BBC will not broadcast Attenborough episode over fear of ‘rightwing backlash’

Helena Horton Environment reporter
Fri, 10 March 2023 



The BBC has decided not to broadcast an episode of Sir David Attenborough’s flagship new series on British wildlife because of fears its themes of the destruction of nature would risk a backlash from Tory politicians and the rightwing press, the Guardian has been told.

The decision has angered the programme-makers and some insiders at the BBC, who fear the corporation has bowed to pressure from lobbying groups with “dinosaurian ways”.

The BBC strongly denied this was the case and insisted the episode in question was never intended for broadcast.

Attenborough’s highly anticipated new series, Wild Isles, looks at the beauty of nature in the British Isles.

Narrated by David Attenborough, it is expected to be a hit, with five episodes scheduled to go out in primetime slots on BBC One.

A sixth episode has also been filmed, which is understood to be a stark look at the losses of nature in the UK and what has caused the declines. It is also understood to include some examples of rewilding, a concept that has been controversial in some rightwing circles.

Related: The truth about Britain’s wildlife crisis is stark: the timid BBC must let David Attenborough tell it loud and clear | Geoffrey Lean

The documentary series was part-funded by nature charities the WWF and RSPB, but the final episode will not be broadcast along with the others and will instead be available only on the BBC’s iPlayer service. All six episodes were narrated by Attenborough, and made by the production company Silverback Films, responsible for previous series including Our Planet, in collaboration with the BBC Natural History Unit.

Senior sources at the BBC told the Guardian that the decision not to show the sixth episode was made to fend off potential critique from the political right. This week the Telegraph newspaper attacked the BBC for creating the series and for taking funding from “two charities previously criticised for their political lobbying” – the WWF and RSPB.

One source at the broadcaster, who asked not to be named, said “lobbying groups that are desperately hanging on to their dinosaurian ways” such as the farming and game industry would “kick off” if the show had too political a message.

They added: “Frankly, this idea that you sort of put it in a separate programme to almost parcel it to one side is disingenuous. Why don’t they integrate those stories into all of them at the time?”

In a statement provided after the story was first published, the BBC said: “This is totally inaccurate, there is no ‘sixth episode’. Wild Isles is – and always was – a five part series and does not shy away from environmental content. We have acquired a separate film for iPlayer from the RSPB and WWF and Silverback Films about people working to preserve and restore the biodiversity of the British Isles.”

Alastair Fothergill, the director of Silverback Films and the executive producer of Wild Isles, added: “The BBC commissioned a five-part Wild Isles series from us at Silverback Films back in 2017. The RSPB and WWF joined us as co-production partners in 2018.

It was not until the end of 2021 that the two charities commissioned Silverback Films to make a film for them that celebrates the extraordinary work of people fighting to restore nature in Britain and Ireland. The BBC acquired this film for iPlayer at the start of this year.”

Laura Howard, who produced the programme and used to work at the BBC’s Natural History Unit, said she did not believe its messages to be political.

She told the Guardian: “I think the facts speak for themselves. You know, we’ve worked really closely with the RSPB in particular who are able to factcheck all of our scripts and provide us with detailed scientific data and information about the loss of wildlife in this country. And it is undeniable, we are incredibly nature-depleted. And I don’t think that that is political, I think it’s just facts.”

The producer said the film would touch on how farming practices had harmed wildlife, but would also profile farmers who had done the right thing.

“Those farmers are there to make the point that every farm in the country ought to be able to do a little bit at least of what they do, and that it is possible to farm alongside nature, to make a profit, to produce healthy food and to still run a business,” Howard said.

She added that she hoped a young audience would be able to find the film, as they are used to streaming on iPlayer rather than watching a broadcast.

Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP for Brighton Pavilion, said: “For the BBC to censor of one of the nation’s most informed and trusted voices on the nature and climate emergencies is nothing short of an unforgivable dereliction of its duty to public service broadcasting. This government has taken a wrecking ball to our environment – putting over 1,700 pieces of environmental legislation at risk, setting an air pollution target which is a decade too late, and neglecting the scandal of our sewage-filled waterways – which cannot go unexamined and unchallenged by the public.

“BBC bosses must not be cowed by antagonistic, culture war-stoking government ministers, putting populist and petty political games above delivering serious action to protect and restore our natural world. This episode simply must be televised.”

Chris Packham, who presents Springwatch on the BBC, also criticised the decision. He told the Guardian: “At this time, in our fight to save the world’s biodiversity, it is irresponsible not to put that at the forefront of wildlife broadcasting.”

Stephen Moss, a natural historian and TV producer who has worked for the BBC on nature programmes, said focusing on a conservation angle could win political support for the cause. He said: “Often, if you lead on environmental issues, people genuinely turn off. But if you drip feed it within the programmes and then hit people with a message at the end when you convince them how brilliant wildlife is, it tends to work.

“With Blue Planet, you got Theresa May standing up and Philip Hammond, the chancellor at the time, saying: ‘this is the BBC as its very best’, doing what Conservatives never do, basically praising the BBC and saying: this is fantastic. So maybe that will happen with this. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Tory politicians jump on the bandwagon and go on and on about how brilliant it is.”

The charities involved in the programme are already using it to launch a campaign – unaffiliated with the BBC – called Save Our Wild Isles. They have gained the support of the National Trust, the Guardian understands.

EU commits to pushing for global fossil fuel phaseout ahead of Cop28 summit


Stuti Mishra
Fri, 10 March 2023

The European Union (EU) has agreed to support a worldwide push for phasing out fossil fuels in a bid to tackle the growing threat of climate crisis ahead of the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai later this year.

Ministers from the 27 EU member states approved a text on their diplomatic priorities ahead of the conference, where almost 200 countries will be present to strengthen their efforts towards limiting global warming.

“The shift towards a climate-neutral economy will require the global phase-out of unabated fossil fuels,” the EU text said, citing the scientific consensus that this is necessary to avoid a more severe climate crisis, Reuters news agency reported.

“The EU will systematically promote and call for a global move towards energy systems free of unabated fossil fuels well ahead of 2050,” it said, adding that global fossil fuel consumption should peak in the near term.

The shift towards a climate-neutral economy, the EU text said, would require a worldwide phase-out of unabated fossil fuels.

This decision comes after countries failed to agree on a push to phase out fossil fuels at last year’s climate summit in Egypt.

More than 80 countries, including the EU, supported an Indian proposal to do this at last year’s summit, provided the earlier agreed-upon pace of coal phase-down is not slowed. But Saudi Arabia and other oil and gas-rich nations opposed it.

Many other nations also backed the proposal, including 39 countries of the Alliance of Small Island States, seriously threatened by the rise in temperatures and sea levels.

There’s hope that this year’s Cop28 summit, starting on 30 November in UAE, could clinch a global deal on phasing out all Co2-emitting fossil fuels - not only coal, as agreed at previous UN climate talks, but also oil and gas.

Europe is currently transforming its energy system to meet climate targets and end decades of reliance on Russian fossil fuels. The EU text said countries should combine the two aims and use renewable energy or energy savings - rather than fossil fuels - to replace Russian energy.

“There is no need for a one-to-one replacement of former Russian natural gas import volumes,” it said.

EU countries approved their climate text two weeks later than planned, owing to a spat among countries over whether it should promote nuclear energy.

The final version scrubbed some wording that countries had disagreed on but said that alongside renewable energy, EU diplomacy will promote sustainable “low-carbon technologies” - a phrase that often refers to nuclear energy.

As climate crisis continues to be a pressing issue, it is hoped that the commitment made by the EU to promote a global fossil fuel phaseout will set the ball rolling for the global deal this year to include in the text.

While coal is considered the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, it is also the cheapest and most abundantly available energy source for developing countries like India which still has a long way ahead to provide cheaper electricity to their population. While India has made strides in renewable growth and aims to increase its share by half by 2030, it often comes under fire for its coal usage.

The move to get all fossil fuels mentioned in the global climate deal was considered a diplomatic offensive by India at the UN climate summit in Egypt and aimed to put the spotlight on oil and gas-producing nations, mostly developed countries like the US and the EU, instead of singling out coal.

The EU’s move towards a global phase-out of fossil fuels is seen as significant as the bloc’s carbon emissions makeup approximately 18 per cent of global historic greenhouse gas emissions.

The European Commission plans to increase the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction target to 55 per cent below 1990 levels by 2030, which will require significant changes in the way people heat their homes, travel, and produce food.

BP boss earns 170 times his average worker as his pay doubles to £10m

August Graham, PA Business Reporter
Fri, 10 March 2023 



The boss of BP earned more than 170 times more than his average employee last year as his pay doubled to around £10 million after the company benefited from the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

New figures from the oil giant showed that Bernard Looney’s total pay packet increased from around £4.5 million in 2021.

The company’s profit doubled between 2021 and 2022, but the increase was largely thanks to a long-term incentive that was paid to Mr Looney.

This means that Mr Looney’s remuneration was around 172 times higher than the average employee at the oil and gas giant.

Compared to the 25th percentile – that is to say an employee whose pay was less then three in four of their colleagues’ – Mr Looney’s pay was 421 times higher.

Those in the 25th percentile also saw their pay increase, going from £21,450 in 2021 to £23,810 a year later.

The average salary for workers across all employers in the UK is around £33,000.

BP fared well last year thanks in no small part to the day that Vladimir Putin decided to send tanks across the border in an attempt to annex the entirety of Ukraine.

As cruise missiles started falling on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities the price of oil and gas ticked upwards last year, peaking in August and June respectively.

The cost of gas in particular spiked for European customers. Oil is largely transported by ship around the world so it was easier for other countries to supply oil to Europe.

But there are many fewer gas ships in the world, so as supply from Russian pipelines dried up the price of gas peaked at somewhere around 15 times its historical average.

BP and its rivals around the world helped avoid a massive energy crunch in Europe by supplying oil and gas to the continent.

But it came at a price as the energy they sold was much more valuable to their customers.

By January this year the average household energy bill was nearly £4,300 per year – four times where it had been before the crisis.

The Government has racked up a massive bill to help households so they did not have to shoulder the full amount themselves.

But BP had its best ever year as a result. Profit doubled to around 28 billion dollars (£23.4 billion).

Jonathan Noronha-Gant, senior fossil fuels campaigner at Global Witness, said: “People everywhere struggling to feed their families or warm their homes in the harsh winter months, have every right to be angry that the CEO of a huge energy firm is netting millions of pounds in pay. This enormous pay package is a kick in the teeth to all hard-working people being faced with a cost-of-living crisis.

“Nothing could be a starker example of the gross inequality that sits at the very heart of our broken energy system.

“For a rich few to be seeing their already extraordinary wealth bolstered, precisely because bills have been so unaffordable for the majority, is a twisted irony. At the very least the governments should be implementing a proper windfall tax on both profits and CEO pay.”

Greek tragedies like Medea are an ethical nightmare. That’s why we need them

Charlotte Higgins
Sat, 11 March 2023 


Last week, I found myself – at the end of a gloomy day – shot through with a burst of fierce, electric energy. It came from watching Sophie Okonedo’s 90 minutes of flat-out fury as she played Medea, opposite Ben Daniels’s Jason, in Dominic Cooke’s production of the Euripides play.

Afterwards, I registered the fact that the woman sitting by me had actually put her hands over her face when Medea decided to murder her own children. I, on the other hand, had not. Why did I mentally urge her on towards the unspeakable deeds, inwardly channelling all the pent-up anti-patriarchal rage at my disposal? Wasn’t there something deeply disturbing about that? Or was the play precisely doing its job in Aristotelian terms: providing a catharsis?

Medea’s murder of her children is the nuclear button when it comes to punishing her faithless husband, who has cast her aside like an old rag: their sons are the symbol and reality of inherited male power. Since Jason has just openly voiced his fantasy that men might give birth to sons without the need for women at all, there’s a magnificent, if gruesome, logic to her crime.

My theatre date quizzed me. She had found Medea a surprisingly sympathetic character … well, for most of the play, and had the script been updated? It had, but not that much: the essentials of Medea’s character were intact, including her immortal words, “It is easier to stand in battle three times in the front line … than to bear one child.”

The audience at the premiere, in Athens in 431BC, mostly male, would have received the story very differently. Athenian women, particularly high-born women, were expected to be silent and remain out of sight and mind of men; in public, they would be veiled. The same year that the play premiered, the Athenian statesman Pericles gave a famous speech in which he said that women’s greatest glory was not to be spoken about. It crossed my mind that my friend had once been a correspondent in Afghanistan.

What on earth do we do with these strange, knotty, difficult texts from the past? Roald Dahl has nothing on Greek tragedy, and yet we seem always to be coming back for more. Okonedo’s Medea was the second brilliant performance I’d seen in a year, after Adura Onashile’s, for the National Theatre of Scotland, last summer. And then there is Phaedra at the National Theatre, starring a magnificent Janet McTeer. The play, by Simon Stone, who also directs, is “after” Euripides’s Hippolytus, Seneca’s Phaedra and Racine’s Phèdre. Those plays tell of how Phaedra, queen of Athens, falls in lust with her stepson, Hippolytus. After he rejects her, she accuses him, falsely, of rape.

I was intensely curious to see how Stone would deal with this storyline. Phaedra’s tale is enormously potent and has parallels in other cultures; for example, the biblical story of Potiphar’s wife. But it’s powerful in a destructive way. It reinforces the patriarchal lie that women, far from being overwhelmingly the victims of sexual violence and abuse, routinely accuse men of rape falsely.

If you disagree that a myth like that can still have a foothold in the modern world, I would politely refer you to the alleged statement by Stephen House, a former Metropolitan police deputy commissioner, that the bulk of rape accusations are, in fact, “regretful sex”. (He denies having used the phrase or believing the statement.) For such reasons, I decided not to include the story of Phaedra in my book Greek Myths: A New Retelling.

As it turned out, Stone also refused the fence. His Phaedra (renamed Helen) does many terrible things, including causing, directly or indirectly, at least two deaths. But in his version of the story, she does not falsely accuse anyone of rape. “What I have her do in my version is no less heinous,” Stone told me. “But it’s not an act that reduces her to a set of cliches that certain parts of society currently use to try to hinder the essential progress towards gender equality.” Is inventing a rape claim worse than causing people’s death? What are we supposed to do with these stories that take you into a world way beyond the boundaries of the taboo?

A couple of weeks ago, I saw another, quite different approach to Greek tragedy, in the Gulbenkian Arts Centre in Canterbury. Several years ago, the playwright David Greig and the director Ramin Grey worked on a hit production, performed in London, Dublin, Manchester, Belfast and Edinburgh, of Aeschylus’s play Suppliants. The story tells of how the 50 daughters of Danaus, forced into marriage with the 50 sons of Aegyptus, flee their homeland in Africa and claim asylum in Argos.

What I saw in Canterbury was the second part of the story, the middle play of what originally would have been a trilogy of tragedies. The twist is that only that first, Suppliants, actually survives. Of the second, Egyptians, only a single word remains, and, of the third, little beyond a few lines hymning Aphrodite. So the play I saw was a complete (bar one word) reconstruction. Greig’s idea, a crazy and quixotic one, was to imagine himself into Aeschylus’s shoes and to build the play without modernising, recuperating, softening or reclaiming it. Impossible, of course, but a fascinating quest.

Related: Yes, Roald Dahl was a bigot. But that’s no excuse to re-write his books | Francine Prose

The result was mesmerising to watch – a thing that both was and wasn’t Greek. It put me in mind of Ossian, whose poems, purporting to be ancient Gaelic epics, were actually faked by the 18th-century Scottish poet James Macpherson – by which I mean it struck me that in years to come, the play will, like Macpherson’s poems, be more revealing of the moment in which it was created than of the culture it aims to reconstruct.

Greig had, I thought, done a good job of being Aeschylean. That is, he had written a play whose likely outcome was the mass rape of 50 women; in which his major female character slits her own throat; and in which the other female character exists solely to uphold the patriarchal values of marriage and family represented by the goddess Hera, whose priestess she is. It’s true that in the next play, which Greig is also planning to write, 49 of the 50 brides murder their rapists/bridegrooms – but Aeschylus was no feminist, and nor, even, was Euripides.

I left with a nagging sense of what a strange – and yet intriguing – thing it was to put a play like this into the world when what the world actually needs is space for the untold stories of women and girls.

And yet we do need difficult, violent intractable texts such as Euripides’s Phaedra with its false rape claim, because the play tracks us back to the origins of a pernicious narrative, but also because Euripides’s play Hippolytus is otherwise ravishingly beautiful (read Anne Carson’s translation in her volume Grief Lessons).

We do need Medea and her horrific child-killing. We need the literature of the past in its spikiness and indigestibility, with its people whom we love and hate, who remind us of ourselves and yet are alien to us. It is one of the few ways we have left of understanding ourselves and other humans in all our destructiveness, and all our deadliness, and all our magnificence.

Charlotte Higgins is the Guardian’s chief culture writer

Ukraine's same-sex marriage campaign: 'Russia is homophobic; we want to be different'

By Alasdair Sandford & Euronews • Updated: 11/03/2023 

An activist in Ukraine's first gay pride demonstration seen through the rainbow flag during the action in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, May 25, 2013. - Copyright AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky

"As we are not married... I'm not protected and my partner is not protected by law... unfortunately I can die at any moment in Ukraine now."

Jul has been living in Kyiv throughout Russia's onslaught on their country, ever since Putin launched the full-scale invasion over a year ago. Together with partner Olha they recently applied to get married online -- a new possibility via the "Diia" ("action") government website.

"Our application was in progress for one day, one business day, and now we have a note of a rejection because unfortunately our constitution position of Ukraine we have this part is that marriage is a willing union between woman and man. That's why our application was rejected," Jul told Euronews.

The couple knew full well what would happen, but like many other LGBT+ couples who also applied, they saw it as a symbolic gesture.

"It's an opportunity to show to our government that this question, a question about civic partnership or same-sex marriage is still very important for Ukraine, especially during this year, during the full-scale war," Jul added.

'What happens if a partner is killed?'

Ukraine has increased support for the rights of LGBT+ people since Western-looking leaders came to power in 2014. Discrimination in the workplace was banned, but same-sex marriage or civil partnerships have not been legalised.

Same-sex marriage is very important for Ukraine, especially during the full-scale war
Jul
Member of Kyiv Pride

Inna Sovsun, a deputy in the Ukrainian parliament, believes that the government has been "dragging its feet for many years now" over the issue. This week she put forward a bill in parliament to legalise same-sex relationships.

She argues that the lack of equal opportunities not only amounts to discrimination, but the additional factor that Ukraine is at war with Russia puts into sharp focus the vulnerability of LGBT+ couples, for whom the consequences can be severe.

"We do have over 700,000 people who are serving in the Ukrainian army. Some of them are LGBT people. Those LGBT people, they do have partners, but they cannot in any way make their relations official," Sovsun told Euronews.

"So in case anything happens to the military person on the battlefront, his or her partner would not be able to make any medical decisions about the partner. Or if the worst happens, if a death happens, if the person is killed, again the partner would not have legal opportunity to make decisions about the burial and all of that. So that kind of adds the urgency to this situation."


The risk is far from theoretical. Olena Shevchenko of the human rights group Ukraine Insight told us there are "real stories, which you see almost every day" on the battlefield.

"Somebody died on the front line, and the partner doesn't have access even to recognise the body because this person's (considered) a nobody... Somebody also died on the front line and this woman had a family with a child. So what will happen next if your partner is not (the) biological mother of this child? What will happen to all those people or mostly those who have families with children?" she said.

"I would say there's a very deep frustration, especially for those of us who gave so much during this war, who are doing many unbearable things," she went on, adding that couples were facing an internal struggle with the Ukrainian authorities, on top of the war with Russia.

"But we have to fight, you know, on both sides, inside and outside. I don't think it is right," Shevchenko said.

Increasing support for LGBT+ rights

Opinion polls suggest that Ukrainians have become much more tolerant of homosexuality in recent years than they once were. One recently indicated that a majority was no longer opposed to same-sex marriage. In August 2022, an online petition to legalise it gathered more than 28,500 signatures.

President Zelenskyy, noting that the government had been looking at legalising same-sex relationships, responded by asking his prime minister to further examine the issue. But he added that during wartime, no changes could be made to the constitution, defining marriage as being between a man and a woman.

Russia is a homophobic country... we want to be different from them

Inna Sovsun

Member of Ukrainian parliament

However, the war has intensified the drive among LGBT+ rights campaigners for urgent change. Inna Sovsun argues that the contrast between Ukraine and Russia adds another dimension to the fight for equal rights in her country.

"We are now in a war with a highly homophobic country. Homophobia nowadays is basically part of Russian official ideology, and I think that in society, people also start to differentiate that we're different from Russia. Russia is extremely homophobic. We want to be different from them," she told Euronews.

"So I think that this also adds to our understanding of the problem as a society. And I think that actually creates better conditions for the legislation to be supported."

Moderna to hire around 2,000 employees amid mRNA development push



Fri, March 10, 2023 

(Reuters) -Moderna Inc said on Friday it was planning to hire about 2,000 employees globally by 2023-end and set up new offices on the U.S. West Coast, as it aims to scale up development of new products amid declining COVID vaccine sales.

The COVID vaccine maker said it will open new offices in California and Seattle, adding that its Genomics unit will expand to south San Francisco.

The latest move comes at a time when Moderna has been working on developing vaccines for skin cancer, flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) using its mRNA technology, which if approved would significantly boost the biotech company that currently relies heavily on its COVID-19 shot.

Last month, Moderna forecast rising costs for 2023 and a decline in COVID vaccine sales, raising concerns that the company could post a loss this year.

The firm had about 3,900 full-time employees as of Dec. 31, according to a regulatory filing.Shares of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company were up more than 2% at $140.22 in afternoon trade.

(Reporting by Raghav Mahobe in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva, Shinjini Ganguli and Shailesh Kuber)

Biden administration grants US visa to extremist Israeli minister

Smotrich  described himself as a “fascist homophobe”

Chris McGreal in New York
Fri, March 10, 2023 

Photograph: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

The Biden administration has granted a US visa to Israel’s extremist finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, over the objection of Jewish American leaders who said he should be barred from the country for his call to “wipe out” a Palestinian town.

The US state department gave Smotrich a diplomatic visa to speak at an investment conference in Washington DC on Sunday, and for meetings with the International Monetary Fund, after concluding that it would be highly unusual to refuse one to a member of the government of a close ally. But the White House said no US officials will meet him or attend the conference.

More than 100 Jewish American leaders signed a statement opposing the visit by the leader of the Religious Zionism party in Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition. It accused him of promoting “Jewish supremacy” along with anti-Arab racism and homophobia.

Related: Biden administration urged to block extremist Israeli minister’s visit

The signatories included three former US ambassadors to Israel, Jewish religious leaders and former heads of pro-Israel groups.

Dozens of Jewish American organisations have pledged to shun Smotrich while he is in the US, noting that he described himself as a “fascist homophobe”. They include the country’s largest Jewish organisation, the Union of Reform Judaism, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and Americans for Peace Now.

Their statement compared the minister to the American-born Israeli rabbi and convicted terrorist, Meir Kahane, who founded the extremist and racist political party, Kach.

“In 1984, when Meir Kahane was first elected to the Knesset, virtually all American Jewish organizations turned their backs on him and his violent and racist ideology and rhetoric. Now it is time for us to do the same for Bezalel Smotrich. American Jewish organizations must be clear: Smotrich has no place here,” they said.

Smotrich has been widely condemned for comments after a mob of several hundred religious Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank attacked the Palestinian town of Hawara nearly two weeks ago, burning dozens of buildings and cars and killing a man in what an Israeli military commander called a “pogrom”.

The attack on Hawara followed the shooting dead of two brothers from a nearby settlement earlier in the day which in turn came after the Israeli military killed Palestinian fighters and civilians in West Bank raids.

Related: Israeli settlers rampage after Palestinian gunman kills two

The Israeli finance minister criticised the settlers for taking matters into their own hands but said the military should act instead.

“I think the village of Hawara needs to be wiped out. I think the state of Israel should do it,” he said shortly after the attack.

The US visa was issued after Smotrich apologised for the comments in a Facebook post on Wednesday. The minister said a friend in the Israeli air force had warned him that pilots were interpreting his remarks to mean that they might be ordered to destroy Hawara.

Smotrich said he was “shaken by the thought that this is how I could have been understood”.

The apology was met with scepticism by his critics who plan to demonstrate at the Washington hotel where he will be speaking at a conference to promote investment in Israeli government bonds.

The US state department described Smotrich’s remarks as “irresponsible, repugnant and disgusting” but still granted him the visa.

The advocacy group Dawn, founded by the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi to promote democracy and human rights in the Middle East, said the Biden administration could have refused it on several grounds used to block visits by officials from other countries.

Dawn noted that in January, the state department restricted visas to “those believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining democracy in Nigeria” and to Cameroonian officials for “inciting violence, human rights violations and abuses”.

The US has also refused entry to other Israeli extremists including a member of the Knesset, Michael Ben Ari, in 2012, probably for his ties to the Kach movement.

‘I grew up in the aftermath of Chernobyl - then became one of the world's most successful athletes’


Simon Usborne
Sat, March 11, 2023 

Oksana Masters was born with severe disabilities, including missing shinbones and thumbs, which are thought to have been caused by her mother’s exposure to radiation after the Chernobyl disaster three years earlier, She went on to win 17 medals in the Paralympics, seven of them gold - Martin Schoeller

When Oksana Masters is having a bad day, her mother brings her sunflowers. Their petals contain layers of meaning for Masters, an athlete who was born in Ukraine; there, the flowers are a symbol of peace and pride. A vase of them overflows behind her as she speaks, via video call, from her home in Champaign, Illinois, a city south of Chicago.

‘It’s winter now so they’re really small but they make me so happy,’ says Masters, who wears a baggy Nike sweatshirt and fancy headphones. ‘In the middle of chaos, they still point to the sun, to the positive, to the light. And that’s what I need sometimes.’

Masters is 33. She was born in 1989 with severe disabilities, including missing shinbones and thumbs, which are thought to have been caused by her mother’s exposure to radiation after the Chernobyl disaster three years earlier. Her birth parents immediately handed her to the state, unwittingly dooming her to an early childhood of extreme cruelty and abuse.

At the last of three orphanages Masters was sent to, an upstairs room operated as a brothel for paedophiles. She was raped almost daily between the ages of five and seven. Beaten and cut for perceived transgressions, her medical needs were ignored and she became dangerously malnourished.

Gay Masters, an American academic, adopted her when she was seven. Oksana arrived in the United States so underweight that doctors diagnosed her with FTT – the medical term ‘failure to thrive’.

Twenty-six years later, after numerous operations, including the amputation of both legs, she has become one of the world’s most successful athletes.

This is the image of a young Oksana that inspired Gay Masters to adopt her - Oksana Masters

It’s a story she tells in her new memoir, The Hard Parts, an account of an improbable journey to the pinnacle of four Paralympic sports: rowing, cross-country skiing, cycling and biathlon. In a decade, she has won 17 medals for the USA, seven of them gold. The book is by turns difficult to read and to put down; ‘triumph over adversity’ barely covers it. It also comes out at a fraught time for the children of Chernobyl, thousands of whom are scattered across the world after being adopted.

The fallout from the nuclear disaster, on 26 April 1986, is still affecting people who were very young when a toxic cloud drifted over Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. And now, during its assault on Ukraine, Russia has repeatedly threatened the country’s working nuclear power plants, as well as the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

Early last year, tanks churned the contaminated soil as generals seized the site as a staging ground for an assault on Kyiv. The plant, which still requires careful management, has since returned to Ukrainian control, but the potential effects of further attacks or power outages remain a grave concern.

In the meantime, Vladimir Putin has raised the threat of nuclear war by vowing to use ‘all available means’ in his assault on Ukraine, reviving the existential angst that spread with that contamination more than 35 years ago.

The disaster at Chernobyl occurred when a botched safety test caused an explosive meltdown of the plant’s fourth reactor. It hastened the fall of the Soviet Union, fuelled Ukrainian nationalism and led to the creation of an exclusion zone with an almost-20-mile radius around the plant, from which more than 100,000 people were evacuated. This remains largely deserted.

The Chernobyl disaster occurred in April 1986 but its impact is still felt today - Igor Kostin/Laski Diffusion/Getty Images

Calculating the disaster’s direct – and lasting – human impact is notoriously difficult: a contested science that became political as part of a wider debate about the safety of nuclear energy. While the immediate death toll was – officially at least – 31, the United Nations estimated in 2005 that up to 4,000 people might eventually die as a result of radiation exposure. Other estimates of additional deaths associated with the accident range up to 200,000 between 1990 and 2004, according to a Greenpeace report.

Meanwhile, research has linked more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer to radiation exposure in people who were children in the area in the late 1980s.

The war and nuclear threat from Russia also comes at a time when members of the Chernobyl generation are in their 30s and have had, or are considering having, families of their own. For those with traumatic upbringings, this can be an emotional challenge. Fear also lingers about the potential for gene mutations to be passed on, though a study of more than 200 Chernobyl survivors and their children by the National Research Centre for Radiation Medicine in Kyiv, published in 2021, found no evidence of such a transgenerational effect.

Raisa Carolan has watched events unfold with dread. She is 30 now, and was raised in orphanages in Belarus, where she was born, before being adopted by an Irish family at the age of 10. She too had suffered from neglect and cruelty, and would later require more than 30 operations, including the amputation of one leg.

Raisa Carolan as a child in 1997

‘For the first couple of weeks after the invasion I was very emotional because I felt a lot of hurt for them,’ Carolan says. ‘When Chernobyl happened, they had to leave their homes and now there’s this.’

Carolan was born seven years after the disaster and has long grappled with its effects. ‘It’s scary and fascinating to think that one nuclear disaster pretty much defines you,’ she says. ‘But I try not to get too much into the “What if?” of it all. I can either let it define me in a negative way or I can toss it around and think, look, it is what it is.’

Janina Scarlet was almost three when the reactor blew up not far from her hometown in Ukraine. Her father, a machinist, and her mother, a nursery teacher, later told her what happened next: that people in her town understood there had been an explosion but were told by the authorities there was nothing to worry about. ‘So for days people continued going outside, breathing the air and drinking water and eating raw fruit, not knowing that it was poisoned,’ says Scarlet, who is now 39.

Scarlet spent much of her childhood in hospitals with immune problems and crippling migraines. But her earliest memories are of a deep anxiety, and thinking that everyone was going to die. When people did die, it added to the sense of an invisible threat hanging in the air. ‘I just remember a lot of funerals,’ she adds.

Young Janina in the summer of 1986

Another threat was antisemitism. Attacks on members of Scarlet’s family prompted them to flee to New York when she was 12. Her grandparents had endured Nazi occupation during the Second World War. ‘Going through war again now, and having Holocaust memorials destroyed, it’s just devastating,’ she says of the recent Russian assault.

When Putin launched his full-scale invasion in February last year, Oksana Masters was preparing to fly to Beijing to compete in the 2022 Paralympic Winter Games. She still feels a kinship with the people of Ukraine. ‘I called my mom when the sirens started going off on the news with the first bombs,’ she recalls. ‘We were just crying on the phone.’

Her memories of Ukraine are mostly bad; but she has a visceral recollection of the moment, in the middle of the night, that she first peered up at Gay from her bed. Her mother had long dreamed of having a child. ‘She knelt down and just touched the bed so gently, and was such a calming presence,’ Masters recalls. ‘When I looked at her I already felt like I was home… that’s where I started living, in a way that’s when I was born.’

In America, surgeons were amazed that she had managed to fashion a walking style with 12 toes, no functional shins and a six-inch discrepancy in leg length. The first above-knee amputation came when she was nine, the second at 14. Masters had a love-hate relationship with her prosthetic legs, and tried desperately to fit in at school.

Oksana, 14, after the amputation of her second leg - Oksana Masters

Her hands, meanwhile, bore the scars of multiple operations to remove webbing and create opposable thumbs from two of her 10 fingers. ‘People are constantly staring at them,’ Masters writes in her memoir before detailing a failed attempt, in her teens, to cut off her fingers with kitchen scissors. She remembers feeling no pain.

At 13, Masters tried out rowing; one of her teachers ran a programme for disabled people. She still remembers the hypnotic feeling of floating and the water pushing against her oars. Soon, she threw herself into training, taking advantage of her ability to shut out physical pain. After 10 years, she paired up with an army veteran who had lost his legs in Afghanistan and made it to London 2012. In the ‘trunk and arms’ mixed double sculls, they won bronze.

It would take a new sport and six more years for Masters to reach the top of the Paralympic podium, after a chance meeting with a cross-country skiing coach. Paralympic cross-country skiers without legs sit on a kind of sled, propelling themselves with strong arms and poles. In the biathlon, they also hurl themselves and their sleds to the ground to shoot at targets.

Her sporting career, together with her mother’s love, offered Masters, she says, an outlet for the anger that had long boiled inside her. ‘It was the combination of that nurture and affection and feeling safe, with a place where I could just physically release everything.’

Oksana showing off one of her medals with her mother - Oksana Masters

For years, Masters knew little of her birth parents. But in 2015 she received a Facebook message from her biological brother in western Ukraine. He had seen a news report about her Paralympic success, and told her that their biological parents were anxious to meet her; their mother had been very poor, he said, and had given her up reluctantly on the recommendation of doctors.

It fuelled a longing for a face-to-face meeting with them, though this hadn’t taken place by the time Putin launched his recent attack. She understands that they have so far stayed safe during the invasion.

‘Now my fear is that I’ll never be able to go back,’ she admits. ‘Because there’ll be no country to go back to.’

Janina Scarlet has no obvious physical challenges as a result of growing up in Chernobyl, although migraines still dog her; but the anxiety that took root during her childhood in Ukraine followed her to America, where she still lives. She was bullied at school and became suicidal in her early teens. ‘Kids would ask me if I was radioactive and if I glowed in the dark,’ she recalls.

The disaster was too much to contemplate. ‘Until my early 30s, I couldn’t even say the word “Chernobyl”. My body would almost shut down.’

A trip to the cinema when she was 16 changed Scarlet’s life. Watching X-Men, a story about ‘mutants’ with superpowers, she began to see herself as a survivor rather than a victim.

The film inspired Scarlet to take a psychology class. Decades on, she’s an award-winning clinical psychologist and author who specialises in treating trauma; in the past year, she has also supported psychologists in Ukraine with remote courses.

Janina Scarlet - Janina Scarlet

Raisa Carolan, meanwhile, is still coming to terms with everything she has been through. Adopted by her Irish family thanks to the charity Chernobyl Children International (CCI), she doted on her mother, Ann. But when she was 16, Ann had a stroke and died. The loss was devastating. ‘It was like being abandoned all over again,’ Carolan says. ‘I was afraid everybody was going to leave me, so I couldn’t get close to them.’

Today she works as an online safety specialist for Google in Dublin, and has developed a growing curiosity about her past. In 2021, she found her biological brother online. They have exchanged messages and Carolan has learned about how difficult life has become in Belarus as a result of sanctions imposed over the country’s support of Russia.

She fears that her brother may be conscripted, and that the reunion she wants may now be out of reach. ‘Until I find out everything about my past,’ she tells me, ‘I’m always going to feel like there’s something missing.’

For Oksana Masters, writing her memoir was part of her own search for missing things. Her mother Gay had not been aware of some of the abuse her daughter had faced until she read early drafts. ‘She just cried because she felt like she had failed because I’d been too afraid to go to her,’ Masters says. ‘But she also understood that I had no idea what to say.’

One of the memories most difficult to put to paper was that of Laney, her best friend in the orphanage and – until Gay came along – the only person who used to hug her or hold her hand. Masters’ love of sunflowers started with Laney too; the girls dreamed of walking through them together. One night in the orphanage, Masters encouraged Laney to join her in a search for bread. She remembers slipping, attracting the attention of staff. Laney pushed her out of harm’s way under a table, only to be caught and beaten so badly that she died.

Masters has only recently felt able to express the grief and guilt she has carried for decades. ‘My mom knows that sunflowers to me aren’t just flowers,’ she says, her voice cracking. ‘They’re how I see Laney and all the good things she meant, which almost makes me forget that anything bad happened.’

Little is known about what became of many of the children born in the aftermath of Chernobyl. A number estimated to be in the ‘low thousands’ were adopted by families all around the world, according to CCI.

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Given all that they have been through, perhaps the most remarkable thing about Oksana Masters, Raisa Carolan and Janina Scarlet is the extent to which they are high-achieving, well-rounded adults. They may have benefitted from what psychologists call ‘post-traumatic growth’ – or the ability to use trauma as a catalyst.

This was certainly true of Masters. After winning a silver medal in a cross-country skiing event at the Sochi Paralympic Winter Games in 2014, she went on to compete again in 2018, in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Major brands, including Nike and Visa, were competing to sponsor her. She has also found the love of her life in Aaron Pike, a dashing champion wheelchair racer and cross-country skier. The couple live together in Champaign and have talked about adopting a child of their own.

But life has not been without further challenges: three weeks before the Games in Pyeongchang, Masters broke her elbow after falling on a patch of ice. Competing risked permanent damage, but with major strapping, she made the starting line.

When the pain became almost too much to bear in the closing stages of the dramatic 1.1km cross-country sprint event, Masters remembers feeling a nudge from behind, yet turning around to find nobody there.

Slumping to the ground after winning her first Paralympic gold medal, the pain gave way to a crazed reel of images, mainly featuring the two most important people in her early life. ‘It started with my memories of Ukraine, and meeting Mom,’ she says, her voice cracking before she glances at the sunflowers.

‘And there was Laney, who I know was the one pushing me to the finish line.’

The Hard Parts, by Oksana Masters, is out now (Simon & Schuster)

RIP
Robert Blake, actor acquitted in wife's killing, dies at 89

 Actor Robert Blake leaves court for the lunch break, Oct. 3, 2005, after his second day of testimony in a wrongful death lawsuit, brought by the family of Bonny Lee Bakley, in Burbank, Calif. Blake, the Emmy award-winning performer who went from acclaim for his acting to notoriety when he was tried and acquitted of murdering his wife, died Thursday, March 9, 2023, at age 89. 

(AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)


 Robert Blake speaks in April 1977 in Los Angeles, about the American Medical Association's violence ratings and his television series "Baretta." 

LINDA DEUTSCH
Thu, March 9, 2023 


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Robert Blake, the Emmy award-winning performer who went from acclaim for his acting to notoriety when he was tried and acquitted in the killing of his wife, died Thursday at age 89.

A statement released on behalf of his niece, Noreen Austin, said Blake died from heart disease, surrounded by family at home in Los Angeles.

Blake, star of the 1970s TV show, "Baretta," had once hoped for a comeback, but he never recovered from the long ordeal which began with the shooting death of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, outside a Studio City restaurant on May 4, 2001. The story of their strange marriage, the child it produced and its violent end was a Hollywood tragedy played out in court.

Once hailed as among the finest actors of his generation, Blake became better known as the center of a real-life murder trial, a story more bizarre than any in which he acted. Many remembered him not as the rugged, dark-haired star of “Baretta,” but as a spectral, white-haired murder defendant.

In a 2002 interview with The Associated Press while he was jailed awaiting trial, he bemoaned the change in his status with his fans nationwide: "It hurt because America is the only family I had."

He was adamant that he had not killed his wife and a jury ultimately acquitted him. But a civil jury would find him liable for her death and order him to pay Bakley's family $30 million, a judgment which sent him into bankruptcy. The daughter he and Bakley had together, Rose Lenore, was raised by other relatives and went for years without seeing Blake, until they spoke in 2019. She would tell People magazine that she called him “Robert,” not “Dad.”

It was an ignominious finale for a life lived in the spotlight from childhood. As a youngster, he starred in the "Our Gang" comedies and acted in a movie classic, "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre." As an adult, he was praised for his portrayal of real-life murderer Perry Smith in the movie of Truman Capote's true crime best seller "In Cold Blood."

His career peaked with the 1975-78 TV cop series, "Baretta." He starred as a detective who carried a pet cockatoo on his shoulder and was fond of disguises. It was typical of his specialty, portraying tough guys with soft hearts, and its signature line: "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time," was often quoted.

Blake won a 1975 Emmy for his portrayal of Tony Baretta, although behind the scenes the show was wracked by disputes involving the temperamental star. He gained a reputation as one of Hollywood's finest actors, but one of the most difficult to work with. He later admitted to struggles with alcohol and drug addiction in his early life.

In 1993, Blake won another Emmy as the title character in, "Judgment Day: the John List Story," portraying a soft-spoken, churchgoing man who murdered his wife and three children.

Blake's career had slowed down well before the trial. He made only a handful of screen appearances after the mid-1980s; his last project was in David Lynch's “Lost Highway,” released in 1997. According to his niece, Blake had spent his recent years “enjoying jazz music, playing his guitar, reading poetry, and watching many Hollywood Classic films.”

He was born Michael James Gubitosi on Sept. 18, 1933, in Nutley, New Jersey. His father, an Italian immigrant and his mother, an Italian American, wanted their three children to succeed in show business. At age 2, Blake was performing with a brother and sister in a family vaudeville act called, "The Three Little Hillbillies."

When his parents moved the family to Los Angeles, his mother found work for the kids as movie extras and little Mickey Gubitosi was plucked from the crowd by producers who cast him in the "Our Gang" comedies. He appeared in the series for five years and changed his name to Bobby Blake.

He went on to work with Hollywood legends, playing the young John Garfield in "Humoresque" in 1946 and the little boy who sells Humphrey Bogart a crucial lottery ticket in the Oscar-winning “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre."

In adulthood, he landed serious movie roles. The biggest breakthrough was in 1967 with "In Cold Blood." Later there were films including, "Tell Them Willie Boy is Here" and "Electra Glide in Blue."

In 1961, Blake and actress Sondra Kerr married and had two children, Noah and Delinah. They divorced in 1983.

His fateful meeting with Bakley came in 1999 at a jazz club where he went to escape loneliness.

"Here I was, 67 or 68 years old. My life was on hold. My career was stalled out," he said in the AP interview. "I'd been alone for a long time."

He said he had no reason to dislike Bakley: "She took me out of the stands and put me back in the arena. I had something to live for."

When Bakley gave birth to a baby girl, she named Christian Brando — son of Marlon — as the father. But DNA tests pointed to Blake.

Blake first saw the little girl, named Rosie, when she was two months old and she became the focus of his life. He married Bakley because of the child.

"Rosie is my blood. Rosie is calling to me," he said. "I have no doubt that Rosie and I are going to walk off into the sunset together."

Prosecutors would claim that he planned to kill Bakley to get sole custody of the baby and tried to hire hitmen for the job. But evidence was muddled and a jury rejected that theory.

On her last night alive, Blake and his 44-year-old wife dined at a neighborhood restaurant, Vitello's. He claimed she was shot when he left her in the car and returned to the restaurant to retrieve a handgun he had inadvertently left behind. Police were initially baffled and Blake was not arrested until a year after the crime occurred.

Once a wealthy man, he spent millions on his defense and wound up living on social security and a Screen Actor's Guild pension.

In a 2006 interview with the AP a year after his acquittal, Blake said he hoped to restart his career.

"I'd like to give my best performance," he said. "I'd like to leave a legacy for Rosie about who I am. I'm not ready for a dog and fishing pole yet. I'd like to go to bed each night desperate to wake up each morning and create some magic."

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Deutsch, the primary writer of this obituary, retired from The Associated Press in 2014.

At a glance: Jehovah's Witness beliefs, history in Germany


Armed police officers gather near the scene of a shooting in Hamburg, Germany on Thursday March 9, 2023. Shots were fired inside a building used by Jehovah's Witnesses in the northern German city of Hamburg on Thursday evening, and an unspecified number of people were killed or wounded, police said. 

(Daniel Bockwoldt/dpa via AP)

DEEPA BHARATH
Thu, March 9, 2023 

Several people were killed and injured Thursday night after shots were fired inside a building where Jehovah’s Witnesses met in the northern German city of Hamburg, officials said.

The international Christian denomination founded in the United States has a more than 100-year history in Germany. Today, about 170,000 members call the European country home, according to the denomination’s website.

The denomination itself dates back to the 19th century. It was founded by Charles Taze Russell, a minister from Pittsburgh. Now headquartered in Warwick, New York, it claims a worldwide membership of about 8.7 million. Members are known for their evangelistic efforts including knocking on doors and distributing literature in public squares.

Here is a quick look at the international denomination’s beliefs and their history in Germany:

— In Germany, there are about 2,020 Jehovah’s Witness congregations and 170,491 ministers. One in 498 Germans practice the faith, according to the denomination’s website.

— Jehovah’s Witnesses do not call their place of worship a church, but “Kingdom Hall.” This is because they believe the Bible refers to worshippers -- not the building -- as the church. The building or hall where congregants meet to worship Jehovah (the God of the Bible and His Kingdom) is therefore known as “Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

— Jehovah’s Witnesses do not use the cross in worship because they believe the Bible indicates that Jesus did not die on a cross, but on a simple stake, and that the Bible “strongly warns Christians to flee from idolatry, which would mean not using the cross in worship,” the denomination's website states.

— Each congregation is supervised by a body of elders. About 20 congregations make up a circuit and are occasionally visited by traveling elders known as circuit overseers.

— On January 27, 2021, the German State Parliament commemorated the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ courageous stand against Nazi abuse. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the ceremony was hosted online and was viewed by more than 37,000 people from Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

— About 1,500 Jehovah’s Witnesses died during the Holocaust out of about 35,000 who lived in Germany and Nazi-occupied countries at the time. More than 1,000 died in prisons and concentration camps. Members of the faith were persecuted by the Nazi regime because they remained politically neutral. They also refused to sign a document renouncing their beliefs and disobeyed the regime’s orders by continuing to meet for worship, doing public ministry and showing kindness to Jewish people.

— On Jan. 27, 2017, Jehovah’s Witnesses received the same legal status that is granted to major religions in Germany, which meant they are viewed as a single religious entity. Prior to gaining this status, their national headquarters in Germany and thousands of congregations in the country were considered independent religious associations.

— In the U.S., Jehovah’s Witnesses suspended door-knocking in the early days of the pandemic’s onset, just as much of the rest of society went into lockdown too. The organization also ended all public meetings at its 13,000 congregations nationwide and canceled 5,600 annual gatherings worldwide — an unprecedented move not taken even during the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918, which killed 50 million people worldwide.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.