd, which, according to Russian customs and financial records, provided millions of dollars in parts, though never directly. Many of the parts are microchips from U.S. manufacturers.
Asia Pacific's exports to Russia were primarily delivered to one importer in St. Petersburg with close ties to the Special Technology Centre, those customs records show. The import company, SMT iLogic, shares an address with the drone maker and has numerous other connections.
Asia Pacific's owner, Anton Trofimov, is an expatriate Russian who graduated from a Chinese university and has other business interests in China as well as a company in Toronto, Canada, according to his LinkedIn profile and other corporate filings.
According to public records, Trofimov is a resident of a modest East York neighborhood of Toronto. He did not respond to questions sent by email and LinkedIn. A woman who answered the door identified herself as Trofimov's wife and said she would pass along a message for him to contact Reuters. He never did.
The neighborhood is a world away from Asia Pacific's office in a shabby and narrow office building off a side alley and pedestrian market in Hong Kong's business district.
No one was at the Hong Kong office when a Reuters journalist visited recently. The company shares a partitioned room with three other tenants, according to the building's receptionist.
Despite appearances, business has boomed this year. In the seven months between March 1 and September 30, since Russia's February invasion, Asia Pacific increased its business sharply, exporting parts valued at about $5.2 million, up from about $2.3 million in the same period of 2021, making it iLogic's biggest supplier, according to Russian customs records. Many of the components were made by U.S. tech firms, the records also show.
Among the parts sent by Asia Pacific to iLogic in the same period of 2022 were $1.8 million of chips made by Analog Devices, $641,000 made by Texas Instruments, and $238,000 by Xilinx, according to the Russian customs data. The supplies also included model aircraft engines made by a Japanese company, Saito Seisakusho, that are used in the Orlan 10, as shown in photos of drones recovered in Ukraine. Saito said it was unaware of the shipments.
Asked about the shipments to Russia in recent months, Analog Devices didn't reply to emailed questions. Texas Instruments and AMD, the owner of Xilinx, said their companies had not directly shipped or approved shipments into Russia for many months and were complying with all U.S. sanctions and export controls.
AMD added that it requires its authorized distributors to implement end-use screening measures to track the potential sale or diversion of AMD products into Russia or restricted regions. "SMT iLogic and Asia Pacific Links are not authorized AMD distributors," AMD said.
THE SUPPLIER NEXT DOOR
Financial records provided by a Russian official and reviewed by Reuters show the Special Technology Centre relies on a number of suppliers, but most notably iLogic. According to a record of iLogic's own bank receipts and payments seen by Reuters, iLogic works almost exclusively for the drone maker.
Since 2017, iLogic has imported about $70 million of mostly electronic products into Russia, according to customs records. And according to financial documents examined by iStories and Reuters, nearly 80% of the company's income is from its business with the Special Technology Centre.
In turn, those same financial records show the Special Technology Centre's biggest customer is Russia's Ministry of Defence, which paid it nearly 6 billion rubles ($99 million) between February and August of this year. The examined records list all transfers to and from the company's bank accounts during that period.
Reached by phone, Alexey Terentyev, a top scientist and major shareholder at the Special Technology Centre, said the war has forced it to focus on making drones.
"Due to the high demand for Orlans, we do not have the resources to do something else now. The demand for it is much bigger than we can produce," he said.
U.S. sanctions had caused the company problems, he said, but it always found someone in the world to sell it what it needed. "Sanctions were imposed on us by one of the most powerful countries in the world," Terentyev said. "We should be proud of this."
Terentyev declined to say if iLogic was one of those suppliers. Asked about iLogic, he said, "You ask me about a company I don't know." Reminded that he was listed as one of iLogic's founders in Russian corporate records, he said that if his name showed up in documents, it was "likely correct" he was a shareholder. "Yes, I remember something," he said. But he could not recall what iLogic did. "I have lost connection with this company," he said.
Those corporate records show iLogic is based at the same St Petersburg office address as the Special Technology Centre. Russian corporate records show it was founded by Terentyev and other senior executives of the drone maker or their relatives.
In a brief telephone interview, Roman Agafonnikov, chief executive officer of the Special Technology Centre, said he didn't know anything about iLogic.
FLORIDA
On the coast of southeast Florida, living in a smart suburban house just behind a nature reserve, is another individual who has supplied Russia's drone program.
Igor Kazhdan, a 41-year-old U.S.-Russian citizen, owns a company, IK Tech, that sold about $2.2 million worth of electronics to Russia between 2018 and 2021, Russian customs records show, over 90% of which were sold to iLogic.
Russian custom records show that IK Tech sold iLogic about 1,000 American-made circuit boards between October 2020 and October 2021, at a time when federal law banned the supply, whether directly or via another company, of any such technology to the Special Technology Centre.
The boards, valued at about $274,000, were made by a California manufacturer, Gumstix. The California company told Reuters it is "very concerned" to hear of the shipments and would investigate. It said it does not have customers located in Russia nor any products or services intended for Russia, adding, "We will take all appropriate action to address any identified diversion of products from lawful end use."
Photos taken by Ukraine officials of the inside of a captured drone and seen by Reuters show a Gumstix board that is almost identical to the boards shipped by IK Tech. According to a list of components found on another drone supplied to RUSI and Reuters by the Ukrainian government, the board is part of the Orlan 10's control unit.
Kazhdan's activities drew the attention of U.S. authorities. Just two weeks before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine and Orlan drones started buzzing overhead, federal agents arrested Kazhdan. He was later indicted on 13 counts of smuggling and evading export controls when selling electronic components to Russia between December 2021 and February 2022.
The indictment related to selling sophisticated amplifiers made by U.S.-based Qorvo that required an export license for Russia. It is not clear from court documents if U.S. authorities were aware of the ultimate destination of the products. The Qorvo amplifiers, which are often used in radar, communications and radio equipment, have been found in the radio communication circuits of Orlan drones, according to Ukrainian officials. In a statement to Reuters, Qorvo said the "declared destination" of the parts mentioned in the case was a distributor in Florida. It added: "Qorvo has never conducted business or had any relationship with IK Tech or Igor Kazhdan, and the Company's products were exported and used without our knowledge."
In November 2022, after Kazhdan pleaded guilty to two charges, a federal judge sentenced him to three years of probation, fined him $200 and ordered him to forfeit about $7,000. If convicted on all counts, Kazhdan could have faced 40 years in prison.
Speaking on the doorstep of his Dania Beach, Florida, home, Kazhdan, wearing a scruffy beard in shorts and short-sleeve shirt, said the scale of his exports to Russia was minimal compared to other companies when it was put to him that he may have been assisting Russia's drone program.
"I just don't think that whatever this is, it's a big deal that you should be writing this story," Kazhdan said. "This is just comical."
Beyond that, he would not speak about the case or his shipments to Russia.
At his November 2022 sentencing hearing, Kazhdan told the Southern Florida District judge that he started doing business with Russia after making contact with importers at a 2016 satellite conference. Soon after, the importers convinced him to skirt reporting and licensing requirements, he said.
The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the case.
((This article was reported by Stephen Grey in London, Maurice Tamman in New York and Florida and by Maria Zholobova, a reporter for iStories; Additional reporting by James Pomfret in Hong Kong and Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto; editing by Janet McBride))
Palestinian activist's family seeks ICC probe into his death
JALAL BWAITEL Thu, December 15, 2022
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — The family of an outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority who died last year after allegedly being beaten by Palestinian security forces said Thursday it has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate the death.
Nizar Banat was a harsh critic of the PA, which governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and had called on Western nations to cut off aid to it because of what he said was its authoritarianism and human rights violations. Banat's family said he died after Palestinian security forces arrested him and beat him with batons.
“Having lost confidence in the independence of the Palestinian judiciary, Nizar Banat’s family sent a request to ICC prosecutor Karim Khan to investigate their son’s brutal murder and prosecute all those responsible,” the family said in a statement.
At the time of Banat's death, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations called for an investigation, and Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh announced the formation of an investigative committee. But critics say the committee has dragged its feet on the probe.
It is rare for Palestinians to ask for an investigation into their own leadership.
Banat's death came amid a crackdown on dissent by the internationally-backed PA, which faces a growing backlash from Palestinians who view it as corrupt and increasingly autocratic — a manifestation of a three-decade peace process with Israel that is nowhere close to delivering Palestinian independence.
His death sparked protests in east Jerusalem and demonstrators burned tires, blocked roads and clashed with riot police in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where the PA is headquartered.
Banat’s family said it views Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as bearing full responsibility for Banat’s death. Abbas was elected in 2005 for a four-year term and faced a crisis of legitimacy last year when he called off long-delayed elections where his Fatah party was expected to suffer an embarrassing defeat to its rival Hamas. Abbas cited a dispute with Israel for the latest delay.
Abbas' forces coordinate security with Israeli troops, targeting Hamas and other armed groups that threaten both. The policy is deeply unpopular with Palestinians, many of whom view it as collaboration with an occupying power.
The Palestinians have asked the ICC to investigate alleged war crimes by Israel, a probe it launched last year. The family of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist killed during an Israeli raid in the West Bank this year, have referred a complaint on her death to the international court.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their future independent state.
EDITORIAL: Drilling ban literally hot topic Republican & Herald, Pottsville, Pa. Thu, December 15, 2022
Dec. 15—Anyone wondering why the Delaware River Basin Commission doesn't trust the natural gas industry to drill safely need look no further than the adjacent Susquehanna River watershed.
Pennsylvania's government long has been outmaneuvered by the industry. Many members of the state Legislature have been lap dogs for industry interests for more than 15 years. And that has been reflected in the state Department of Environmental Protection's accommodating oversight of drilling. The DRBC regulates water distribution and exercises some environmental oversight for the Delaware River watershed, which provides water for about 13 million people. Its members are the governments of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Delaware and the federal government.
The agency has precluded drilling in the watershed, and recently voted to preclude drillers from dumping drilling and fracking wastewater anywhere in the watershed, while making it more difficult for drillers to extract water for fracking operations.
All of those restrictions have drawn howls of protest from the industry, and some landowners have protested that they cannot extract value from their land through drilling leases.
Meanwhile, the DEP makes it hard to argue with the Delaware commission's decisions. The agency was woefully ineffective in the early days of the industry's arrival. After residents of the tiny crossroads of Dimock, Susquehanna County, filmed themselves lighting their tap water on fire soon after Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. began drilling, the agency finally placed a moratorium on drilling around the village.
The state attorney general's office did not criminally charge Cabot until 2020. Recently, Cabot's successor, Coterra Energy Inc., pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of the Clean Streams Law for the migration of methane into Dimock's residential wells. It agreed to pay $16 million for a municipal water system and to pay residents' water bills for 75 years.
Now, remarkably, the DEP has lifted the moratorium on horizontal drilling for gas under Dimock, while insisting that the decision was not related to the plea deal.
Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the governor-elect, was critical of the DEP during his gubernatorial campaign. Reinstating the moratorium would be a good place for him to start making the agency an aggressive guardian of the public interest.
SCI FI TECH
Nuclear fusion breakthrough 'an enormous game changer,' Constellation Energy CEO says
The U.S. Department of Energy announced a breakthrough in nuclear fusion on Tuesday that puts the world one step closer to harnessing an abundant energy source free from carbon emissions and long-lived radioactive waste.
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm confirmed that scientists achieved a reaction that created more energy than was used — known as a net energy gain — at the federally-funded Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
“Last week at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, scientists at the National Ignition Facility achieved fusion ignition,” Sec. Granholm said. “It’s the first time it’s ever been done. … Simply put, this is one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century.”
Such a development carries broad implications for renewable energy and long-term solutions to replace fossil fuels, though the benefits are still decades away.
“It'd be an enormous game changer,” Constellation Energy CEO Joe Dominguez told Yahoo Finance Live on Monday (video above). “We've been chasing this for a long time. But the developments we saw out of Lawrence Livermore are, I think, the best developments on fusion energy that we've seen since the work at Princeton probably 30 years ago with the TFTR [Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor]. So it's very exciting. It's transformational.” Nuclear fusion occurs when two atoms under extreme pressure and heat fuse into one atom, releasing a packet of energy. (Photo: National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory)
A nuclear fusion reaction, which is what keeps the sun and other stars burning, occurs when the nuclei of two atoms fuse into one atomic nucleus. When that happens, the excess mass converts into energy. (The reverse process, nuclear fission, powers existing nuclear power plants and bombs.)
Scientists have been working to achieve sustained nuclear fusion since the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory was founded in the 1950s, but replicating the conditions found within the massive cores of stars in labs on earth has proven to be a seemingly intractable problem.
One difficulty has been in running the reaction long enough to ignite a chain of reactions. Another related challenge has been unleashing larger amounts of energy.
Experts say that nuclear fusion releases 4 million times more energy than burning oil or coal. Put another way, a pickup truck filled with nuclear fusion fuel has the equivalent energy of 2 million metric tons of coal or 10 million barrels of oil. And it produces that energy without the drawbacks of other sources, namely climate change causing carbon emissions and lasting hazardous waste.
Technicians use a service system lift to access the target chamber interior for inspection and maintenance at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States in 2008. Philip Saltonstall/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/Handout via REUTERS
Recent years have shown more promising results, partly due to improved technology and a growing appetite for zero-carbon energy. Donut-shaped reactors using large magnets have been able to extend the time of the reaction. Earlier this year, one such reactor in China set a record for the longest sustained nuclear fusion reaction at 17 minutes. Other tests have claimed to reach a breakeven point, meaning the energy output equaled the energy put into the test.
The development at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory has seemingly gone further. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) uses a different method of causing fusion by directing powerful lasers at a capsule of hydrogen atoms to generate the pressure and heat necessary.
According to The Financial Times, which first reported the news Sunday, preliminary results show ignition took place, producing 2.5 megajoules of energy, or 120% of the energy that was consumed by the lasers.
That marks a long-awaited advancement in what has been considered a moonshot technology for decades. However, there's still a long runway ahead to move from small reactions in laboratory settings to commercial nuclear reactors.
Specifically, nuclear fusion won't help the world reach its 2030 net-zero targets. It may start to come into play by 2050.
“I still think we're decades away,” Dominguez said. “But this development, where we're now getting more energy out of the reaction than we're putting in to create the reaction, is a gigantic milestone.”
Grace O'Donnell is an editor for Yahoo Finance.
How nuclear fusion works, and why it's a big deal for green energy that scientists made a 'breakthrough'
Paola Rosa-Aquino Tue, December 13, 2022 Engineers work at the National Ignition Facility in California's Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.David Butow / Contributor
US Department of Energy scientists produced a nuclear fusion reaction with a net energy gain.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility achieved the milestone on December 5.
Fusion energy advocates say it's a step forward in clean, cheap, and almost limitless electricity.
Scientists have made a "breakthrough" in their quest to harness nuclear fusion.
For the first time, researchers created a nuclear fusion reaction that produced more energy than they put into it.
The experiment, conducted on December 5 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, generated 3.15 megajoules of energy, more than the 2.05 megajoules put into creating it.
"Scientifically, this is the first time that they showed that this is possible," Gianluca Sarri, a physicist at Queen's University Belfast, told New Scientist. "From theory, they knew that it should happen, but it was never seen in real life experimentally."
What is fusion energy and why is it a big deal?
This illustration shows how lasers heat a target to the necessary conditions for nuclear fusion to occur
.Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Nuclear fusion works by forcing together two atoms — most often hydrogen — to make a heavier one — like helium.
This explosive process releases massive amounts of energy, the Department of Energy explains. Fusion is the opposite of fission, the reaction that powers nuclear reactors used commercially today.
Fusion occurs naturally in the heart of the sun and the stars, providing these cosmic objects with fuel.
Since the 1950s, scientists have been trying to replicate it on Earth in order to tap into what nuclear energy advocates suggest is clean, cheap, and almost limitless electricity.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, fusion generates four times more energy per kilogram than the fission used to power nuclear plants, and nearly 4 million times more energy than burning oil or coal.
What's more, unlike fossil fuels, fusion doesn't release carbon dioxide — the greenhouse gas that's the main driver of climate change — into the atmosphere. And unlike nuclear fission, fusion doesn't create long-lived radioactive waste, according to the Department of Energy.
A view of Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, in Leningrad, Russia on September 14, 2022.
Sezgin Pancar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
But so far, nuclear fusion hasn't solved our energy problems on a grand scale. What Tuesday's 'breakthrough' announcement means for the future
Tuesday's announcement is a huge step forward in nuclear fusion energy, but applying the technology at commercial scale is likely still years away.
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a theoretical physicist, pointed out that the process the Department of Energy uses requires tritium, a rare and radioactive isotope of hydrogen.
"It may yet yield important information that is ultimately transformative. We don't know yet," Prescod-Weinstein tweeted on Monday. "Being able to do this once a day with a laser does not at all mean that this mechanism will scale!"
US scientists achieve ‘holy grail’ net gain nuclear fusion reaction: report
Josh Marcus Sun, December 11, 2022
US scientists have reportedly carried out the first nuclear fusion experiment to achieve a net energy gain, a major breakthrough in a field that has been pursuing such a result since the 1950s, and a potential milestone in the search for a climate-friendly, renewable energy source to replace fossil fuels.
The experiment took place in recent weeks at the government-funded Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, where researchers used a process known as inertial confinement fusion, the Financial Times reports, citing three people with knowledge of the experiment’s preliminary results.
The test involved bombarding a pellet of hydrogen plasma with the world’s largest laser to trigger a nuclear fusion reaction, the same process which takes place in the sun.
Researchers were able to produce 2.5 megajoules of energy, 120 per cent of the 2.1 megajoules used to power the experiment.
The laboratory confirmed to the FT it had recently conducted a “successful” experiment at the National Ignition Facility, but declined to comment further, citing the preliminary nature of the data.
“Initial diagnostic data suggests another successful experiment at the National Ignition Facility. However, the exact yield is still being determined and we can’t confirm that it is over the threshold at this time,” it said. “That analysis is in process, so publishing the information . . . before that process is complete would be inaccurate.”
The scientific community is abuzz that a net gain fusion reaction has taken place, noting that US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm and US under-secretary for nuclear security Jill Hruby are set to make an announcement from the national laboratory on Tuesday.
Many commentators celebrated the reported fusion breakthrough.
“Scientists have struggled to show that fusion can release more energy out than is put in since the 1950s, and the researchers at Lawrence Livermore seem to have finally and absolutely smashed this decades-old goal,” Arthur Turrell, deputy director of the UK Office for National Statistics, wrote on Twitter on Sunday. “This experimental result will electrify efforts to eventually power the planet with nuclear fusion—at a time when we’ve never needed a plentiful source of carbon-free energy more!”
Oliver Cameron, an executive at self-driving car company Cruise, predicted that with the news out of Livermore, the world could be in for a futuristic era of widespread nuclear fusion energy and broadly capable artificial general intelligence (AGI).
“It is becoming increasingly likely that we end this decade with both AGI and viable nuclear fusion,” he wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
In April, the White House announced a suite of initiatives meant to support the development of the fusion industry.
“Fusion is one of a much larger suite of clean energy gamechangers that [are] commensurate with the scale that the climate challenge requires,” Alondra Nelson, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said at the time in a statement. “Now is the time for courageous innovation to accelerate fusion energy.”
The Biden administration also helped secure $370bn in subsidies for low-carbon energy development as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
Researchers and environmentalists remain divided over the green potential of nuclear fusion.
Proponents argue that fusion is much safer than nuclear fission, the process that powers all existing nuclear energy plants. They say that if commercial reactors were able to regularly achieve net energy gain, and were powered by renewable energy, fusion could be the energy source that finally weans the world off its dependence of fossil fuels.
“For my generation, it was fear of weapons that influenced people’s view of nuclear. In this generation, it’s climate change,” Todd Allen, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan and director of the school’s Fastest Path to Zero climate centre, told The Independent earlier this year. “I don’t know in the end if these are the technologies that catch fire or not. It’s just interesting to me because they’re the first demos of new ideas in half a century. I think there is a lot of interest and potential.”
Others, however, argue nuclear fusion has a long history of overpromising and under-delivering, despite massive capital expenditures, a sluggish pace of development the world can’t afford given the dwindling time available to avert the worst of the climate crisis.
“We’ve never been in principle against any technology, but it is very clear, every time you start calculating, that the moment you introduce nuclear, the costs are going up and the speed of change is going down,” Jan Haverkamp, an energy expert at Greenpeace, told The Independent in January. “That’s exactly what we can’t afford now as climate change is becoming ever more real. If you start talking about nuclear at this moment, either you’re following a fad or you’re trying to divert the attention from what really needs to be done.”
Still, despite this debate, billions of dollars are flowing into private nuclear startups, like the Bill Gates-backed TerraPower, as well as government efforts like ITER, a 23,000-tonne, $22bn, 35-nation nuclear experiment under construction in France.
US scientists make huge breakthrough in fusion energy
David Millward Sun, December 11, 2022 Fusion reaction produces net energy gain, says US government lab in scientific milestone - Corbis Historical
A major breakthrough in the search for clean energy has been made by US government scientists at a laboratory in California, it has been reported.
A fusion reaction, carried out at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory produced more energy than was absorbed by the fuel to create it.
It represents a major milestone in the drive to wean the US and other major economies from carbon-producing fossil fuels which scientists regard as the main driver of climate change.
The energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine has intensified the need for alternative energy.
On taking office, Mr Biden pledged that his administration would be a global leader in the race to develop green technology. Pictured is the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory - Corbis Historical
The US energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm and under-secretary for nuclear security Jill Hruby are due to announce the breakthrough on Tuesday.
In August last year, the Livermore laboratory announced the results of a reaction which released 1.3 megajoules of energy, about five times the 250 kilojoules that were absorbed by the capsule.
The reaction is produced by bombarding a minute blob of plasma with light from 192 lasers at the laboratory’s $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility, which was initially created to test nuclear weapons by simulating explosions.
Ms Hruby hailed the results at the time.
“These extraordinary results from NIF (National Ignition Facility) advance the science that NNSA (National Nuclear Safety Administration) depends on to modernise our nuclear weapons and production," she said.
“It also offers potential new avenues of research into alternative energy sources that could aid economic development and help fight climate change."
However, that fell short of the 1.9-megajoule target set by the NIF.
That threshold was breached in recent weeks by scientists at Livermore, the Financial Times reported.
It is understood the latest laser reaction produced 2.5 megajoules of energy. The results of the fusion experiment are still being analysed.
Such was the power produced in the fusion experiment that some of the diagnostic equipment was damaged.
The laboratory has remained cautious, beyond describing the experiment as successful.
“Initial diagnostic data suggests another successful experiment at the National Ignition Facility,” it said.
“However, the exact yield is still being determined and we can’t confirm that it is over the threshold at this time.
“That analysis is in process, so publishing the information . . . before that process is complete would be inaccurate.”
Fusion reactions produce neither carbon nor long-lived, radioactive waste - effectively reaching the holy grail in energy production.
It also enables vast amounts of energy to be produced from very little hydrogen fuel.
The technique of inertial confinement fusion dates back to the 1970s and simply put aims to harness the power found in nuclear weapons to produce energy.
Fusion energy has bipartisan support in Washington.
Earlier this year Democratic congressman Don Beyer, who started the Fusion Energy Caucus, stressed the technology was different from that used to produce power at Fukushima and Chernobyl.
“Fusion is the Holy Grail of climate change and decarbonised future,” he told a White House summit.
“Perhaps even more profoundly, fusion has the potential to lift more citizens of the world out of poverty than any idea since fire.”
Nevada flower listed as endangered at lithium mine site In this Feb. 10, 2020, file photo, a plant ecologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, points to a tiny Tiehm's buckwheat that has sprouted at a campus greenhouse in Reno, Nev. U.S. wildlife officials declared a Nevada wildflower endangered Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2022, at the only place it exists on a high-desert ridge where a lithium mine is planned to help meet growing demand for electric car batteries.
(AP Photo/Scott Sonner, File)
SCOTT SONNER Wed, December 14, 2022
RENO, Nev. (AP) — A Nevada wildflower was declared endangered at the only place it's known to exist — on a high-desert ridge where a lithium mine is planned to help meet growing demand for electric car batteries, U.S. wildlife officials announced Wednesday.
The Fish and Wildlife Service's formal listing of Tiehm's buckwheat and its accompanying designation of 910 acres (368 hectares) of critical habitat for the 6-inch-tall (15-centimeter-tall) flower with yellow blooms raises another potential hurdle for President Joe Biden's “green energy” agenda.
With an estimated remaining population of only about 16,000 plants, the service concluded that Tiehm's buckwheat is on the brink of extinction.
“We find that a threatened species status is not appropriate because the threats are severe and imminent, and Tiehm’s buckwheat is in danger of extinction now, as opposed to likely to become endangered in the future,” the agency said.
The proposed mining and mineral exploration poses the biggest threat to the flower. It's also threatened by road-building, livestock grazing, rodents that eat it, invasive plants and climate change, the service said. It said an apparent, unprecedented rodent attack wiped out about 60% of its estimated population in 2020.
Ioneer, the Australian mining company that's been planning for years to dig for lithium where the flower grows on federal land halfway between Reno and Las Vegas, says it has developed a protection plan that would allow the plant and the project to coexist.
But the listing under the Endangered Species Act subjects the mine to its most stringent regulatory requirement to date.
It also underscores the challenges facing the Biden administration in its efforts to combat climate change through an accelerated transition from fossil fuels to renewables.
“Lithium is an important part of our renewable energy transition, but it can't come at the cost of extinction,” said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which petitioned for the listing in 2019 and sued last year to expedite the plant's protection.
The mining company said the decision "provides further clarity for the path forward" and is “fully in line with Ioneer's expectations” for development of the mine site at Rhyolite Ridge in the Silver Peak Range west of Tonopah, near the California border.
“We are committed to the protection and conservation of the species and have incorporated numerous measures into our current and future plans to ensure this occurs,” Ioneer managing director Bernard Rowe said in a statement.
“Our operations have and will continue to avoid all Tiehm's buckwheat populations,” he said.
The service's final listing rule will be published Thursday in the Federal Register.
The conservationists who sued to protect the plant insist that Ioneer's mitigation plan won't pass legal muster. They pledge to resume their court battle if necessary to protect the buckwheat's habitat from the rush to develop new lithium deposits.
The flowers are found on a total of just 10 acres (4 hectares) spread across about 3 square miles (7.8 square kilometers). Federal agencies are prohibited from approving any activity on federal lands that could destroy, modify or adversely affect any listed species' critical habitat.
Donnelly said the company's latest operations plan for the first phase of the mine proposes avoiding a “tiny island of land” containing 75% of its population — surrounded by an open pit mine and tailings dumps within 12 feet (3.7 meters) of the flowers.
The Bureau of Land Management is reviewing the environmental impacts of Ioneer's latest operations and protection plans.
But Donnelley noted that USFWS estimated in Wednesday's final listing rule that the proposed scenario would “disturb and remove up to 38% of the critical habitat for this species, impacting pollinator populations, altering hydrology, removing soil and risking subsidence.”
“Ioneer's ‘Buckwheat Island’ scenario would spell doom for this sensitive little flower,” Donnelly said.
The mine is among several renewable energy-related projects facing legal or regulatory challenges in Nevada. They include another lithium mine proposed near the Oregon border and a geothermal power plant where the Dixie Valley toad has been declared endangered in wetlands about 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Reno.
“Now that the buckwheat is protected, we’ll use the full power of the Endangered Species Act to ensure Ioneer doesn’t harm one hair on a buckwheat’s head,” Donnelly said.
How dams built by China starve the Mekong River Delta of vital sediment Starving the Mekong: Lives are remade as dams built by China upstream deprive Mekong River Delta of precious sediment
Thu, December 15, 2022 By Kanupriya Kapoor, Simon Scarr and Phuong Nguyen
SOC TRANG, Vietnam (Reuters) -Standing on the bank of the Mekong River, Tran Van Cung can see his rice farm wash away before his very eyes. The paddy's edge is crumbling into the delta.
Just 15 years ago, Southeast Asia's longest river carried some 143 million tonnes of sediment – as heavy as about 430 Empire State Buildings – through to the Mekong River Delta every year, dumping nutrients along riverbanks essential to keeping tens of thousands of farms like Cung's intact and productive.
But as Chinese-built hydroelectric dams have mushroomed upriver, much of that sediment is being blocked, an analysis of satellite data by Germany-based aquatic remote sensing company EOMAP and Reuters shows. (Graphic - Starving the Mekong: )
The analysis reinforces an estimate by the Mekong River Commission, set up in 1995 by countries bordering the river, that in 2020 only about a third of those river-borne soils would reach the Vietnamese floodplains. At the current rate of decline, the commission estimated, less than five million tonnes of sediment will reach the delta each year by 2040.
Stretching nearly 5,000 kilometres from the Plateau of Tibet to the South China Sea, the Mekong is a farming and fishing lifeline for tens of millions as it swirls through China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia before reaching Vietnam.
"The river is not bringing sediment, the soil is salinised," said Cung, 60, who has grown rice at his family's 10-hectare farm for more than 40 years.
"Without sediment, we are done," he said. His diminishing harvest now brings in barely half of the 250 million dong ($10,636) annually that he earned just a few years ago, and his two children and several neighbours have left the area to seek more stable and lucrative work elsewhere.
DAMS TRAP SEDIMENT
For decades, scientists and environmentalists have warned upstream dam projects jeopardise livelihoods in a region of some 18 million people and an annual rice market of $10.5 billion that is a major food source for up to 200 million people across Asia, according to WWF estimates, Reuters calculations and Vietnam's Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Worry shared by Lower Mekong nations has already led Cambodia to pause plans for two dams on the river, according to the Mekong Dam Monitor, an online platform that provides real-time data on dams and their environmental impact.
But in China and Laos, dam-building goes on. Of seven new dams planned in Laos, at least four are co-financed by Chinese companies, according to Mekong Dam Monitor data.
China's foreign ministry said the country accounted for only a fifth of the total Mekong basin area and only 13.5% of the water flowing out of the Mekong's estuary, adding that there was already a "scientific consensus" on the impact of China's upstream dams. The ministry did not address the slide in sediment levels or the role of Chinese dams in that decline.
Using data derived from thousands of satellite images, EOMAP and Reuters analysed sediment levels around four major dams on the Mekong, two in China and two in Laos. The analysis showed each dam drastically reduced the sediment that should have otherwise flowed through at those locations – by an average of 81% of the sediment load across the four dams.
"The dams are trapping sediment ... each one traps a certain amount, so there isn't enough reaching the floodplains," said Marc Goichot, a WWF river specialist in Vietnam who was not involved in the analysis but reviewed the results.
"Sediment and deltas should be able to regenerate and rebuild themselves," he said. "But the pace at which the natural balance is being forced to change in the Mekong is too fast for the sediment to keep up." 'WAKE-UP CALL'
Farmers in the Vietnamese Mekong River Delta region were not prepared for the speed at which their landscape - and fortunes - have changed.
The area under rice farming has shrunk by 5% in the last five years alone, with many forced to adopt shrimp farming in salty seawater as an alternative.
Incomes in this once-booming region are now among Vietnam's lowest, even as the national economy grows at a projected 8% for 2022. The region has seen more outward migration than any other in Vietnam since 2009, according to Vietnam's Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The Mekong River Commission estimated in 2018 that total sediment flow by now would be around 47 million tonnes per year. It could be far lower – estimated at just 32 million tonnes per year, according to scientific studies from the last decade including one published in July 2021 in the journal Nature Communications.
"In the past three or four years there has been a wake-up call about sediment," said the head of the commission, Anoulak Kittikhoun of Laos. "We definitely cannot return to sediment levels seen in the past. We need to preserve what we have."
Meanwhile China, eager to boost renewable energy capacity to reduce its reliance on coal, has already built at least 95 hydroelectric dams on tributaries flowing into the Mekong, called the Lancang in China.
Another 11 dams have gone up since 1995 on the main river itself in China – including five mega-dams each standing more than 100 metres tall – while China has helped to build two in Laos.
Dozens more are planned. State-owned Huaneng Lancang River Hydropower, tasked with developing resources, aims to double the network's 21.3 gigawatt capacity by 2025, its chairman Yuan Xianghua told Reuters.
CASCADING EFFECT
The analysis by EOMAP and Reuters of satellite images taken over three decades around four major dams in China and Laos found evidence that the dams reduce sediment flow drastically.
The analysis relied on measurements of turbidity depicted in the images – the amount of light scattered by solid particles suspended in water – as a proxy for sediment levels. Sediment clouds water as it flows: the muddier the water, the higher the turbidity and the more sediment it is likely carrying.
EOMAP used the same approach to gauge sediment in the Elbe River in 2010 and in hydropower reservoirs in Switzerland and Albania in 2021. Its findings on those waterways matched ground observations.
The satellite images for the Mekong analysis date back to the 1990s, which "allows us to calculate turbidity levels before many of the dams were built," said EOMAP data analyst Philipp Bauer.
After discarding images obscured by cloud cover or pollution, the team was left with 1,500 depicting the turbidity around two dams in China and two in Laos. Experts not involved in the analysis agreed the findings made clear the dams were a key culprit behind the delta's sediment loss.
"Mainstream dams catch everything," said economist Brian Eyler at the Stimson Center, which runs the Mekong Dam Monitor. "China's got 11 on the mainstream, plus other countries, so all these are working together to reduce sediment load."
For example, before China built its fourth-largest dam at Nuozhadu in Yunnan province, the water's turbidity measure in 2004 averaged 125.61 so-called 'nephelometric turbidity units', or NTUs, according to satellite data.
After the dam was completed in 2012, average turbidity at the same spot plummeted 98% to just 2.38 NTUs - clear enough to meet the World Health Organization's classification for drinking water.
The Xayaburi and Don Sahong dams in Laos are the most recent to come online, with Xayaburi the largest on the entire Mekong River. Average turbidity before China constructed the Xayaburi dam was 101.51 NTUs, while after the dam came online in 2019, turbidity tumbled 95% to an average of 5.16 NTUs.
And on Laos' southern border with Cambodia, turbidity fell about 42% to 42.39 NTUs after the Don Sahong dam started up in 2019.
Reuters asked both the Chinese and Laotian governments about the impact of their dams and plans to build more. China's foreign ministry did not respond to questions about its existing and planned dams or their impact on sediment levels, while the Laotian government did not respond to requests for comment.
Governments of other countries through which the Mekong flows also did not respond to requests for comment. FAR-REACHING IMPACTS
At Cung's rice farm in Vietnam, riverbank seedlings have little time to take root before they fall into the water as the banks give way.
Located about 430 kilometres (270 miles) from the nearest upstream dam – and roughly 1,400 kilometres from the Chinese border – the farm area's turbidity has dropped about 15% in the last 20 years, to about 61 NTUs on average today, according to the analysis by EOMAP and Reuters.
Downriver countries affected by the dwindling sediment have lobbied unsuccessfully for China to share data on sediment flows as well as details of its dam-building plans. Beijing shares data only about the water levels and flow rates from its mainstream dams.
Last year, the Mekong River Commission launched its own joint study with China looking at the dams' impacts, but the results won't be known until 2024 at the earliest.
But while the commission has raised concerns about sediment depletion, "We have not had a serious conversation [with China] about sediment yet," said commission chief Kittikhoun.
"Water flow is a priority. Working with China, you have to take it one step at a time."
Sitting cross-legged by the river, rice farmer Cung said he and his peers have struggled to find information about how to adapt to the changes wrought by dams.
"It's not an easy decision to make but sometimes quitting is the only economic choice that makes sense," Cung said.
($1 = 23,505.0000 dong)
(Additional reporting by David Stanway, Claire Trainor and Manas Sharma; Editing by Katy Daigle and Kenneth Maxwell)
Whitebark pine that feeds grizzlies is threatened, US says Seen are whitebark pine that have succumbed to mountain pine beetles through the Gros Ventre area east of Jackson Hole, Wyo., on Aug. 1, 2011. U.S. officials say climate change, beetles and a deadly fungus are imperiling the long-term survival of the high-elevation tree found in the western U.S. (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP, File)
MATTHEW BROWN Wed, December 14, 2022
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Whitebark pine trees can live more than 1,000 years, but in just two decades more than a quarter of the trees that are a key food source for some grizzly bears have been killed by disease, climate change, wildfires and voracious beetles, government officials said as they announced federal protections Wednesday.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will designate whitebark pine as threatened with potential extinction, according to details obtained by The Associated Press. The belated acknowledgement of the tree’s severe decline will require officials to craft a recovery plan and pursue restoration work.
Whitebark pines are found at elevations up to 12,000 feet (3,600 meters) — conditions too harsh for most tress to survive. They are considered a “keystone” species other plants and animals depend on for survival, and their edible seeds are spread almost exclusively by a bird, the Clark's nutcracker.
A nonnative fungus — white pine blister rust — has been killing whitebark pines for a century and they've been largely wiped out in areas. That includes the eastern edge of Yellowstone National Park, where seeds from the trees are a source of food for threatened grizzly bears.
More recently, the trees have proven vulnerable to bark beetles that have killed millions of acres of forest, and climate change that scientists say is responsible for more severe wildfire seasons.
The trees occur across 126,000 square miles (326,164 square kilometers) of land in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and western Canada.
Wildlife officials declined to designate which forest habitats are critical to the tree’s survival, stopping short of what some environmentalists argue is needed.
An estimated 88% of whitebark pine habitat is federally owned, with most of that area managed by the U.S. Forest Service.
Just over 50% of standing whitebark pine trees are dead, according to researchers. That includes about 25% that died in the past two decades, said Alexandra Kasdin with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Despite the losses, remaining whitebark populations are resilient enough to withstand disease and other problems for decades, she said.
“We have found it is likely to become endangered with extinction in the foreseeable future, not that it is in danger of extinction now,” Kasdin said. “The species is still relatively widespread.”
Noah Greenwald with the Center for Biological Diversity said the decision not to designate critical habitat means whitebark stands could be harmed by construction of ski areas or other developments.
“How it’s going to be able to survive in a warming world isn’t totally known, so it would be prudent to identify places likely to be refuges and ensure they get protected,” Greenwald said.
The species is not commercially harvested, but California wildlife officials said timber harvests should nevertheless be considered a threat in areas where whitebark pine are intermingled with other trees. Federal officials said logging could affect individual trees or local areas, but was unlikely to have species-level impacts.
A 2009 court ruling that restored protections for Yellowstone grizzly bears cited in part the tree’s decline, although government studies later concluded the grizzlies could find other things to eat.
That's complicated government efforts to declare the bears recovered and no longer needing federal protection. Grizzlies raid caches of whitebark pine cones hidden by squirrels and devour the seeds within the cones to fatten up for winter.
Environmentalists had petitioned the government in 1991 and again in 2008 to protect the trees. After getting sued, wildlife officials in 2011 acknowledged that whitebark pines needed protections but they took no immediate action, saying other species faced more immediate threats.
At the time many mountaintops across the West were turning red with dying stands of whitebark pine, said 2008 petition author Sylvia Fallon, a Natural Resources Defense Council biologist.
“Now you look up at the mountains and you see fields of gray, dead trees,” Fallon said Wednesday. “It's taken 14 years since we filed the petition, but I'm glad to see Fish and Wildlife finally make this determination."
The protections adopted Wednesday were proposed two years ago. The final rule includes new provisions that allow members of Native American tribes to collect seeds from whitebark pine for ceremonial or traditional use.
Researchers and private groups are working with federal agencies on plans to gather cones from blister rust-resistant trees, grow the seeds in greenhouses and then plant them back on the landscape.
“There's hope here,” said Diana Tomback, a University of Colorado Denver biology professor and policy director for the Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Foundation.
“We know how to find genetic resistance to white pine blister rust and there's a number of whitebark pine trees that have it. They will be the foundation of a planting strategy,” she said.
A draft of the restoration plan is expected early next year.
Some work already has been accomplished, including the planting of nearly 1 million disease resistant seedlings by the advocacy group American Forests, said Elizabeth Pansing the group's senior manager of western forest science. So far that work “is not happening at the pace or scale needed” to accomplish range-wide restoration, Pansing said.
Future efforts will seek to reseed about a third of the whitebark pine’s range in coming years, Pansing said. Clark's nutcrackers would then spread seeds from disease-resistant trees across the remainder of the range, according to Pansing and Tomback.
“It may take several human lifetimes, but eventually through natural processes we believe we can restore whitebark pine,” Tomback said.
