Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit Collapses

The British billionaire's rocket company is ceasing its operations. Its stock has fallen by more than 89% this year.

LUC OLINGA
APR 1, 2023 10:03 AM EDT

It is a blow that will resonate throughout the British aerospace industry for a long time.

Great Britain had bet on Virgin Orbit, the company of billionaire Sir Richard Branson, to become a space power. But these ambitions, which manifested themselves in the development of a satellite manufacturing industry, have just taken a huge blow.

The company is ceasing operations "for the foreseeable future” after failing to secure a funding lifeline, only five years after it was created, CEO Dan Hart told employees on March 30, according to CNBC.

"Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to secure the funding to provide a clear path for this company,” Hart said, according to an audio recording of the meeting.
'No Choice'

"We have no choice but to implement immediate, dramatic and extremely painful changes,” Hart said, adding that this would be "probably the hardest all-hands that we’ve ever done in my life.”

Virgin Orbit (VORB) didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company confirmed in a regulatory filing that it is laying off 85% of its workforce, or 675 employees, "in order to reduce expenses in light of the company's inability to secure meaningful funding."

Those impacted are located in all areas of the firm, according to the document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Virgin Orbit said it estimates that it will incur aggregate charges of approximately $15 million, consisting primarily of $8.8 million in severance payments and employee benefits costs, and $6.5 million in other costs primarily related to outplacement services.

 

The company expects to recognize the majority of these charges in the first quarter of 2023. The layoffs will be substantially complete by April 3.

"In addition, the company may incur other charges or cash expenditures not currently contemplated due to unanticipated events that may occur, including in connection with the implementation of the workforce reduction," Virgin Orbit warned.

These developments have accelerated the fall in Virgin Orbit's stock. The stock started the year at $1.85. It is currently trading at around 20 cents. This is a decline of 89.1% in just three months. It's a spectacular stock market rout for a company that went public, via a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, with a valuation of nearly $4 billion in December 2021.

Virgin Orbit only has a stock market capitalization of $67.4 million at the time of writing.

Founded in 2017 and based in California, Virgin Orbit suffered a major setback earlier this year when an attempt to launch the first rocket into space from British soil ended in failure. Virgin Orbit was the company organizing this mission, in collaboration with the British Space Agency and Spaceport Cornwall, which aimed to launch nine satellites into space, which would have been a major first for the UK. An “anomaly” prevented the rocket from being put into orbit.

"The data is indicating that from the beginning of the second stage first burn, a fuel filter within the fuel feedline had been dislodged from its normal position," Virgin Orbit explained mid-February. "Additional data shows that the fuel pump that is downstream of the filter operated at a degraded efficiency level, resulting in the Newton 4 engine being starved for fuel. Performing in this anomalous manner resulted in the engine operating at a significantly higher than rated engine temperature."
Unique Method

Virgin Orbit was not the same in the days following this failure.

In mid-March, the company had suspended its operations while it held discussions on possible sources of financing and explored strategic opportunities. It had indicated a few days later that it had resumed its activities.

Virgin Orbit stood out from rivals like Elon Musk's SpaceX. It wants to offer a fast and adaptable space launch service for small satellites weighing between 300 and 500 kg, a growing market.

The 21-meter Virgin Orbit rocket, dubbed LauncherOne, does not take off vertically, but is attached under the wing of a modified Boeing 747 called "Cosmic Girl”. Once the correct altitude is reached, the plane releases the rocket, which starts its own engine to push itself into space and to place its cargo in orbit.

Launching a rocket from an airplane is easier than a vertical take-off, because theoretically a simple airstrip is enough, instead of an expensive space launch pad, experts say. In summary, the advantage of this launch method is that it is more flexible and less expensive to put satellites into orbit than vertical rocket launchers.

Sir Richard Branson's space ambitions are now supported only by Virgin Galactic, which aims to send tourists into space.

Long Beach's Virgin Orbit lays off 675 people, 85% of its workforce

Samantha Masunaga
Fri, March 31, 2023 at 2:39 PM MDT

A repurposed Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 aircraft named Cosmic Girl, carrying Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne rocket, takes off from Spaceport Cornwall at Cornwall Airport Newquay in England. (Ben Birchall / Associated Press)

Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit is laying off about 675 employees, or 85% of its workforce, as the air-launched rocket company failed to find funding to sustain its operations.

Most of the affected employees were based in Long Beach and Mojave.

The Long Beach company plans to spend $8.8 million in severance payments and employee benefit costs and an additional $6.5 million on outplacement services and other related costs, according to a company filing Thursday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

To fund the severance and outplacement costs, Virgin Orbit sold a $10.9-million senior secured convertible note to Virgin Investments, the investment arm of Branson's Virgin Group, according to the filing.

The layoffs will be "substantially" complete by Monday. The remaining employees will focus on making progress on the company's next LauncherOne rocket, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment. That rocket is in production and nearly complete.

Virgin Orbit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The layoffs come two weeks after the company said it would pause operations and put most of its staff on furlough while it looked for additional cash.

Virgin Orbit faced a tough market for fundraising, with higher interest rates and greater reluctance from investors to fund technology that wasn't a sure-fire bet. Other small-satellite launch companies have also faced financial struggles this year, including Alameda-based Astra, which received a delisting warning from the NASDAQ late last year for having a share price below $1 for 30 consecutive days.

Virgin Orbit Holdings' stock traded for a little over $7 a share last year at this time. On Friday, the stock closed at 20 cents.

Virgin Orbit had hoped for a lifeline from private investor Matthew Brown, but talks between the two broke down late last week, according to CNBC.

The company launches small satellites via a rocket that blasts off from beneath the wing of a modified Boeing 747 aircraft. Virgin Orbit had four successful launches before a failure earlier this year that resulted in the loss of its customers' satellites.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Virgin Orbit officially shutters its space launch operations

In the end, only four of its six attempts ended with satellites in orbit.

Henry Nicholls / reuters

Andrew Tarantola
·Senior Editor
Thu, March 30, 2023 

Virgin Orbit’s days of slinging satellites into space aboard aircraft-launched rockets have come to an end Thursday. After six years in business, Virgin’s satellite launch subsidiary has announced via SEC filing that it does not have the funding to continue operations and will be shuttering for “the foreseeable future,” per CNBC. Nearly 90 percent of Virgin Orbit’s employees — 675 people in total — will be laid off immediately.

Virgin Orbit was founded in 2017 for the purpose of developing and commercializing LauncherOne, a satellite launch system fitted under a modified 747 airliner, dubbed Cosmic Girl. The system was designed to put 500 pounds of cubesats into Low Earth Orbit by firing them in a rocket from said airliner flying at an altitude of 30,000 - 50,000 feet. Despite a string of early successes — both in terms of development milestones and expanding service contracts with the UK military, LauncherOne’s first official test in May of 2020 failed to deliver its simulated payload into orbit.

A second attempt the following January in 2022 however was a success with the launch of 10 NASA cube sats into LEO, as was Virgin Orbit’s first commercial satellite launch that June. It successfully sent seven more satellites into orbit in January 2022 and quietly launched Space Force assets that July.

In all, Virgin Orbit made six total flights between 2020 and 2023, only four successfully. The most recent attempt was dubbed the Start Me Up event and was supposed to mark the first commercial space launch from UK soil. Despite the rocket successfully separating from its parent aircraft, an upper stage “anomaly” prevented the rocket’s payload from entering orbit. It was later determined that a $100 fuel filter had failed and resulted in the fault.

As TechCrunch points out, Virgin Group founder, Sir Richard Branson, “threw upwards of $55 million to the sinking space company,” in recent months but Start Me Up’s embarrassing failure turned out to be the final straw. On March 16th, Virgin Orbit announced an “operational pause” and worker furlough for its roughly 750 employees as company leadership scrambled to find new funding sources. The company extended the furlough two weeks later and called it quits on Thursday.

“Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to secure the funding to provide a clear path for this company,” Virgin CEO Dan Hart said in an all-hands call obtained by CNBC. “We have no choice but to implement immediate, dramatic and extremely painful changes.”

Impacted employees will reportedly receive severance packages, according to Hart, including a cash payment, continued benefits and a “direct pipeline” to Virgin Galactic’s hiring department. Virgin Orbit’s two top executives will also receive “golden parachute” severances which were approved by the company’s board, conveniently, back in mid-March right when the furloughs first took effect.

Dominion Will See Fox News In Court After Judge Rules the Election Lies Were ‘Crystal Clear’

Kyle Barr
Fri, March 31, 2023 

Members of Rise and Resist participate in their weekly "Truth Tuesday" protest at News Corp headquarters on February 21, 2023 in New York City. Text messages and emails between various Fox News hosts and network executives obtained during a defamation lawsuit brought by voting machine company Dominion against Fox NewsMore

Frequent protesters stood in front of the Fox News building in New York City last month with signs citing court documents stemming from the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit.

Fox News will be forced to defend its promotion of the “Big Lie” in court, as a Delaware judge ruled that a jury would need to decide whether there was “actual malice” in how the network let election disinformation loose upon its millions of viewers.


On Friday, Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis ruled that Dominion Voting Systems has not yet proved Fox acted with libelous intent by promoting the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. At the same time, the judge ruled against Fox News and Fox Corporation’s attempts to quash the lawsuit. He further gave Dominion the benefit that Fox’s statements, by themselves, could constitute defamation.

Dominion kicked up the hornet’s nest when it brought its $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News back in 2021. The company has said it’s seeking recompense for lost profits due to the lies spread about the company. Dominion has filed similar lawsuits against ultra-conservative networks like Newsmax and OAN.

Davis wrote that Dominion has met the burden of proof to show that all of Fox’s promoted statements about the voting machine company were all lies. The judge added the evidence is “CRYSTAL clear [emphasis his] that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.” A trial is set to start sometime in April.

The court held two hearings earlier this week to discuss the matter. In its summary judgment request, Fox News has tried to argue that its promotion of the big lie was just common journalist practice by discussing the election allegations coming from Trump. The network further claimed its reporting was protected under the First Amendment, and that there’s precedent protecting news sites from allegations later proven false.

On the flip side, Dominion argued Fox was actively promoting the big lie by publishing and promoting top election deniers.

Defamation suits like this hang on the thin thread of proving that one side had “actual malice” in its speech, meaning it acted knowing the information was false or acting with reckless disregard to a statement’s truth. It’s an incredibly hard burden of proof for plaintiffs in defamation cases, though at least Dominion has a lot of ammunition to fire at Fox, mostly from hosts’ and guests’ own lips.

The document retreads much of what came out in texts and emails from Fox executives and hosts. The main faces at Fox News regularly complained about Trump and the election conspiracy, calling it “shockingly reckless” and complaining about election conspiracists like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani. In records from Fox Corporation Chair Rupert Murdoch’s deposition, the venerable scion of conservative media around the globe said he could have stopped Fox News from bringing on the election conspiracists, but chose not to.

Gizmodo

Delaware jury to decide if Fox is liable for defaming Dominion

Tom Hals, Jonathan Stempel and Helen Coster
Fri, March 31, 2023 

Workers clean up the burnt remains of a Christmas tree outside the News Corp. and Fox News building in New York

By Tom Hals, Jonathan Stempel and Helen Coster

WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) - A jury will decide whether Fox Corp defamed Dominion Voting Systems with false vote-rigging claims aired by Fox News after the 2020 U.S. election, a Delaware judge ruled on Friday, dealing a setback to the media company that had sought to avoid a trial in the $1.6 billion lawsuit.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis denied motions from Fox and partially granted Dominion motions to resolve the issue of defamation liability ahead of the scheduled April 17 trial date. The ruling puts the high-profile case in the hands of a jury that will determine whether Fox acted with actual malice and whether Dominion suffered any damages.

The trial, to be held in Wilmington, is expected to last roughly four weeks. It is possible the parties could still settle the case. Davis heard arguments from both sides during a two-day pretrial hearing on March 21 and 22.

“This case is and always has been about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news," Fox said in a statement. "Fox will continue to fiercely advocate for the rights of free speech and a free press as we move into the next phase of these proceedings.”

Dominion said it was gratified by the ruling and looked forward to the trial.

This is one of the most closely watched U.S. defamation lawsuits in years and involves one of America's largest cable networks, home to many prominent conservative commentators.

Denver-based Dominion sued New York-based Fox Corp and Fox News in 2021, accusing them of ruining its reputation by airing false claims by former President Donald Trump and his lawyers that its voting machines were used to rig the outcome of the election against him and in favor of Democrat Joe Biden.

Dominion has said in court filings that internal emails, texts and deposition testimony demonstrate that Fox personnel at every level - from producers to hosts, all the way up to Chairman Rupert Murdoch - knew the election-rigging claims were false and aired them anyway in pursuit of ratings as they lost viewers to far-right outlets that embraced Trump's claims.

Dominion argued this met the "actual malice" standard to win a defamation case under which a plaintiff must prove a defendant knowingly spread false information or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

Davis, however, said actual malice will be determined by the jury.

The judge ruled in Dominion's favor on some elements of defamation including that the allegedly defamatory statements by Fox concerned Dominion, that the statements had been published by Fox and were false.

"The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that (it) is CRYSTAL clear that none of the statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true," wrote Davis, using all capital letters for emphasis.

Fox has argued that its coverage of the election claims was protected by press freedoms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment because it was newsworthy and properly framed as opinion or unproven allegations. Fox also has argued that Dominion's suit advances an overly broad interpretation of U.S. defamation law and is a threat to freedom of the press.

Lawyers for Fox also have invoked the legal doctrine of "neutral reportage," which holds that the press cannot be held liable for publishing newsworthy allegations in a neutral way.

Davis, however, said in his ruling the doctrine would not shield Fox from liability, because the network did not conduct disinterested reporting.

Fox faces a similar lawsuit by voting-technology company Smartmatic, which is seeking $2.7 billion in damages from Fox Corp, the cable network, Fox hosts and guests.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delawared; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Bill Berkrot)

Fox lawsuit highlights effects of conspiracies on Dominion





 A woman points at Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer during the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors general election canvass meeting, Nov. 28, 2022, in Phoenix. Dominion Voting Systems has been ensnared in a web of conspiracy theories that have undermined public confidence in U.S. elections among conservative voters. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)

ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY and JONATHAN J. COOPER
Thu, March 30, 2023

PHOENIX (AP) — In Arizona’s most populous county, elected officials are bracing for what could happen when it comes time to replace its $2 million-a-year contract for voting equipment.

Officials in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, say they have no concerns about their current vendor, Dominion Voting Systems. The problem is that the company has been ensnared in a web of conspiracy theories since the 2020 presidential race that have undermined public confidence in U.S. elections among conservative voters, led to calls to ban voting machines in some places and triggered death threats against election officials across the country.

“I have concerns over my own personal security if we re-enlist Dominion,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican elected in 2020, said in a court filing. “It went from a company that nobody had heard about to a company that is maybe one of the most demonized brands in the United States or the world.”

That sudden turnabout in fortunes for the Colorado-based voting machine company is at the heart of a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit it has filed against Fox News, with the trial scheduled to begin in mid-April. Dominion claims Fox defamed it by repeatedly airing false claims about the company’s voting machines and software. Court records and testimony revealed that several Fox hosts and executives didn’t believe the claims pushed by former President Donald Trump and his allies since the 2020 election but continued to air them, in part because they were worried about losing viewers.

Fox has argued the network was reporting on allegations that were newsworthy as Trump and his Republican allies contested his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. The network has said Dominion has been overstating its value, could not have suffered damages in the amounts it is claiming and has played down security concerns about its machines. Fox lawyers also argue that documents produced in the case show Dominion is in a solid financial position.

“The case has no merit, and the outrageous damage claim only highlights its naked attempt to suppress legitimate speech protected by our Constitution," Fox said in a statement.

Dominion has been presenting evidence that it says shows lost contracts and business opportunities over the past two years. It cites misinformation as the reason officials in some counties in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Tennessee have terminated their contracts with it while counties in Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey and Ohio have opted against renewing.

One expert, in a report submitted by Dominion in November as part of its lawsuit, estimated the company had experienced nearly $16 million in lost profits from customers that either terminated their contracts early or decided not to renew.

The same estimate projected Dominion has already suffered $72.3 million in lost opportunities, which includes potential contract extensions, additional equipment sales and service contracts with existing customers, and new business.

Overall, the expert estimated the company had experienced a $920 million decline in value, which includes the estimated taxes the company would have to pay if it were awarded damages. The expert also estimated additional future lost opportunities that have yet to be detailed publicly.

“The evidence will show that Dominion was a valuable, rapidly growing business that was executing on its plan to expand prior to the time that Fox began spreading and endorsing baseless lies about Dominion voting machines,” Stephanie Walstrom, a Dominion spokeswoman, said in a statement.

The company's challenges haven’t ended, as conspiracies about the last presidential election have permeated much of the Republican Party. Trump allies continue to travel the country meeting with community groups and holding forums to promote election conspiracies.

The conspiracies have been cited by some county officials, who say they are responding to constituent concerns, as justification for refusing to certify election results and have fed attempts to decertify or ban voting equipment.

“People aren’t acting rationally,” said Lawrence Norden, an election security expert with the Brennan Center for Justice, which has advocated for more voter access and money for election offices. “They are canceling contracts at great expense to their taxpayers.”

Not included in the Dominion expert’s report are more recent actions, including in Shasta County, California, where the board of supervisors terminated its contract with Dominion early. At a meeting in January, the board cited a loss in public confidence in the machines, which are used in the county to tabulate paper ballots marked by hand.

In 2020, Trump won Shasta County with 65% of the vote.

“Dominion has to prove to me that we have a free and fair election,” said Board of Supervisors Chair Patrick Henry Jones, who led the effort to end the contract. “Just because we’re all sitting up here and elected doesn’t mean we had free and fair elections every single time.”

The board is now pursuing a plan to count ballots by hand, a process experts consider to be less accurate and more time-consuming in all but the smallest of jurisdictions. Trump ally Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO, has promised to support their efforts to get rid of their voting machines.

In an interview, Lindell said he was prepared to help cover the costs of any lawsuits Shasta County might face.

“They are within their rights of going to paper ballots and a hand count,” Lindell said. “They have to be courageous, or we are not going to get rid of these machines.”

Cathy Darling Allen, the elected Shasta County clerk and registrar of voters, has defended the voting equipment and blamed “disproven conspiracy theories” for undermining the county’s election system and staff. She has warned the county was in danger of not being able to conduct elections.

“Their actions have placed the security of our elections at risk and created a dangerous precedent encouraging outsiders to undermine our elections at the county level,” Darling Allen wrote in testimony to Congress this month.

She estimated that hand-counting all ballots in a presidential election with 50 contests on the ballot would cost at least $1.6 million and require hiring nearly 1,300 temporary employees. The county has more than 111,000 registered voters.

Election security experts were concerned that the market for voting machines already was limited before the 2020 election, dominated by three companies. One Dominion competitor, Election Systems & Software, has not reported contract cancellations but has also been forced to defend its reputation amid the voting machine conspiracies.

In a recent hearing, Erin Murphy, an attorney for Fox, told the Delaware Superior Court judge presiding over the defamation case that Dominion has “a real speculation problem” regarding its claims for damages and said Dominion’s lost-profits argument appears to be based on the presumption that it would have won every contract it sought had it not been for Fox’s coverage of the election fraud allegations.

That ignores the fact that Dominion’s rivals have sometimes offered lower bids or more attractive technology, Murphy said. Fox has highlighted internal communications, including a chat in which one Dominion employee said, “God our products suck,” as well as a federal advisory outlining potential vulnerabilities reported in a Dominion system.

Arizona's Maricopa County has been at the forefront of the conspiracy theories about Dominion. The GOP-controlled Legislature in 2021 used its subpoena power to seize the county’s voting equipment and hired a firm run by Trump supporters to comb through it in search of evidence the machines were compromised. The firm found none, and Doug Logan, who oversaw the project, conceded in a private text message that surfaced in an unrelated lawsuit that “the Dominion machine is actually quite precise." Nevertheless, distrust remains rampant.

Dominion’s executive vice president of sales, Waldeep Singh, said in a court filing that the situation in Arizona has made it impossible to do business there. He blamed conspiracy theories for scuttling the company’s chances of winning business in Yavapai County, a conservative rural county north of Phoenix.

“All I can tell you is, based on my experience and our trajectory at the time in Arizona, we were trending in a very positive direction,” Singh said.

Now, he said, “I don’t think we’ll win anything in Arizona again.”

___

Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Randall Chase in Wilmington, Delaware; David Bauder and Jennifer Peltz in New York; and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.

Norfolk Southern’s Push for Profits Compromised Safety, Workers Say

Peter Eavis, Mark Walker and Niraj Chokshi
Sun, April 2, 2023

Alan Shaw, president and CEO, Norfolk Southern Corporation, center, testifies during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in Washington, March 22, 2023. (Pete Marovich/The New York Times)

Norfolk Southern once had so few accidents and injuries that it won the rail industry’s prestigious E.H. Harriman safety award for 23 years in a row until it was retired in 2012. But in the past decade, the company has gone from an industry leader to a laggard.

The rate at which its trains are involved in accidents and its workers are injured on the job has soared, putting it at or near the bottom on those safety measures among the country’s four largest freight railroads. Employees, former workers and some rail experts blame decisions by executives to cut thousands of jobs and put pressure on employees to speed up deliveries in a drive to bolster profits.

Lance Johnston is among the critics. Johnston was a Norfolk Southern engineer, or train driver, in the St. Louis area for more than 25 years until he was fired after a dispute in 2021 with his manager about problems with a train’s brakes.

That July, he said, he started a shift at the A.O. Smith rail yard in Granite City, Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, and found that his locomotive had defective brakes. After notifying a supervisor of the problem, Johnston said, he was told to use the locomotive, even though the defect was in violation of Norfolk Southern regulations and could, he said, make it hard to control the train and even lead to a derailment.

“When the equipment’s defective, the equipment’s defective,” he said in an interview last week. “You stop what you’re doing, and you fix it.”

Norfolk Southern’s operations have been under federal scrutiny since one of its trains carrying hazardous substances derailed in February in East Palestine, Ohio. Johnston said he believed that the operations had really begun deteriorating about four years ago, around the time the company said it would adopt efficiency measures known in the industry as precision scheduled railroading. He said the cutbacks meant there were not enough people to repair and maintain trains.

Since 2012, the size of Norfolk Southern’s workforce has dropped 39%, a bigger decline than at any of the other three large U.S. freight rail companies — BNSF, CSX and Union Pacific. Meanwhile, Norfolk Southern’s accident rate, which measures the number of accidents against the miles a company’s trains have traveled, soared 80%, the largest increase by far among the four railroads, though Union Pacific’s rate has been consistently higher. Rail accidents include derailments, collisions and fires.

Norfolk Southern’s injury rate for employees on duty has also risen, and over the past 10 years it has been, on average, significantly worse than those recorded by the other three large U.S. railroads. The injury rate did improve last year, and is better than the rates at other railroads, including Canadian companies that operate trains in the United States.

“It’s my goal to work with our new operations leadership team, union leadership and our front-line employees to further strengthen Norfolk Southern’s safety culture and make it the best in the industry,” CEO Alan H. Shaw said in a statement.

He added that Norfolk Southern’s derailments last year were its fewest in 20 years and that its injury rate was the lowest in 10 years. A representative for the railroad said its accident rate had gone up in part because its trains now traveled fewer miles.

Johnston said the safety concern he had raised was particularly important because the trains he had typically worked on traveled through residential areas in the St. Louis area. (The train that derailed in East Palestine started at a neighboring rail yard in Illinois.)

Johnston was fired soon after the dispute and has filed a whistleblower complaint with the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration claiming that he was fired for raising a safety issue.

Norfolk Southern declined to comment on Johnston’s OSHA case and his account of being fired. In a letter to OSHA, a lawyer representing the company said it had fired Johnston for “unbecoming” conduct based on an “insubordinate, threatening and profane outburst toward his supervisor.”

Since 2018, Norfolk Southern workers and former employees have filed 267 whistleblower complaints with OSHA, the most of any of the large freight railroads. The agency, which enforces whistleblower protection laws, including those in the rail industry, opened an investigation into 239 of the complaints.

In the same period, CSX had 204 complaints, followed by 198 from workers at Union Pacific and 138 at BNSF.

Norfolk Southern’s safety practices and culture are the subject of a special investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. In opening the review, the board cited the East Palestine derailment and other recent incidents in which three workers were killed. The board is aiming to determine if “there’s something more systemic going on” at the company that caused those and other accidents, said Jennifer Homendy, the board’s chair.

The Federal Railroad Administration, the top rail regulator, is also investigating the company. Congress has held hearings, and lawmakers have introduced bipartisan bills that would impose tougher safety standards on all railroads, especially those that carry hazardous substances. And the Justice Department said Friday that it had sued the railroad, asking it to pay cleanup costs and additional penalties for the East Palestine derailment.

Rail experts said Norfolk Southern’s turn toward demanding more of fewer workers and pushing them to work faster was part of an industry trend. Under pressure from hedge funds and other investors, the largest freight railroads have aggressively sought to run their operations more efficiently over the past decade.

Precision scheduled railroading generally involves sticking to a strict operating schedule; cutting staff and assets like train cars, locomotives and rail yards; and running fewer but longer trains. Canadian National pioneered it in the late 1990s under its CEO, E. Hunter Harrison, who later took his hyper-efficient approach to Canadian Pacific and CSX.

In 2018 and 2019, Kansas City Southern, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern announced plans to incorporate at least some of the principles advanced by Harrison, who died in 2017.

Those changes have been a boon to railroad investors and executives. Norfolk Southern’s profits have soared, and over the past five years it has paid shareholders nearly $18 billion through stock buybacks and dividends. On Friday, Norfolk Southern said Shaw’s pay more than doubled last year to $9.8 million. In his statement, he said his pay and that of other executives would now be based partly on safety metrics.

But the industry’s efficiency drive has so angered railroad workers that they nearly walked off the job last fall, threatening to imperil the U.S. economy. That strike was averted after Congress and President Joe Biden imposed a contract that many workers found sorely lacking because it did not guarantee them paid time off for illness or medical appointments.

“It’s profit over everything, not just safety,” Mark Wallace, a top official with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said in reference to the entire rail industry. “It’s profit over customer service. It’s profit over employee satisfaction.”

Bill Tucker, a lawyer in Birmingham, Alabama, has been representing freight workers in cases against employers for 45 years. Norfolk Southern is the worst offender among the large railroads, he said.

One suit that Tucker filed in federal court in 2021 on behalf of two Norfolk Southern workers, Shane Fowler and Kelvin Taylor, asserts that a manager threatened to discipline the men after they reported safety issues that violated the Federal Railroad Administration’s defect and safety rules.

In the lawsuit, the two men said their manager had demanded that they remove the “bad order” tags, which are used to flag defective cars, from two cars. The complaint states that Fowler and Taylor reported their manager to the Norfolk Southern Ethics and Compliance hotline for safety violations. Soon after, the workers were themselves charged with safety violations, which they said they hadn’t committed.

Fowler and Taylor, who still work at the company, said through Tucker that they had no comment. “Morale on the railroads in general, and at Norfolk Southern in particular, is abysmal,” the lawyer said. “It’s just awful.”

Laws that govern the railways push employees with grievances to use internal company hearings, limiting their ability to take disputes to court. As a result, critics of the industry say, railroad companies find it easier than other businesses to dismiss employees and their complaints.

Some workers said that despite such problems they liked rail work. Johnston, the fired train engineer, wants to reclaim his job.

On the day of the dispute in 2021, he operated the locomotive with defective brakes until a federal regulator, doing inspections in the yard, noticed the problem and said the engine had to be taken out of service until repairs were done.

Later that day, having been told that the brakes were fixed, Johnston discovered that one was still defective, he said. He got into an argument with his supervisor and used his cellphone to take a photograph of the defect, which can be a violation of Norfolk Southern rules.

“I expected to be punished,” Johnston said, “but I didn’t expect to be terminated.”

c.2023 The New York Times Company

KARMA IS A BITCH AND SHE BE COLD

The US leads the world in weather catastrophes. Here's why

 

ASSOCIATED PRESS
SETH BORENSTEIN
Sun, April 2, 2023 at 12:23 AM MDT·5 min read

The United States is Earth's punching bag for nasty weather.

Blame geography for the U.S. getting hit by stronger, costlier, more varied and frequent extreme weather than anywhere on the planet, several experts said. Two oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains, jutting peninsulas like Florida, clashing storm fronts and the jet stream combine to naturally brew the nastiest of weather.

That’s only part of it. Nature dealt the United States a bad hand, but people have made it much worse by what, where and how we build, several experts told The Associated Press.

Then add climate change, and “buckle up. More extreme events are expected,” said Rick Spinrad, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Tornadoes. Hurricanes. Flash floods. Droughts. Wildfires. Blizzards. Ice storms. Nor’easters. Lake-effect snow. Heat waves. Severe thunderstorms. Hail. Lightning. Atmospheric rivers. Derechos. Dust storms. Monsoons. Bomb cyclones. And the dreaded polar vortex.

It starts with “where we are on the globe,” North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello said. “It’s truly a little bit ... unlucky.”

China may have more people, and a large land area like the United States, but “they don't have the same kind of clash of air masses as much as you do in the U.S. that is producing a lot of the severe weather,” said Susan Cutter, director of the Hazards Vulnerability and Resilience Institute at the University of South Carolina.

The U.S. is by far the king of tornadoes and other severe storms.

“It really starts with kind of two things. Number one is the Gulf of Mexico. And number two is elevated terrain to the west,” said Victor Gensini, a Northern Illinois University meteorology professor.

Look at Friday's deadly weather, and watch out for the next week to see it in action: Dry air from the West goes up over the Rockies and crashes into warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s all brought together along a stormy jet stream.

In the West, it's a drumbeat of atmospheric rivers. In the Atlantic, it's nor'easters in the winter, hurricanes in the summer and sometimes a weird combination of both, like Superstorm Sandy.

“It is a reality that regardless of where you are in the country, where you call home, you’ve likely experienced a high-impact weather event firsthand,” Spinrad said.

Killer tornadoes in December 2021 that struck Kentucky illustrated the uniqueness of the United States.

They hit areas with large immigrant populations. People who fled Central and South America, Bosnia and Africa were all victims. A huge problem was that tornadoes really didn't happen in those people's former homes, so they didn't know what to watch for or what to do, or even know they had to be concerned about tornadoes, said Joseph Trujillo Falcon, a NOAA social scientist who investigated the aftermath.

With colder air up in the Arctic and warmer air in the tropics, the area between them — the mid-latitudes, where the United States is — gets the most interesting weather because of how the air acts in clashing temperatures, and that north-south temperature gradient drives the jet stream, said Northern Illinois meteorology professor Walker Ashley.

Then add mountain ranges that go north-south, jutting into the winds flowing from west to east, and underneath it all the toasty Gulf of Mexico.

The Gulf injects hot, moist air underneath the often cooler, dry air lifted by the mountains, “and that doesn't happen really anywhere else in the world,” Gensini said.

If the United States as a whole has it bad, the South has it the worst, said University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd, a former president of the American Meteorological Society.

“We drew the short straw (in the South) that we literally can experience every single type of extreme weather event,” Shepherd said. “Including blizzards. Including wildfires, tornadoes, floods, hurricanes. Every single type. ... There's no other place in the United States that can say that.”

Florida, North Carolina and Louisiana also stick out in the water so are more prone to being hit by hurricanes, said Shepherd and Dello.

The South has more manufactured housing that is vulnerable to all sorts of weather hazards, and storms are more likely to happen there at night, Ashley said. Night storms are deadly because people can't see them and are less likely to take cover, and they miss warnings in their sleep.

The extreme weather triggered by America’s unique geography creates hazards. But it takes humans to turn those hazards into disasters, Ashley and Gensini said.

Just look where cities pop up in America and the rest of the world: near water that floods, except maybe Denver, said South Carolina's Cutter. More people are moving to areas, such as the South, where there are more hazards.

“One of the ways in which you can make your communities more resilient is to not develop them in the most hazard-prone way or in the most hazard-prone portion of the community,” Cutter said. “The insistence on building up barrier islands and development on barrier islands, particularly on the East Coast and the Gulf Coast, knowing that that sand is going to move and having hurricanes hit with some frequency ... seems like a colossal waste of money.”

Construction standards tend to be at the bare minimum and less likely to survive the storms, Ashley said.

“Our infrastructure is crumbling and nowhere near being climate-resilient at all,” Shepherd said.

Poverty makes it hard to prepare for and bounce back from disasters, especially in the South, Shepherd said. That vulnerability is an even bigger issue in other places in the world.

“Safety can be bought," Ashley said. “Those that are well-to-do and who have resources can buy safety and will be the most resilient when disaster strikes. ... Unfortunately that isn't all of us.”

“It’s sad that we have to live these crushing losses,” said Kim Cobb, a Brown University professor of environment and society. “We’re worsening our hand by not understanding the landscape of vulnerability given the geographic hand we’ve been dealt.”

Damage from a late-night tornado is seen in Sullivan, Ind., Saturday, April 1, 2023. 

(AP Photo/Doug McSchooler, File)

___

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

'Absolute chaos': Illinois theater roof collapse sums up destruction by storms

Apollo Theatre incident following severe storm, in Belvidere

Kanishka Singh and Ashraf Fahim
Sat, April 1, 2023 
By Kanishka Singh and Ashraf Fahim

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A rock concert was in store on a Friday evening at the Apollo Theatre in Belvidere, Illinois, with hundreds of people looking forward to an evening of death metal music to start the weekend.

What followed was "chaos, absolute chaos" in the words of Belvidere Police Chief Shane Woody as vicious storms brought down the roof half an hour into the show with 260 people inside the theater.

The deadly tragedy summed up the sudden destruction left by recent tornadoes that have ripped through the U.S. South and Midwest.

"The lights go out, I hear a noise. Everything crashes down," Jessica Hernandez, who was inside the theater on Friday, told Reuters in an interview. Hernandez, 18, said her friends had convinced her to attend the concert.

A man aged around 50 was killed in the collapse and dozens were left injured, officials said. The deceased man was identified as Frederick Forest Livingston Jr by his employer and sister, according to ABC News.

Over 40 people were treated at local hospitals following the roof collapse incident and most injuries included orthopedic, head and neurologic trauma, and soft tissue injuries, CBS News reported, citing a local doctor.

Death metal band Morbid Angel, which was scheduled to perform at the concert, wrote on its Facebook page that the tornado caused "the roof, over the area in-front of the stage, and marquee to collapse." The show was subsequently canceled.

Footage from the scene cited by local media showed destruction inside the theater with officials and members of the public attempting to clear the debris and rescue those who may have been trapped.

All the people had been accounted for, officials said on Saturday. The concertgoers were eventually led to safety by emergency workers.

In Illinois, three other people were killed in Crawford County after the collapse of a residential structure, the state Emergency Management Agency said on Saturday.

Over 20 people were left dead and scores wounded after violent storm packing high winds and heavy rains ripped through Southern and Midwestern sections of the United States, heading east on Saturday.

The turbulent weather occurred one week after a swarm of thunderstorms unleashed a deadly tornado that devastated the Mississippi town of Rolling Fork, destroying many of the community's 400 homes and killing 26 people.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington, Editing by Franklin Paul)

Brittney Griner urges Biden to bring home reporter Gershkovich, accused of spying in Russia

 

Griner and her wife Cherelle 

Reporter for U.S. newspaper The Wall Street Journal Evan Gershkovich leaves a court building in Moscow

Sun, April 2, 2023 at 2:42 AM MDT


(Reuters) - U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, who was freed from a Russian penal colony in a prisoner exchange last year, has urged the Biden administration to keep using "every tool possible" to win the release of a U.S. reporter accused of spying in Russia.

Griner and her wife Cherelle said on Instagram that "our hearts are filled with great concern" for Evan Gershkovich, the journalist arrested by Russia's FSB security service last week in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.

The Kremlin says Gershkovich was using journalism as a cover for spying activity - something his newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, has vehemently denied.

Russia has not made public any evidence to support the charges, under which Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in jail. The White House has described the accusations as "ridiculous" and President Joe Biden has called on Moscow to release him.

The Griners said they were grateful for Biden's "deep commitment to rescue Americans". They cited the cases of aid worker Jeff Woodke, freed last month after being kidnapped for more than six years in West Africa, and Paul Rusesabagina, a permanent U.S. resident who returned home last week after being released from prison in Rwanda.

The couple added, "we call on all of our supporters to both celebrate the wins and encourage the administration to continue to use every tool possible to bring Evan and all wrongfully detained Americans home".

Brittney Griner, a WNBA star and double Olympic gold medallist who played for a Russian team in the off-season, was arrested at a Moscow airport one week before Russia invaded Ukraine last year.

She was found with vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage and sentenced to nine years in a penal colony after being convicted on drug smuggling and possession charges, a verdict that Biden called "unacceptable".

She was freed in December in exchange for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who spent 14 years in jail in the United States for arms trafficking, money laundering and conspiring to kill Americans.

(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Journalist Detained by Russia Was Reporting Stories That ‘Needed to Be Told’


Reporter for U.S. newspaper The Wall Street Journal Evan Gershkovich appears in a photograph obtained by Reuters, in Moscow, Russia December 2021. (Stringer . / reuters)

Katie Robertson
Sun, April 2, 2023 

The reporting job in Moscow had everything Evan Gershkovich was looking for, his friends said: experience in a far-flung location with the chance to connect with his Russian roots.

Gershkovich, 31, an American journalist born to Soviet émigrés, moved from New York to Russia in late 2017 to take up his first reporting role, a job at The Moscow Times and, his friends and co-workers said, he quickly embraced life in Moscow.

“He had no hesitation; he was really ready to try something totally new,” said Nora Biette-Timmons, a friend from college and the deputy editor of Jezebel, adding, “I remember so distinctly how much he loved what he was doing.”

In January 2022, he was hired as a Moscow-based correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, a dream job, his friends said.

But on Thursday, in a move that intensified tensions between Moscow and the West, Russian authorities said that they had detained the journalist, accusing him of “spying in the interests of the American government.”

Russia has not provided any evidence to back up the accusations, and Gershkovich and his employer have denied the allegation. Russian state media said Gershkovich was being held at a prison in Moscow to await trial after being transported from Yekaterinburg, a city 900 miles away in the Ural Mountains where he was arrested. He is the first American journalist detained on espionage charges since the end of the Cold War and faces up to 20 years in jail.

Dozens of global news organizations have condemned the arrest and President Joe Biden on Friday called for Gershkovich’s immediate release. Top editors and press freedom organizations from around the world wrote to the Russian ambassador to the United States on Thursday, saying that the arrest was “unwarranted and unjust” and “a significant escalation in your government’s anti-press actions.”

The letter went on, “Russia is sending the message that journalism within your borders is criminalized and that foreign correspondents seeking to report from Russia do not enjoy the benefits of the rule of law.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago has drastically heightened the risks for journalists trying to report in the region. After the start of the war, many independent Russian outlets were shut down and Russian journalists were forced to flee. Western outlets that had operated bureaus in the country for decades moved their reporters out, and few Western journalists remain full time in the country today. Some reporters have continued to file stories from Russia by traveling in and out as needed.

In interviews, friends of Gershkovich described him as an extroverted journalist with an abiding love for Russia and its people, who was cleareyed about the risks facing him in his reporting.

Polina Ivanova, a correspondent who covers Russia and Ukraine for the Financial Times, said she met Gershkovich soon after they both arrived in Moscow in 2017.

“Evan is a completely gifted reporter and someone for whom journalism is incredibly natural because he is an amazing talker and charms everybody and is very funny,” she said.

Ivanova said that the pair frequently discussed the risks they faced in covering the country but that Gershkovich felt he should make every effort to report stories outside of Moscow.

“He always understands Russia with an extreme amount of insight and nuance and depth and that is based on the fact that he’s lived and breathed this story for the past five years,” she said. “And that’s what makes this all so painful because he really cares so much about what is happening in the country.”

Ivanova said she last saw Gershkovich in February, when she was traveling with him and friends in Vietnam. Afterward, he flew straight to Moscow for his latest reporting assignment.

Known to many of his American friends as “Gersh,” Gershkovich grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. His parents had emigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union, part of a wave of Jews who left in the 1970s. He spoke Russian at home and, in an article in the magazine Hazlitt in 2018, he reminisced about growing up with his mother’s Russian superstitions, including not spilling salt on the dinner table, and looking for ways to increase his connection with his heritage.

Gershkovich studied philosophy and English at Bowdoin College in Maine, graduating in 2014. He then lived in Bangkok for a year on a Princeton in Asia fellowship.

After college, Gershkovich moved to New York City and worked at The New York Times as a news assistant, handling reader emails for public editors Margaret Sullivan and Liz Spayd, from early 2016 until September 2017. He left the Times to take The Moscow Times job and get the reporting experience he craved. In 2020, Gershkovich started covering Russia and Ukraine for Agence France-Presse, then moved to The Wall Street Journal.

Jazmine Hughes, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine who became friends with Gershkovich when he worked at the Times, described a message he sent her in December 2021 telling her the news about his new job at the Journal.

“Remember when we were in The New York Times cafeteria and you were convincing me to give journalism a shot for another few years and not give up just yet?” Gershkovich wrote to Hughes. “I just got hired by The Wall Street Journal. I’m the Moscow correspondent. I’m in the bureau. I did the thing. Look at us!”

Hughes said in an email: “Getting the Moscow correspondent job was basically his too-big-to-dream job.”

Jeremy Berke, a former Insider reporter who now writes the cannabis industry newsletter Cultivated, said he and Gershkovich had been close friends since their freshman year at Bowdoin College and lived together for a time in the New York City borough of Brooklyn.

“Evan’s parents are Soviet émigrés, so he always felt very strongly about connecting with his roots,” Berke said.

“He felt like not only was this a moment in time in Russia where the country is very interesting but that he was a person who could really bridge the gap between U.S. audiences and Russia,” Berke added.

Berke said Gershkovich had made many friends in Moscow and built a life there before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“He was getting invited to friends’ cottages; he knew where all the cool bars were,” he said. “He loved his life there.”

Joshua Yaffa, a writer for The New Yorker who first met Gershkovich five years ago in Moscow, wrote in an article on Friday that Gershkovich, like some other Western reporters, had relocated outside of Russia after the war began, but returned last summer because his accreditation was still valid.

“It seemed like the old logic might still apply: Foreigners could get away with reporting that would be far more problematic, if not off limits entirely, for Russians,” Yaffa wrote.

In recent months, Gershkovich had written articles about an artillery shortage hampering Russia’s war effort in Ukraine and an acquiescence to the war by most Russians. His last byline was Tuesday, on a story about Russia’s dimming economic outlook as it is squeezed by Western sanctions.

Emma Tucker, the editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal, said in an email to the staff Friday that the publication was working with the State Department as well as legal teams in the U.S. and in Russia to secure Gershkovich’s release.

“Evan is a member of the free press who right up until he was arrested was engaged in news gathering,” Tucker wrote. “Any suggestions otherwise are false.”

Berke said he had spoken with Gershkovich’s mother on Thursday and Friday. (Gershkovich’s family declined to comment for this article.)

“It’s really hard,” he said. “They left the Soviet Union and were very worried about him going back. So I think this hits close to home.”

Ivanova of The Financial Times said foreign journalists who had worked with Gershkovich were distraught about his detention. She and others have asked people to email letters of support, which they will translate into Russian, as required by Russian law, and send to Gershkovich in prison.

Ivanova said there were now very few Western journalists still traveling in to Russia.

“What he was doing was incredibly important,” she said. “It was a story that really needed to be told because we need to understand it.” She added, “It helps no one if Russia remains a black box.”

c.2023 The New York Times Company

Ukrainian teens' voices from the middle of war: 'You begin to appreciate what was common and boring for you'

THE CONVERSATION
Alexander Motyl, Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University - Newark
Sat, April 1, 2023 

A residential building destroyed by Russian army shelling in Borodyanka, Kyiv province. Hennadii Minchenko/Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images

A colleague from Kyiv, Ukraine, whom I’ll call N.M., sent me brief essays her students wrote on what they would do when the war ends. As both a scholar and a novelist, I knew that these voices, which expressed a beautifully straightforward and pure yearning for the simplest things that are lost in war, needed to be heard by the world.

The essays were written in English, and N.M., who has a master’s degree in English language and literature, told me she made only “2-3 corrections.” The students attend the 10th and 11th grades at a Kyiv school, are 15 to 17 years old, and hail from the capital city and its suburbs. The essays were written between March 14 and March 18, 2022.

Several themes run through most of the essays. The teens yearn for peace and want to do ordinary things, such as meet family and friends, take walks, enjoy the city. Daily routines have become extraordinary after several weeks of war. All intend to stay in Ukraine. Despair is absent. The students expect the war to end with a Ukrainian victory, and they’re decidedly proud to be Ukrainian.

Their optimism is all the more remarkable in light of the essays’ having been written in mid-March, when anything like victory seemed remote. Many of the students have also learned an important existential lesson: Life can be cut short at any time, and it’s imperative to live it to the hilt.

Before the war, Ukrainian teens weren’t thinking about bombs or hunger.

Mykola Miakshykov/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Diana captures the overall mood well:

“Literally 2 weeks ago, everyone lived their quiet daily lives, but one night these lives changed forever. Russia attacked our cities and forced some people to leave their homes forever or stay in a dangerous place and live in a fear. But the horror cannot be eternal, the end will come, and it will be significant for our country. After our victory I will definitely meet all my friends and family members, I will say how much I love them. Also I will appreciate every moment spent with family and people of my heart. Also I will definitely help my country to recover what it lost, I will volunteer and after graduating from school, I will enter that faculty which will be useful for Ukraine. Now we can just hope and pray for the best.”

Like Diana, Masha yearns for the ordinary:

“Today the situation in our country is very difficult, and we understand that we did not appreciate our everyday life, our meetings with friends, and even a simple walk. … After all these circumstances, your views on life have changed, you begin to appreciate what was common and boring for you. After the war, we will all be completely different people!”

Dasha’s expectations are equally quotidian:

“When I come back home the first thing that I would do is play the piano. I will play as long as I can. After this, I will water my plants.”

Nastya, meanwhile, says,

“I’ll do everything I didn’t have time to do before the war. For example, I’ll go to the dentist, because it was that Thursday that I had an appointment with him for the evening. But most of all I want to come home to my peaceful and strong Ukraine.”

Anya’s discovered the depth of her patriotism:

“Every morning I get up and thank you God I’m alive. … When I heard explosions, I thought it can be my last minute. I will spend more time with my family and friends. And I will LOVE MY UKRAINE MORE THAN EVER.”

So has Sofia:

“We are strong, I am proud to be Ukrainian.”

Growing up fast: A group of teens listening to a military medic who came to teach them first aid on Feb. 20, 2022, in Skole, Ukraine. Gaelle Girbes/Getty Images

Vlad is also feeling patriotic:

“When this war is over I will be thanking our Heroes, absolutely fearless defenders, who have been protecting our country this time. I’m totally proud of them. Their behavior inspires all the world and this is wonderful. … Anyway, we’re winning this bloodshed and building new country with freedom for our descendants. … I hope, our culture will be the best in the world and people will start respect it.”

Hlib’s optimism is both religious and political:

“I think that the war will be over when God says, because everything depends on him. Also when the President of Russia is removed or when all the supplies run out and all the soldiers retreat. When the Russian economy will be completely destroyed and the revolution will begin. When everyone will stop being afraid of the President of Russia and will oppose him. But the war will surely be over soon. Because good always wins.”

Anzhelika’s expectations concern politics – and food:

“I pray very much for Kyiv, because this is an incredible city that I dream of returning to! And after the war, of course, everyone will get drunk, so maybe I’ll drink a couple of drops for victory. And I dream of eating sushi, this is my favorite dish, so I’ll eat them all week. And of course I still want to go to university in Ukraine and live in Ukraine with my friends and relatives. And I believe that after the victory, not Ukraine will ask to join NATO, but NATO to [join] Ukraine, because our people have incredible strength! Glory to Ukraine!”

Alina picks up on the theme of Ukraine’s strength:

“These three weeks of a continuous horror changed all of us. Some people were left homeless, some people were left without relatives and a huge amount of Ukrainians lost their lives for peace. But there is at least one principal thing, which is common for all of us: Our nation became stronger. We became stronger. … Everything will be tranquil again. Everything will be Ukraine.”

A second Alina looks at the war’s cost - and how Ukraine will move forward in its aftermath:

“Sooner or later the war will stop. These events will leave an imprint in every Ukrainian. … Maybe we will bury many thousands of people, but they all did not fall in vain. We will remember everyone. Then we will renovate our houses, malls, museums. … Ukrainian will build their future in a progressive country. We will all develop and other countries will respect us. No one will ask anymore ‘Ukraine? Where is it? Is it in Russia?’ Our country will join NATO and European Union. In the end no one will attack us again.”

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. The Conversation is trustworthy news from experts.

It was written by: Alexander Motyl, Rutgers University - Newark .

Read more:

Ukrainian refugees might not return home, even long after the war eventually ends

Lessons in realpolitik from Nixon and Kissinger: Ideals go only so far in ending conflict in places like Ukraine

Why the best way to stop strongmen like Putin is to prevent their rise in the first place

RATS JUMPING FROM A SHIP OF FOOLS
Rough week for Alberta's ruling UCP casts shadow ahead of May election


Premier Danielle Smith Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference in Ottawa

Sun, April 2, 2023 
By Nia Williams

(Reuters) - As Canada's main oil-producing province Alberta prepares for an election next month, its combative Premier Danielle Smith is facing a series of controversies and resignations that could undermine support for her ruling United Conservative Party (UCP), political analysts say.

In the space of a week, a leaked recording of a phone call between Smith and a Calgary pastor facing pandemic-related charges has raised questions about the premier's judgment, two senior members of Smith's cabinet said they would not be running for re-election in May and a UCP candidate resigned after accusing teachers of exposing kids to pornography.

Polls show Alberta's election, scheduled to take place no later than May 29, will be a tight two-way race between the UCP and left-leaning New Democratic Party, led by Rachel Notley.

The series of events, of which Smith's phone call with controversial street pastor Artur Pawlowski is the most serious, may damage her standing among moderate conservatives and undecided voters in key election battlegrounds like Alberta's corporate oil capital Calgary, said Duane Bratt, a political science professor at Mount Royal University.

"I think it will make a difference (to voters), it's going to keep coming up," Bratt said of the recording. "It's going to be reluctant conservatives in Calgary who are concerned about the judgment and trustworthiness of Premier Smith and this adds to questions about that."

Pawlowski is facing charges related to COVID-19 protests in Canada last year, which included a weeks-long blockade of the Coutts border crossing in southern Alberta. A verdict is expected in early May.

In the 11-minute phone call released on Wednesday by the NDP, Smith expressed sympathy with Pawlowski's situation and said she would ask justice department officials about the case again. Critics including the NDP say it is inappropriate for the premier to discuss individual cases in the justice system with officials.

Smith denies any wrongdoing. In a statement, the premier said she had her staff work with the Ministry of Justice to determine if anything could be done to grant amnesty for people charged with non-violent, non-firearms COVID-related charges, and followed their advice when they recommended dropping the matter.

Smith became UCP leader and premier last October, replacing Jason Kenney, by appealing to grassroots UCP members in the traditionally conservative province. But some political analysts have said the UCP's rightward shift risks alienating more moderate voters.

Last week's controversies come just days after two senior Alberta government minister, Finance Minister Travis Toews and Environment Minister Sonya Savage, said they would not seek re-election.

Their departures will deplete the strength of Smith's cabinet should she win in May. Savage's retirement from front-line politics may also hamper collaboration between the Alberta and federal governments over climate policies.

LIBERAL FEDS SAY NICE THINGS

"I think it's a loss for Alberta and I think it's a loss for Canada, she was a very effective minister," federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson told reporters on Thursday.

(Reporting by Nia Williams in British Columbia; additional reporting by Steve Scherer in Ottawa; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Watch: Fisherman hauls in ‘river monster’ from the River of Death

David Strege
Sat, April 1, 2023 

Fisherman Alberto Flores stated he was “chasing river monsters” and managed to hook one Sunday near Dallas in the West Fork of the Trinity River, also referred to as the River of Death.

Flores landed a 5-foot-plus alligator gar, a prehistoric fish that has survived in the nasty waters of the Trinity, unlike other fish species.

The Trinity River is so polluted it earned the “River of Death” nickname because more than 1 million fish have died in its waters over a 15-year period, as reported by Chron.

“Decades of pollution and mass death of other species have yet to vanquish this uniquely ancient and resilient fish,” Chron stated.

Flores posted video of his catch on TikTok. (Note: The video doesn’t appear on some media platforms, in which case you’ll need to go to the link to view it.)

@albertoflores5264

Chasing river monsters 🦖🔥🔥🔥 check out the “Fishin is my addiction”Angler Fever dry fit t-shirt💧💧💧#fyp #anglerfever #fishtok #outdoors #alligatorgar #fishing #pescando #dallas #tx #letemgoletemgrow #madkatz

♬ original sound – albertoflores5264

“This girl put up a beautiful fight, beautiful fish,” Flores said in the video. “I think she’s ready to go back, so we’re going to get her back into the water.”

He carried the alligator gar to the edge of the dirty river, put it down on the bank and the fish slithered its way back home.

One commenter on TikTok asked Flores, “That’s good eating, why did you put it back in?”

His reply: “We don’t eat fish out of the Trinity River.”

UAE Mars orbiter creates stunning new map of the Red Planet


Robert Lea
Fri, March 31, 2023 

A new map of Mars created by the United Arab Emirates' Hope Mars mission.

A new map of Mars shows the Red Planet in stunning detail, revealing a wealth of fascinating geological features as seen from orbit.

The high-resolution map could help scientists answer a number of pressing questions about Mars including how it came to be a dry, arid, and barren landscape despite once being abundant with liquid water.

The Martian map was created by a team of scientists led by New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Center for Space Science. The researchers used data collected from orbit around Mars by the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM), also known as Hope or Al-Amal.

Related: New Mars water map reveals history of Red Planet

The map shows the Red Planet through the eyes of Hope's state-of-the-art onboard imaging system, the Emirates Exploration Imager (EXI), and is a testament to the growing influence of the UAE in science. In a statement, NYUAD wrote that it hopes the new Mars map will motivate young people in the UAE to pursue careers in STEM disciplines.

"We plan to make our map available to the entire planet, as part of the new and more advanced Atlas of Mars, which we have been working on, and will be available in both English and Arabic once published," NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) group leader and research scientist Dimitra Atri said in the statement. "The hope is that this accessibility will make it a great tool for researchers, and also students to learn more about Mars, and showcase the possibilities that the space sector in the UAE can offer."

To create the map, Atri and the team took over 3,000 observations from EXI taken over one Mars year,a period equivalent to two years here on Earth, and stitched them together to build a color composite. The resultant map shows many of the major geological features of the Red Planet in high resolution.

The map reveals polar ice caps, mountains, and long inactive volcanoes, as well as remnants of ancient rivers, lakes, and valleys that around 3.5 billion years ago overflowed with liquid water. As such, the map could help planetary scientists better understand how the climate of Mars has changed over billions of years resulting in the dry and barren world we observe today.

"The complete Mars map also brings the UAE and the Arab world another step closer to achieving EMM's ambitious mission goal to provide a complete global picture of the Martian climate," Atri added. "More than 30 previous spacecraft have only managed to capture a snapshot of the Mars weather, whilst EMM will follow the seasonal changes throughout a Martian year."

Related stories:

— China's Mars orbiter has mapped the entire Red Planet, nailing key science goal (photos)

— This new map of ice on Mars could guide future astronauts

— NASA Mars lander makes 1st ever map of Red Planet underground by listening to winds

By allowing scientists to study the distribution of impact craters across the planet's arid surface, the map also reveals the history of early asteroid bombardment of Mars. As such the composite of EXI images could also help researchers better understand the conditions in the tumultuous early solar system when space rock impacts were far more common than today.

The Hope orbiter is the first interplanetary mission from the UAE and from the Arab world as a whole. Commissioned by UAE leaders in 2014, the spacecraft was launched from Japan on July 20, 2020. After a journey of around seven months, Hope reached orbit around Mars on February 9, 2021.

"The Hope probe is helping researchers to create this global image of the planet due to its strategic position," Atri said. "Hope circles Mars in an elliptical orbit that allows it to observe from much further away than any other spacecraft. This strategic position is helping researchers to create a global image of the planet."

Americans want to lead in space but don’t love the price tag 

Poll: Americans aren’t over the moon about paying for space exploration

Sam Matthews
·Executive Producer, Yahoo News
Sat, April 1, 2023

Welcome to This Week in Outer Space, where you’ll find a roundup of the best space coverage from Yahoo News and our partners from the past week or so. Last week, we were off, due to a special visitor at our office in New York. This week, we’re back, with a potentially game-changing discovery on the moon, a new theory to explain a giant space rock’s bizarre behavior and an unfortunate update on the fate of Richard Branson’s satellite launch business. But first, a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that Americans aren’t quite ready to buy into the hype surrounding future lunar missions.
Poll: Americans aren’t over the moon about paying for space exploration

Lately, it seems like NASA will take any chance to remind you that we're going back to the moon. There has been no shortage of updates on the upcoming Artemis missions, with announcements, announcements of upcoming announcements and even the space exploration equivalent of fashion week. Returning to the moon after more than 50 years is an exciting prospect, and one that could have huge ramifications for how we live here on Earth. But a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that Americans aren't overwhelmingly enthusiastic about NASA's lunar ambitions.

Fifty percent of respondents told us they're excited by the possibility of returning to the moon, while 36% said they aren't. The rest, well, they weren't so sure. And when it comes to the specifics of the upcoming Artemis missions, 58% of Americans said they've never heard of it, with just 8% saying they've heard "a lot." However, a clear 62% majority still considers it important for the U.S. to maintain its status as the world leader in space exploration.

That said, Americans are far more divided on whether "space missions are a good use of taxpayer money" — 40% say yes, 36% say no — and oddly enough, here America's political divide finds a rare moment of unity: People who voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election responded almost exactly in the same way as those who voted for Donald Trump, with 48% and 46% saying the cost of space exploration is worth it.

Illustration by Yahoo News

So, why are Americans hesitant about footing the bill for space missions? Tom Zelibor, CEO of the Space Foundation, says it may come down to a lack of "space awareness."

"The awareness side of space that people don't get is that the majority of technologies that we have to develop for being in austere environments in space absolutely benefit us on Earth," Zelibor told Yahoo News.

"The landscape is replete with examples," he added, pointing to everyday objects like football helmets, polarized sunglasses, WD-40 and even modern cosmetics that have connections to space program innovations. Motioning to his smartphone, he chuckled, "Everyone has one of these things in their pocket. Well, you know, 90% of that phone is useless if you don't have space technologies attached to it."

"We have to do a better job on the space awareness side, because people will see dollar signs, but they won't equate it to what it does for us on Earth," he concluded.