Opinion

China wants to erase Tibet. Will Britain stay quiet about this crime?


Simon Tisdall
Sun, 27 August 2023 

Photograph: Héctor Retamal/AFP/Getty Images

Last week’s US sanctioning of Chinese officials involved in Beijing’s ongoing criminal efforts to erase Tibet as a separate political, ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious entity showed America at its best.

Few other governments give a hoot. Most cravenly look the other way.

Citing a recent UN report on the “forced assimilation” of one million Tibetan children ordered into Mandarin-language state boarding schools far from their homes and families, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, demanded China stop trying to eradicate Tibet’s distinct identity.


“We urge PRC [People’s Republic of China] authorities to end the coercion of Tibetan children into government-run boarding schools and to cease repressive assimilation policies in Tibet and other parts of the PRC,” Blinken said – apparently referring to Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Hong Kong, where the right to self-determination is also denied.

The fact America’s senior diplomat was ready to take a public, principled stand will infuriate and puzzle Beijing, which has occupied Tibet since 1950. President Xi Jinping and his callous Communist cadres don’t do principles. For them, altruism in foreign policy is an alien concept.

The Biden administration is trying to patch up rocky relations with China. So it’s all the more impressive that it feels strongly enough about Beijing’s systemic abuses of democratic and human rights to speak out, regardless of possible negative repercussions.

It’s doubly refreshing after a week when a herd of middle-ranking, ethically challenged, mostly undemocratic governments kowtowed to Xi at the Brics summit in South Africa. They seem to think China will build a fairer, juster world. Are these leaders naive, corrupt, or merely stupid?

James Cleverly, foreign minister of another middling power, says he, too, will raise human rights concerns when he visits Beijing this week. British ministers always say that. Then nothing changes. Why is he going to China at all? Apparently it’s to maintain dialogue (as if one genuinely existed). He claims the UK has “agency”, can exert influence.

This is delusional. The Chinese party behemoth, spying, bullying and hacking, beating up protesters in Manchester, torching the Hong Kong joint declaration, backing neofascist Vladimir Putin, besieging democratic Taiwan and plotting an authoritarian “new world order” is simply not listening, especially now Europe and Britain no longer speak as one.

Xi gives not a fig for the UK’s China policy – not least because the Conservatives cannot agree one. But the US is a different matter. Perhaps Blinken’s demarche will give him pause. Tibet is another dangerous flashpoint among too many. And what’s happening there is one huge crime against humanity.

The mass abuses of Tibetan children – it’s hard to imagine the trauma they must suffer – is part of a deliberate scheme to alter Tibet’s demographics, entrench the dominance of majority Han Chinese people and culture, and suppress Tibetan Buddhist religious practice, language and media.

Gyal Lo, a Tibetan educational sociologist, told the Free Tibet pressure group: “The Chinese government is tearing families apart and forcing these vulnerable children to become strangers to their own Tibetan culture.”

A second UN inquiry this year reported that hundreds of thousands of Tibetans have been removed from their homes and workplaces in rural areas and assigned to low-skill “vocational training” and low-paid employment, thereby undermining identity and traditional communities.

Campaigners provide evidence of numerous excesses, including arbitrary detention, torture, sexual crimes, disappearances and severe punishment of dissent. In a sense, Tibet is in permanent lockdown. Passports to leave are virtually unobtainable. Foreign media are denied entry. China wants it forgotten.

Vigils, marches and sit-ins still take place, despite heavy-handed paramilitary policing and ubiquitous surveillance, and are usually peaceful, Free Tibet says. “However, the Chinese authorities are growing increasingly intolerant … Many [protests] are met with a violent response”. In 2022, at least three Tibetans self-immolated.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom also warns that “the Chinese government’s control and suppression of Tibetan Buddhism has intensified, with authorities restricting Tibetans’ access to religious sites, banning religious gatherings, and destroying sites and symbols.

“Monks and nuns have been subjected to torture in prison, and Tibetans have been detained for religious activities honouring the Dalai Lama [Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader] or possessing his portraits,” the commission said. Human Rights Watch says the government is also conducting mass DNA collections, to better surveil people.

This calamity could soon take an even darker turn – over the disputed succession to the 88-year-old Dalai Lama, free Tibet’s Nobel peace prize-winning face to the world. An unnamed male child, the third most senior lama and head of the faith in Mongolia, is reportedly in the frame. But Beijing is vowing to impose its own candidate.

That China is attempting to wipe collective memories and consign the old Tibet to oblivion is not seriously disputed (except by Beijing’s lie machines). China argues its actions are benign, that it has invested heavily there. But that’s driven by its hunger for natural resources. As elsewhere, Xi’s obsession with control, uniformity and conformity trumps all.

By ignoring China’s daily flouting of basic human decency and international law, governments around the world are complicit in Tibet’s silent erasure. None recognises the Tibetan people’s sovereign rights or the Tibetan government-in-exile.

So here’s a challenge for Cleverly in Beijing. The Chinese, as usual, will take little or no notice of Britain’s views about Russia, fair trade, security and the rest. So why not use your otherwise meaningless visit to publicly condemn China’s crimes against humanity in Tibet?

Your hosts would be angry. They would certainly be embarrassed. But who knows? They might start treating Tibet, and Britain, with a little more respect.

Health alarm as tide of rotting seaweed chokes UK holiday beaches

Henry Young
Sat, 26 August 2023 

When Owen Francomb from Margate set out on a walk with his dog Gertie along Kent’s picturesque Thanet coast early this month, he didn’t imagine he’d need to be rescued from a tide of toxic sludge. But on the beach at Newgate Gap, French bulldog Gertie started sinking into a thick carpet of rotting seaweed and began to panic.

“She couldn’t move,” Francomb. says. “So I scrambled down the slipway and jumped down on to the beach, expecting the seaweed to be a foot deep, but it came up to my belt. I really struggled to wade through it.” Another dog walker had to help him and Gertie out of the stinking slime.

Over 1,000 tonnes of seaweed have been removed from beaches between Minnis Bay and Broadstairs by Thanet district council – at a cost of £65,000 – in just five weeks from the beginning of July this year, compared with a reported average of between 400-800 tonnes in an entire season.

“We do typically get seaweed blooms as the weather warms up, so residents are used to it,” says Amy Cook, founder of the community initiative Rise Up Clean Up Margate which organises regular beach cleans and local environmental campaigns. “This year, however, the smell of seaweed has hung over the whole town, which does not usually happen.”

Margate is not the only place to suffer. Weymouth in Dorset is another tourist town which has suffered from an unusually large amount of rotting seaweed on its beach this summer.

The seaweed has benefited from ideal growing conditions this year including extreme marine heatwavesin the North Sea. There have also been unusually high tides and strong winds, beaching excess seaweed in the south-east of England. Warming oceans mean that warm-water species are spreading, particularly more fleshy species such as kelp and seagrass.

Seaweed is a macroalgae that grows only in seawater. As it decomposes it can release the gas hydrogen sulphide which affects fish – and can be lethal. It also cause eye irritation and respiratory problems in humans.

Florida-based researcher Dr Brian Lapointe has, since 1973, been studying seaweed blooms like those found on the Kent coast and their relationship to wastewater He says the smell caused by hydrogen sulphide is a “real issue” and “people need to take precautions if they’re living in an area with those odours”.

“[The gas] can affect the electronics in your house because it forms sulphuric acid,” he says. “In the Caribbean, where Sargassum seaweed has been such a problem, people have lost electronic appliances: air conditioners, all kinds of things.”

UK government guidelines state that an average person experiencing prolonged exposure can experience “notable discomfort”. Higher quantities could induce headaches, bronchial constriction, fatigue and dizziness.

Thanet district council cannot remove the rotting seaweed from some locations due to the presence of a chalk reef which is a marine conservation zone. Current advice for residents is to keep windows closed and “avoid exercising outdoors when the smell is present, particularly if your breathing rate increases”.

Environmental science expert Professor Daniel Franklin monitors the effects of unnaturally elevated nitrogen levels in Poole Harbour. “The main concern with big accumulations of seaweed is that there are potentially large, and negative, ecological changes, as well as negative consequences for some human activities like tourism,” he says.

Visitors play among the seaweed at Weymouth, Dorset. 

Photograph: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

The Kent area also suffers from nutrient enrichment of coastal waters due to sewage discharge as well as agricultural run-off.

In 2023, between Herne Bay and Whistable alone, Southern Water has already released sewage into the ocean at least 374 times via storm overflows – 181 of those occurring since the beginning of May in the busy summer season – according to figures published by Surfers Against Sewage.

In Broadstairs, where the numbers of E coli and intestinal enterococci colonies this summer have been as high as 960 per 100ml, lifeguards are sometimes forced to keep people out of the water rather than make sure they’re safe within it.

Seaweed blooms have been linked to health issues internationally. Across the Channel in Brittany, the proliferation of green algae along the coastline, thought to be caused by extensive factory farming, was the subject of a bestselling graphic novel, Green Algae, by journalist Inès Léraud in 2019. A film adaptation of the book was released this summer.

SOS Whitstable founder member Bryony Carter says the protest group has noticed “a substantial increase in seaweed over the last three years”, adding: “It may cause issues for swimmers in the future if it continues to grow at the rate we’ve seen.”

In a statement, Southern Water said it was “committed to reducing use of storm overflows and working to increase our wastewater treatment storage capacity along with nature-based and engineering solutions to divert rainwater away from the sewer system and back into the environment”.

Neither they nor Thanet council could provide readings of hydrogen sulphide gas in Kent.

Weed-choked pavements anger residents as ‘rewilding’ divides UK towns and cities

The majority of objectors appear to come from the political right.

Phoebe Weston
Updated Sat, 26 August 2023

Brighton is home to the UK’s only Green member of parliament and is outwardly a bastion of progressive politics. Wild spaces here are not only the rolling hills of East Sussex or the beachfront but the smaller, often overlooked, green areas within residential neighbourhoods.

These untamed enclaves are full of nature’s drama, but another kind of drama is playing out among residents who feel that rewilding in the city’s backyard has gone too far.

“I’m fully supportive of eco-friendly policies generally but they shouldn’t be used for just manifesting neglect,” says resident Lesley Fallowfield, who recently had to go to A&E after falling over vegetation growing out of the pavement by her house.

Fallowfield, who has lived in her house for 30 years, spent six weeks wearing an orthopaedic boot and crutches and has had enough of weeds among the paving slabs. “I think it looks terrible. It would put me off buying a property here,” she says.

She is not alone in her concerns. The push from local authorities to rewild spaces is causing consternation in villages, towns and cities across the country.

Green patches outside people’s houses are in many places no longer neat and well cut, as the majority of residents expect them to be.

Ivan Lyons, Conservative councillor for Westdene and Hove Park, says that while most people he speaks to are content with unkempt verges, rewilding pavements is going too far. Conservative councillor Anne Meadows, from Patcham and Hollingbury ward, agrees: “It used to be the number two concern for residents, now it’s number one. Number one used to be the rubbish collection.”

The issue of weeds growing between paving slabs started with bans on the weedkiller glyphosate and other herbicides over suspected links to cancer in humans. Their environmental damage, particularly to soil quality, is also well documented.

Foamstream, an eco-friendly foam weedkiller that works by using heat, is currently being looked at as an alternative. Brighton council says it is also trialling mechanical sweepers, weed rippers and strimmers with weed-ripping brushes.

How to get rid of weeds without highly-effective herbicides is a real conundrum – at one point, Bristol council trialled vinegar as an alternative, leading to complaints from residents about the smell.

Leaving grass to grow has the benefit of saving money for councils and reducing carbon emissions from less mowing, but the main ideological reason being put forward is that longer grass creates more space for wildlife within our towns and cities.

Nationally, we have lost 97% of wildflower meadows and the country’s wildlife populations have plummeted by an average of 60% since 1970.

Scientists warn that the biodiversity crisis is as serious as the climate crisis, that these two issues are linked, and that local councils need to respond accordingly. This is why councils all over the UK are starting to draw up rewilding plans.

Long grass provides a home for invertebrates, such as butterflies and moths, which lay eggs on it, and bumblebees, which nest within it.

But many residents in Brighton are unconvinced by these well-documented wildlife benefits. One said the main thing she was finding was dog poo. “I think there is enough wildlife as it is,” said another, adding that the policy had only benefited ticks and rats.

Another row this summer centred around hanging baskets in Salisbury. Some residents were outraged after the city council opted to replace traditional flower displays with those that were better for native wildlife and required less watering.

This clash of values is spreading across UK towns and cities. A councillor from Torridge in Devon said that letting grasses grow to two feet in some areas gave off a “Torridge-doesn’t-care” image, adding that it was “very disrespectful” to have grass that long in the town’s cemetery.

Another councillor, in Lydney, Glucestershire, said that rewilding was making a mess of the town and was “catastrophic for wildlife”, citing Alan Titchmarsh telling a House of Lords investigation that it was an “ill-considered” trend.

The majority of objectors appear to come from the political right.

Salisbury has seen an argument break out over hanging baskets. 

Photograph: Slawek Staszczuk/Alamy

Pollsters say that support for a net zero UK by 2050 is expressed among all political voters, yet anti-environmentalism appears to have been identified as a vote-winner. Ideas which were not part of mainstream conversation are being brought in as “wedge issues”.

For example, Tory ministers are looking to water down key climate policies such as the ban on petrol and diesel cars by 2030, phasing out gas boilers by 2035, and low traffic neighbourhoods.

This trend is not confined to the UK. “Rewilding is becoming an important front for political antagonism in Europe,” says Dr Ed Atkins from the University of Bristol, who researches how sustainability policies can be made more inclusive.

It is seen as part of a growing set of challenges from populist anti-green parties across the continent.

Objections to the EU’s nature restoration law were launched by a right-leaning group of MEPs, who raised concerns about farmers losing livelihoods and food security. In France, gilet jaunes protested against fuel taxes, and farmers in the Netherlands fought against attempts to tackle nitrogen pollution through major reductions in livestock.

In each of these cases, the debate centred around how apparently environmental policies were affecting people’s livelihoods.

Policies on rewilding are fundamentally about political, social, cultural and economic concerns.

Atkins says: “I don’t buy that those are just rightwing populist backlashes on climate action. A lot of these episodes are about people saying, ‘we’ve been left behind’, and this is just exacerbating that.”

It is often the negative narrative that is heard the loudest, says Atkins: “In many ways, it’s easier to give that negative narrative that rewilding weeds is messy. It’s disrespectful, and it’s not improving the urban space …What we expect on these spaces is now being challenged. And it’s happening quite quickly.

“People’s responses to that change can take all manner of forms. But in my mind it is important that the voices which explain, inform and illuminate the benefits are loud. This is good. This is good for our environment.”

Atkins believes that these concerns can become culture wars when top-down policy is imposed on people who feel that they don’t have a say. “I would say that there should be greater communication about what rewilding in a city or a town might bring, but also a greater discussion of the forms it could take, and what particular spaces might go through that process.”

Making sure that people have their say has been a key part of the success of the UK’s largest urban rewilding project in Derby, where conservationists have been holding “community conversations” so that locals can talk about what they do and don’ want to see. The 130 hectares of Allestree Park (part of which was previously a golf course) was given the green light to go wild in 2021.

“We knew there would be confusion and conflict,” says Dr Jo Smith, chief executive of Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, who has been leading on the Rewilding Allestree Park project.

Her team set up online consultations before agreeing to move forward with the project.

“We’ve now got monthly events where people can just drop in, and we’ve got staff there who can answer questions, deal with concerns, and just talk to people,” she says.

There was controversy about more cattle and fencing being brought in, with people worried about treading in cow dung and having their dogs chased. Some people were even concerned about the possibility of the reintroduction of apex predators such as wolves because they associate that with the word “rewilding”. Others just wanted the land to go back to being a golf course.

As a result of these conversations the authorities are holding off on plans to bring in more cattle but going ahead with all the things people basically agree on, such as increasing wildflowers in meadows, creating more wetland areas and tree planting.

“There are lots of things that we can start to do proactively that everyone’s pretty much happy with, and that’s where we’ve decided to start,” says Smith.

Generally speaking, there is widespread agreement and consensus, which can be drowned out by a vocal minority who object, she adds.

A consultation of 2,000 people found 89% were supportive of the project, but not everyone can be won over, and so the debate will continue.

Smith says: “We know that it’s almost impossible to get everyone to agree to anything.

“What we need is a big majority that allows us to move forward confidently – we’re in a biodiversity emergency. We have to act quickly”.

Just two migrants deported to EU under post-Brexit deal

Rachel Flynn
Sat, 26 August 2023 

The Prime Minister warned the asylum system was under “unsustainable pressure” after the bill for the taxpayer almost doubled in a year to nearly £4 billion (PA Wire)

Only two migrants who arrived in the UK by crossing the English Channel have been deported to Europe under the post-Brexit agreement, figures from the Home Office reveal.

The post-Brexit returns policy, introduced in 2021, allows officials to deem migrants “inadmissible” if they travelled through a safe third country to reach Britain.

But zero migrants were considered “inadmissible” in the past year and just two were deported, according to Home Office figures reported in The Times.

Since the start of the scheme, 83 inadmissibility decisions have been made and 23 migrants been deported in total.

Earlier this month there were talks of a new returns deal between the UK and the EU following the removal of the Dublin regulation, which allowed irregular migrants to be returned to the nation of first arrival after Brexit.

The regulation was seen as ineffective, with only 105 UK requests to return migrants to the EU accepted in the year before Brexit.

Overall, a total of 175,457 people were waiting for an initial decision on an asylum application in the UK at the end of June, up 44 per cent on the same period a year earlier – the highest figure since current records began in 2010.

Of these, 139,961 had been waiting longer than six months for an initial decision, up 57 per cent year on year from 89,231 and another record high.

Labour said the asylum backlog amounts to a “disastrous record” for Rishi Sunak and home secretary Suella Braverman, while campaigners called for claims to be processed more efficiently.

The prime minister warned the asylum system was under “unsustainable pressure” after the bill for the taxpayer almost doubled in a year to nearly £4bn.

Prime minister Rishi Sunak has pledged to ‘stop the boats’ ahead of the next general election (PA Wire)

Facing questions from broadcasters on Friday, Mr Sunak insisted that while fixing the issue “would take time”, his plan to end small boat crossings “is working”.

He said: “When I became prime minister, before I outlined my plan, the number of illegal migrants coming to the UK had quadrupled in just the last couple of years.

“But for the first time this year, crossings are down. They are down about 15 per cent versus last year. That’s the first time that has happened since the small boats crisis emerged. That shows that the plan is working.”

THEY COULD JOIN AZOV BATTALION
Russian neo-Nazi group refuses to fight in Ukraine, accusing Kremlin of abandoning its leader

James Kilner
Sat, 26 August 2023 

Russian neo-Nazi paramilitary group Rusich refuses to fight in Ukraine in protest at Kremlin's lack of help in freeing its leader who has been arrested in Finland on war crimes charges

A Russian neo-Nazi paramilitary group that supported the Wagner mercenary rebellion has announced it will no longer fight in Ukraine, accusing the Kremlin of abandoning its leader.

The group, called Rusich, said that its leader Yan Petrovsky was arrested last month when he tried to pass through Helsinki airport and that Russian diplomats have ignored his pleas for help.

“Since July 20, Yan Petrovsky has not been visited by either the Russian consul or a lawyer. The Slav is threatened with extradition to Ukraine either directly or through a third country in a fictitious criminal case,” it said, using Petrokvsky’s military call sign.

“Rusich stops performing any combat missions,” it said on its Telegram channel. “If a country cannot protect its citizens, then why should citizens defend the country?”

Petrovsky has been accused of war crimes and Ukrainian officials want to put him on trial.

Rusich was set up in 2014 and is open about its pro-Nazi views. Even alongside Wagner, it was known for its brutality.

In April Rusich posted a video on its Telegram channel of a Ukrainian prisoner being beheaded with a knife. Its leaders have also filmed themselves killing puppies.

Rusich has criticised the Russian ministry of defence’s handling of its invasion of Ukraine and, although it wasn’t directly involved, it supported Wagner’s rebellion in June that was called off 120 miles from Moscow.

After the death of Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin this week in a plane crash widely blamed on Vladimir Putin, Rusich said: “Let this be a lesson to you all. You always have to go all the way.”

Since the Wagner rebellion, the Kremlin appears to have begun a crackdown on Russian mercenary and paramilitary groups.

Wagner’s camp in Belarus is being dismantled and its former fighters are being made to pledge their allegiance to Putin.

Rusich also said that two Ukrainian intelligence officers had already interrogated Petrovsky in Finland.

“It remains incomprehensible (actually understandable) why our diplomatic wing in Finland is engaged in sabotage, turning a blind eye to the detention and interrogation of citizens by intelligence officers of the country that we are actually fighting a war against,” it said.

Cause of Kenya's longest power outage in memory remains unclear as grid suppliers exchange blame

CARA ANNA
Sun, August 27, 2023


A Kenyan sips a cup of tea as she sits in her sitting room with emergency light as there was no electricity Saturday, Aug. 26 2023. Much of Kenya remains without electricity Saturday morning after an unexplained power outage Friday night shut down the country's main international airport and led to a rare public apology by a government minister.

(AP Photo/Abdul Azim Sayyid)

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The longest nationwide power outage in Kenyans’ memory remained a mystery Sunday as the government-owned power company blamed a failure at Africa’s largest wind farm, which laid the responsibility on the power grid instead.

Some of Kenya’s more than 50 million people, including in the capital, Nairobi, saw power return almost 24 hours after the massive outage occurred late Friday. It was an embarrassment to the East African economic hub that has sought to promote itself as a tech center on the continent but remains challenged by alleged mismanagement and poor infrastructure.

Hundreds of people were stranded in darkness for hours at Kenya’s main international airport in Nairobi, leading to a rare public apology from a government minister in a country where tourism is a key part of the economy. “This situation WILL NOT happen again,” transport minister, Kipchumba Murkomen, said.

The head of the Kenya Airports Authority was fired after a generator serving the main international terminal had failed to start.

Shortly before midnight Saturday, Kenya Power offered the first detailed explanation of the outage, blaming it on a loss of power generation from the Lake Turkana Wind Power plant, Africa’s largest wind farm, causing an imbalance that “tripped all other main generation units and stations, leading to a total outage on the grid.”

But Lake Turkana Wind Power in a statement denied it was to blame. Instead, it said it had been forced to go offline by an “overvoltage situation in the national grid system which, to avoid extreme damage, causes the wind power plant to automatically switch off.” The plant had been producing nearly 15% of the national output at the time.

Such an interruption should be immediately compensated by other power generators in the system, the company said, but the continuing outages in the national grid were preventing the wind plant from being brought back online.

Kenya Power said it couldn’t even turn to importing power from neighboring Uganda, a relatively fast option that for some reason had been unavailable.

“We are jointly working on having the Uganda interconnector restored so as to enhance our grid recovery efforts,” it said.

President William Ruto, whose own office told The Associated Press on Saturday it was still running on generator power hours after Kenya Power announced it had restored electricity to “critical areas” of the capital, did not comment publicly on the crisis. Instead, he again criticized opposition calls for anti-government protests over the rising cost of living, calling them a threat to investors.

“Shame of a nation,” was the main headline of one of Kenya’s leading newspapers, the Sunday Nation. It said the outage was costing businesses millions of dollars and leaving some major hospitals to run on generators.

Kenya gets almost all its electricity from renewable sources, a fact that the government will promote as it hosts the first Africa Climate Summit early next month.

Explainer-What is India's next space mission after moon landing?

Reuters
Fri, August 25, 2023 

People watch a live stream of Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft's landing on the moon, in Ahmedabad OK WHO WAS ON THE MOON READY TO FILM THE LANDING?


BENGALURU (Reuters) - On the heels of the success of the Chandrayaan-3 moon landing, India's space agency has set a date for its next mission - this time to study the sun.

The Aditya-L1, India's first space observatory for solar research, is getting ready for launch at the country's main spaceport in Sriharikota, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) told reporters at its satellite command centre this week, as scientists and crew celebrated the moon mission's success.

"We are planning to launch in the first week of September," said ISRO chairman S. Somanath.

WHAT WILL ADITYA-L1 DO?

Named after the Hindi word for the sun, the spacecraft is India's first space-based solar probe. It aims to study solar winds, which can cause disturbance on earth and are commonly seen as "auroras".

Longer term, data from the mission could help better understand the sun's impact on earth's climate patterns.

Recently, researchers said the European Space Agency/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft had detected numerous relatively small jets of charged particles expelled intermittently from the corona - the sun's outer atmosphere - which could help shed light on the origins of solar wind.

HOW FAR WILL IT TRAVEL?

Hitching a ride on India's heavy-duty launch vehicle, the PSLV, the Aditya-L1 spacecraft will travel 1.5 million km in about four months to study the sun's atmosphere.

It will head to a kind of parking lot in space where objects tend to stay put because of balancing gravitational forces, reducing fuel consumption for the spacecraft.

Those positions are called Lagrange Points, named after Italian-French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange.

HOW MUCH DOES THE MISSION COST?

In 2019, the government sanctioned the equivalent of about $46 million for the Aditya-L1 mission. ISRO has not given an official update on costs.

The Indian space agency has earned a reputation for world-beating cost competitiveness in space engineering that executives and planners expect will boost its now-privatised space industry.

The Chandrayaan-3 mission, which landed a spacecraft on the lunar south pole, had a budget of about $75 million.

(Reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Giles Elgood)

JAPAN

No tritium found in fish after treated Fukushima water release

Simon Druker
Sat, August 26, 2023 

Fish samples from the ocean around Japan’s Fukushima nuclear complex are registering normal and do not contain radioactive contaminants after the discharge of treated wastewater from the plant, officials said Saturday. File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI


Aug. 26 (UPI) -- Fish samples from the ocean around Japan's Fukushima nuclear complex are registering normal and do not contain radioactive contaminants after the discharge of treated wastewater from the plant, officials said Saturday.

The Japanese government did not detect any amount of tritium in the first fish samples taken in the water around the damaged plant.

Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries tested fish caught within five miles of the discharged water, the Kyodo News Agency reported.

The declaration comes after Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said Friday none of the radioactive element was detectable in seawater samples.

The company expects to gradually release up to 22 trillion becquerels of tritium per year from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station over the next 20 or 30 years.

An aerial picture of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and its tanks containing radioactive water in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, the day before treated water began being released into the ocean. Photo by JiJi Press/EPA-EFE

Officials on Thursday began releasing treated water from the damaged nuclear plant into the ocean, amid strong environmental pushback from the fishing industry and neighboring countries.

China on Thursday suspended all seafood imports from Japan ahead of the water discharge, citing the possibility of tritium contamination.

The radioactive isotope of hydrogen is considered unstable and radioactive. Tritium occurs naturally but can also be produced as a byproduct of nuclear reactors.

The United Nations nuclear watchdog has said the procedure aligned with global safety standards.

Groundwater around the stricken nuclear facility has been contaminated since a catastrophic explosion crippled the site in March 2011.

Testing is taking place within a 25-mile radius of the water discharge site.

More than 1 million tons of water have already been stored for treatment and eventual discharge.

Last year, Tokyo Electric said it would raise seafood at the Fukushima site in order to dispel rumors about contamination.

Officials will continue measuring tritium levels in both water and fish each time treated wastewater from the Fukushima plant is released into the ocean.

Volunteer moms are distressed about the water being discharged from the Fukushima nuclear plant

Janis Mackey Frayer and Larissa Gao
Sat, August 26, 2023


IWAKI, Japan — In a laboratory on the third floor of a nondescript building here, a group of volunteers pour water from plastic jerry cans through filters into large round-bottomed vessels. Others chop up dried fish and other foods and put them into small blenders about the size of a coffee bean grinder.

These people aren’t trained scientists. They’re mothers who are worried about the legacy being left for their children after the decision to release treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean.

The gradual discharge of an estimated 1.3 million metric tons of wastewater began Thursday, after repeated assurances from the Japanese government and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, that it is safe.

But around 40 miles away, in the lab where they test water samples drawn off the shore near the plant, the lab’s manager, Ai Kimura, said she was worried that the discharge might ruin the ecosystem in this area on Japan’s central-eastern coast.

“I worry about the negative legacy, which is the contamination,” Kimura, 44, told NBC News Thursday, adding that it was a “negative legacy to our children.”

Ai Kimura. (Arata Yamamoto / NBC News)

The water being released, enough to fill 500 Olympic-size swimming pools and still building, has been used to cool fuel rods in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant’s reactors since a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami in 2011 set off a meltdown that spewed radioactive particles into the air in the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986, in what was then the Soviet Union.

Though the water is filtered and diluted to remove most radioactive elements, it still contains low levels of tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that is difficult to strip out.

Fukushima shoreline. (Arata Yamamoto / NBC News)

The Japanese government and the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), have said that the water which they say will be released over the next 30 to 40 years and is being held in hundreds of tanks on land, must be removed to prevent accidental leaks and make room for the plant’s decommissioning, more than a decade after the disaster.

Tepco, which has in the past been accused of a lack of transparency, has vowed to put safety first and stop the discharges if problems arise.

Shortly after the first batch of Fukushima water was discharged on Thursday, the IAEA said that its on-site analysis confirmed that the levels of tritium were “far below” the operational limit.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Friday that the United States was also satisfied with Japan’s “safe, transparent, and science-based process.”

There have nonetheless been loud objections from neighboring countries, including China, where customs authorities announced an immediate ban on all imports of Japanese “aquatic products,” including seafood, to “comprehensively guard against the risk of radioactive contamination to food safety caused by nuclear-contaminated water discharges.”

Although the South Korean government reiterated this week that it sees no scientific or technical issue with the water’s release, police in the country on Thursday arrested 16 protesters accused of trying to break into the Japanese Embassy in the capital, Seoul.

Dolly Peng, 23, looks at sushi in a Hong Kong store that has a sign saying it is from Norway, Argentina and Canada. (Cheng Cheng / NBC News )

But according to data posted online by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, water with much higher levels of tritium has been discharged by nuclear facilities in countries including China, South Korea, Canada and France in line with local regulations.

In the area around the Fukushima plant the impact of the disaster is eerily clear. Three miles away, in the town of Futaba, many of the abandoned houses look like they haven’t been touched since the day of the earthquake.

Curtains flap through broken windows, pictures and clocks are still on the walls and debris is strewn all over. Cars and bicycles are covered in dust.

Back in the lab, which operates as a nonprofit called Tarachin and funds its state-of-the-art equipment with donations, Kimura said that its testing had confirmed that radiation levels in agricultural products and the ocean in the accident region had been decreasing gradually.

But she said she feared the discharge might ruin the promising future of this area’s ecosystem.

“If the treated water is once again discharged, we believe that the same tragedy from 12 years ago will be repeated,” she said.

Janis Mackey Frayer reported from Fukushima, and Larissa Gao from Hong Kong.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

At Fukushima Daiichi, decommissioning the nuclear plant is far more challenging than water release

MARI YAMAGUCHI
Sat, August 26, 2023

This aerial view shows the treated water diluted by seawater flowing into a secondary water then into a connected undersea tunnel for an offshore discharge at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima, northern Japan, Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023. For the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, managing the ever-growing radioactive water held in more than 1,000 tanks has been a safety risk and a burden since the meltdown in March 2011. The start of treated wastewater release Thursday marked a milestone for the decommissioning, which is expected to take decades. 

(Kyodo News via AP, File)

FUTABA, Japan (AP) — For the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, managing the ever-growing volume of radioactive wastewater held in more than 1,000 tanks has been a safety risk and a burden since the meltdown in March 2011. Its release marks a milestone for the decommissioning, which is expected to take decades.

But it's just the beginning of the challenges ahead, such as the removal of the fatally radioactive melted fuel debris that remains in the three damaged reactors, a daunting task if ever accomplished.

Here's a look at what's going on with the plant's decommissioning:

WHAT HAPPENED AT FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI?

A magnitude 9.0 quake on March 11, 2011, triggered a massive tsunami that destroyed the plant’s power supply and cooling systems, causing three reactors to melt and spew large amounts of radiation. Highly contaminated cooling water applied to the damaged reactors has leaked continuously into building basements and mixed with groundwater. The water is collected and treated. Then, some is recycled as cooling water for melted fuel, while the rest is held in tanks that cover much of the plant.

WHY RELEASE THE WATER?

Fukushima Daiichi has struggled to handle the contaminated water since the 2011 disaster. The government and the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, say the tanks must be removed to make way for facilities needed to decommission the plant, such as storage space for melted fuel debris and other highly contaminated waste.

WILL THE WASTEWATER RELEASE PUSH DECOMMISSIONING FORWARD?

Not right away, because the water release is slow and the decommissioning is making little progress. TEPCO says it plans to release 31,200 tons of treated water by the end of March 2024, which would empty only 10 tanks out of 1,000 because of the continued production of wastewater at the plant.

The pace will later pick up, and about 1/3 of the tanks will be removed over the next 10 years, freeing up space for the plant's decommissioning, said TEPCO executive Junichi Matsumoto, who is in charge of the treated water release. He says the water would be released gradually over the span of 30 years, but as long as the melted fuel stays in the reactors, it requires cooling water, which creates more wastewater.

Emptied tanks also need to be scrapped for storage. Highly radioactive sludge, a byproduct of filtering at the treatment machine, also is a concern.

WHAT CHALLENGES ARE AHEAD?

About 880 tons of fatally radioactive melted nuclear fuel remain inside the reactors. Robotic probes have provided some information but the status of the melted debris remains largely unknown.

Earlier this year, a remote-controlled underwater vehicle successfully collected a tiny sample from inside Unit 1’s reactor — only a spoonful of the melted fuel debris in the three reactors. That’s 10 times the amount of damaged fuel removed at the Three Mile Island cleanup following its 1979 partial core melt.

Trial removal of melted debris using a giant remote-controlled robotic arm will begin in Unit 2 later this year after a nearly two-year delay. Spent fuel removal from Unit 1 reactor’s cooling pool is set to start in 2027 after a 10-year delay. Once all the spent fuel is removed, the focus will turn in 2031 to taking melted debris out of the reactors. But debris removal methods for two other reactors have not been decided.

Matsumoto says “technical difficulty involving the decommissioning is much higher” than the water release and involves higher risks of exposures by plant workers to remove spent fuel or melted fuel.

“Measures to reduce radiation exposure risks by plant workers will be increasingly difficult,” Matsumoto said. “Reduction of exposure risks is the basis for achieving both Fukushima's recovery and decommissioning.”

HOW BADLY WERE THE REACTORS DAMAGED?

Inside the worst-hit Unit 1, most of its reactor core melted and fell to the bottom of the primary containment chamber and possibly further into the concrete basement. A robotic probe sent inside the Unit 1 primary containment chamber found that its pedestal — the main supporting structure directly under its core — was extensively damaged.

Most of its thick concrete exterior was missing, exposing the internal steel reinforcement, and the nuclear regulators have requested TEPCO to make risk assessment.

CAN DECOMMISSIONING END BY 2051 AS PLANNED?

The government has stuck to its initial 30-to-40-year target for completing the decommissioning, without defining what that means.

An overly ambitious schedule could result in unnecessary radiation exposures for plant workers and excess environmental damage. Some experts say it would be impossible to remove all the melted fuel debris by 2051 and would take 50-100 years, if achieved at all.

Ford just got a loan bigger than anything seen ‘since the advent of the auto industry’ — here’s what the company is spending it on

Julia Taravella
Sat, August 26, 2023 

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it will be giving Ford a $9.2 billion loan to build electric vehicle (EV) factories.

This loan, which Ford will be using to build three separate factories, will substantially increase the American car manufacturer’s capacity for building vehicles that do not rely on gas.

“Not since the advent of the auto industry 100 years ago have we seen an investment like that,” Gary Silberg, global automotive sector leader at the accounting firm KPMG, told Bloomberg.

Ford’s recent dedication to ramping up EV production includes plans to make clean energy vehicles more affordable. That’s an important development as, so far, high costs are a common reason people have not been making the switch to EVs.

“It’s going to help make great EVs available to more customers while powering thousands of good paying jobs and American manufacturing,” Dave Webb, Ford’s treasurer, said in a statement, according to The Verge.

The company will be joining forces with South Korean manufacturer SK Innovation. Together, the two brands plan to create enough battery capacity to power two million EVs annually by 2026.

The aid from the DOE couldn’t have come at a better time, as some experts predict that we’ll need 10 million EVs on U.S. roads by 2025 to evade the worst effects of our planet’s overheating.

Currently, dirty energy transportation such as internal-combustion cars and buses are responsible for nearly 30% of polluting gases that are contributing to Earth’s rising temperatures. So efforts to speed up the production of vehicles that do not release these toxic gases are important to slowing our planet’s overheating.

Moving toward a world with fewer gas-reliant vehicles benefits the planet in other ways, too. It means less need for toxic liquids like motor oil, which take years to degrade and can harm wildlife and contaminate waterways. Fewer gas-reliant vehicles can also improve air quality, especially in cities.

Women working in Antarctica say they were left to fend for themselves against sexual harassers

NICK PERRY
Sat, August 26, 2023 


2 / 10
A sign is photographed at McMurdo Station on Dec. 4, 2018. The Associated Press found a pattern of women working in Antarctica who said their claims of sexual harassment or assault had been minimized by their employers. The AP investigation came after the National Science Foundation published a report in 2022 in which 59% of women said they'd had a negative experience of harassment or assault while on the ice.

 (National Science Foundation via AP)

, New Zealand (AP) — The howling winds and perpetual darkness of the Antarctic winter were easing to a frozen spring when mechanic Liz Monahon at McMurdo Station grabbed a hammer.

If those in charge weren’t going to protect her from the man she feared would kill her, she figured, she needed to protect herself. It wasn’t like she could escape. They were all stuck there together on the ice.

So she kept the hammer with her at all times, either looped into her Carhartt overalls or tucked into her sports bra.

“If he came anywhere near me, I was going to start swinging at him,” Monahon says. “I decided that I was going to survive.”


___

Monahon, 35, is one of many women who say the isolated environment and macho culture at the United States research center in Antarctica have allowed sexual harassment and assault to flourish.

The National Science Foundation, the federal agency that oversees the U.S. Antarctic Program, published a report in 2022 in which 59% of women said they’d experienced harassment or assault while on the ice, and 72% of women said such behavior was a problem in Antarctica.

But the problem goes beyond the harassment, The Associated Press found. In reviewing court records and internal communications, and in interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees, the AP uncovered a pattern of women who said their claims of harassment or assault were minimized by their employers, often leading to them or others being put in further danger.

In one case, a woman who reported a colleague had groped her was made to work alongside him again. In another, a woman who told her employer she was sexually assaulted was later fired. Another woman said that bosses at the base downgraded her allegations from rape to harassment. The AP generally does not identify those who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they publicly identify themselves.

The complaints of violence did not stop with the NSF report. Five months after its release, a woman at McMurdo told a deputy U.S. marshal that colleague Stephen Bieneman pinned her down and put his shin over her throat for about a minute while she desperately tried to communicate she couldn’t breathe.

Bieneman pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor assault. He was fired and sent back to the U.S., court documents show, and his trial is scheduled for November. His lawyer, Birney Bervar, said in an email to the AP that it was “horseplay” initiated by the woman and the evidence didn’t support “an assault of the nature and degree she described.”

The NSF report triggered a Congressional investigation. In a written response to Congress that is contradicted by its own emails, Leidos, the prime contractor, said it received “zero allegations” of sexual assault in Antarctica during the five years ending April 2022.

Kathleen Naeher, the chief operating officer of the civil group at Leidos, told a congressional committee in December that they would install peepholes on dorm room doors, limit access to master keys that could open multiple bedrooms, and give teams in the field an extra satellite phone.

Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., said the proposed fixes left him flabbergasted.

“This should have been done before we sent anyone down to Antarctica,” he said at the hearing.

Monahon and all but one of the workers quoted in this story are speaking publicly for the first time. Trapped in one of the most remote spots on Earth, the women say they were largely forced to fend for themselves.

“No one was there to save me but me,” Monahon says. “And that was the thing that was so terrifying.”

___

Monahon believes she only escaped physical harm in Antarctica because of her colleagues, not management.

She met Zak Buckingham in 2021 at a hotel in Christchurch, New Zealand, where McMurdo workers were quarantining against COVID-19 before going to Antarctica. It would be Monahon’s second stint in Antarctica, a place that had fascinated her since her childhood half a world away in upstate New York.

At the hotel, Monahon says, male colleagues bothering her and a friend backed off when Buckingham — a plumber and amateur boxer from Auckland, New Zealand — sat with them.

Buckingham, now 36, was intimidating and a bit wild, but funny and charming. One night, Monahon says, she and Buckingham hooked up.

What Monahon didn’t know was that Buckingham had a history of what a judge described as alcohol-related criminal offending in New Zealand.

Three months before deploying, Buckingham breached a protection order taken out by his former partner and the mother of his three children, according to court records the AP obtained after petitioning a New Zealand judge. He’d texted his ex-partner demanding oral sex. She told him to stop being inappropriate.

“No, I will not stop being inappropriate,” he’d replied, and demanded oral sex again, according to the judge's findings. She again told him to stop. He responded, according to the records: “You need to be f----- like a slut.”

A week later, he sent her 18 texts, court records show. She warned him she’d call the police.

“Continue to threaten me and you’ll need to,” he’d replied.

___

Antarctica’s ancient ice sheet and remoteness make it ideal for scientists studying everything from the earliest moments of the universe to changes in the planet’s climate.

The population at McMurdo, the hub of U.S. operations, usually swells from 200-300 in the southern winter to over 1,000 in the summer. Typically, around 70% are men.

Funded and overseen by the NSF, the U.S. Antarctic Program is run by a tangle of contractors and subcontractors, with billions of dollars at stake. Since 2017, Leidos has held the main contract, now worth over $200 million per year. Subcontractor PAE, which employs many of the base’s workers, was bought last year by the government services giant Amentum.

There is no police presence or jail at McMurdo, and law enforcement falls to a sworn on-site deputy U.S. marshal.

Buckingham was hired by PAE. Amentum didn’t respond to questions from the AP. Leidos Senior Vice President Melissa Lee Dueñas said it conducts background checks on all its employees.

“Our stance on sexual harassment or assault couldn’t be more clear: we have zero tolerance for such behavior,” Dueñas said in an email. “Each case is thoroughly investigated.”

The NSF and Leidos declined to answer questions about Buckingham or other cases. Leidos said sharing specific details wasn’t always appropriate or helpful.

The NSF told the AP it improved safety in Antarctica last year. The agency now requires Leidos to immediately report any significant health and safety incidents, including sexual assault and harassment, it said in a statement. The NSF said it also created an office to deal with such complaints, provided a confidential victim’s advocate, and established a 24-hour helpline.

___

On the ice, with limited options for socializing, many head to one of McMurdo’s two main bars: Southern Exposure or Gallagher’s.

Neither has windows, workers say, and they smell of body odor and decades of stale beer that has seeped into the floor. In the summer, when the sun shines all night, people walk out of the bars and are dazzled by the light.

One night at Southern Exposure, Monahon told the AP, Buckingham began laughing with buddies about who was going to sleep with her and her friend. Next thing, he was forehead to forehead with another man, she says. Buckingham, reached by phone in New Zealand, declined to comment and hung up.

Monahon says she repeatedly told Buckingham she didn’t want to speak with him. Soon after, she heard Buckingham was angry at her.

Worried, she says, she told PAE's human resources she feared for her safety. They took no action. A week later, Buckingham rushed up to her in Gallagher’s, shaking with anger, shouting and threatening her, she says.

“You’ve been talking s--- about my mother,” he yelled at her, she says, leaving her baffled. “People who talk s--- about my mother deserve to die.”

Monahon says she was shocked to the core. “Snitches will get stitches,” she says Buckingham snarled as others intervened.

Cameron Dailey-Ruddy, who bartended at Gallagher’s, witnessed the commotion. He ordered everyone but Monahon to leave and called 911, which connects to the station firehouse. From the dispatcher, Dailey-Ruddy got the numbers for the Leidos station manager and PAE’s HR representative and asked them to come to the bar.

“It was kind of an open secret at that point that that guy had been harassing her,” said Dailey-Ruddy. He added that Buckingham was at the bars most nights, sometimes drank in public areas and harassed women.

Monahon says the managers brought her to a secret room and told her she could skip work the next day.

It was the last time she would feel supported by management.

___

After a night in her new room, Monahon met with PAE’s HR representative, Michelle Izzi.

Monahon claims Izzi discouraged her from reporting what happened to the deputy U.S. marshal, in part because it would create jurisdictional headaches and even an international problem, as Buckingham was a New Zealand citizen. Monahon also says Izzi told her she needed to carefully consider how filing charges might affect her personally and impact the entire U.S. Antarctic Program.

In a later recorded meeting, Izzi denied that she discouraged Monahon and said she had in fact instructed her to call the marshal. Izzi did not respond to the AP's requests for comment.

The next night, Dailey-Ruddy says, Buckingham was back at the bar. The night after, according to another person familiar with the situation, Buckingham got into a physical altercation with another man.

Dailey-Ruddy wasn’t surprised by the lack of action against Buckingham.

“It seemed like par for the course in terms of the culture, and sexual harassment, and how women’s safety was addressed on the station,” he says.

Meanwhile, Monahon had taken the machinist’s hammer to defend herself. In a statement to PAE’s HR department, she wrote: “Zak Buckingham is a danger to me. He has threatened my life. He is capable of hurting me and he wants to hurt me. … I have been living in fear for the last two days.”

With her employers doing nothing to address her concerns, Monahon's immediate boss and co-workers came up with their own plan, according to two employees familiar with the situation.

Monahon was told to pack her bags, and the next morning joined a group trying to navigate a safe route across the sea ice over eight days to resupply a tiny U.S. outpost. The crossing is risky because the ice can crumble in the spring.

“To protect her, they put her in a dangerous situation,” said Wes Thurmann, a fire department supervisor who had worked in Antarctica every year since 2012.

But they all felt it was safer than her remaining at McMurdo.

Thurmann, who was also notified when Dailey-Ruddy called 911, says he was introduced to McMurdo’s misogynistic culture when a group of men recited a list of women they considered targets for sex. Often, Thurmann says, the NSF and Antarctic contractors blamed such behavior on alcohol.

But the bosses wouldn’t ban booze, he says, because it would make deployments less attractive.

___

Monahon’s crisis on the ice wasn’t an anomaly. In November 2019, another incident involving a food worker pushed the NSF to launch its investigation. The food worker didn’t respond to a request for comment, but her case is outlined in internal emails obtained by the AP.

The woman told her bosses she’d been sexually assaulted by a coworker. Her performance was subsequently criticized by a supervisor, who was also the girlfriend of the accused man. Two months later, she was fired.

Many of the woman’s colleagues were outraged. Julie Grundberg, then the McMurdo area manager for Leidos, repeatedly emailed her concerns to her superiors in Denver.

“The fact that we haven’t come out with some sort of public statement is making the community trust our organization even less,” Grundberg wrote.

Supervisor Ethan Norris replied: “We need your help to keep this calm and be a neutral party as you have only one side of the story at this point.”

Norris did not respond to a request for comment from the AP.

The case prompted some of the women to form their own support group, Ice Allies. More than 300 people signed a petition calling for better systems for handling sexual assaults.

The food steward settled a wrongful termination claim for an undisclosed amount, people familiar with the situation told the AP. Leidos later fired Grundberg, in a move many workers believe was retaliatory.

Another food steward, Jennifer Sorensen, told the AP she was raped at McMurdo in 2015. Initially, she didn’t tell anyone.

“On station, I had no advocate to speak on behalf of my needs and protection, no jail to protect me from my rapist, and no knowledge of any present law enforcement personnel,” Sorensen said in a written account to the AP.

Still haunted 21 months later, Sorensen wrote to the man’s employer, GHG Corp., about what had happened. GHG later wrote back that it had investigated her claims with Leidos and wouldn’t hire the man again.

“We have concluded that you were a victim of sexual harassment,” wrote GHG President Joseph Willhelm.

Sorensen says it was shameful that GHG and Leidos downgraded what she says was rape to harassment. GHG did not respond to a request for comment. Sorensen also contacted the FBI, which did not file criminal charges and refused to release details of its investigation to the AP.

Britt Barquist, who worked as foreperson of the fuel department, told the AP she was attending a safety briefing with co-workers in 2017 when a man in a senior role reached under the table and squeezed her upper leg.

“It was a lingering hand on the inside of my thigh, like as close as you can get to just grabbing my actual crotch,” Barquist says.

Her boss at the time, Chad Goodale, told the AP he saw what happened and called his supervisor. He said the outcome was the man was taken off a joint project and told to avoid contact with Barquist. Yet upon returning to Antarctica in 2021, Barquist says, she was forced to work with the man again.

“It was humiliating. And awful,” she says. “I would try to not make eye contact with him, or acknowledge him at all. … Towards the end, he would talk to me about things, and I would just be wanting to throw up.”

When Barquist returned to Antarctica last year, she took a job as a cook, working alongside her husband at a tiny satellite camp rather than at McMurdo.

“I just wish I had been more protected,” she says.

___

Shortly before Monahon returned from her expedition, Buckingham was taken to a plane to go home early. The woman who normally drives people to the airfield refused to transport him.

“With my supervisor, we just decided it’s not safe, and station management can drive him out themselves,” says Rebecca Henderson.

Izzi, PAE’s HR representative, called Monahon into a meeting. Izzi’s superior, Holly Newman, was on the phone in Denver. Monahon recorded the conversation.

“The investigation was completed. We took appropriate action,” Newman says in the recording. She doesn't specify what action was taken other than to say the person was no longer on the ice. She adds that sometimes they get reports that aren't true.

Newman couldn’t be reached for comment.

In the recording, Newman then says problems with alcohol and people “hurting other people” have been occurring in Antarctica since “way before” she first visited in 2015.

“Why does it happen? Why doesn’t it stop?” Newman asks. “Those are big questions and there are not really any answers that I sit on that are satisfactory yet.”

___

In March 2022, Buckingham was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and 10 months of supervision after pleading guilty to two charges of breaching a protection order for his ex-partner.

“This is … the first time you have been before the court on any offending of this nature,” Judge Kevin Glubb concluded. “It has to be the last, Mr. Buckingham, you understand that? You come back again, all bets are off.”

Buckingham never faced any legal action or consequences for what Monahon said happened in Antarctica. He is now living back in New Zealand.

Monahon hopes her story prompts the contractors in Antarctica to face more accountability. And she wants the NSF to do more than potentially replace Leidos as the lead contractor when its contract expires in 2025.

“What are they going to do to make sure that this next contractor doesn’t do the same thing?” she asks.

Monahon was determined to keep working at Antarctica and returned in 2022, but has decided to skip this season.

“It’s that mentality of don’t let them win,” she says. “But I do think they are winning right now.”

___

AP researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report.