Friday, July 28, 2023

Bunkers, sniper rifles: Deepening sectarian war in India dents Modi's image

Krishn Kaushik
Fri, July 28, 2023 

Heavily armed rival groups firing at each other from bunkers

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Nearly three months later, no sign of resolution to conflict

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Embarrassment for Modi as he prepares for G20 summit

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Government to face no-confidence motion over violence

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State government, police accused of bias



KANGVAI, India, July 28 (Reuters) - A one-mile stretch of a highway in the lush green foothills of India's Manipur state has become the symbol of a vicious sectarian conflict that has killed over 180 people since May and severely dented the strongman image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The bitter fighting between the Meitei community and the Kuki tribals is in the remote northeast of the country but it has lasted for almost three months, a deep embarrassment for Modi as he prepares to host a summit of G20 leaders in September and contest a general election next year.

There have been past tensions between the two groups, but violence erupted in early May after the state high court ordered the government to consider extending economic benefits reserved for the Kuki tribals to the Meiteis.

Street protests spiralled into armed conflict and now, rival gunmen have dug into bunkers and outposts along the highway and in other places in Manipur, and regularly fire at each other with assault weapons, sniper rifles and pistols.

Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes because of the fighting, villages have been set on fire and many women sexually assaulted, residents and media reports say. The Meitei-dominated state police are seen as partisan while army troops have been ordered to keep the peace but not to disarm fighters.

There is no sign of any early resolution.

Historian and author Ramachandra Guha described the situation as "a mixture of anarchy and civil war and a complete breakdown of the state administration".

"It is a failure of the prime minister at a time of grave national crisis," Guha added, speaking in a television interview. "Narendra Modi lives in a bubble of his own, he doesn't like to be associated with bad news and somehow hopes he will ride it out."

The prime minister's office and a state government spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

The Kukis, who are a third of the Meitei population, have borne a disproportionate brunt of the violence and make up two-thirds of the victims, according to new government data reviewed by Reuters this week. They have mostly fled to the hills, leaving the capital Imphal and the surrounding valley, areas dominated by the majority Meiteis.

Much of the violence and killings have taken place in buffer zones near Manipur's foothills where intense gun battles erupt regularly, security officials said.

The stretch of the national highway where the Meitei-dominated Bishnupur district meets Kuki-controlled Churachandpur is one of the buffer zones that has seen some of the worst fighting.

MODI'S COMMENTS

This week, when a Reuters team visited the Kuki village of Kangvai, just off the highway, volleys of gunshots could be heard from both sides.

Jangminlun Touthang, 32, a Kuki fighter carrying a hunting rifle, was manning a post directly opposite the Meitei lines.

He said he was there to protect his village from the Meiteis "who are going to attack us, who are going to burn our houses".

"When they attack, we fire," he said.

Modi's first comments on the violence in Manipur came last week, over two months after the trouble started in early May. He promised tough action a day after videos that purported to show two Kuki women being paraded naked and assaulted by a crowd went viral and drew international condemnation.

"The law will take its strongest steps, with all its might. What happened to the daughters of Manipur can never be forgiven," he said.

Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also heads the state government in Manipur. In the federal parliament, Modi faces a no-confidence motion over the violence, the second time in over nine years in power that he has been put to the test.

Although there is no threat to his government, Modi is likely to have to address the issue in detail.

The opposition is likely to ask why he is persisting with support to Manipur Chief Minister Biren Singh, a Meitei who heads the BJP state government.

Manipur, which borders Myanmar, is one of India's smallest states with a population of 3.2 million. While Kukis are just 16% of the state's population, Meiteis make up 53% of the people.

The death toll of 181 killed includes 113 Kukis and 62 Meiteis, according to the data reviewed by Reuters that have not been reported earlier.

The data show that in the first week of the violence in early May, 77 Kukis were killed compared to 10 Meiteis.

“Resources available to both sides are not the same. It is not a fight among equals,” a federal security official based in Manipur told Reuters.

According to government estimates, 2,780 weapons stolen from the state armoury, including assault rifles, sniper guns and pistols, remain with the Meiteis, while the Kukis have 156.

Kae Haopu Gangte, general secretary of Kuki Inpi Manipur, an umbrella Kuki civil society group, blamed the conflict on what he said was the desire of the Meiteis to dominate Kuki land.

The Kukis now want a separate state within India, he said.

“Until and unless we achieve statehood we will not stop,” Gangte said. “We are fighting not only Meiteis, we are fighting the government.”

Pramot Singh, founder of Meitei Leepun, a prominent Meitei organization that has members on the frontlines, said all Meiteis supported the conflict.

Seated outside his home near Imphal, with a pistol in a holster, he said his group will fight the Kukis until they stop demanding a separate state be carved out of Manipur.

“The war will continue from the Meitei side. This is just the beginning,” he said.

(Reporting by Krishn Kaushik in Manipur; Editing by YP Rajesh and Raju Gopalakrishnan)


India's Parliament rocked by protests for a third day over ethnic violence in remote state


A woman holds placards during a protest demonstration against the violence in the northeastern state of Manipur, in New Delhi, India, Friday, July, 21, 2023. Deadly ethnic clashes in India's northeast rocked India's Parliament with the opposition blocking proceedings for a second straight day on Friday demanding the sacking of the top elected official of northeastern Manipur state where ethnic clashes have left more than 130 people dead since early May.



Policewomen stand guard during a protest demonstration against the violence in the northeastern state of Manipur, in New Delhi, India, Friday, July, 21, 2023. Deadly ethnic clashes in India's northeast rocked India's Parliament with the opposition blocking proceedings for a second straight day on Friday demanding the sacking of the top elected official of northeastern Manipur state where ethnic clashes have left more than 130 people dead since early May. 



Students and activists participate in a protest demonstration against the violence in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, in New Delhi, India, Friday, July, 21, 2023. Deadly ethnic clashes in India's northeast rocked India's Parliament with the opposition blocking proceedings for a second straight day on Friday demanding the sacking of the top elected official of northeastern Manipur state where ethnic clashes have left more than 130 people dead since early May. 



Students and activists shout slogans during a protest demonstration against the violence in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, in New Delhi, India, Friday, July, 21, 2023. Deadly ethnic clashes in India's northeast rocked India's Parliament with the opposition blocking proceedings for a second straight day on Friday demanding the sacking of the top elected official of northeastern Manipur state where ethnic clashes have left more than 130 people dead since early May. 



Students and activists shout slogans during a protest demonstration against the violence in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, in New Delhi, India, Friday, July, 21, 2023. Deadly ethnic clashes in India's northeast rocked India's Parliament with the opposition blocking proceedings for a second straight day on Friday demanding the sacking of the top elected official of northeastern Manipur state where ethnic clashes have left more than 130 people dead since early May. 

AP Photos/Altaf Qadri


Mon, July 24, 2023 

NEW DELHI (AP) — India's Parliament was disrupted for a third day Monday by opposition protests over ethnic clashes in a remote northeastern state in which more than 130 people have been killed since May.

Opposition lawmakers carried placards and chanted slogans outside the Parliament building as they demanded a statement from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the violence in Manipur state before a debate on the issue.

Last week, Modi broke more than two months of public silence over the ethnic clashes, telling reporters that mob assaults on two women who were paraded naked were unforgivable, but he did not refer directly to the larger violence.

His comments came after a video showing the assaults sparked widespread outrage on social media despite the internet being largely blocked and journalists being locked out in the state. It shows two naked women surrounded by scores of young men who grope their genitals and drag them to a field.

The video was emblematic of the near-civil war in Manipur, where mobs have rampaged through villages and torched houses. The conflict was sparked by an affirmative action controversy in which Christian Kukis protested a demand by mostly Hindu Meiteis for a special status that would let them buy land in the hills populated by Kukis and other tribal groups and get a share of government jobs.

Indian Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday said the government is ready to discuss the situation in Manipur. "I request the opposition to let a discussion take place on this issue. It is important that the country gets to know the truth on this sensitive matter,” he said in the lower house of Parliament.

Both houses of Parliament were adjourned various times as the opposition stopped proceedings with their demand for a statement from Modi. Sessions were also disrupted on Thursday and Friday.

The main opposition Congress party's president, Mallikarjun Kharge, tweeted it was Modi's “duty to make a comprehensive statement inside the Parliament on Manipur violence.”

Violence in Manipur and the harrowing video have triggered protests across the country. On Monday, scores of people gathered in Indian-controlled Kashmir and protesters carrying placards took to the streets of the eastern city of Kolkata.

Over the weekend, nearly 15,000 people held a sit-in protest in Manipur to press for the immediate arrest of anyone involved in the assault, which occurred in May. They also called for the firing of Biren Singh, the top elected official in the state who also belongs to Modi's party.

The state government said last week that four suspects had been arrested and that police were carrying out raids to arrest other suspects.
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The wind energy industry is struggling

Jeronimo Gonzalez
Thu, July 27, 2023

The News

The wind energy sector has been blighted by rising financing and materials costs, fierce competition, and expensive technical problems that have led to heavy losses despite demand for energy soaring. Plummeting prices for other forms of renewable energy have also piled on to the industry’s problems.

We’ve gathered reporting and analysis on why the industry is struggling and where it’s succeeding.
Insights

Soaring temperatures across Europe and the continent’s efforts to wean its economies from dependance on Russian oil and gas have underscored the need for wind energy. However the combination of plummeting prices for renewable energy coupled with soaring costs on debt have made large offshore wind projects inviable. “This means that price of renewable energy regrettably must come up temporarily after years of steep decline,” the head of Danish energy giant Ørsted said.

Wind turbine producers have struggled with rising steel prices, inflation, and low quality production. Shares of Siemens Energy plunged by close to 30% last month after the company announced technical faults in its turbine business, affecting some of the world’s biggest wind developers. “Turbine prices fell sharply in 2017, which was then followed by the industry introducing new technology and turning to emerging markets for suppliers to keep costs down,” an analyst at JPMorgan said. “Some of the quality and design issues in the industry now are the result of that.”

Earlier this year, the White House announced plans to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030, enough to power roughly 10 millions homes. Reaching the goal will be a tough task: As of July, there are just two operational wind projects in the U.S. which combined produce 0.14% of the government’s 2030 goal. Earlier this month, two major projects were scrapped because of a lack of bids and cost issues. Developers “look at projects and the agreed upon price and are not seeing a path to profitability,” an expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies said.



Meanwhile, China’s wind industry is buoyant. The country’s total wind capacity — both onshore and offshore — now surpasses 310 gigawatts, double its 2017 level and roughly equivalent to the next seven highest producing countries combined. Its capacity is set to double again before 2025 as it seeks to add another 371 GW by then. “This new data provides unrivalled granularity about China’s jaw-dropping surge” in wind capacity, Dorothy Mei, a project manager at Global Energy Monitor said, referring to data published last month.

Vattenfall Stops UK Offshore Wind Project Citing Costs and Lower Profits

Vattenfall UK wind farm
Vattenfall decided to stop a major UK wind farm development project due to rising costs (file photo)

PUBLISHED JUL 20, 2023 5:41 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

Vattenfall has become the latest developer of wind farms to report that rising costs are undermining the economics of offshore projects. The Swedish energy company announced that it has decided to shelve a late-stage development project in the UK saying the market for offshore wind power is “challenging.” The company’s decision also raised broader concerns for the UK’s offshore wind energy sector which is a key component of the government’s future energy plans.

“We have decided to stop the development of Norfolk Boreas in its current form,” Vattenfall President and CEO Anna Borg announced in the company’s mid-year financial report. “We will examine the best way forward for the entire Norfolk Zone, which in addition to Boreas also includes Vanguard East and West.”

The project was planned for an area about 30 miles off the south east coast of Britain. Boreas was to have an installed capacity of 1.4 GW and was due to deliver its first power in 2027. The zone with the three wind farms was to consist of between 180 and 312 turbines with a total capacity of 3.6 GW. 

“Higher inflation and capital costs are affecting the entire energy sector, but the geopolitical
situation has made offshore wind and its supply chain particularly vulnerable,” Borg said in explaining the decision to suspend the development project. She told investors that the company has seen cost increases of up to 40 percent, saying that this affects the future profitability of the project. They are citing soaring material and project costs along with the impact of inflation and interest rates on the projects’ economics.

The company, which has grown its wind portfolio in the past year from 4.2 GW to 5.6 GW, said it is still convinced that offshore wind power is “crucial for energy security.” Nonetheless, based on the changing economics, they are recording a more than $500 million impairment charge against earnings to stop the development of these UK projects. 

Vattenfall had previously said the Boreas project and its advancement was “great news” for the UK. They received planning consent for the project in December 2021 and won Contracts for Difference a year ago. The company reported the contract provided for a 15-year fixed revenue stream with Reuters estimating the guaranteed minimum price at nearly $58 per MW hour. The company signed grid contracts with Siemens Energy and Aker Solutions last October and was expected to make a final investment decision later this year for Boreas.

The decision to suspend the development is raising broader questions about the UK’s industry. The government has highlighted that it plans to have 50 GW of offshore wind energy as part of its energy plan. The UK currently has around 14 GW of installed capacity. The Boreas project was seen as among the most advanced of the UK’s future projects.

Addressing investors, Borg said that they now believe that the UK does not currently have the investment environment needed to meet its offshore wind targets. The company hopes that the contract prices might improve to make it possible to go forward with projects. They said the incentives currently available no longer reflect market conditions while noting that other developers including Ørsted have also called for target support of the industry.

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'Oppenheimer' reignites debate: Was the U.S. justified in dropping atomic bombs on Japan?


Mike Bebernes
·Senior Editor
Updated Thu, July 27, 2023 


U.S. Army via Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum via AP


What's happening

The new blockbuster film "Oppenheimer," which tells the story of how physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer became “the father of the atomic bomb,” has given new energy to a debate that has raged for nearly 80 years: Whether the U.S. made the right decision to drop nuclear weapons on Japan at the end of World War II.

An overwhelming majority of Americans at the time approved of the bombings, which killed as many as 200,000 Japanese citizens in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But that sentiment has shifted over the decades. By 2015, the U.S. public was close to evenly split on whether the use of nuclear weapons was justified.

Oppenheimer himself was deeply conflicted about the weapons he helped create. He reportedly celebrated the news of the Hiroshima bombing, stating that his only regret was they hadn’t developed the bomb in time to use against the Nazis earlier in the war. But a few months later, he told then-President Harry Truman, “I feel I have blood on my hands.” In the years following the war, he was a vocal advocate for strict nuclear arms control and opposed the creation of even more powerful versions of the bomb.

Why there’s debate

Because of the extraordinary stakes of the decision — and the unknowable outcomes of not making it — the debate over dropping the bombs has been described by one historian as “the most controversial issue in American history.”

In 1945, the main argument in support of the bombings, which many affirm to this day, was that the use of nuclear weapons actually saved countless lives and that the alternatives would have been even more devastating. Proponents of this view say the only other way to convince Japan to surrender would have been a brutal invasion that would have caused massive losses on both sides and created a famine that could have led to starvation for millions of Japanese civilians.

Others say it’s likely there would have been other nuclear attacks had the world not been given a clear example of their incredible power.

But critics of the bombings say these justifications ignore what was really happening at the time. They argue that American leaders dropped the bombs because they wanted to do maximum damage to the Japanese people, not some sober calculus in search of the least-harmful way to end the war. Many also scoff at the idea that the attacks somehow served as a deterrent, since the world’s arsenal of nuclear weapons grew exponentially in the years that followed.

Perspectives

Americans are hiding behind a myth to justify doing the unforgivable

“Like many Americans, I was taught growing up that my grandfather was spared the burden of invading Japan and very likely dying because Harry Truman dropped a pair of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and ended the war. The main function of such stories is to justify a terrible war crime.” — David Klion, The New Republic

The bombings ultimately spared countless lives

“The alternative to dropping the bombs was a full-scale land invasion of the islands. Conventional attacks, including regular bombing, would have resulted in widespread civilian casualties as well as the long-term destruction of Japanese infrastructure.” — Tiana Lowe Doescher, Washington Examiner

Japan may have surrendered regardless

“The bomb’s central role in the Japanese surrender has been hotly contested by many historians, complicating any claims it was a necessary act.” — Greg Mitchell, Los Angeles Times

Japan was nowhere near surrendering before the bombs were dropped

“The big [myth] was that the Japanese were ready to surrender and would have surrendered even if we had not dropped those bombs. I think that is a myth. … The Japanese were essentially defeated—that’s true. Their fleet had been sunk and their cities had been burned. But they were not ready to surrender.” — Evan Thomas, nuclear historian, to Time

The typical story gives U.S. leaders far too much credit

“The standard narrative that most people have about the use of the atomic bombs and World War II is wrong. … Just the idea that Harry Truman very carefully weighed whether to use the bomb or not. It was a question of, ‘Do you bomb? Or do you invade?’ And so with a heavy heart, he chose to bomb and that was the lesser of two evils. That is just 100 percent not what happened at the time.” — Alex Wellerstein, nuclear historian, to Vox

The most humane thing the U.S. could have done was end the war as quickly as possible

“We were fighting a merciless foe in a savage war where every day brought more suffering and devastation, to combatants and civilians alike and across Asia. The best thing that could happen was ending the war as soon as possible, and the atom bomb brought it to a swift and decisive conclusion.” — Rich Lowry, National Review

The bombings convinced the world that nuclear weapons should not be used again

“It was inevitable that such a destructive and horrific weapon would be developed. And the specter of that weapon is breathtaking and terrifying. But the sheer scale of the bomb often overshadows a much more optimistic fact of the story: Since 1945, mankind has had the choice to use the weapon and thus far have chosen not to.” — Hal Sundt, The Ringer

Using the bombs accelerated the nuclear arms race

“This is a pervasive myth, one that primarily benefits the companies that build nuclear weapons. It’s the myth that military power prevents conflict. … The real realists recognize that by perpetuating this system of valuing nuclear weapons, we are going to ensure that they’re used.” — Seth Shelden, United Nations liaison for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, to Slate
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Dangerous fungus is becoming more prevalent. Scientists believe climate change could be to blame


Illustration about the rise of a dangerous fungus called Candida auris.
(Illustration/Amelia Bates, Grist via AP) 

CAMILLE FASSETT
Thu, July 27, 2023 

SEATTLE (AP) — In 2016, hospitals in New York state identified a rare and dangerous fungal infection never before found in the United States. Research laboratories quickly mobilized to review historical specimens and found the fungus had been present in the country since at least 2013.

In the years since, New York City has emerged as ground zero for Candida auris infections. And until 2021, the state recorded the most confirmed cases in the country year after year, even as the illness has spread to other places, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data analyzed by The Associated Press.

Candida auris is a globally emerging public health threat that can cause severe illness, including bloodstream, wound and respiratory infections. Its mortality rate has been estimated at 30% to 60%, and it's a particular risk in healthcare settings for people already with serious medical problems.

Last year, the most cases were found in Nevada and California, but the fungus was identified clinically in patients in 29 states. New York state remains a major hotspot.

A prominent theory for the sudden explosion of Candida auris, which was not found in humans anywhere until 2009, is climate change.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of a collaboration between The Associated Press and Grist exploring the intersection of climate change and infectious diseases.

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Humans and other mammals have warmer body temperatures than most fungal pathogens can tolerate, so have historically been protected from most infections. However, rising temperatures can allow fungi to develop tolerance to warmer environments, and over time humans may lose resistance. Some researchers think this is what is already happening with Candida auris.

The pathogen emerged spontaneously 14 years ago on three continents, in Venezuela, India, and South Africa. Fungal disease expert Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist, immunologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University, said this was puzzling, because the climates in these places are quite different.

“We have tremendous protection against environmental fungi because of our temperature. However, if the world is getting warmer and the fungi begin to adapt to higher temperatures as well, some ... are going to reach what I call the temperature barrier,” Casadevall said, referring to the way mammals’ warm body temperatures historically protected them.

When Candida auris was first spreading, said Meghan Marie Lyman, a CDC medical epidemiologist for the mycotic diseases branch, the cases were linked to people who had traveled to the U.S. from other places. Now, most cases are acquired locally — generally spreading among patients in healthcare settings.

In the U.S., there were 2,377 confirmed clinical cases diagnosed last year — an increase of over 1,200% since 2017. But Candida auris is becoming a global problem. In Europe, a survey last year found case numbers nearly doubled from 2020 to 2021.

“The number of cases has increased, but also the geographic distribution has increased,” Lyman said. She noted that while screenings and surveillance have improved, the skyrocketing case numbers do reflect a true increase.

In March, a CDC press release noted the seriousness of the problem, citing the pathogen's resistance to traditional antifungal treatments and the alarming rate of its spread. Public health agencies are focused primarily on strategies to urgently mitigate transmission in healthcare settings.

“It’s kind of an active fire they’re trying to put out,” Lyman said.

Dr. Luis Ostrosky, a professor of infectious diseases at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, thinks Candida auris is “kind of our nightmare scenario.”

“It’s a potentially multi-drug resistant pathogen with the ability to spread very efficiently in healthcare settings,” he said. "We’ve never had a pathogen like this in the fungal infection area.”

It is nearly always resistant to the most common class of antifungal medication, and is sometimes also resistant to another medication primarily used for severe catheter fungal infections in hospitals.

“I’ve encountered cases where I’m sitting down with the family and telling them we have nothing that works for this infection your loved one has,” Ostrosky said.

Ostrotsky has treated about 10 patients with the fungal infection but has consulted on many more. He said he has seen it spread through an entire ICU in two weeks.

Researchers, academics, and public health groups are discussing and investigating theories that explain the emergence of Candida auris. Ostrosky said that climate change is the most widely accepted one.

The CDC's Lyman said it’s possible the fungus was always among the microorganisms that live in the human body, but because it wasn’t causing infection, no one investigated until it recently started causing health problems. She also said there are reports of the fungus in the natural environment — including soil and wetlands — but environmental sampling has been limited, and it’s unclear whether those discoveries are downstream effects from humans.

“There are also a lot of questions about there being increased contact with humans and intrusion of humans into nature, and there have been a lot of changes in the environment, and the use of fungi in agriculture," she said. "These things may have allowed Candida auris to escape into a new environment or broaden its niche.”

Wherever and however it originated, the fungus poses a significant threat to human health, researchers say. Immunocompromised patients in hospitals are most at risk, but so are people in long-term care centers and nursing homes, which generally have less access to diagnostics and infection control experts.

Candida auris is not only challenging to treat, but also difficult to diagnose. It is quite rare and many clinicians are not aware it exists.

Common symptoms of infection include sepsis, fever, and low blood pressure, which all can have many causes. The fungus is diagnosed with a blood test. Blood is placed in a nutrient-rich medium to allow any infectious organism to grow and become more detectable.

But Ostrosky notes this misses about half the cases. “Our gold standard is a little bit better than flipping a coin," he said, adding there is a newer technology that improves bloodstream detection but it’s expensive and not widely available in hospitals.

Beyond the increase in cases, popular culture has helped increase awareness of fungal infections. A popular HBO series, “The Last of Us,” is a drama about the survivors of a fungal outbreak. A fungal infection that can transform humans into zombies is a work of fiction, but addressing climate change, which is altering the kinds of diseases seriously threatening human health, is a real world challenge.

“I think the way to think about how global warming is putting selection pressure on microbes is to think about how many more really hot days we are experiencing,” said Casadevall of Johns Hopkins. “Each day at (100 degrees Fahrenheit, or 37.7 degrees Celsius) provides a selection event for all microbes affected — and the more days when high temperatures are experienced, the greater probability that some will adapt and survive.”

“We’ve been flying under the radar for decades in mycology because fungal infections didn’t used to be frequently seen,” said Ostrosky of UTHealth Houston.

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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.
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Joe Rogan Boosted a Bad Space Study. It’s Scientists Who Are Paying the Price.

David Axe
The Daily Beast.
Tue, July 25, 2023 

Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / Getty

Not content to push homophobia, transphobia and fat-shaming, make light of sexual assault, and undermine the public’s confidence in vaccines, uber-popular radio host Joe Rogan is now doing his best to dismantle astronomy, too.

On July 16, Rogan tweeted to his 11 million followers a link to a press release from the University of Ottawa promoting recent research from Rajendra Gupta, one of the school’s adjunct physics professors.



Flouting decades of work by hundreds of the world’s best astronomers and physicists, Gupta invented a new formula, blended it with data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and concluded the universe is 26.7 billions years old.

That’s nearly twice as old as the universe’s actual age—13.7 billion years, a figure scientists spent decades calculating.

Virtually none of Gupta’s peers agree with him, but that didn’t bother Rogan. Nor did it trouble Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Twitter, who replied to Rogan’s tweet. In addition to Rogan’s signal-boost, USA Today has highlighted Gupta’s old-universe notion, as has Popular Mechanics. A dubious notion from a minor player in the space sciences has gone mainstream.



Gupta is wrong. But he’s just the right kind of wrong that appeals to self-proclaimed “free-thinkers” such as Rogan and Musk. With an assist from some mainstream media, the two libertarians are, wittingly or unwittingly, chipping away at one of the last bastions of pure science—the space sciences. Which is especially ironic considering that Musk also owns a rocket company.

The populist embrace of Gupta’s fringe idea could have dangerous implications. “Misinformed voices who lack credentials can drown out the educated voices who have spent their lives studying a subject,” Allison Kirkpatrick, a University of Kansas astronomer, told The Daily Beast.

Gupta’s main mistake was to revive a discredited theory about light. Space scientists agree that light tends to change color across time and space. Since the universe is expanding, light—in order to keep up—tends to stretch out as it radiates. Over billions upon billions of miles and millions of years, this stretching-out changes the light’s wavelength and makes it more red.

Hundreds of Doctors Demand Spotify Stop ‘Menace’ Joe Rogan From Pushing Anti-Vax Misinfo

This so-called “redshift” is extremely useful to Earthbound astronomers gazing out at the inky depths of the cosmos. Exactly how red a star, or a galaxy full of stars, appears to be can tell us how far away it is, and—as the universe is expanding—how old it is.

Since everything in the universe started out in the same spot, and then burst outward with the Big Bang, the oldest and reddest observable objects should be close to the overall age of the universe. At the same time, this age should align with the gradual decay of the background radiation from the Big Bang.

Match up these and other observations, as many scientists have done many times, and you get roughly the same age for the universe: 13.7 billion years.

But Gupta was unhappy with the number, as he fixated on new data about some very old galaxies that are only now becoming observable thanks to the $10-billion James Webb Space Telescope, which launched on Christmas Day in 2021.

NASA’s Webb Telescope Cracks a 40-Year-Old Space Mystery

Some of the oldest observable galaxies seem to have developed weirdly quickly in the first few hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang. “The well-accepted standard model of the universe is in tension with the JWST data,” Gupta told The Daily Beast.

So Gupta tried something new. He mixed into his calculations the defunct “tired light” model, which assumes the universe isn’t expanding—and that any redshift we observe comes from light literally wearing out and stretching out over time. He then applied tired light to an expanding universe.

The result is a description of a very old universe. One that’s expanding and is filled with light that slows down all on its own across space and time. The implication for astronomers, if Gupta’s model actually worked, is that those ancient and faraway galaxies wouldn’t be 13.7 billion years old. They’d be 26.7 billion years old.

Those extra 13 billion years would have given the oldest galaxies—the ones that recently became visible through the JWST—ample time to evolve. “The hybrid model is found to be compliant with the JWST observations,” Gupta said.

It’s all very tidy. But only if you ignore a lot of other data, including the observable decay in the cosmic background radiation from the beginning of the universe.

Also, the tired-light model should make faraway galaxies lose focus from our point of view here on Earth. “Distant galaxies would appear blurred if tired light were correct, but they do not,” Brian Keating, an astrophysicist at the University of California, San Diego, told The Daily Beast.

The bottom line is that Gupta’s theory doesn’t work. Yes, we still have a lot to learn about the oldest galaxies and how they seemingly formed so quickly. No, those mysteries do not fundamentally rewrite overlapping models that have aligned in recent decades to tell us that the universe is 13.7 billion years old.

The Universe’s Oldest Galaxies Hold Its Biggest Secrets

In the sciences, it’s OK to be wrong—as long as you work in good faith, submit your data and findings to your peers, accept their scrutiny, correct your mistakes and move forward with a better understanding while others publish rebuttals of your original work. This is peer review, writ large, and it’s essential.

The problem is the media, which can short-circuit the slow process of peer review—and tempt unscrupulous or impatient academics to do the same. “Media outlets seek compelling and attention-grabbing stories, while academic institutions and researchers strive for visibility and recognition for their work,” Keating explained. “As a result, there can be a temptation for both parties to exaggerate findings, oversimplify complex research or present preliminary results as definitive conclusions.”

For his part, Gupta said he’s “not worried.” “My theory is in the open for people to test and criticize.” But the qualified critics of Gupta’s work don’t have nearly the reach that the populist boosters do. Combined, Rogan and Musk can instantly reach tens of millions of attentive followers. In this case, they may have seeded in millions of minds the incorrect notion that the universe is twice as old as it actually is.

To be fair, the age of the universe doesn’t have much direct bearing on how most of us live our lives. But science in general does have a direct bearing on our lives—and science says the universe is 13.7 billion years old, not 26.7 billion years.

“If we can't convince people to trust science about things that have very little impact on their lives,” Kirkpatrick asked, “how can we convince them to trust scientists on the most important questions facing humanity?” The safety and effectiveness of vaccines, for instance. Or the urgency of climate change.

“Astronomers used to be one of the most trusted scientific professions because we don't have any obvious agendas,” Kirkpatrick said. “We are not being paid by corporations. But now we're being questioned on things like the age of the universe.”

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Whistleblower tells Congress the US is concealing 'multi-decade' program that captures UFOs



WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects, a former Air Force intelligence officer testified Wednesday to Congress. The Pentagon has denied his claims.

Retired Maj. David Grusch's highly anticipated testimony before a House Oversight subcommittee was Congress' latest foray into the world of UAPs — or “unidentified aerial phenomena," which is the official term the U.S. government uses instead of UFOs. While the study of mysterious aircraft or objects often evokes talk of aliens and “little green men,” Democrats and Republicans in recent years have pushed for more research as a national security matter due to concerns that sightings observed by pilots may be tied to U.S. adversaries.

Grusch said he was asked in 2019 by the head of a government task force on UAPs to identify all highly classified programs relating to the task force's mission. At the time, Grusch was detailed to the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that operates U.S. spy satellites.

“I was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access,” he said.

Asked whether the U.S. government had information about extraterrestrial life, Grusch said the U.S. likely has been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s.

The Pentagon has denied Grusch's claims of a coverup. In a statement, Defense Department spokeswoman Sue Gough said investigators have not discovered “any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.” The statement did not address UFOs that are not suspected of being extraterrestrial objects.


Related video: UFO hearing: Military pilots, intelligence whistleblower to testify | Banfield (News Nation)   Duration 6:00   View on Watch

Daily MailUFO whistleblower admits US government is in possession of UFOs
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Fox BusinessUFO whistleblower reveals disturbing details during House Oversight Committee hearing
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PA MediaUS concealing programme to retrieve UFOs, says ex-intelligence officer
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Grusch says he became a government whistleblower after his discovery and has faced retaliation for coming forward. He declined to be more specific about the retaliatory tactics, citing an ongoing investigation.

“It was very brutal and very unfortunate, some of the tactics they used to hurt me both professionally and personally,” he said.

Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., chaired the panel's hearing and joked to a packed audience, “Welcome to the most exciting subcommittee in Congress this week.”

There was bipartisan interest in Grusch’s claims and a more sober tone than other recent hearings featuring whistleblowers celebrated by Republicans and criticized by Democrats. Lawmakers in both parties asked Grusch about his study of UFOs and the consequences he faced and how they could find out more about the government’s UAP programs.

“I take it that you’re arguing what we need is real transparency and reporting systems so we can get some clarity on what’s going on out there,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.

Some lawmakers criticized the Pentagon for not providing more details in a classified briefing or releasing images that could be shown to the public. In previous hearings, Pentagon officials showed a video taken from an F-18 military plane that showed an image of one balloon-like shape.

Pentagon officials in December said they had received “several hundreds” of new reports since launching a renewed effort to investigate reports of UFOs.

At that point, “we have not seen anything, and we’re still very early on, that would lead us to believe that any of the objects that we have seen are of alien origin,” said Ronald Moultrie, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security. “Any unauthorized system in our airspace we deem as a threat to safety.”

Nomaan Merchant, The Associated Press


Whistleblowers Unveil Details of 'Incredible' UFO Experiences

Congress held a hearing on UFOs featuring testimony from pilots and whistleblowers who encountered them firsthand.

IAN KRIETZBERG
JUL 26, 2023 

Perhaps the greatest conspiracy theory of them all -- the one concerning an extra-terrestrial presence on Earth -- was re-ignited in June when Air Force veteran David Grusch filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that the U.S. government possesses craft of non-human origin.

Grusch, alongside two other whistleblowers -- former Navy pilot Ryan Graves and former Navy commander David Fravor -- testified before a Congressional hearing on UFOs, referred to as UAPs, July 26.

DON'T MISS: See: Pentagon Releases Formerly Classified Clip of UFO Over Middle East

UAPs, Graves said, present a potential risk to national security. He claimed that the government has more information and awareness of these unidentified objects than they let on, and urged transparency in conversations surrounding UAPs.

"I have experience of UAPs firsthand. As we convene here, UAPs are in our air space, but they are grossly underreported," Graves said. "These sightings are not rare or isolated, they are routine. These encounters became so frequent that aircrew would discuss the risk of UAP as part of their regular pre-flight briefs."

"If everyone could see the sensory and video data I witnessed," Graves added, "our national conversation would change."

Both Graves and Fravor discussed specific situations in which they encountered these objects. Both men said that the objects represent a technology that no Earth-bound science can match; humans, they said, could not survive the g-forces of these vehicles.

"Not for the acceleration rates we observed."

Fravor discussed a scenario in which he encountered one of these such objects, saying that the UAP was "perfectly white and smooth." It had neither windows nor seams.

"The object had been observed coming down from over 80,000 feet, rapidly descending to 20,000 feet, hanging out for hours and then going straight back up," Fravor said. "Above 80,000 feet is space."

As Fravor and his pilots drew closer to the object, it vanished; it moved a distance of around 60 miles in the span of a minute.

"We have nothing that can stop in midair and go the other direction. I think it's far beyond the material science that we currently possess," Fravor said. "We have nothing close to it. It was amazing to see. I told my buddy I wanted to fly it. It's an incredible technology."

Graves reported an object that was floating, completely stationary, in the midst of category four hurricane winds, which run between 130 and 150 mph.

"These same objects," he said, "would then accelerate to supersonic speeds, 1.1, 1.2 Mach, and they would do so in very erratic behaviors that I don't have an explanation for."

Since renewing its efforts to investigate reports of UFOs in December, the Pentagon has clocked hundreds of reports. As of April, about half of its 650 reports were categorized as being worthy of investigation.

The Anomaly Resolution Office released a Department of Defense video of a UFO captured by a U.S. drone at a Senate hearing in April. The analyst who testified at the hearing, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, said that the video was "readily explainable."

"In our research, AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics."

Former Intelligence Guy Tells Congress the Government Is Reverse-Engineering Alien Relics



Victor Tangermann
Wed, July 26, 2023 

The House Oversight Committee is holding a hearing about highly controversial claims that the US government is secretly hiding evidence of extraterrestrial life, and could even be working to reverse-engineer the otherworldly relics.

Air Force veteran and former member of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency David Grusch renewed his allegations that the government has not only recovered alien spacecraft over recent decades, but has actively sought to keep the information from leaking to the public.

If that all sounds insane, you're not wrong. And it's worth keeping in mind that Grusch has produced exactly zero evidence to back up his outrageous claims.

The big question? Whether today's hearing will manage to shed any light on the situation.

Congressman Tim Burchett, co-lead of the investigation into UAPs, said that "this is an issue of government transparency. We can’t trust a government that does not trust its people."

"We’re not bringing little green men or flying saucers into the hearing," he added. "Sorry to disappoint about half y’all. We’re just going to get to the facts. We’re going to uncover the cover-up."

Still, Grusch's opening statements did seem to allude to some of those things.

"I was informed, in the course of my official duties, of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program," he wrote, adding that "I made the decision based on the data I collected, to report this information to my superiors and multiple Inspectors General, and in effect become a whistleblower."

"It is my hope that the revelations we unearth through investigations of the Non-Human Reverse Engineering Programs I have reported will act as an ontological (earth-shattering) shock, a catalyst for a global reassessment of our priorities," he concluded. "As we move forward on this path, we might be poised to enable extraordinary technological progress in a future where our civilization surpasses the current state-of-the-art in propulsion, material science, energy production and storage."

Today's hearing also included a rehashing of existing reports of UFO sightings that have made headlines ever since The New York Times published a report back in 2017 that first uncovered a "shadowy" Defense Department UFO program that had been operating for years.

"We were primarily seeing dark grey or black cubes inside of a clear sphere," retired navy pilot Ryan Graves, the first witness to appear alongside Grusch, told lawmakers during today's hearing.

"That was primarily what was being reported when were able to gain a visual tally of these objects," he added. "That occurred over eight years."

The hearing's third witness, former navy commander David Fravor, who famously filmed a "Tic Tac"-shaped object back in 2004, described the object as being " far superior to anything that we had at the time, have today or looking to develop in the next ten years."

"All four of us saw a white 'Tic-Tac' object with a longitudinal axis pointing north-south, and moving very abruptly over the water, like a ping-pong ball," he recalled during his opening statements.

Some Congress members, unsurprisingly, balked at Grusch's previous allegations that the government had recovered "non-human" spacecraft.

North Carolina representative Virginia Foxx pointed to All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office director Sean Kirkpatrick, who told Congress back in April that the office "found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics."

Other onlookers pointed out that members of Congress clearly didn't do their homework before attending today's hearing.

"Not a great sign that [representative Glenn Grothman] launches the UFO Hearings by mentioning reading Frank Edwards' book 'Flying Saucers — Serious Business,'" journalist Garrett Graff tweeted, "which is one of the least reputable books on the subject of the last 75 years."

Graff also called today's opening statements not "compelling (or even particularly smart)," arguing that "these members haven't really done their research to understand the history of UFOs and the US government."

In short, extraordinary claims call for extraordinary evidence. If the government has alien artifacts, let's see them.

More on UFOs: Scientist: No, We Didn't Just Find an Alien Spacecraft on the Bottom of the Ocean

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