What is most likely going on in Area 51? A national security historian explains why you won't find aliens there

Christopher Nichols, Professor of History, The Ohio State University
Mon, August 14, 2023 a

For decades, what lay at the end of this road was a mysterious secret. David James Henry/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA



Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

What is most likely going on in Area 51? – Griffin, age 10, South Lyon, Michigan

One of the reasons people can never be entirely sure about what is going on at Area 51 is that it is a highly classified secret military facility. It was not until 2013 that the U.S. government even acknowledged the existence and name “Area 51.”

This information came out as part of a broader set of documents released through a Freedom of Information Act request, which is something regular citizens and groups can do to ask the U.S. government to provide details about government activities. In this case, the request made public formerly classified CIA information regarding the historical development and testing of the U-2 spy plane. The information also revealed where it was tested: Area 51!


As a national security historian, I know there’s a long history of secrets at Area 51. I also know that none of those secrets have anything to do with space aliens.
The place

The base commonly referred to as Area 51 is located in a remote area of southern Nevada, roughly 100 miles (161 kilometers) from Las Vegas. It is in the middle of a federally protected area of the U.S. Air Force’s Nevada Test and Training Range, now known as the Nevada National Security Site, which is inside the larger Nellis Air Force Range.

Area 51, the yellow rectangle in the center of the map, is tucked in the middle of the much larger Nellis Air Force Range. DEMIS BV via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Area 51 is the secret code name for the site. The airfield at Area 51 is called Homey Airport, and the overall facility is often referred to as Groom Lake. Groom Lake is a salt flat, or dried-out lake, adjacent to the airport.
The history

In the early years of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, both nations sought new technological developments that might give one country more power than the other. A great amount of information about scientific achievements, such as on rockets or weapons – but also even on ways to grow more food or make fuel more efficient – was kept secret as an issue of national security.

A key part of not fighting another world war was, and still is, developing technologies to see what the other side is doing – that is, surveillance technologies that can spy on the enemy. The information gathered by new and improved surveillance technologies about new innovations with planes and weapons was very important to governments.

This meant that both the surveillance information and the technology to get it were closely held national security secrets. Very few people in the governments of the U.S. and Soviet Union knew about the secrets from the 1940s all the way up until the end of the Cold War in 1991.

The U-2 spy plane was the first of many secrets kept at Area 51. U.S. Air Force

Central to all this was the U.S.’s U-2 spy plane. It could fly higher and faster than other airplanes and was made to travel over targets all around the world to take high-resolution photographs and measurements. Area 51 was selected in 1955 to test the U-2 in part because its remote location could help keep the plane secret.

Area 51 became the test site for other secret new aircraft. This included the A-12, which, like the U-2, was a fast-flying reconnaissance plane. The A-12 was first test flown at Homey Airport in 1962. It had a bulging disc-like center to carry additional fuel. Its shape and shiny titanium body could well have been responsible for some people’s reports about seeing spherical ships, also known as flying saucers.

Another important – and odd-shaped – aircraft first tested at Area 51 was the stealth fighter known as the F-117. It first flew at Homey Airport in 1981.

The F-117 stealth fighter looks like it could have come from another world but was made right here on Earth. U.S. Air Force

Secrets and speculation

“More Flying Objects Seen in Clark Sky,” read the June 17, 1959, headline in the Reno Evening Gazette newspaper. Reports like this of unidentified flying objects in the 1950s and 1960s fueled controversy and attention for Area 51. This was for three main reasons:

Area 51 was highly secret and not publicly accessible.

The area was home to test flights of secret new airplanes that moved fast and in different ways than expected.

The Cold War was an era of political tension, and there were many movies and TV shows about space aliens at the time.

When the government does not tell the public the full truth, no matter the reasons, secrets can lead to wild speculation. Secrecy can leave room for conspiracy theories to develop.

Area 51 remains off-limits to civilian and regular military air traffic, a decade after the government acknowledged its existence. The 68 years of government secrecy has helped to amplify suspicions, speculation and conspiracy theories. These conspiracy theories include crashed alien spaceships, space aliens being experimented on, and even space aliens working at Area 51.

Speculation about space aliens at Area 51 has been part of popular culture for more than half a century. Airwolfhound/Flickr, CC BY-SA

There are much simpler explanations for what witnesses have seen near Area 51. After all, the public now knows about what was being tested at Area 51, and when. For example, as U-2 and A-12 flights increased in the 1950s and 1960s, so did local sightings of UFOs. As balloons and planes crashed, and secret testing of new technologies as well as captured Soviet equipment continued, so did reports of UFO crashes and landings.

In fact, many UFO sightings match almost exactly with dates and times of flights of then-classified experimental aircraft. We also know that prototype drones and more recent versions have been tested at the site.

In the end, there is no reason to think that anything other than earthly technologies have been behind the strange sights and sounds at Area 51.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

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

It was written by: Christopher Nichols, The Ohio State University.

Read more:


Overclassification overkill: The US government is drowning in a sea of secrets


US intelligence report on UFOs: No aliens, but government transparency and desire for better data might bring science to the UFO world

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
UBS pays $1.43 billion to settle US mortgage claims as industry-wide probe concludes

Kanishka Singh and Jonathan Stempel
Updated Mon, August 14, 2023 


WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - UBS agreed to pay $1.435 billion to settle U.S. charges that the Swiss lender misled investors into buying troubled mortgage securities, concluding an industrywide probe into a root cause of the 2008 global financial crisis.

The U.S. Department of Justice on Monday said it has collected more than $36 billion in civil fines from 19 banks, mortgage originators and rating agencies over the packaging, sale and rating of residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) leading up to the crisis.

Many of these securities carried triple-A ratings despite being backed by subprime and other risky mortgages, and investors suffered enormous losses as borrowers went into default and underwriting flaws became apparent.

The largest settlement, $16.65 billion, was reached in 2014 with Bank of America, which had bought mortgage specialist Countrywide Financial six years earlier.

UBS' settlement resolved Justice Department claims in a 2018 lawsuit filed in Brooklyn that the bank defrauded investors by knowingly making false and misleading statements about more than $41 billion in loans backing 40 RMBS issued in 2006 and 2007.

The bank had rejected a proposal that it pay nearly $2 billion to settle, a person familiar with the matter said at the time.

Credit Suisse, which UBS bought in June, reached a similar $5.28 billion settlement in 2017.

In a press release, UBS said it previously set aside reserves to cover the $1.43 billion payout. Monday's settlement should result in the lawsuit's dismissal.

UBS' payout is "a warning to other players in the financial markets who seek to unlawfully profit through fraud that we will hold them accountable no matter how long it takes," U.S. Attorney Breon Peace in Brooklyn said in a statement.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Mark Porter and Jonathan Oatis)

‘Mr. Bean’ actor sparks controversy with confounding newspaper column: ‘It’s starting to become a pattern’

Rachel McGlasson

Mon, August 14, 2023 


Mr. Bean and his hijinks are always a delight to watch on screen. But after his latest antic, in which he claimed electric vehicles (EVs) aren’t better for the environment than gasoline vehicles, we kind of wish he would have stuck to the jokes.

Actor Rowan Atkinson (aka Mr. Bean) is the latest to fall prey to the misleading idea that EVs are more harmful to the environment than gasoline vehicles. He voiced these concerns in an opinion piece published in The Guardian, in which he argued that the pollution tied to mining and manufacturing behind EVs is more harmful than the pollution released by gasoline vehicles.

“Electric vehicles may be a bit soulless, but they’re wonderful mechanisms: fast, quiet and, until recently, very cheap to run,” he wrote. “But increasingly, I feel a little duped. When you start to drill into the facts, electric motoring doesn’t seem to be quite the environmental panacea it is claimed to be.”

Unfortunately, the facts he is wanting to drill into are widely from pro-dirty energy groups that have a financial interest in gasoline vehicles sticking around. The argument is often the same — the production of electric vehicles produced almost 70% more pollution than the production of traditional vehicles (that’s a fact from Volvo, by the way). It’s not incorrect, but it is heavily biased.

A 2020 study by Transport and Environment found that the life cycle pollution output — or the overall pollution produced by an EV across its entire lifespan — is, on average, almost three times less than that of a vehicle that runs on gasoline. Aside from that, there is a lot of progress being made to mitigate the production pollution that Atkinson is so concerned about.

Solid and semi-solid state batteries are being explored by many EV companies. These batteries would significantly cut down on that pollution.

Don’t just take it from us, though. Auke Hoekstra, a program director at Eindhoven University of Technology and a passionate debunker of misinformation around EVs, took to Twitter to explain in a long thread just why Atkinson’s article isn’t very truthful.

“I love Rowan Atkinson the comedian and I believe he learned electrical engineering once, but I feel this erroneous article on EVs dupes the readers of The Guardian and that’s starting to become a pattern,” he tweeted. “Electric vehicles really emit 3x less CO2.”

Hoekstra said the points Atkinson made are often brought up in the EV world, and while things like the mining of materials, the heavy weight of batteries, and their high costs are all concerns of the EV industry, the industry is also advancing daily to address these.

At the end of the day, Hoekstra summed up Mr. Bean’s opinion piece rather matter-of-factly.

“Atkinson is a great comedian but doesn’t understand the environmental impacts of EVs,” he wrote. “The Guardian quality control should have picked this up. EVs emit 3x less CO2 over their lifetime currently. EVs sold in 2050 will emit 10x less.”

ALT.WAGNER
Convoy Private Military Company created in occupied Crimea receives millions from Russian bank and billionaire Rotenberg

Ukrainska Pravda
Mon, August 14, 2023 

The Convoy Private Military Company (PMC), established in occupied Crimea in the autumn of 2022, has received 300 million roubles [roughly US$3 million – ed.] from VTB, one of Russia's largest banks 69% of which is owned by the state, and Arkady Rotenberg, an oligarch who is close to Russian President Putin.

Source: an investigation conducted by the Dossier centre

Details: The investigation says that in just a month and a half of autumn 2022, the Convoy PMC received 437.5 million roubles [roughly US$4.4 million]. Of this amount, 120 million roubles [roughly US$1.2 million] came from the company owned by Putin's friend [the Ai-Petri Sanatorium owned by Arkady Rotenberg], another 200 million roubles [roughly US$2 million] from a state bank, and the rest from fuel companies that have nothing to do with the Convoy PMC.

None of these companies commented on the transfer of money.

Donations from state-owned and near-state corporations are transferred to the account of the St Petersburg Cossack Community Convoy. This Community, in turn, transfers the money to the account of the Military Security Company Convoy LLC. Over the course of a month and a half in the autumn of 2022, 85 million roubles [roughly US$853,000] were transferred in this way.

As the investigators noted, the money is then cashed in for expenses "in a very simple way": funds from the Convoy account are transferred to the head of the PMC Konstantin Pikalov as "loans to the founder". According to the documents studied by journalists, he takes approximately 60 million roubles [roughly US$602,000] a month.

The organisation pays for military equipment that can be purchased openly (body armour, uniforms, tents, medical equipment) directly from their own accounts, the Dossier writes.

Pikalov is associated with the founder of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin – the media called him Prigozhin's "right-hand man" and Wagner's curator in Africa. As the Dossier stated, the Convoy PMC's combat area is located in Kherson Oblast, and this summer the unit consisted of about 400 fighters.

A throng of interfaith leaders to focus on combating authoritarianism at global gathering in Chicago

DAVID CRARY
Mon, August 14, 2023 


Members of the Tai Ji Men Qigong Academy practice before the Parliament of World Religion Parade of Faiths, Sunday, Aug. 13, 2023, in Chicago.

(AP Photo/Paul Beaty)

For the Parliament of the World’s Religions, the week-long event marks a return to its roots – the organization was founded in Chicago in 1893.

More than 6,000 people representing scores of religions and belief systems are expected to convene in Chicago starting Monday for what organizers bill as the world’s largest gathering of interfaith leaders.

For the Parliament of the World’s Religions, the week-long event marks a return to its roots – the organization was founded in Chicago in 1893. In the past 30 years, it has convened six times, most recently in Toronto in 2018.

Past gatherings have drawn participants from more than 80 nations. This week’s speakers and presenters will represent Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Baha’i, Hinduism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Indigenous religions, paganism and other beliefs.

This year’s theme is “A Call to Conscience: Defending Freedom and Human Rights,” with a focus on combating authoritarianism around the world. Topics on the agenda include climate change, human rights, food insecurity, racism and women’s rights.

“We will take a stand for the rights we’re all at risk of losing,” said the Rev. Stephen Avino, the organization’s executive director.

Scheduled speakers include U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and actor Raiin Wilson, a member of the Baha’i faith. The keynote speaker will be Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.

Illustrative of the parliament’s diversity, its program chair for this week’s event is Phyllis Curott, a Wiccan priestess who as an author and lawyer has advocated for the legal rights of witches.

In a pre-conference statement, she assailed authoritarianism as “the most dangerous crisis confronting all of us today.”

“This existential, expanding and global scourge is manifesting in tyrants and strongmen who commit crimes against humanity, suppress essential freedoms, subvert democracies and murder the truth with lies,” she said. “They are fostering hate and the resurgence of antisemitism and Islamophobia, misogyny and racism.”

Numerous cultural and educational events are taking place to complement the speeches and discussions, starting with a Parade of Faiths on Sunday that celebrated Chicago’s diversity. Local faith, spiritual and cultural communities joined the parade, some accompanied by music and dance highlighting their history and traditions.

Among the upcoming events is “Guns to Garden Tools,” featuring a blacksmith who will demonstrate how he melts down firearms to create gardening tools.

The parliament has no formal powers of any sort. And for all its diversity and global scope, it is not ideologically all-encompassing. Its participants, by and large, share a progressive outlook; conservative Catholics, evangelicals and Muslims — among others — have not embraced the movement.

Gene Zubovich, a history professor at the University of Buffalo, wrote about the 2018 Toronto gathering for the online news journal Religion & Politics.

“The Parliament can come off as an echo chamber of progressive faith traditions,” he wrote. “Given the many religious tensions across the world, the real challenges of interfaith dialogue, and the self-selected crowd at Toronto, the universalist rhetoric could sound a little hollow. “

However, he credited the the interfaith movement for its evolution over the decades.

”Its leadership is much more diverse and inclusive,” he wrote. “Its politics is attentive to Indigenous issues, women’s rights, and climate change.”

Cardinal Blase Cupich, the Catholic archbishop of Chicago, is among the scheduled speakers this week. He has been urging Catholics in the archdiocese to engage in the event, saying it is in harmony with key priorities of Pope Francis.

The gathering “is an opportunity to live out the Holy Father’s teaching that a core part of our identity as Catholics involves building friendship between members of different religious traditions,” Cupich said in a message to the archdiocese last month. “Through our sharing of spiritual and ethical values, we get to know one another.”

___

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

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An Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank kills 2 Palestinians, health officials say

Associated Press
Mon, August 14, 2023 

This is a locator map of Israel and the Palestinian Territories. (AP Photo) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinians, including a 16-year-old, in a raid in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, Palestinian health officials said.

Israel has been carrying out near-nightly raids in the West Bank since last year in response to a spate of Palestinian attacks, what has fueled tensions in the region and sent the death toll soaring. The violence comes amid a spike in attacks on Palestinians by radical Jewish settlers, continued settlement expansion and as Israel is led by a government composed of ultranationalist settlement supporters.

The Palestinian Health Ministry identified those killed as Qusay al-Walaji, 16, and Mohammed Nujoom, 25, adding that the raid took place in the Jericho area, which has seen heavy fighting over the last 16 months. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

Israeli-Palestinian violence in the West Bank has surged to levels unseen in nearly two decades, with more than 170 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire since the start of 2023, according to a tally by The Associated Press.

Israel says most of those killed have been militants, but stone-throwing youths protesting the raids and others not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.

At least 27 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis during that time.

Israel says the raids are essential to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks. The Palestinians see the violence as a natural response to 56 years of occupation, including stepped-up settlement construction by Israel’s government and increased violence by Jewish settlers.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.

Grindr employees working from home were given 2 weeks to decide to move across the country to work in person or lose their jobs
Hannah Getahun
Sun, August 13, 2023 

Grindr AppThomas Trutschel/Getty Images




• Employees at LGBTQ+ dating site Grindr are being asked to return in person.

• The company gave employees two weeks to indicate if they could move by October.

• The company's employees say Grindr could be retaliating against them for trying to form a union.

Management at the popular LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr is asking workers to return to the office or lose their jobs, prompting outrage from employees who say the move will upend their lives.

According to a form sent to workers at Grindr on August 4 obtained by Vice's Motherboard, workers would need to confirm by August 17 whether or not they would move within 50 miles of Grindr's three offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, or the San Francisco Bay area or lose their jobs at the end of the month.

The news comes two weeks after employees announced their effort to unionize under the Communications Workers of America, Grindr United. Grindr United posted Sunday that the pivot to in-person work by the company is a "bizarre coincidence."

"Just as a by-the-way, it's now August 9th and @grindr management STILL has not addressed our union at all, in any way, other than telling us we have to move from our homes to keep our jobs," the union account wrote in another post.

Grindr CEO George Arison told staff that the decision was "many months" in the making, per a memo obtained by Bloomberg.

In a statement to Insider, a company spokesperson said the company began "the process of transitioning away from 'remote-first' to hybrid" in April and that employees were informed of a future switch to hybrid work during an all-hands meeting in June — before the unionization effort was announced.

However, employees told The New York Times that the company told them to expect the transition after one or two quarters.

The company spokesperson also said that the decision to move to a hybrid work model has "nothing to do with the NLRB election petition" and said, "We respect and support our team members' rights to make their own decision about union representation."

Grindr United did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment sent over the weekend.

Grindr is just one of the latest companies to urge employees to return to the office. Amazon, Apple, Disney, Google, Meta, the company formerly known as Twitter, and dozens of other businesses are asking their white-collar workers to work in the office at least part of the time.

However, the option is unpopular among many workers, who say they would take a pay cut over an in-person job. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, employers forcing a return to in-person work are seeing slower hiring rates.

Quinn McGee, an employee organizer at Grindr United CWA, told Vice the demands sent by Grindr, who McGee said refused to meet with employees about the union drive, were "dehumanizing."

"To tell me that I have two weeks to decide whether or not to uproot my family's life for a job that won't come to the table and speak with me as an adult — it's dehumanizing," McGee told the publication.

Egypt, Jordan and Palestinian president slam Israel, say it's fueling violence against Palestinians

Associated Press
Mon, August 14, 2023 at 9:58 AM MDT·2 min read

CAIRO (AP) — The leaders of Egypt and Jordan, and the Palestinian president on Monday slammed Israel, saying it was fueling chaos and violence in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank as bloodshed surges between Israel and Palestinians.

The condemnation came at the end of a three-way summit in the northern Egyptian city of el-Alamein that brought together Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, Jordan's King Abdullah II and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The three accused Israel of a number violations against Palestinians, including what they said were incursions by Israeli soldiers at a contested holy site in east Jerusalem and illegally withholding Palestinian money.

The site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, is the holiest site in Judaism. Today, it is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. The competing claims lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel’s government did not immediately respond to the statement from the summit.

The past months have seen one of the deadliest periods in years in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More than 160 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire this year in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Palestinians have killed 29 people on the Israeli side during that time.

Israel's new ultra nationalist government, formed last December, has adopted a hard-line approach to the Palestinians. In January, it decided to withhold $39 million from the Palestinian Authority and transfer the funds instead to a compensation program for the families of Israeli victims of Palestinian militant attacks.

During violent flare ups, Egypt, which was the first Arab country to establish diplomatic ties with Israel, has regularly acted as a peace broker between the two sides.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.

IRON JOHN REDUX
Men's groups expand with an urgent message: It's okay to open up

Tara Bahrampour, (c) 2023, The Washington Post
Sun, August 13, 2023 

Men's groups expand with an urgent message: It's okay to open up

On a Thursday in spring, as the sun set over D.C.'s Palisades neighborhood, nine men lay across a wooden deck under the darkening sky. Birds trilled, their song drowned periodically by planes roaring toward Reagan National Airport. A stick of incense smoldered, its smoke curling into the mild air.

"Take in the sounds," said Rua Williamson, who was leading the men in a breathwork session. "I invite you to maybe bring up an intention. How you want to live in this world. How you want to love in this world. How you want to be in this world."

Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post.

The men ranged from young adulthood to middle age; they were White, Black, Hispanic, Middle Eastern. As Williamson directed them to take short breaths, their bellies contracted in unison. Someone cranked up a Bluetooth device, and electronic drumming and bass rose up. Williamson laid his hand on the tummy of Alex Mero, a 52-year-old accountant in a light-purple T-shirt and black eyeglasses. He wrapped his hands around the waist of 30-year-old Dru Haynesworth, an activist and community health worker from Southeast Washington wearing a T-shirt that said "VOTE."

He brought the men together with a collective ommmm. "Feel the vibration resonate in the floor," Williamson said. "Feel the connection to your brothers."

It was a kind of connection that U.S. men increasingly say is missing from their lives, leaving them lonely, disconnected and, often, angry. Earlier this year, Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy declared the country to be in an "epidemic of loneliness and isolation." National suicide rates have risen in recent decades, and men in 2021 died by suicide at a rate nearly four times higher than women, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

American men's isolation stems in large part from a pervasive cultural belief, experts say: that men should be self-reliant and hide their emotions, especially from other men.

Today, a battle over the face of American masculinity is underway. Popular music, action movies and leaders like former president Donald Trump and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), author of the recent book "Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs," push for a more aggressive model.

Such conceptions, though, leave no room for vulnerability, said Mark Greene, founder of Remaking Manhood, a consultancy that works with organizations to help improve men's professional relationships.

"If a boy expresses too much emotion or too much need for connection, is too giddy, is too joyful, what we say to that boy is, 'What are you, a sissy? What are you, a girl? What are you, gay?'" Greene said. "It's your job to dominate those around you, or you will lose status, and that will increase the number of individuals above you who can dish out dominance to you. And what we find is that in that system, in that structure, men are constantly in competition with each other and constantly driven by this sense of anxiety."

Niobe Way, a professor of developmental psychology at New York University and the author of "Deep Secrets: Boys' Friendships and the Crisis of Connection," said many boys are raised with what she called "the cowboy mentality - 'I can do it myself, I don't need others,'" often perpetuated by "the father wanting the son to man up and not be so soft. . . . The whole model of getting help is part of so-called femininity."

As a result, she said, "Women end up being the therapist for their husband, and more are getting sick of it."

But some men are looking for alternatives, and some are finding them in fellowship organizations with names like EvryMan, the ManKind Project and the Journeymen, the group doing breathwork that night in D.C.

"We have all these groups that are just spontaneously coming into being, as men say, 'I want a circle of men that I can call my brothers, I want a circle of men that I can express what's going on for me emotionally, and I want a circle of men who will hold me accountable in positive ways,'" Greene said.

The theme of the Journeymen's gathering in April, their first in-person meeting in D.C. since the pandemic, was "heartbreak and grief." As the sky turned cobalt, Williamson implored the men to sense their emotions and "let them flow freely," to raise their voices and "release them into the darkness."

The men yelled, growled and bayed until neighborhood dogs started barking; voices rose to a frenzied pitch, then subsided. Williamson embraced a man who was sobbing. One man hugged himself. Then it was time to sit in a circle and open up. Joshua Cogan, the group's founder, spoke first.

"People here have gone through a lot in our lives, some in the last few months. As we move through the world as men, sometimes it can be hard to have a sense of that," he said. "All that which has been unnamed and unfelt, it's actually been felt, it just hasn't been dealt with. We put up a stiff arm and won't let the other guy into our lane of traffic, we don't want to make eye contact because if we did, we'd have to let him into our lane and show up really differently in the world."

As a man, he said, "you can sense that there are deeper things that are happening in men's lives, but when you bring it up the subject is changed. If guys' lives are a house, they only let you see the living room with the plastic on the furniture. And you're like, 'Hey, I'm hearing some baying in the basement.' But we don't talk about that."

Going around the circle, they began to talk about what lurked in the basement. One had lost his sister a few months earlier. Many talked of fraught or violent relationships with their fathers - or of not having a father around.

"My mom was a single working mom in D.C.," said Adrian Heizmann-Checa, 45, of Cathedral Heights. "I was scared she was going to get killed. I'm 7, 8, 9 years old, crying, 'Where the hell is my dad, where the hell is my mom,' in a basement in Adams Morgan. . . . So I just [had] to become a self-reliant superhero."

Julian Sanders, 31, of Northwest Washington, a first-time participant, said his father used to beat him when he was as young as 6. "A lot of my pain and fear of not being good enough came from feeling weak - I wasn't strong enough to protect my mother, I wasn't strong enough to protect my brother, to take care of my family," he said.

Mero, the accountant, who was also a first-timer, nodded. "My father beat the crap out of me," he said. "I watched my mother take it. We were a big family. When I saw her take it, I knew she was taking it for us. I felt her strength."

The toll of American loneliness is steep. The condition can increase the risk of premature death to a degree comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and correlates with an increased risk of heart disease, stroke and dementia. "Humans are wired for social connection," said Murthy, the surgeon general, "but we've become more isolated over time."

Cogan, a D.C. photojournalist, started the Journeymen in 2019 after his wife noted that he was on the phone with his male friends for hours each day, listening to them talk about what was going on in their lives.

"I saw guys suffering with their sense of identity, their sense of self-worth, their sense of belonging, their sense of their rights to their pain," he said. "I'd see a guy who'd be drinking really heavily. . . . They'd come over and start talking about their relationship or lack of relationship. Next minute they'd sober up, they didn't want to talk about it anymore."

Cogan, now 47, had been working through his own personal difficulties: the end of a previous relationship; his at-times fraught relationship with his father; the bullying he had suffered as a child. Now, he said, he was often the only man his male friends were talking to. "My intuition is that I was modeling openness," he said. "They saw me talk about my relationship, crying, going to therapy. They saw me as a safe harbor."

For many men, he said, "The world isn't safe. There's no expectation that a guy in our culture can say, 'I'm scared, I've got fear.' There's no expectation that a guy can ask for safety in our culture. A lot of the guys I know, they can't even do this with their partner."

But in recent years, Way said, men have witnessed societal movements such as the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter, which also challenged old paradigms. "Then covid happens, and we hit the bottom of the barrel on connections," she noted. "We can't walk out of our homes. We woke up to see we are a mess, and we're not having the connections we want, and we're not actually happy."

Journeymen members describe their sessions, which can be in person or virtual, as releasing a weight they had long carried. They say the sessions help them be better fathers and husbands, better friends to other men.

The group had been gearing up for its first multiday retreat when the pandemic hit; it had to be canceled. Members began meeting monthly on Zoom, and the group eventually expanded to roughly 200 men across the nation and beyond, with chapters in Bozeman, Mont., and the Dominican Republic. The retreat finally took place last year in West Virginia, with 40 participants ranging in age from 28 to 75.

In April, the men listened as Mero described how, as the oldest of eight children growing up in Queens, he was "the one who made sure everyone has to be okay."

After his father moved back to his native Ecuador, they didn't talk for 10 years. "But a year before he passed away, I went down there to clear the air. I never cried, never grieved so much as I did that day, and oh, it felt wonderful. I'd never felt so good," Mero said. "I cried for everyone in my family. . . . Staying in his hometown, all his brothers and sisters, seeing where he came from, I don't want to justify it, but . . ." Mero trailed off.

"Thank you," Sanders said. "I was able to have a glass of wine with my father. He's a hood dude from D.C. He's one of 10 kids. He can name everyone on his block that was dead. More people on his block his age were dead than were alive. Unfortunately, as men, we have to be careful because our pain can be destructive. . . . My grandfather was born without a name. His father was the son of a slave. He had to join the army and name himself and jump out of planes and raise a family."

Now, Sanders said, he wanted to break the cycle of violence. "So we aren't the story that the next generation sits in a circle and tells about. So they can say, 'Wow, I loved my father, my father was the best thing that happened to me.'"

VULCANOLOGY

Spectacular Mount Etna eruption leads to flight cancellations from Catania

Andrea Vogt
Mon, 14 August 2023 

An eruption of lava from the volcano’s southeast crater

The airport at Catania in Sicily, a top Italian tourist destination, has halted all flights after a spectacular new eruption began on Sunday at nearby Mount Etna.

The eruption of lava from the volcano’s southeast crater - clearly visible on Sunday evening to Catania residents - produced a cloud of black volcanic ash that fell on the city, disrupting both air and vehicle traffic on Monday.

“Because of an eruption at Etna all departures and arrivals are cancelled until 1pm,” the airport said. However, Italian national news agency ANSA reported that the airport operator has confirmed the extension of the closure until 8pm.


City officials on Monday also banned bike and motorcycle traffic and reduced vehicle speeds to below 30 kilometres an hour due to the ash, which local residents are asked to collect and leave in small containers near their homes for removal.

The mayor of Linguaglossa, a small town on Etna’s flank, also issued an ordinance prohibiting excursions to the summit from the volcano’s north side.

Stranded tourists requested airlines provide information to clear up confusion about when flights will resume and how to reach their final destinations. Many planes, including seven Ryanair flights, were rerouted through Trapani, Comiso and Palermo.

Crowds form at Catania Airport in Sicily after flight cancellations - Joann Randles/Cover Images

At 3,324 metres (nearly 11,000 feet), Etna is the tallest active volcano in Europe and has erupted frequently in the past 500,000 years.

An eruption earlier this year closed the airport on May 21.

The latest incident did not occur without warning. Observers at Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology took photos of Etna making large vapour rings from the new open vent in the summit crater last week and noted increased seismic activity.

Last year around 10 million passengers transited through the airport, which services the eastern part of Sicily. Authorities said travellers should contact their airlines and monitor the airport website.