Secret underground passageways discovered in ruins of 4,300-year-old city in China
Aspen Pflughoeft
Thu, December 28, 2023
Today, entering the ancient stone city of Houchengzui in northern China means walking carefully through the sprawling ruins. Four thousand years ago, however, entering the city meant getting through multiple defensive walls and overpowering the well-prepared occupants.
Archaeologists have known about the imposing defenses of Houchengzui Stone City for decades — but the ancient city still held a secret.
Houchengzui Stone City is between 4,300 and 4,500 years old with ruins stretching across roughly 15 million square feet, according to a Dec. 28 news release from the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology via the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the China Archaeology Network.
Archaeologists initially found the city in 2005 and began systematically excavating it in 2019, the release said.
During the most recent excavations, archaeologists stumbled on a system of secret underground passageways. They found six intersecting tunnels that functioned as a hidden transportation network.
A partial map of the hidden passageways, the blue dotted lines, labeled TD1 and TD2.
A photo shows a partial map of the passageways. Other photos show a tunnel entrance and a view inside the well-preserved arched tunnels.
An entrance to one of the secret tunnels.
Archaeologists said the tunnels were between about 5 feet and about 20 feet down. Inside, the tunnels were between 3 feet and 6 feet tall and roughly 4 feet wide. Several tunnels passed under the city’s defensive walls and opened to the outside.
A view inside one of the underground passageways.
The secret tunnels added another layer of security to Houchengzui Stone City’s other defenses.
The city had a complex defensive system with three different concentric walls, additional structures along the walls, a limited number of guarded gates, and trenches, the release said.
Archaeologists believe the Houchengzui Stone City design stemmed from its cultural importance of military defense and its strategic location at the edge of an ancient alliance.
Excavations at the site are ongoing.
Houchengzui Stone City is in Qingshuihe County of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and about 300 miles west of Beijing.
Google Translate and Baidu Translate were used to translate the news release from the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology via the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the China Archaeology Network.
Scientists ID mystery killer of decapitated seals found on California beaches since 2016
Pilar Arias
Thu, December 28, 2023
Scientists have cracked the case of scores of decapitated seals found on northern California beaches since 2016.
Noyo Center for Marine Science's Sarah Grimes investigates marine mammal deaths, and told The Mercury News she suspected a responsible culprit, but needed proof.
"It was so gruesome," Grimes told the Bay Area newspaper. "I was like marine mammal CSI, seeing all the dead pups with their heads torn off, and I’m like, ‘What the heck did that?’"
The headless bodies were found in MacKerricher State Park, where a student at University of California Santa Cruz caught the guilty party in the act.
"We set up camera traps and got one really solid video of a coyote dragging a harbor seal pup and beheading it," Ph.D. student Frankie Gerraty said. "We are pretty confident there has been predation at four sites along the Northern California coast."
Researchers are not yet sharing the video while they continue trying to understand "the seemingly new predator-prey relationship," the Los Angeles Times reports.
Elephant seals lay on a beach near the Point Reyes National Seashore of Inverness in California on May 31, 2023.
Coyotes are appearing more often in the area after being poisoned and hunted by farmers and ranchers for decades.
"This really is nature’s balance," Grimes told the LA Times. "The coyote is not a villain. It’s part of the ecosystem that has been missing for some years."
Scientists are still working to understand why coyotes are only going for the seals' heads, leaving their bodies behind, but believe it could have to do with the nutrition content of seal brains compared to other body parts.
Point Reyes National Seashore in Inverness, California, on May 31, 2023.
Annual closures are currently in place at Point Reyes National Seashore until March 31, 2024, to protect elephant seal pups from disturbance during pupping season, the park's website says.
The seals found decapitated by coyotes are harbor seals, and research will continue into hunting patterns and the impact on the marine animal population.
Scientists solved the mystery of headless seals on California beaches
Katie Hawkinson
Thu, December 28, 2023 at 9:59 AM MST·2 min read
California coasts are teeming with marine life, so when locals encounter dead seals on their beaches, it may be a sad sight but it isn’t necessarily cause for alarm.
But since 2015, beachgoers have reported some disturbing sights: decapitated seal pups, particularly in Mackerricher State Park, around 150 miles north of San Francisco.
Experts were initially worried that a person was behind the deaths, and ecologist Frankie Gerraty told the Los Angeles Times the cuts looked too clean to be from an animal.
But now, Mr Gerraty told the Times that the mystery has been solved: coastal coyotes.
The scientist said that he captured footage of a coyote decapitating a freshly killed seal pup last year. Ecologists knew coastal coyotes scavenged the corpses of dead seal pups, but the footage provided new insight into the coyotes’ behavior.
“It’s obviously gruesome, but at the same time…coyotes and harbor seals are native species,” Gerraty told the Los Angeles Times.
“It could be the restoration of this relationship,” he added.
Mr Gerraty told the outlet that it’s still a mystery why coyotes eat the head and leave the rest of the body, but his theory is that their brains are particularly nutritious — and seal blubber is difficult to bite through.
While it may be a natural part of life, others say this spike could cause seals to change their behavior.
“I think the main challenge for the seals will be that if this becomes a bigger issue, if they start losing a lot of their pups to predation, that they might need to choose different places to have their babies,” biologist Rachel Reid told NBC Bay Area.
Researchers are calling on the public to contact the West Coast Marine Stranding Network, an organization run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to report any marine creatures — particularly seals — stranded on the coast, whether dead or alive.
“We learn so much about ocean health through those stranded animals,” Sarah Grimes, a marine mammal stranding coordinator and educator, told the Los Angeles Times.
Putin ally dies falling from house window, latest in spate of mysterious Russian deaths
Michael Dorgan
Thu, December 28, 2023 a
A Russian lawmaker and ally of President Vladimir Putin was found dead under mysterious circumstances Wednesday after falling from the third floor of his home, Russian state media has reported.
Vladimir Egorov, 46, who was a member of Putin's ruling United Russia party, plunged 30 feet to his death at his home in the town of Tobolsk, located in the western Siberian region of Tyumen Oblast. Media outlet Baza reported on its Telegram channel that Egorov’s body was discovered Wednesday afternoon in the courtyard of a house and that police are investigating what caused his death.
Vladimir Egorov, left, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is the latest prominent Russian figure to die under mysterious circumstances after he fell to his death from the third floor of his home.
RUSSIAN OIL EXECUTIVE WHO CRITICIZED UKRAINE INVASION DEAD AFTER REPORTEDLY FALLING OUT OF HOSPITAL WINDOW
Russian news agency TASS also reported that Egorov had fallen to his death, citing an investigative department from the Tyumen region.
Fox News Digital reached out to Russia’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs to confirm the reports but did not immediately receive a response.
The New York Post, citing the 72 news outlet, reported that Egorov may have suffered from heart problems before the deadly fall.
Egorov, who was also a lawyer, was forced out of the city administration in 2016 following a corruption scandal for which he was not convicted, according to the New York Post. He then returned to the political fray.
Many other notable figures in Russia have died from falls since the beginning of the war with Ukraine.
In June, Kristina Baikova, a 28-year-old glamorous vice president of a Russian bank, fell from her 11th floor apartment, while in February, senior Russian military officer Marina Yankina plummeted 16 stories to her death in St Petersburg.
In September 2022, Ravil Maganov, the chairman of Russia's Lukoil oil giant, died after falling from a sixth-floor hospital window in Moscow.
Meanwhile, in August, Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and several of his top lieutenants died when their jet crashed halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg.
In May, Russia's deputy science minister Pyotr Kucherenko, who had allegedly been a private critic of the invasion of Ukraine, died suddenly after falling seriously ill on a flight to Moscow.
In April, top energy boss Igor Shkurko was found dead in his prison cell after he was accused of taking a bribe.
Massive SunZia Wind Project Raises $11 Billion, Starts Building
Josh Saul
Wed, December 27, 2023
(Bloomberg) -- A wind farm and transmission line billed as the largest clean energy project in US history has secured $11 billion in financing and started construction.
Pattern Energy Group LP said Wednesday it closed on financing that includes about $8.8 billion in construction and term facilities and $2.25 billion in tax equity for the 3.5 gigawatt SunZia wind farm in New Mexico and 550-mile transmission line carrying electricity to Arizona. Pattern was bought by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board in 2020.
It took more than 17 years for SunZia to gain approvals and begin building, highlighting the difficulty of building transmission lines in the US. Grid experts say the country needs a huge build-out of transmission to move energy produced by wind and solar farms, but regulatory agencies, local landowners and conservationists can all slow or even stop development.
Bloomberg Businessweek
The first EV with a lithium-free sodium battery hits the road in January
Sodium-ion batteries have lower density but are cheaper and perform better in cold weather.
Will Shanklin
·Contributing Reporter
Wed, December 27, 2023
JAC via CarNewsChina
JAC Motors, a Volkswagen-backed Chinese automaker, is set to launch the first mass-produced electric vehicle (EV) with a sodium-ion battery through its new Yiwei brand. Although sodium-ion battery tech has a lower density (and is less mature) than lithium-ion, its lower costs, more abundant supplies and superior cold-weather performance could help accelerate mass EV adoption. CarNewsChina reports that the JAC Yiwei EV hatchback deliveries will begin in January.
Yiwei is a new brand in 2023 for JAC. Volkswagen has a 75 percent stake in (and management control of) JAC and owns 50 percent of JAC’s parent company, Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Holdings (JAG). The Chinese government owns the other half of JAG, making for one of the auto industry’s stranger pairings.
The Sehol E10X, which the new Yiwei EV appears to be a rebranded version of. (JAC via CarNewsChina)
The Yiwei EV appears to be a rebranded version of the Sehol E10X hatchback (above), announced earlier this year. CarNewsChina describes the Sehol model as having a 252 km (157 miles) range with a 25 kWh capacity, 120 Wh / kg energy density, 3C to 4C charging, and a HiNa NaCR32140 cell. When JAC revealed the Yiwei brand in May, it said it would drop the Sehol label and rebrand all its vehicles to either JAC or Yiwei, leading us to this week’s EV reveal. JAC hasn’t yet said whether the Yiwei-branded model will keep the E10X moniker.
In April, JAC showcased a separate EV called the Yiwei 3 at the Shanghai Auto Show. That model launched in June with an LFP lithium battery, promising the sodium-ion variant would launch later.
A (JAC via CarNewsChina)
The new Yiwei EV reportedly uses cylindrical sodium-ion cells from HiNA Battery. JAC assembles the batteries in the company’s modular UE (Unitized Encapsulation) honeycomb structure, similar to CATL’s CTP (cell-to-pack) and BYD’s Blade. The layout can provide for greater stability and performance.
U.S. intelligence officials determined the Chinese spy balloon used a U.S. internet provider to communicate
An American intelligence assessment found that the balloon used a commercially available U.S. network to communicate, primarily for navigation, U.S. officials say.
The Chinese spy balloon in the sky over Billings, Mont., on Feb. 1.Chase Doak / AFP
Dec. 28, 2023,
By Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee
WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence officials have determined that the Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. this year used an American internet service provider to communicate, according to two current and one former U.S. official familiar with the assessment.
The balloon connected to a U.S.-based company, according to the assessment, to send and receive communications from China, primarily related to its navigation. Officials familiar with the assessment said it found that the connection allowed the balloon to send burst transmissions, or high-bandwidth collections of data over short periods of time.
The Biden administration sought a highly secretive court order from the federal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to collect intelligence about it while it was over the U.S., according to multiple current and former U.S. officials. How the court ruled has not been disclosed.
Such a court order would have allowed U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct electronic surveillance on the balloon as it flew over the U.S. and as it sent and received messages to and from China, the officials said, including communications sent via the American internet service provider.
The company denied that the Chinese balloon had used its network, a determination it said was based on its own investigation and discussions it had with U.S. officials.
NBC News is not naming the provider to protect the identity of its sources.
A National Security Council spokesperson referred questions to the national intelligence director's office. It declined to comment.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said it was a weather balloon that accidentally drifted into American airspace.
"As we had made it clear before, the airship, used for meteorological research, unintentionally drifted into U.S. because of the westerlies and its limited self-steering capability," Liu told NBC News in a statement. "The facts are clear."
Chinese intelligence officials have covertly used commercially available service providers in various countries in the past, often as backup communication networks, according to multiple former U.S. officials. They frequently seek out encrypted networks or ones with strong security protocols so they can communicate securely, the officials said.
The previously unreported U.S. effort to monitor the balloon's communications could be one reason Biden administration officials have insisted that they got more intelligence out of the device than it got as it flew over the U.S.
Senior administration officials have said the U.S. was able to protect sensitive sites on the ground because they closely tracked the balloon's projected flight path. The U.S. military moved or obscured sensitive equipment so the balloon could not collect images or video while it was overhead.
U.S. sailors recover debris from the Chinese surveillance balloon after it was shot down off Myrtle Beach, S.C. U.S. Navy via AP file
After the balloon was shot down on Feb. 4, Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, told reporters that the U.S. military and intelligence community had taken exhaustive steps to protect against the balloon's ability to collect intelligence.
“We took maximum precaution to prevent any intel collection," VanHerck said at a briefing. "So that we could take maximum protective measures while the balloon transited across the United States.”
In an exclusive interview this month, VanHerck said he worked together with U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees U.S. nuclear weapons, to reduce the release of emergency action messages to ensure the Chinese balloon could not collect them.
“We took action to put capabilities away, whether that be airplanes, ballistic missiles in our missile fields," VanHerck said. "We limited our emission of emergency action messages that could be potentially collected on."
Emergency action messages, or EAM, are how U.S. leaders communicate with strategic forces all around the world. The messages, which are highly classified, can include directing nuclear-capable forces on response options in the case of a nuclear war.
“Protecting EAM and nuclear command and control communications is of critical importance to the United States,” a senior defense official said.
After the balloon was shot down, a senior State Department official said that it was used by China for surveillance and that it was loaded with equipment able to collect signals intelligence.
The balloon had multiple antennas, including an array most likely able to collect and geolocate communications, the official said. It was also powered by enormous solar panels that generated enough power to operate intelligence collection sensors, the official said.
Defense and intelligence officials have said the U.S. assessment is that the balloon was not able to transmit intelligence back to China while it was over the U.S.
The FBI forensics team that examined the balloon after it was shot down completed a classified report about the equipment it carried, according to multiple U.S. officials. Its findings remain secret and have not been widely briefed.
Federal judges on the surveillance court, where proceedings are held in secret, must determine whether there is probable cause that the surveillance target is a foreign power or a foreign agent and that the surveillance is necessary to obtain foreign intelligence information. The court's rulings are classified.
Courtney Kube is a correspondent covering national security and the military for the NBC News Investigative Unit.
Carol E. Lee is an NBC News correspondent.
Black Tech Layoffs Brought To Light In Letter Penned By Rep. Barbara Lee And CBC
Members
Tomas Kassahun
Wed, December 27, 2023
Rep. Barbara Lee | Photo: Paul Morigi via Getty Images
Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Lee is working with several Congressional Black Caucus members to speak up for Black tech employees who are being disproportionately laid off. In a letter to Julie Su, the acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor, Lee and her colleagues said they’re concerned about the high rate of Black employees losing their jobs in the tech industry.
“We write to express our concerns with recent reports highlighting the impacts of widespread layoffs within the tech industry and its disproportionate impacts on the African American community and women,” the advocates wrote, according to The Grio. “Tech companies who previously agreed to address bias and discrimination and create greater opportunities in the workforce are now quietly defunding diversity pledges.”
In 2015, the Congressional Black Caucus Diversity Task Force launched the CBC Tech 2020 Initiative, aiming to increase diversity in the tech industry.
“Technology has revolutionized our lives and continues to be a driving force in our economy. African Americans must be included in every aspect of this technological revolution — not just as end users or as a market share,” Lee said in a statement at the time.
The California Congresswoman now continues to demand for the tech industry to be held accountable.
“We’ve been fighting for justice and for economic parity and security as part of the mission of the CBC,” Lee told The Grio. “And so when we established Tech 2020, it was about equity and inclusion.”
According to the letter from the CBC, over 240,000 tech workers have been laid off since the start of 2023. That’s a 50% increase from the previous year. A majority of the employees that have been let go in 2023 are women and minorities, Lee said.
“Now with all the Supreme Court decisions and with all of the backsliding, especially by Republicans, it’s very important that we be very assertive in our fight for equity and justice within the private sector and public sector,” Lee said to The Grio.
The CBC is still waiting for a response from the Department of Labor.
“The letter was sent to the secretary of labor, and it’s the federal government’s job to conduct oversight and to answer these questions,” Lee said.
She continued, “I would hope that the tech companies would welcome this so that they can get their act together and make sure that they don’t disproportionately lay off African-Americans, which is occurring right now.”
Higher Education Wasn’t the Only Target of the Anti-Affirmative Action Movement
Brandon Tensley
Thu, December 28, 2023 at 5:00 AM MST·10 min read
The moment the U.S. Supreme Court wiped out affirmative action in higher education in June, civil rights advocates warned that the effects could stretch beyond colleges and universities.
Just months later, we can see that they were right.
A venture capital firm run by women of color is in a legal fight to protect the firm’s contest that grants $20,000 to Black women business owners. And a maternal health program based in San Francisco that gives pregnant Black and Pacific Islander residents $1,000 monthly stipends is being sued.
For more than half a century, affirmative action helped to remedy the country’s long and ongoing history of discrimination against marginalized groups, and in particular Black Americans. But it appears that the landmark ruling has become an opening for conservative actors to dismantle other efforts to level the playing field, and the stakes remain high.
Capital B spoke with several experts about the implications of the high court’s decision to turn back the clock for everything from voting rights to congressional funding opportunities for Black farmers to diversity efforts within police departments.
A vital health program becomes a target
When the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision came down, it was clear that it could affect the diversity of the health care workforce pipeline.
Immediately, health care experts raised concerns about what could happen at medical schools across the country — how shrinking the diversity of the student body could lead to a decrease in the number of Black doctors. Currently, just under 6% of physicians are Black, a disproportionately low percentage.
Read more: What’s Behind Black Women’s High Risk For Strokes
Among advocates, the argument for a diverse health care workforce is that it will reduce the number of health disparities that end Black lives early. There’s a growing body of research that shows that having a doctor who looks like their patients can positively influence outcomes.
Notably, some of the conservative pushback against affirmative action has broadened beyond medical school admissions and health care training to city programs designed to address persistent racial disparities in health outcomes.
San Francisco’s Abundant Birth Project is facing a lawsuit intended to shut it down. It’s given 150 pregnant Black and Pacific Islander residents $1,000 monthly stipends to support families who need help with things such as gas and food.
The pioneering program is intended to combat grim realities: Black folks are three to four times more likely than white folks to die from childbirth-related causes, and per infant mortality data, Black babies are two times more likely than white babies to die. In short, the program offers services to the most vulnerable. But the lawsuit claims that it’s racially discriminatory.
It’s unclear how much this argument will hold up in court, even with the June decision. The stakes are different when we’re talking about college admissions versus death or severe health complications.
Voting rights and the assault on democracy
Since the 2020 census, Louisiana, like a number of other states, has been involved in a legal dispute over a district map that civil rights groups say violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it dilutes the political power of Black voters. Louisiana is 33% Black, but Black voters can pick their candidate of choice in just one of the state’s six congressional districts.
In court documents filed only a week after the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action, Louisiana Republicans signaled their intent to use the decision to argue that considering race in map drawing ought to be illegal — a claim that could be embraced elsewhere in the U.S. and undermine the primary legislative achievement of the Civil Rights Movement.
Read more: A New Report Card Evaluates Voting Maps in Every State. How Did Your State Do?
Attorneys for the Republicans suggested that Section 2, which allows litigation in order to ensure equality at the ballot box, “is no longer necessary” because racial discrimination in voting isn’t the sort of menace today that it was when the Voting Rights Act was signed into law.
This was an extension of some of the logic advanced in the affirmative action case. The court “made clear that as statutes requiring race-based classification achieve their intended ends, they will necessarily become obsolete,” the attorneys insisted.
Such scheming exemplifies why advocates are concerned about the state of voting rights, even with victories such as the Supreme Court’s June decision that required Alabama to add a second majority-Black congressional district.
As Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, an independent organization focusing on political engagement, told Capital B earlier this year, “The assault on democracy is in full swing.”
Is environmental justice an outlier?
Advocates cautiously rejoiced when the Biden administration announced that climate and environmental issues would be a top policy priority. They had seen it before: Since the Carter administration in the 1970s and ’80s, every Democratic president has instituted environmental policies only for a conservative leader to come along and roll them back or ignore them.
Read more: Moving South, Black Americans Are Weathering Climate Change
Still, when the current administration announced its Justice40 program — a plan to ensure that at least 40% of federal investments related to climate adaptation and infrastructure would be delivered to “disadvantaged” communities — the support was loud and optimistic.
Then, however, the administration announced that it wouldn’t include race in its metrics for determining what a “disadvantaged” community is, despite the fact that race is the most reliable determinant of environmental and climate injustices. Seemingly every environmental justice group in the country released a statement against this decision, decrying it as another plain example of environmental racism.
Yet after this year’s affirmative action decision, it appears as if the administration knew precisely what it was doing. Because climate and environmental policies don’t mention race, they’ve avoided legal challenges from a Supreme Court that leans conservative.
But this doesn’t mean that everything’s fine. Since last year, the court has issued rulings that have defanged the Clean Water and Clean Air acts. And while the administration’s “colorblind” approach has, so far, staved off the total disruption of its climate goals, this strategy will make climate change adaptation less effective, more costly, and slower.
Black farmers remain on high alert
Black farmers fear that the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision might further diminish opportunities for them to receive congressional funding that could help them. They’ve faced discrimination at the hands of the U.S. Department of Agriculture before.
Consider the controversy over the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. It created a $4 billion debt relief program for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, including Black, Native American, Latino, and Asian communities.
Read more: Resources for Black Families Fighting for Control of Their Land
But the program was quickly shut down. A judge issued a restraining order in response to a class-action lawsuit brought by white farmers who alleged that the program discriminated against them. The Inflation Reduction Act replaced the program with assistance for a broader group of “distressed borrowers.”
John Boyd, the founder of the National Black Farmers Association, told Capital B that this change “set a trap for affirmative action,” and will give conservative groups ammunition to sue or stop race-based programs — maneuvering that will disproportionately disadvantage Black farmers, who feel ignored by the Biden administration. Farmers are facing foreclosure and economic hardship because they can’t get access to government resources.
“While the grass is growing, the cows are starving,” Boyd said. “I’m disappointed in the president [and] in this administration for not keeping the issue where it should be, which is front and center. There’s no dialogue from the White House, and we haven’t received a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer [about whether we’ll be able] to meet.”
Harvey Reed, an agricultural consultant and the founder of the Louisiana Association of Cooperatives, said that he isn’t optimistic that the USDA or its agencies will do anything to move the needle. With the gutting of affirmative action, addressing historical injustices within the agency might not be a priority for the administration.
“For 90 years, the USDA’s Farm Service Agency has made promise after promise that it will compensate Black farmers, but as of yet, nothing has happened,” Reed said. “The secretary of agriculture has had 12 years or more — eight under Obama and 11 under Biden — and has not done anything.”
Tammy Gray-Steele, the CEO and founder of the National Women in Agriculture Association, told Capital B that she fears that the affirmative action decision will only intensify the challenges plaguing Black women, whose concerns the USDA and the White House overlooked until recently.
“I’m just hoping that they get new, younger people at the table who are honest and have some integrity really on behalf of Black farmers,” she said.
Keeping an eye on police department diversity
The Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision may have paved the way for government-funded agencies, including police departments, to ignore applications from racial and ethnic minorities and women.
The criminal justice system disproportionately affects Black and brown communities. And yet, those who investigate criminal activity are largely white. This disparity can lead to cultural misunderstandings, which can, in turn, derail investigations.
Read more: What Police Say Vs. What They Do on Tape
“Without that [affirmative action], we’re hopeful that people will do the right thing, but that [relying on agencies to voluntarily hire people of color] hasn’t always been to the advantage of minority individuals,” Rodney Bryant, the national president of the National Organization for Black Law Enforcement Executives, or NOBLE, told Capital B.
When President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925 in 1961, the order opened up job opportunities for people of color.
Affirmative action was later expanded to include anti-sex discrimination policies.
“The greatest beneficiary of affirmative action has been women. In law enforcement, they’re the minority. This is one of the areas we’ve been working very aggressively to [improve],” Bryant explained, referring to the 30×30 Initiative, a coalition of law enforcement professionals attempting to have women make up 30% of law enforcement staff by 2030.
He noted that, even with these kinds of initiatives, there’s no guarantee that agencies will proactively diversify their staff. And that’s concerning.
“We know that when you have a diverse agency, you function better in law enforcement or in corporate America. You function better because those people bring a level of value, which is a benefit to your agency or to the community you serve,” Bryant said.
The fallout for Black businesses
The Fearless Fund — whose founders say that it’s the first of its kind “built by women of color, for women of color” — has been in a legal battle since August.
A group run by Edward Blum, the conservative activist who’s been crusading against affirmative action for decades, filed a lawsuit against the venture capitalist firm. Blum, who brought the case that ended colleges’ use of race-conscious admissions policies, targeted the Fearless Fund’s contest that awards $20,000 to Black women business owners.
Read more: Texas’ College DEI Ban Is the Latest to ‘Turn Back the Clock on Racial Equality
Not only do companies led by Black women usually receive less than 1% of all venture capital funding, but in 2022, venture capital for Black entrepreneurs plunged by 45%, according to data. Yet conservative actors are seeking to quash programs that confront racial inequality.
The Fearless Fund’s contest, in Blum’s mind, violates the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was designed during the Reconstruction era to establish equal citizenship rights for newly emancipated people of African descent.
A federal appeals court in October temporarily paused the Atlanta-based firm’s program, saying that it’s “racially discriminatory.” The civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump has since filed an appeal on behalf of the firm. Oral arguments are scheduled to begin in January.
Blum’s legal machinations shine a light on a growing conservative pattern of weaponizing social justice-oriented tools against efforts to nourish racial equality in the private sector, The Washington Post reported in November.
Arian Simone, one of the Fearless Fund’s founding partners, has made plain the importance of this case.
“In the event we were to lose, what is at stake is anything that is race-based,” she said in a recent video. “If we win, we win — we are winning for everybody. But if we lose, then everybody’s affected by our loss. Everybody loses.”
Capital B staff writers Margo Snipe, Adam Mahoney, Aallyah Wright, and Christina Carrega contributed to this report.
The post Higher Education Wasn’t the Only Target of the Anti-Affirmative Action Movement appeared first on Capital B News.
WAR IS ECOCIDE
Takeaways from AP investigation into Russia's cover-up of deaths caused by dam explosion in Ukraine
SAMYA KULLAB and ILLIA NOVIKOV
Wed, December 27, 2023
Houses are seen underwater in the flooded town of Oleshky, Ukraine, June 10, 2023. An AP investigation has found that Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted the dead in one of the most devastating chapters of the 22-month war in Ukraine - the flooding that followed the catastrophic explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in the southern Kherson region. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)More
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted the dead in one of the most devastating chapters of the 22-month war in Ukraine — the flooding that followed the catastrophic explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in the southern Kherson region.
The AP's reporting focused on Oleshky, one town in the vast area flooded by the dam. Health workers and others who were in Oleshky told The Associated Press that Russian authorities hid the true number of dead by taking control of the issuance of death certificates, immediately removing bodies not claimed by family, and preventing local health workers and volunteers from dealing with the dead, threatening them when they defied orders. Still afraid, many Oleshky residents and health workers declined to speak, fearing reprisal. The AP’s investigation is based on the accounts of those who did, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity or on condition only their first names be used, fearing reprisal from Russia on family members still in occupied territory.
Here are the key takeaways from the investigation:
HUNDREDS DEAD
In the critical first hours after the dam collapse on June 6, occupation authorities downplayed the consequences, leading many Oleshky residents to believe they would not be affected. This later contributed to the high death toll.
Russia said 59 people drowned in the territory it controls. The AP investigation found the number is at least in the hundreds in Oleshky alone, among the most populous in flood affected areas with around 16,000 residents at the time, according to Ukrainian officials.
Health workers said they believe 200-300 people died in the town. Many are still missing, their bodies likely still trapped in homes.
A volunteer, who feared reprisal and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she, her husband and two neighbors picked up at least 100 bodies during the floods. These were taken to the central cemetery in Oleshky and buried in graves 1 meter (3 feet) deep. The volunteer was later threatened by Russian occupation authorities and forbidden from collecting bodies.
Svitlana, a nurse at the Oleshky District Multidisciplinary Hospital, the city’s main primary health center, said she saw the flood waters rise toward her home the afternoon of June 6 as she was walking her dog. By the next morning, two-floor homes would be inundated, its residents trapped on the roof.
Chaos ensued as volunteers began rescuing people using their own resources. For the first three days, occupation authorities were nowhere to be seen, local residents, volunteers and health workers said. Many sought help from health workers in the hospital where Svitlana worked, which by that time had become a refuge for those forced out from flooded areas.
The dead began appearing. Bloated bodies were seen floating. As waters receded allowing residents to check on relatives, more were found trapped in the mud under collapsed homes.
CONTROL OVER CERTIFICATES
Health workers said occupation authorities returned around June 9, three days after the flooding. They came with strict orders prohibiting doctors in the hospital from issuing death certificates for drowning victims — but not for those who died of natural causes.
This was a departure from protocol followed by doctors since Oleshky was occupied by Russian forces in March 2022. Doctors were permitted to issue death certificates, and did so in Russian and secretly in Ukrainian to keep Kyiv’s records up to date.
By prohibiting doctors from issuing death certificates for the drowned, occupation authorities essentially took away doctors’ authority and ability to document the number of dead. Svitlana, who oversaw record-keeping for the drowned, said Russian police verbally issued the order, and did not provide an official written statement.
Police came to the hospital daily to copy the hospital's death certificates, making sure none were for drowning victims.
Those with dead relatives were told to go to forensic centers in other districts, where doctors selected by occupation authorities were responsible for signing death certificates. The bodies could not be buried without the document.
Residents and health workers were told to call police if they saw a dead body. Trucks belonging to the Russian state emergency service arrived to collect them and take them to the forensic centers. Those with no one to claim them were never seen again.
MASS GRAVES
Bodies were hurriedly buried in mass graves in the first days of the floods, residents and health workers said. The Associated Press was able to confirm the location of at least one located in the yard of the Orthodox Pokrovska Church in the center of Oleshky, and one man buried there, Yurii Bilyi, a TV repairman.
Bilyi was recognized by a municipal worker who dug his grave and later told Svitlana. Bilyi’s burial was recounted to his daughter, Anastasiia Bila, now in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. Her uncle told her the grave was doused with chlorine and a priest said a prayer.
It's unknown how many bodies were buried with Bilyi. Bila said her uncle did not offer a precise number. He is now living under occupation and did not respond to questions from the AP.
While several people interviewed referred to more mass graves than the one where Bila’s father was buried, the AP was unable to determine the precise number of such graves or how many people were buried in them.
Svitlana, the nurse, said the evidence is still hidden in Oleshky: documents detailing the dead, plots where they are buried, photos, the death certificates collected in secret.
AP: Russian occupation authorities deliberately undercounted victims of Kakhovka dam disaster
Dinara Khalilova, The Kyiv Independent news desk
Thu, December 28, 2023
Moscow-installed illegal administration in the Russian-occupied part of Kherson Oblast "vastly and deliberately" undercounted the victims of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant's destruction in June, an investigation by the Associated Press (AP) revealed.
Russia's destruction of the Kakhovka Dam on June 6 triggered one of the largest man-made environmental disasters in Ukraine's history. The southern Kherson Oblast has suffered catastrophic floods and a large-scale humanitarian crisis.
According to the United Nations' report, 29 people died as a result of the dam's destruction, and 28 were injured on the Ukrainian-controlled territory as of July 10.
While Russia has claimed that 59 people died in floods caused by the dam explosion in the territory it controls, the AP investigation discovered that in the Russian-occupied Oleshky alone, the number is at least in the hundreds.
The AP journalists talked to medical workers who kept records of the dead in Oleshky, a volunteer who buried the bodies, and Ukrainian informants who provided intelligence from the area to the Ukrainian Security Service as well as other residents, rescue volunteers, and recent escapees from the occupied area.
According to their accounts, Russian occupation authorities took control of issuing death certificates, promptly removing bodies that were not claimed by relatives, and preventing local medical workers and volunteers from dealing with the dead, threatening them when they did not follow orders.
Read also: ‘They are destroying us.’ People plea to escape flooded Russian-occupied areas
AP also found out that, following the disaster, mass graves were dug up in the Russian-occupied territory, and unidentified bodies were taken away to be never seen again.
"The scale of this tragedy, not just Russia, but even Ukraine doesn't realize," a nurse who initially supervised the process of collecting death certificates and later fled to Ukrainian-controlled territory told AP. "It's a huge tragedy."
While Russia has denied responsibility for the dam's explosion, its military has occupied the Kakhovka plant since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Intercepted communications from the night of the disaster further show that the Russians had planned "escape points" and were waiting on a "command" from their superiors.
According to the UN's report published on Oct. 17, Russia's destruction of the Kakhovka dam has caused almost $14 billion in damages to Ukraine.
Read also: Ukraine’s south threatened with long-term economic, agricultural decline after Kakhovka dam destruction
AP concludes at least hundreds died in floods after Ukraine dam collapse, far more than Russia said
SAMYA KULLAB and ILLIA NOVIKOV
Updated Thu, December 28, 2023
Water flows over the collapsed Kakhovka Dam in Nova Kakhovka, in Russian-occupied Ukraine, June 7, 2023. An AP investigation has found that Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted the dead in one of the most devastating chapters of the 22-month war in Ukraine - the flooding that followed the catastrophic explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in the southern Kherson region. (AP Photo, File)
MYKOLAIV, Ukraine (AP) — They recognized the TV repairman.
The residents of Oleshky in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine could not identify many of those they buried after a catastrophic dam collapse in June sent water coursing through their homes and shattered their lives. The bodies were too bloated and discolored, volunteer rescuers and health workers said. They described seeing faces that resembled rubber masks, frozen in that last frenzied gasp for air. But to those secretly keeping count of the drowned, Yurii Bilyi was no stranger.
The cheerful 56-year-old was a town fixture. He had serviced many homes and spent his days working from a shop just across the street from the churchyard where he was buried, in a hurriedly dug mass grave, The Associated Press has learned.
Anastasiia Bila, his daughter, remembers his last words clearly over the unstable phone connection. “Nastya,” he affectionately called her, hoping to soothe her anxieties as flood waters rose quickly, inundating 600 square kilometers (230 square miles), submerging entire towns and villages along the banks of the Dnipro River, the majority in Russian-occupied areas. “I’ve seen worse under occupation.”
Over six months since the catastrophic explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in the southern Kherson region, an AP investigation has found Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted the dead in one of the most devastating chapters of the 22-month war. Russian authorities took control of the issuance of death certificates, immediately removing bodies not claimed by family, and preventing local health workers and volunteers from dealing with the dead, threatening them when they defied orders.
“The scale of this tragedy, not just Russia, but even Ukraine doesn’t realize,” said Svitlana, a nurse who initially oversaw the process of collecting death certificates and later escaped to Ukrainian-controlled territory. “It’s a huge tragedy."
Russia, which didn't respond to questions for this article, has said 59 people drowned in the territory it controls, roughly 408 square kilometers (160 square miles) of flooded areas. But in the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky alone, which Ukrainian military officials estimate had a population of 16,000 at the time of the flooding, the number is at least in the hundreds. An exact figure for the dead — in Oleshky, the occupied area's most populous town before the war, and beyond — may never be known, even if Ukrainian forces retake the territory and are able to investigate on the ground.
The AP spoke to three health workers who kept records of the dead in Oleshky, one volunteer who buried bodies and said she was later threatened by Russian police, and two Ukrainian informants passing intelligence from the area to the Ukrainian security service. According to their accounts, mass graves were dug, and unidentified bodies were taken away and never seen again.
Nearly a dozen interviews were conducted with other residents, rescue volunteers and recent escapees from the area. The AP also gained access to a closed Telegram chat group of 3,000 Oleshky residents who posted about bodies lying on the streets, bodies collected by police and the many missing.
Most spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity or, like Svitlana, on condition only their first names be used, fearing reprisal from Russia on family members still in occupied territory.
Together, these accounts reveal a calculated attempt by Russian authorities to cover up the true cost of the dam collapse, which the AP has found was likely caused by Moscow. Residents of Oleshky fear their enduring traumas risk being forgotten as the war grinds on, and their beloved once idyllic home is gradually depopulated.
A TOWN ABANDONED
The dam burst in the early hours of June 6, causing extensive flooding along the lower Dnipro River, submerging entire communities across the Ukraine-controlled right and Russian-occupied left banks in a matter of hours.
At first, the Russian-appointed administration in Kherson told residents not to be alarmed. In a post on its official Telegram channel, it stressed the “situation is not critical.” So most went about their normal day — walking dogs, going to work, staying at home. Choices that would later prove fatal.
By the afternoon the water levels were rising quickly, inundating two-story homes as the powerful current swept everything away. The elderly struggled to climb up to roofs, people clung to their chimneys waiting to be saved by local rescue crews, most of them civilians who owned boats.
For the first three days of the floods occupation authorities were nowhere to be found, locals said, having apparently fled, despite initially reassuring residents. Conspicuously absent were police and prosecutors, both Russian-appointed officials authorized to deal with the deceased.
Bodies were piling up and decaying in the summer heat, their stench wafted in the air. Wailing relatives approached the town’s medical workers, not knowing where to take the dead.
“A lot of people drowned,” said Svitlana, the head nurse at the Oleshky District Multidisciplinary Hospital, the city’s main primary health center, which later transformed into a shelter for people forced out of their homes. The putrefaction of flesh caused many corpses to inflate. “People were floating around the city like balloons.”
They needed to be buried. “We took the responsibility,” the nurse said.
They had the authority to issue death certificates both under Ukrainian law and Russian rule. The health center functioned as a main hospital for Oleshky residents after Russia occupied the town in March 2022, soon after Russia invaded Ukraine. Health workers continued to receive salaries from Ukraine, deposited electronically into their bank accounts, a crucial link tying them to their homeland as the occupation’s draconian laws began to transform everything else before their eyes.
Russian rubles replaced Ukrainian hryvnias in the market. Some residents accepted Russian passports to make life under occupation easier. Keeping record of the Ukrainian dead, largely caused by shelling before the floods, became a last vestige of Ukrainian control.
For health workers in the hospital, it was a matter of national necessity. After occupation authorities forbade the issuance of death certificates in the Ukrainian language on Jan. 1, health workers continued to do so in secret to ensure the Ukrainian medical database was up to date in Kyiv, the capital. Residents were given two certificates, one to satisfy their new occupiers, and the other to keep moored to their homeland. Health workers told residents to hide the latter.
The same procedure was followed immediately after the dam collapse.
In total, around 15 death certificates were electronically sent during the first week after the flood to Svitlana Serdiukova, the health facility’s medical director in exile, who was keeping track of the registry remotely in government-controlled Ukraine. Svitlana, the nurse in Oleshky, was in direct contact with her during this time.
The cause of death for all 15 was asphyxia by drowning.
RUSSIA CERTIFIES THE DEAD
Everything came to a halt on June 12.
The Russian state emergency rescue service workers were back in Oleshky by the afternoon of June 9, and three days later, they began reasserting control.
They brought large trucks and road-clearing equipment and offered to evacuate people first to Radensk, in Kherson region, and from there relocate them to Chelyabinsk and Tula in Russia. The residents refused to be taken that far, asking only to be taken to a dry patch in Oleshky.
They were refused. Many stayed put.
Russian authorities had strict orders for the hospital: Doctors were now forbidden from issuing death certificates for flood victims. They were still permitted to issue certificates for other causes of death, however. The new rule was issued verbally, said Svitlana and Yelena, a fellow nurse at the hospital.
From that moment on, they said, flood victims would have to be referred for autopsies in facilities elsewhere in Kherson region, in Kalanchak, Skadovsk, and Henichesk, where doctors approved by occupation authorities would be in charge of issuing the certificates after conducting forensic examinations. Relatives could not bury their family members without the crucial document.
Svitlana said she pressed the police for an official order proving the old policy in place since March had changed. They didn’t have it, and responded to her queries with threats, she said.
“They said: ‘You will suffer the consequences for doing this.’ I said, ‘Alright, I am ready, and the doctor, too.’”
The order deprived doctors of responsibility for flood victims. It also took away their ability to keep records of the dead for Kyiv.
Serdiukova’s record-keeping could go no further. The last Ukrainian death certificate she received was on June 14.
The police came to the hospital daily to make copies of death certificates issued by doctors, to ensure the rules were being obeyed. “You need to understand under what circumstances we worked there — under the FSB, police, prosecutors,” Svitlana said, using the acronym for the Russian security service that is the main successor agency of the Soviet-era KGB.
The hospital referred just under 50 bodies to the new autopsy centers, but this doesn’t reflect the total dead. Residents were given specific numbers to call police who dispatched workers to collect discovered bodies, circumventing the hospital altogether. Family members were charged 10,000 rubles (equivalent to about $108) as a service fee, a hefty sum for many under occupation. Those who couldn’t afford that begged doctors to write a different cause of death, such as “heart attack,” so they could be buried quickly, both nurses said.
Bodies without relatives to claim them were never seen again.
The rescue service also patrolled Oleshky’s streets to collect the dead.
On June 15, the hospital began giving vaccines against hepatitis A, dysentery and typhoid amid rising concerns of water-borne diseases. A worker from the town’s municipal “Pobut” service, responsible for cleaning streets, arrived visibly inebriated, Svitlana said.
Svitlana told him to return when he was sober. But the man, in his early 40s, replied, he could not but drink after what he had seen. He had been ordered to dig out the dead from under their collapsed homes, he said, and bury them in mass graves.
He recognized some.
“The TV guy has drowned, the ginger, Yura,” he told her, referring to his hair color, according to Svitlana’s account.
She knew him, too.
A FATHER BURIED
Anastasiia Bila, Yurii’s daughter, was in Lviv in western Ukraine, where she had fled before the invasion, when she spoke to her father for the last time. It was on June 6, at around 3 p.m.
He had refused to evacuate their family home. He had two German shepherds he could not abandon.
The connection was intermittent. She urged him to go to the second floor of the house if the water levels continued to rise. She tried to call again a half-hour later, but there was no reception.
She made a plea on the private Telegram chat: “Bilyi Yurii Anatoliyovych, does not get in touch for a second day," she wrote, adding his last known location, his home’s address: Dniprovska, 85. “Please help me find my father, maybe someone saw or knows his whereabouts, any information.”
On Sunday, five days later, Bila’s uncle was able to check on his brother by hiring a boat with his wife and son. They found Bilyi’s lifeless body. He told Anastasiia she could stop looking for her father.
The body was buried in a mass grave in the yard of the Orthodox Pokrovska Church in the center of Oleshky. It was not possible to bury him and others anywhere else, as most places were still flooded, Bila said.
Bilyi’s shop has been on the same street.
The grave was doused with chlorine, Bila’s uncle, who witnessed the burial, recounted to her, she said. The priest prayed over the dead.
Pobut workers, made up of local Ukrainians and acting on orders of occupation authorities, were responsible for collecting and burying the dead, according to health workers. They dug on a daily basis between June 10-20. The bodies were buried without coffins, not even bags to cover them.
As the unit was acting on orders of occupation authorities, the decision to bury people in mass graves likely came from those authorities, health workers said.
“The first bodies were buried in the city center (church), as 90% of the city was underwater,” said Bila. “Those bodies were not processed by a hospital, no autopsy or time of death, they were buried right away,” she said.
Serdiukova later confirmed Bilyi was not in Ukraine's registry. Officially he is considered a missing person.
The exact number of bodies in the grave where Bilyi was buried is not known. Bila said her uncle did not tell her a precise number. He is living under occupation and did not respond to questions from the AP.
But the hospital workers the AP interviewed estimate the number to be between 10 to 20. For a time, they tried to document who was buried where. They asked relatives to fill out forms detailing where bodies were found, how they were clothed, and later, which plot of which grave they were buried in.
“The bodies were collected and buried in a mass grave to ensure they don’t start decomposing on city streets. After de-occupation there will be an exhumation. That’s when we’ll be able to investigate everything,” said Serdiukova.
With the return of the Russian state emergency service, the process became more orderly. They arrived with trucks to carry bodies and a special rescue team.
The fate of unidentified bodies, those without relatives to claim them, carted away by the Russian rescue service is also not known. Yelena, the nurse, approached a truck driver and asked him what would happen to them.
He told her casually that the bodies with no relatives were buried in a mass grave, she said. Without caskets, in black bags.
While several people interviewed referred to more mass graves than the one where Bila’s father was buried, the AP was unable to determine the precise number of such graves or how many people were buried in them.
Bila considers herself lucky. At least her father is buried in the town he loved and refused to leave, even under the threat of death.
Like many, she’s waiting for Ukraine to liberate the town. Then, she said, “I’ll be able to re-bury him in a proper cemetery.”
THE THREAT
The volunteer was not afraid of dead bodies. When the floods inundated her neighborhood in Oleshky, the sight of the floating dead did not stir her like it did the others. She had witnessed her best friend’s death when she was a teenager.
“It’s the living that frighten me,” she said.
On June 7, she, her husband and three neighbors went about evacuating trapped residents inside homes. By June 9, she witnessed dead bodies for the first time. They were “bloated and partially decomposed. They were floating. I often couldn’t recognize a person,” she said.
Some were trapped under the sticky mud and had to be dug out. Those she knew, around 20, she took to the hospital with the hopes that relatives could claim the bodies. The rest were taken to another church in the city, blessed by a priest and buried in the town’s cemetery. She said she collected “more than 100” dead.
The health workers estimate 200 to 300 people drowned in Oleshky. “I’m even afraid to say it out loud,” said Yelena.
Many were older, unable to physically leave their homes or climb up to the roof, according to the accounts of rescue volunteers, residents who reported relatives dead, and health workers.
“I buried them with my own hands,” the volunteer said. There was no money to hire diggers, she said, but people volunteered to do it for free. The graves were dug shallow, 1 meter (3 feet) deep. Any more and they would flood. The volunteer said she used bedsheets to cover them. When those ran out, she said, she found plastic film.
Pits were dug for each person, but sometimes for up to three, the volunteer said.
But this work was put to a stop when the Russian rescue service returned. Occupation authorities prohibited volunteers from collecting or burying the dead, telling them this was a job for the police only.
Russian emergency service trucks arrived. Workers in white bodysuits put the dead in black bags, witnesses said. One driver told the volunteer they were destined for autopsies in Henichesk, an occupied port city about three hours away.
Some days later, several police officers came to the volunteer’s home. She said they told her that an informant had told them she had been involved in burying people without death certificates. They interrogated her about why she had transported bodies, and how many she had recovered. She explained there was no other option, the bodies were smelling.
They reprimanded her, telling her she did not have the right to collect bodies and eventually forced her to sign a document promising she would stop collecting the dead because she didn’t have the right qualifications, she said.
“They told me that if I continue doing so they’ll ‘cage me’, That’s when I stopped,” the volunteer said. “I was scared for myself and my family.”
The police visited her home almost every day after that, she said.
“They had video journalists coming here to show how Russia helps here. They wanted to conceal the consequences of the dam explosion, so that people don’t talk about how many people suffered and how many needed help. They wanted to hide it,” she said. “That’s why they prohibited us.”
WORLDS APART
The evidence is still hidden in Oleshky: documents detailing the dead, plots where they are buried, photos, the death certificates collected in secret.
“I hid all these papers behind closed doors so that no one knew,” Svitlana said. “With time everything is forgotten, some people might leave, their life will change, but with those papers — no one will forget. It was important to save them.”
She is waiting for Ukraine to liberate the territory so the truth can come to light. She cleared her phone and left documents behind to keep them out of the hands of Russians who routinely stop Ukrainians leaving occupied areas and conduct thorough security checks.
Residents, speaking to the AP after they returned to Ukraine-controlled territory, said most of the town is no longer habitable. Many remain missing since the floods, while battles inch closer. Ukrainian forces are reportedly advancing near the Krynky area, which lies 40 kilometers (24 miles) from Oleshky. There was a pause during the flooding from shelling, which resumed with ferocity, residents say.
Both Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for bringing down the dam, but analysts agree that Russia had motive. The dam’s collapse occurred right as Ukraine launched what would develop into a disappointing counteroffensive. The flooding altered the geography of the Dnipro River, complicating plans set out by Ukrainian military leaders.
Now, two-thirds of Oleshky is gone, entire districts and homes are destroyed, according to the accounts of half a dozen residents who left.
“There are two Ukraines,” said Svitlana. “One is at war, in tragedy, many people are left homeless. And the other is living life well and flourishes.”
In Oleshky, divisions between the townspeople have deepened, sometimes within members of a single family. The volunteer’s sister moved to Russia. Bila’s uncle and his family are estranged from hers because he harbors pro-Russian views, she said.
Svitlana said colleagues still in Oleshky told her that her office was ransacked after she left in August. But she is confident the documents are still hidden.
“It’s a durable book,” she said.
___
Novikov reported from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Google agrees to settle $5 billion lawsuit accusing it of tracking Incognito users
The complaint said Google deceived people into thinking they could control what information they share.
Mariella Moon
·Contributing Reporter
Thu, December 28, 2023
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In 2020, Google was hit with a lawsuit that accused it of tracking Chrome users' activities even when they were using Incognito mode. Now, after a failed attempt to get it dismissed, the company has agreed to settle the complaint that originally sought $5 billion in damages. According to Reuters and The Washington Post, neither side has made the details of the settlement public, but they've already agreed to the terms that they're presenting to the court for approval in February.
When the plaintiffs filed the lawsuit, they said Google used tools like its Analytics product, apps and browser plug-ins to monitor users. They reasoned that by tracking someone on Incognito, the company was falsely making people believe that they could control the information that they were willing to share with it. At the time, a Google spokesperson said that while Incognito mode doesn't save a user's activity on their device, websites could still collect their information during the session.
The lawsuit's plaintiffs presented internal emails that allegedly showed conversations between Google execs proving that the company monitored Incognito browser usage to sell ads and track web traffic. Their complaint accused Google of violating federal wire-tapping and California privacy laws and was asking up to $5,000 per affected user. They claimed that millions of people who'd been using Incognito since 2016 had likely been affected, which explains the massive damages they were seeking from the company. Google has likely agreed to settle for an amount lower than $5 billion, but it has yet to reveal details about the agreement and has yet to get back to Engadget with an official statement.
UPDATED
Amnesty confirms Apple warning: Indian journalists' iPhones infected with Pegasus spyware
Manish Singh
Updated Thu, December 28, 2023
Apple's warnings in late October that Indian journalists and opposition figures may have been targeted by state-sponsored attacks prompted a forceful counterattack from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. Officials publicly doubted Apple's findings and announced a probe into device security.
India has never confirmed nor denied using the Pegasus tool, but nonprofit advocacy group Amnesty International reported Thursday that it found NSO Group's invasive spyware on the iPhones of prominent journalists in India, lending more credibility to Apple's early warnings.
“Our latest findings show that increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs, alongside other tools of repression including imprisonment under draconian laws, smear campaigns, harassment, and intimidation,” said Donncha Ó Cearbhaill,hHead of Amnesty International’s Security Lab, in the blog post.
“Despite repeated revelations, there has been a shameful lack of accountability about the use of Pegasus spyware in India which only intensifies the sense of impunity over these human rights violations.”
The Washington Post separately reported Thursday that Apple faced heat from senior officials from Modi's administration, who behind closed doors, earlier demanded Apple soften the political impact of the warnings. Senior officials summoned Apple representatives to insist they provide alternative explanations, even flying in an Apple security expert to meet with ministry leaders, the report adds.
The pressure campaign by Indian officials to soften the impact of the warnings disturbed Apple executives in California but achieved limited results, The Washington Post added. While Apple India officials initially helped cast doubt on the alerts -- issuing a statement that in part said it was possible some notifications may be false alarms -- the company issued no follow-up statement placating authorities after the expert's visit.
The report adds:
The recent episode also exemplified the dangers facing government critics in India and the lengths to which the Modi administration will go to deflect suspicions that it has engaged in hacking against its perceived enemies, according to digital rights groups, industry workers and Indian journalists.
Many of the more than 20 people who received Apple’s warnings at the end of October have been publicly critical of Modi or his longtime ally, Gautam Adani, an Indian energy and infrastructure tycoon. They included a firebrand politician from West Bengal state, a Communist leader from southern India and a New Delhi-based spokesman for the nation’s largest opposition party.
For Apple, maintaining its commitment to user security took priority over risks to its growing India business. Apple, which opened two official stores in India this year, plans to move 25% of iPhone production to India by 2025, according to JP Morgan analysts. But the showdown revealed Modi's willingness to turn the screws on Big Tech.
India targeting high-profile journalists with spyware: Amnesty
AFP
Wed, December 27, 2023
Created by Israeli firm NSO Group and sold to governments around the world, Pegasus software can be used to access a phone's messages and emails, peruse photos, eavesdrop on calls, track locations and even film the owner with the camera (JOEL SAGET)
India's government has recently targeted high-profile journalists with Pegasus spyware, Amnesty International and The Washington Post said in a joint investigation published Thursday.
Created by Israeli firm NSO Group and sold to governments around the world, Pegasus software can be used to access a phone's messages and emails, peruse photos, eavesdrop on calls, track locations and even film the owner with the camera.
Amnesty said journalists Siddharth Varadarajan of The Wire and Anand Mangnale of The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project had been targeted with the spyware on their iPhones, with the latest identified case occurring in October.
"Our latest findings show that increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs, alongside other tools of repression including imprisonment under draconian laws, smear campaigns, harassment, and intimidation," said Donncha O Cearbhaill, Head of Amnesty International's Security Lab.
India's government did not immediately respond, but it denied similar accusations in 2021 that it used Pegasus spyware to surveil political opponents, activists and journalists.
Indian media reported last month that the country's cyber security unit was investigating allegations by opposition politicians of attempted phone tapping after they reported receiving Apple iPhone warnings of "state-sponsored attackers".
In that case, Ashwini Vaishnaw, the information and technology minister, said the government was "concerned" by the complaints.
Indian government pressed Apple to soften hacking warning: Report
Julia Shapero
THE HILL
Thu, December 28, 2023
The Indian government privately pressed Apple officials to soften their warnings to Indian journalists and opposition politicians that state-sponsored attackers could be targeting their phones, according to The Washington Post.
Senior officials in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration reportedly called Apple India’s managing director, Virat Bhatia, after reports emerged about the notifications in late October and asked the tech giant to withdraw the warnings.
Soon after, Apple India sent out emails saying the notifications are based on “threat intelligence signals that are often imperfect and incomplete” and began privately asking Indian tech journalists to note the warnings could be false alarms and had been issued to users in 150 countries, the Post reported.
A memo from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) similarly noted users in other countries received notifications and that Apple’s systems contained vulnerabilities, according to the Post.
Government officials also told Indian news outlets they suspected the warnings were the result of an “algorithmic malfunction,” and the deputy minister of electronics and information technology announced a probe into the notifications.
In November, an Apple security official from outside India reportedly flew to New Delhi to meet with government officials and defended the company’s work, according to the Post.
Many of the people who received Apple’s warnings in late October had been critical of Modi or Indian energy and infrastructure tycoon Gautam Adani and his relationship with the Indian prime minister, the Post noted.
Journalist Anand Mangnale reached out to Adani for comment in late August on a story alleging his associates secretly traded in the Adani Group’s public stock in potential violation of Indian securities law.
Mangnale had Pegasus spyware planted on his phone within 24 hours of the inquiry, according to a forensic analysis of his phone conducted by Amnesty International and reported by the Post.
Mahua Moitra, a former member of Parliament who criticized Modi’s relationship with Adani, also received a warning from Apple in late October. An examination of her phone by the security firm iVerify also indicated it had been hacked, according to the Post.
Moitra was expelled from Parliament in December over allegations that she was receiving bribes from a business rival of Adani’s to ask questions about his relationship with the prime minister. She has denied the accusations.
Apple reportedly faces pressure in India after sending out warnings of state-sponsored hacking
India's government is 'really angry' at Apple for warning its known critics, The Washington Post says.
Mariella Moon
·Contributing Reporter ENDGADGET
Thu, December 28, 2023
REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas
Indian authorities allied with Prime Minister Narendra Modi have questioned Apple on the accuracy of its internal threat algorithms and are now investigating the security of its devices, according to The Washington Post. Officials apparently targeted the company after it warned journalists and opposition politicians that state-sponsored hackers may have infiltrated their devices back in October. While Apple is under scrutiny for its security measures in the eyes of the public, the Post says government officials were more upfront with what they wanted behind closed doors.
They reportedly called up the company's representatives in India to pressure Apple into finding a way to soften the political impact of its hacking warnings. The officials also called in an Apple security expert to conjure alternative explanations for the warnings that they could tell people — most likely one that doesn't point to the government as the possible culprit.
The journalists and politicians who posted about Apple's warnings on social media had one thing in common: They were all critical of Modi's government. Amnesty International examined the phone of one particular journalist named Anand Mangnale who was investigating long-time Modi ally Gautam Adani and found that an attacker had planted the Pegasus spyware on his Apple device. While Apple didn't explicitly say that the Indian government is to blame for the attacks, Pegasus, developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, is mostly sold to governments and government agencies.
The Post's report said India's ruling political party has never confirmed or denied using Pegasus to spy on journalists and political opponents, but this is far from the first time its critics have been infected with the Pegasus spyware. In 2021, an investigation by several publications that brought the Pegasus project to light found the spyware on the phones of people with a history of opposing and criticizing Modi's government.
India's govt demanded Apple soften impact of hack warnings -Washington Post
Reuters
Wed, December 27, 2023
Apple iPhones are seen inside India's first Apple retail store, a day ahead of its launch, in Mumbai
(Reuters) - Apple's warnings in October to Indian opposition politicians that government hackers may have hacked their phones prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration to quickly demand the U.S. firm soften its message, the Washington Post reported.
Apple's India representatives were called by administration officials who demanded that company help weaken the political impact of the warnings, the newspaper said citing three unidentified sources.
An Apple security expert was also summoned from outside the country to a meeting in New Delhi and the expert was pressed to come up with alternative explanations for the warnings, it said.
Apple and India's Ministry of Electronics and Information did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Indian opposition has accused Modi's government of trying to hack the phones of senior opposition politicians who said they had received warning messages from Apple.
At the time, some of the lawmakers shared screenshots on social media of a notification quoting the iPhone manufacturer as saying: "Apple believes you are being targeted by state-sponsored attackers who are trying to remotely compromise the iPhone associated with your Apple ID".
Apple has previously said it did not attribute the threat notifications to "any specific state-sponsored attacker".
(Reporting by Chandni Shah and Baranjot Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
