PNG

30th anniversary of the twin eruptions of Rabaul

 19 September 2024

RNZ


Smoke and ash fills the air as Mount Tavurvur erupts in Rabaul in eastern Papua New Guinea on 30 August 2014. Photo: AFP / Ness Kerton

It has been 30 years since the twin volcano eruptions decimated the beautiful seaside town of Rabaul.

On the morning of 19 September 1994, the Vulcan and Tavurvur volcanos situated on opposite sides of Rabaul's Simpson Harbour, erupted sending giant mushroom clouds into the sky.

Residents were relatively accustomed to quakes and minor eruptions.

But this one was different.

Jurgen Ruh, who owned a shipping and salvage company in Rabaul recalls the unusual tremors that began on the day before.

"We had an earthquake early in the morning at around four o'clock. It was massive. Water came out of the tanks outside; cups fell off the sink and there was a fair bit of damage in the house."
Warning signs and evacuation

Rabaul was built by the German colonial administration in the early 1900s and was the German headquarters until it was captured by the British in the early days of World War 1.

For the people at Matupit near the volcanos, who still had living memory of the last eruption in 1937, the warning signs were being taken very seriously.

Ruh said when the elderly people from Matupit began leaving the area, other people followed.

"The town was self-evacuating. The authorities called all the car dealers and said: Open your gates, let all your cars go. They called the oil companies and told them to give fuel to any car that came.

Car dealers were also told to pick up anyone who was leaving Rabaul and take them to Kerevat, a safe distance away from the eruptions.


Papua New Guinea, Bismarck Archipelago, Gazelle peninsula, New Britain island, East New Britain province, Rabaul, Rabaul Bay, Matupit island, Tavuvur, Turangunan, Tovanumbatir, Rabalanakaia et Vulcan volcanoes seen from Malmaluan viewpoint. Photo: Dozier Marc / Hemis via AFP
Personal stories

Helen Sapien was a 21-year-old trainee broadcaster who had just joined Radio East New Britain. The 19th of September always brings back emotional memories of the uncertainty and fear.

"I'm always emotional, you know...thinking about the people who come crying to you. I was just having my breakfast when I heard the people I lived with shouting: The volcano has erupted.

"When I turned around from where I was sitting, I saw the smoke and it was scary!"

Sapien thought it was the end for her.

The volcanoes shot up tons of rock and ash into the sky while people on the ground braced for the worst.

Residents along the north coast within visible distance of the volcanos said by 11am, the place had become very dark. It was hard to see past 20 meters.

Isaiah Mokis was 8 years old at the time. His mother chose to stay back to care for her elderly mother because she couldn't make the long journey.

He remembers the heart-breaking moments when he knocked on the door repeatedly to convince his mother to go with him and his dad.

"My mother had locked the door with our grandmother, and they began praying. She told us to do and that she would stay and die with our grandmother."

Mokis and her whole family were rescued and taken to safety on a boat.

All the businesses located in Rabaul were destroyed. Buildings collapsed from the heavy ash fall. People left with whatever they could.

Only five people died from the effects of the massive eruption. More than 100,000 were relocated to old plantations in Kokopo.


Volcanic eruption in Tavurvur volcano, East New Britain Province, Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. Photo: Eric Lafforgue / Hans Lucas via AFP
Future of Rabaul

In July, the National Executive Council lifted a long-standing moratorium on Rabaul and surrounding areas officially allowing residents to return.

Prime Minister James Marape, who visited Rabaul for the 30th anniversary, said the government has set up a committee of ministers and allocated funding to rebuild the "Pearl of the Pacific."

"This decision is intended to breathe life back into the region, fostering business growth and development.

"Initial studies show that a functional Rabaul port will generate K2billion annually, not only for East New Britain and the New Guinea Islands, but for the whole country."

With the support from the national government, East New Britain Governor, Michael Marum, is looking at growing tourism numbers going forward.

"Last year we had 20 cruise sh

Boar’s Head is closing its Virginia plant tied to deadly listeria outbreak, discontinues liverwurst

POOR DISINFECTION PROTOCOLS

The closure comes after a USDA investigation found several health violations at a plant in Jarratt, Virginia

By Joy Saha

Staff Writer

SALON
Published September 18, 2024

Boars Head Deli meats display in Grocery Store, Queens, New York.

 (Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Boar’s Head is indefinitely shutting down its plant in Jarratt, Virginia, linked to a nationwide listeria outbreak concerning sliced deli meats.

On Sept. 13, Boar's Head Provision Company announced that it is also permanently discontinuing production of its Strassburger Brand Liverwurst, which was made at the Jarratt plant and contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. In addition to recalling the liverwurst, Boar’s Head expanded its recall “to include every item produced at the same facility as our liverwurst.”

The outbreak has been reported in 18 states. At least nine deaths have been reported and 57 people have been hospitalized since the outbreak.

In a recent statement, Boar’s Head said they “regret and deeply apologize for the recent Listeria monocytogenes contamination in our liverwurst product.”

“We understand the gravity of this situation and the profound impact it has had on affected families,” the statement continued.

Boar’s Head said an internal investigation revealed the “root cause” of the listeria contamination was a “production process that only existed at the Jarratt facility and was used only for liverwurst.”

Related
Following massive recalls and outbreaks, Americans are losing confidence in food safety regulations

“Given the seriousness of the outbreak, and the fact that it originated at Jarratt, we have made the difficult decision to indefinitely close this location, which has not been operational since late July 2024,” the company added.

The latest announcement comes after the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) found several health violations at the Jarratt plant. The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service summed up 69 records of “noncompliances” flagged by inspectors over the past year at the Jarratt plant, according to records obtained by CBS News. On Aug. 29, an FSIS spokesperson told the outlet that the agency was working with the state of Virginia to “ensure the establishment [plant] has an effective system in place to produce safe food for the public.” They added that FSIS has “suspended inspection at the Boar's Head establishment in Jarratt, Virginia, which means that it remains closed until the establishment is able to demonstrate it can produce safe product.”

Records released by the USDA revealed that inspectors faulted Boar's Head several times for mold or mildew building up around the company's facilities in Jarratt. Last month, inspectors found what appeared to be mold and mildew around the hand-washing sinks used by workers preparing ready-to-eat meats, CBS News reported. Mold build-up was also seen outside of steel vats used by the plant and inside holding coolers between the site's smokehouses.

“A black mold like substance was seen throughout the room at the wall/concrete junction. As well as some caulking around brick/metal,” inspectors wrote in a record made in January, adding that some spots were “as large as a quarter.”

The following month, one inspector said they found “ample amounts of blood in puddles on the floor” and a “rancid smell” throughout a cooler used at the plant.

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Records also detailed the presence of insects in and around deli meats at the plant. The situation was so bad that in one instance, the USDA had to tag more than 980 pounds of ham in a smokehouse hallway to be “retained” for an investigation. Flies were also seen going in and out of “vats of pickle” left in a room.

“Small flying gnat-like insects were observed crawling on the walls and flying around the room. The room's walls had heavy meat buildup,” inspectors wrote in June. Other areas of the plant were also riddled with bugs, including what appeared to be “ants traveling down the wall” along with a beetle and a cockroach, inspectors said.

Boar’s Head said the recent closure will affect “hundreds” of employees. The company said it is appointing a new chief food safety officer and quality assurance officer. It is also establishing a safety council consisting of independent food safety experts, according to the Associated Press. Members include Mindy Brashears, a former food safety chief at the USDA, and Frank Yiannas, a former deputy commissioner for food policy at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“This is a dark moment in our company’s history, but we intend to use this as an opportunity to enhance food safety programs not just for our company, but for the entire industry,” Boar’s Head said.


Read more about food recalls

:Multi-state salmonella outbreak prompts massive egg recall

Perdue Foods recalls 167,000 pounds of frozen chicken after customers find “strands of metal wire”

This summer's salmonella-laced cucumber recall linked to nearly 500 cases of illness


By Joy Saha
Joy Saha is a staff writer at Salon. She writes about food news and trends and their intersection with culture. She holds a BA in journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park.MORE FROM Joy Saha

BARENTS OBSERVER

Researchers struggle to register birds as geopolitics hinder border cooperation

In this video report, we go on a boat trip with the Norwegian researchers along the Pasvik River where the border between Arctic Russia and Norway is right in the middle.

Researchers, who are here to register bird species, tell us about a problem they face - since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they can’t cooperate with their Russian colleagues on the other side of the river. Climate change, pollution, protection of the different species… How is this border area dealing with all the issues? The video is in English with Russian subtitles.

Neo-Nazi mercenaries to help FSB guard Russian border with Finland

DURING WWII THE NAZIS WERE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BORDER

The terrifying Russian far-right and neo-Nazi paramilitary ‘Rusich Group’ claims it has entered an official agreement with FSB Border Service to conduct intelligence activities and strengthen the border with Finland.


Wearing masks and home-made camouflage, the paramilitary men are armed with automatic rifles and ready to patrol. This photo is from the Saimaa Canal near Lappeenranta in the south. Photo: Rusich Group / Telegram

By Thomas Nilsen
By Olesia Krivtsova
September 10, 2024

BARENTS OBSERVER

The Rusich Group, or Diversionno-shturmovaya razvedyvatel’naya gruppa (DShRG), origins out of bizarre underground neo-Nazis in St. Petersburg and first took active part in war-like combat as a volunteer battalion in Russian controlled Donbas region in 2014.

Since the full-scale war on Ukraine, members of the group have been linked to the Wagner Group of paramilitary forces on the battlefield.

Now, the group announces on Telegram it has made an official agreement with FSB Border Service to engage in reconnaissance to strengthen the border with Finland.


DShRG Rusich officially entered into cooperation with the FSB Border Service on the state border of Russia to exchange experience, conduct intelligence activities and strengthen the border with Finland, the announcement reads.

Russia shares a 1,340 kilometer long land-border with Finland, from the Gulf of Finland in the south to the Kola Peninsula in the north.

FSB Border Guard Service in charge of the northwestern district of Karelia and Murmansk, based in Petrozavodsk, could not be reached for comments. FSB has stopped answering requests by phone or email from the Barents Observer.

The border is currently closed for people to cross after FSB last winter pushed thousands of migrants into Schengen-Europe through Finnish crossing points. Helsinki made clear that the border will remain closed as long as Moscow doesn’t assure a stop to orchestrating such hybrid operation.

The Rusich Group is known for its extremely cruel methods of warcrimes against prisoner of war (POW). The group has called on Ukrainian POWs to be executed. Videos of torture and executions are posted on the internet.

Its neo-Nazi hateful ideology is based on a mixture of Slavic and Viking paganism, Russian nationalism, patriotism and Nazism.

One of the group leaders is Jan Petrovsky (also known under his new name Voislav Torden). He is a former resident of Norway as his mother in 2004 married a Norwegian. He was seen patrolling streets in Norway in team with Soldiers of Odin and was involved in the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement.

After fighting in Donbas since 2014 and seen with Rusich Group in St. Petersburg, Petrovsky was in July 2023 suddenly arrested by Finnish police at the airport in Helsinki. Kyiv wanted extradition, but Finland’s Supreme Court rejected the request, Helsingin Sanomat reported.

One of the photos posted on Telegram shows two of the men with Rusich Group checking some digital communication or orientation in the forest-area in what looks like the southern part of the border.

Supporting pan-Scandinavian, pan-Slavic ideas, group members carry old runes symbols, like the old-Viking Tiwaz and the eight-rayed Kolovrat, knowns as the Slavic swastika. This is also the symbol the group brands its Telegram channel with. Rusich Group has allegedly recruited far-right supporters from a number of European countries, including Finland.

The mercenaries are armed with automatic rifles and several of the photos posted on Telegram show other weaponry, like hand grenades, sniper rifles, machine guns and what appeared to be hand-made explosives.

FSB Border Service is a branch of the FSB, tasked to patrol Russia’s external borders.

Like Finland, also Russia has a no-go border zone where civilians are not allowed in without special permit. Russia, though, has this border zone fenced off with barbed wire fence all along the border from the Barents Sea in the north to the Baltics in the south.

Russian barriers towards the Pasvik river, which forms the joint Norwegian-Russian border. A similar regime with barbed wire fences is in force along the 1,340 kilometers long border Russia has with Finland. The men on this photo are FSB Border Guards. Photo: Thomas Nilsen

In Soviet times, the border guard service was part of NKVD, later KGB. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s first President Boris Yeltsin removed the border guards from the intelligence and created a separate government agency, the Federal Border Service of Russia, in 1993. Ten years later, in 2003, Vladimir Putin changed the status back and places the border guards directly as a branch of FSB.

On request from Helsinki, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex last year deployed guards to help Finland monitor its eastern border.

A STOP sign marking no entrance to the border zone on the Finnish side north in Lapland. Photo: Thomas Nilsen

Traces of radioactive Cesium-137 measured along Norway’s border with Russia

The radioactivity was measured in filters at Viksjøfjell and Svanhovd in the second week of September, but the origin is still unknown.


Norway shares a 198 kilometer long border with Russia's Kola Peninsula. Viksjøfjell to the left, Svanhovd to the right in the horizon. Photo: Thomas Nilsen

By Thomas Nilsen

September 17, 2024

BARENTS OBSERVER

Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (DSA) says the amount of Cesium discovered in the air filters is “very low.”

The filters from Viksjøfjell and Svanhovd are analyzed at the emergency preparedness unit in Pasvik once a week. Radioactive Cesium-137 appeared sometime between September 9th and 12th.

Bredo Møller with DSA’s Emergency Preparedness unit at Svanhovd is not worried.

“The levels are clearly higher than normal, but pose no risk to humans or the environment,” Møller says to the Barents Observer.

“We have detected 5 µBq/m3 at the filter station at Svanhovd for week 37 (9-16 September) and we have measured the same concentration (5 µBq/m3) at the filter station at Viksjøfjell week 36/37 (5-12 September),” he explains.

Bredo Møller says the DSA will carry out more analyzes over the next few days

“We will not be surprised if these are also at the same level as what we have seen today.”

DSA says no other radioactive isotopes were discovered when the filters were studied. Nor is it known whether any measurements on the Russian side of the border have similar results.

No other filters in northern Norway or Finnish Lapland have detected a peak in Cesium over the last week. Cesium-137 is formed as a fission product by operating a nuclear reactor.

DSA has laboratories for analysing radiation from air filters in northern Norway both in Tromsø and at Svanhovd in the Pasvik valley. Photo: Thomas Nilsen

Reactors

There are numerous maritime reactors onboard submarines and icebreakers operating the Barents Sea out of bases along the coast of the Kola Peninsula. The large-scale strategic exercise Ocean-2024 ended on September 16, but it is unlikely that such releases are coming from a naval reactor in operation at sea. Small leakages of Cesium-137 are more likely to appear during start-up or maintenance of a reactor or from handling spent nuclear fuel.

Bredo Møller says the Cesium could also originate from forest fires. Fallout from the Chernobyl accident in 1986 and even the atmospheric nuclear testings before 1962 can still be measured in nature. Cesium-137 has a half-life of about 30 years.

When old trees burn, radioactivity could be brought up in the air and blowing by the wind.

 

Novaya Zemlya

Russian weapons designers from Rosatom have all summer and early autumn been working at the Pankovo test site at Novaya Zemlya. The site is dedicated to test the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile believed to have a more or less open cooling of the mini-reactor.

Work at the test-site, however, is strictly secret and very little information is made public. There are no official reports that the Burevestnik is tested, but indications can be seen by studying daily updated satellite images from the Arctic archipelago.

The Barents Observer has in the course of the summer seen several cargo-ships and special purpose vessels in the waters outside Pankovo and over the last few weeks, Rosatom’s two large Il-76 transport planes have periodically been parked at the airport in Rogachevo at Novaya Zemlya.

The blue-colored aircraft are believed to conduct operations connected to the Burevestnik testings.

Satellite image by Sentinel, graphics by Barents Observer

There are currently a few nuclear-powered icebreakers moored at Atomflot in Murmansk.

The radioactive isotope now measured in Finnmark could as well come from faraway, depending on wind-directions.

A fleet of Chinese container carriers shuttles on Russian Arctic route

The ships are the biggest of their kind that ever have sailed on the Northern Sea Route.


The north Russian port of Arkhangelsk is key destination for the Chinese container carriers that this year sail on the Northern Sea Route. Photo: Arkhangelsk Governor Aleksandr Tsybulsky on VK

By Atle Staalesen

September 17, 2024
BARENTS OBSERVER

A Russian nuclear icebreaker in early September sailed from the Chukotka Sea and into the East Siberian Sea. In its wake were the 289 meter long bulk carrier Smoke and 231 meter long container ship NewNew Star.

Sea-ice conditions in the area were complicated, icebreaker operator Rosatomflot informed on social media VK.

None of the two ships have any kind of ice-class.

According to Rosatomflot, the NewNew Star is the biggest container carrier that ever have sailed across the Russian Arctic route. It was built by a German yard in 2007 and has a deadweight of 42,000 tons and a length of 231 meters.

It is part of a fleet of container carriers operated by company Torgmoll, a Chinese-registered company closely associated with Russian business interests.

The NewNew Star was in mid-September 2024 on its way south along the Norwegian coast with course for St.Petersburg. Map by Vesselfinder/Barents Observer

In addition to the NewNew Star, the Torgmoll also operates the NewNew Panda 1, NewNew Moon, NewNew Star 2 and the Xin Xin Shan. All of them have permissions for sailing on the Northern Sea Route this year.

The biggest of them is the NewNew Panda 1. It has a length of 261 meter and a deadweight of 53,697 tons. Judging from information from the Northern Sea Route Administration, it is due to sail across the Arctic route in early October.

Torgmoll also operates the NewNew Polar bear, the ship that is suspected of having sabotaged the Balticconnector pipeline in the Gulf of Finland.

The NewNew Moon on 13th September arrived in Arkhangelsk after sailing from China on the Northern Sea Route. Map by Marinetraffic/The Barents Observer

Several of the container vessels have the north Russian port of Arkhangelsk as their destination. The 196 meter long NewNew Moon arrived in the port city on the 13th of September.

According to authorities in Arkhangelsk, the ships all carry import consumer goods from China.

In mid-August, regional governor Aleksandr Tsybulsky said that 500 containers had arrived in town and that they were packed with spare parts for cars, household products and other consumer goods.

“And this is only the beginning,” he added. “In a couple of weeks, we expect another two ships from China with about 700-800 containers,” the governor explained.

According to Tsybulsky, a total of ten Chinese ships will visit the Port of Arkhangelsk in course of 2024.

The regional leader has himself on several occasions met representatives of Chinese companies to discuss business. In May, he was in the Chinese port city of Dalian to discuss shipments on the Northern Sea Route. In June, he followed up talks during the St.Petersburg Economic Forum.

Over the past three years, trade between Arkhangelsk and China is reported to have more than doubled. China now accounts for 32,5 percent of the region’s foreign trade, Tsybulsky says.

Doctors Without Borders forced to leave Russia

The organization has been helping to provide expensive health care in Russia for more than 30 years.

Doctors Without Borders has been involved in tuberculosis treatments in Russia's northern regions. Photo: Svetlana Nevsegda/MSF

Text: Elizaveta Vereykina
September 17, 2024

BARENTS OBSERVER

In the statement on their website, Médecins Sans Frontières/ (MSF) explains that in August this year they received a letter from the Ministry of Justice of Russia, with the decision to withdraw the affiliate office of the non-profit association in Russia because, as the Ministry puts it, the MSF’s activity did not correlate with the organization’s standing order. What exactly is meant by that has remained unclear so far.


“It is with a heavy heart that we have to close our activities in Russia,” Yashovardhan, head of MSF programs in Russia, is quoted as saying. “Our organisation’s work is guided by the principles of independence, impartiality, and neutrality, and medical ethics. We provide assistance based on the needs.”

The MSF has been active in Russia since 1992 and has been involved in a series of health programs essential for the Russian population. For example, in Arkhangelsk, a city in the Russian north, where MSF has been involved in tuberculosis treatments.

Tuberculosis is one of the major health issues in the country, where, according to the Russian business newspaper Vedomosti, in 2022 yet another spike in the disease had been registered,

As Russia’s Health Ministry reported earlier on their website, they have been cooperating closely with the Russian branch of the “Médecins Sans Frontières” to eliminate tuberculosis:

“This is an expensive therapy, the cost of a course varies from two thousand to one and a half million rubles and more, - the Minister of Health of the Arkhangelsk region Anton Karpunov was quoted as saying on the Ministry’s website. - “There are situations when we cannot provide a citizen with a full package of drugs due to their high cost or absence on the Russian market. Then non-profit organizations come to the rescue”, - the Minister explained.

In the MSF’s statement about withdrawing from Russia, the organization highlights that by 2024, 41 patients in the Arkhangelsk and Ivanovo regions started treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis within the program in cooperation with the Russian health authorities.

It’s unclear why, in such a context, the MSF is still being closed by Russian authorities and how the MSF’s support could be replaced.

Besides Arkhangelsk and Ivanovo, Doctors Without Borders also operated in Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Kemerovo region, Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan regions.

Many other NGO’s have recently stopped their operations in Russia as what experts with Amnesty International see as a crackdown on any independent organizations, who dare to defend human rights and speak the truth. Also, any affiliation with foreign funding is branded as an “enemy” by the Russian authorities.

FROM THE MARKET NOT THE LAB

Scientists again link covid pandemic origin to Wuhan market animals

Genetic evidence from a new report suggests the coronavirus pandemic most likely spilled over from animals in the Wuhan market.

By Joel Achenbach
September 19, 2024

An international team of scientists published a peer-reviewed paper Thursday saying genetic evidence indicates the coronavirus pandemic most likely originated with a natural spillover from an animal or animals sold in a market in Wuhan, China, where many of the first human cases of covid-19 were identified.

The paper, which appears in the journal Cell, does not claim to prove conclusively that the pandemic began in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, and it is unlikely to end the acrimonious and politicized debate over the coronavirus’s origin.

For more than four years, researchers, intelligence agencies, journalists and amateur sleuths have tussled over the two main scenarios for the pandemic’s origin: a natural spillover from animals or some kind of leak from a laboratory experimenting on coronaviruses.

The new report bolsters the natural spillover theory, but it does not rule out other origins. A key limitation of the research is that the genetic data, obtained by Chinese investigators in the early days of the pandemic after the market was closed, cannot reveal whether any animal was actually infected with the virus.

“The results we see are consistent with infected animals, but we cannot prove that they were,” said Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research and a co-author of the new paper.

Much of the report is familiar territory. Many of the 23 authors of the paper are known to have long supported a market origin for the virus. In an informal report in March 2023, they presented a central feature of the genetic data — the confirmation that animals potentially capable of triggering a pandemic were in the market.

That early report, which was not peer-reviewed or published in a journal, had a scientifically awkward provenance. It was written over the course of about 10 days, Débarre said, after she noticed that Chinese researchers had posted some of their genetic data from the market on GISAID, a public database regularly scanned by pandemic researchers.

The Chinese researchers had submitted a report to the journal Nature, and, after peer review, it was published in April 2023. The Nature paper from the Chinese scientists describes the genetic data as inconclusive about the origin of the pandemic, including that there is no proof any animals were infected with the virus.

“Furthermore, even if the animals were infected, our study does not rule out human-to-animal transmission, as the sampling was carried out after the human infection within the market,” the Nature paper states. “Thus, the possibility of potential introduction of the virus to the market through infected humans, or cold-chain products, cannot yet be ruled out.”

The new paper in Cell is longer, more comprehensive, probes a broader range of questions, and includes more data from the market and early-patient cases than the international team’s informal 2023 report, Débarre said.

Both the earlier and the new reports document that traces of the virus were found clustered in a section of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market where genetic traces of animals were also found. Several of those species — raccoon dogs, rabbits and dogs — are known to be susceptible to infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid. Raccoon dogs have also been shown experimentally to be capable of transmitting the virus.

A significant element of the new paper is an analysis of when the pandemic began. Scientists can study mutations of the coronavirus, which evolves at a relatively steady rate, to estimate when the millions of genomes deposited in databases had the most recent common ancestor. That genetic evidence points to mid-November 2019 as the most likely time the virus spilled into humans and began spreading, and there could have been two or more spillover events, the researchers said.

“The timing of the origin of the market outbreak is genetically indistinguishable from the timing of the origin of the pandemic as a whole,” the report states.


There are many independent lines of evidence pointing to the market as the epicenter of the pandemic, said Kristian Andersen, an infectious-disease researcher at Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif., and a co-author of the report in Cell. No previous virus spillover has been so well-documented, he said.

“Of any previous outbreak, pandemic, you name it, we don’t have this level of granularity,” he said. “We can narrow it down to a single market, and narrow it down to a section in that market, and maybe even narrow it down to a single stall in that market. That is mind-boggling.”

Early in the outbreak, as word spread of an unusual respiratory illness in Wuhan, officials closed the Huanan market. It was cleaned and all animals were removed.

Finding the specific animals that could have caused a spillover of the virus may be impossible, said Michael Worobey, a University of Arizona evolutionary biologist and co-author of the report.

“Immediately, you have a needle-in-a-haystack situation, but then you incinerate all the haystacks and burn up all the needles,” Worobey said.

The genetic evidence, the new report contends, supports the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 emerged in the same way that SARS-CoV-1 — which sickened people in 2002-2003 but was extinguished before it could cause a full-blown pandemic — is widely believed to have started, from animals sold in a market. The authors contend the world needs to take more aggressive action to shut down the illegal trade in wildlife to lower the risk of another catastrophic pandemic.

“All the data [on the origin of the pandemic] currently available point in the same direction, which is the wildlife trade in the Huanan market. Will it put the debate to an end? I’m afraid it’s unlikely,” Débarre said.

The natural spillover hypothesis has been challenged by proponents of the “lab leak theory,” an umbrella term for a suite of scenarios, many of them involving the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The sprawling institute conducted extensive research on coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-1. Proponents of the lab leak theory argue the institute conducted research with lax biosafety protocols.

The debate over covid’s origins continues to be contentious and politicized. It is also entangled with geopolitical tensions and with a broader debate about biosafety practices and the regulatory oversight of laboratory experiments that seek to assess and understand the threat pathogens could pose.

The lab leak theory emerged early in 2020 and was embraced by President Donald Trump. It gained momentum in May 2021 when 18 scientists, including Worobey, wrote a letter to the journal Science saying all possible origins of the pandemic, including a lab leak, deserve investigation. President Joe Biden then asked his intelligence agencies to investigate.

They were unable to reach a consensus. Most favored a natural origin, but two agencies favored a lab origin. None claimed high confidence in their conclusions.

A report from Senate Republicans in 2022 said a “research-related accident” was the “most likely” origin of the pandemic, although it did not rule out a natural origin. “Critical corroborating evidence of a natural zoonotic spillover is missing,” the report said.

There is no evidence that the virus, or its progenitor, was inside a laboratory before the outbreak. Chinese officials have denied the virus came from a lab. But the Chinese government has limited outside investigations, and the lack of transparency has been an obstacle in the search to understand the origin of the virus.

Chinese officials have also dismissed the market origin, instead floating conjectures, generally dismissed by the global scientific community, that the virus came from outside China, possibly via packages of frozen seafood or from a military research facility in Maryland.

“To the question — Did it come from a lab or come from a market? — I think we already knew the answer to that,” Andersen said. “Yep, it’s the market. It’s natural, as we’ve previously seen happen.”

Opinion

The losing strategy of underestimating Russia

Russia remains a formidable power. The West should not assume it is a depleted military force.

By Lee Hockstader
September 19, 2024 


Aboard a NATO surveillance flight above the Norwegian Sea last week, just two of the 19 military personnel were as old as the plane, a 45-year-old modified Boeing 707 jammed with electronics and monitoring devices, its fuselage crowned with an enormous radar dome.

But the young crew on the lumbering AWACS — the acronym stands for Airborne Warning and Control System — was on the lookout for an enduring threat: Russia’s Northern Fleet, on maneuvers near Iceland as part of a massive worldwide naval exercise.

That exercise, dubbed Ocean 2024, involved some 400 Russian warships, submarines and support vessels in the North Atlantic and Pacific, as well as the Mediterranean, Caspian and Baltic seas, along with some 90,000 military personnel, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Chinese vessels also participated.

Even if Russia’s figures are inflated, the operation was a muscle-flexing reminder that Moscow remains plenty equipped to project power across the globe.

That sobering fact often gets lost amid China’s rising threat and Washington’s pivot to the Indo-Pacific. It shouldn’t, because it would be a mistake once again to underestimate the Kremlin’s resolve to challenge the U.S.-led global order, or Moscow’s staying power in Ukraine.

The outset of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale war in Ukraine exposed Russia’s ground forces as incompetently led and beholden to a tyrant in thrall to his own arrogance and neoimperial ambitions. The ensuing stalemate, now well into its third year, has been a strategic calamity for Moscow.





Yet if Russia is a corrupt, retrograde, nihilistic power, it remains a power. Given the West’s pattern of misreading Moscow’s resilience, it’s worth taking stock of the menace it still poses far beyond Ukrainian borders.

Reminders of that threat have been plentiful in recent months. On the AWACS flights that patrolled the Norwegian Sea east of Iceland last week, Russian ships, presumed to be part of the Ocean 2024 exercise, were detected on nearly every mission, a NATO spokesman said.

On the flight I was on, the tactical director, a French air force major, told me: “We didn’t used to encounter the Russian navy very often. Now we know they are out there.”

That observation was reinforced in a recent paper for Chatham House, a British think tank, by a half-dozen military specialists who surveyed Moscow’s plans for regenerating its military, now the recipient of an eye-watering one-third of all Russian government spending.

Much has been made of Ukraine’s impressive success in sinking or crippling a chunk of Putin’s Black Sea Fleet. But with a couple of exceptions, the Chatham House study said, the ships destroyed or disabled were “very old or limited” vessels. The Russian navy “has lost none of its blue-water combat capability,” the paper concluded, and Moscow’s “global power projection capabilities are undiminished.”

To underline that capability, three Russian warships and a submarine cruised into Cuban waters in June and remained just off Havana for several days. They posed no specific threat to the United States; unlike other ships and submarines in Moscow’s arsenal, they were not equipped with nuclear weapons. But they did carry hypersonic precision missiles with a range of several hundred miles.

It’s also worth remembering that Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling, which has successfully intimidated Western leaders into slowing weapons deliveries to Ukraine, has involved more than rhetoric. On his orders, Russian forces in May rehearsed preparations for launching tactical nuclear weapons.

That is not to say Putin intends to launch a nuclear war, or that he believes Russia’s fleet could go toe-to-toe with the U.S. Navy. But the longer the war in Ukraine grinds on, the more credence the West should give his bedrock assumption — that Moscow can outlast Washington and its allies through the sheer mass of Russian forces and resources, and by keeping the West off balance with threats of escalation.

Putin’s strategy seems increasingly sound, as public support for Ukraine has softened in the United States and parts of Europe. There, hopes have receded that Russia can be defeated on the battlefield, or that its economy will crumble under the weight of U.S.-led sanctions.

The wishful view of Russia as a paper tiger has been discredited by the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive last year, and by Putin’s ability to shrug off an attempted mutiny last year and repeated military setbacks.

Granted, Ukraine’s invasion of the Russian region of Kursk this summer was a propaganda triumph. But it has given Kyiv control of just .006 percent of Russia’s landmass. By contrast, Moscow’s forces occupy nearly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory — despite the infusion of $200 billion of Western military and other aid.

The West has been right to help Kyiv retain its independence. It needs now to formulate a muscular long-term strategy that deters future Russian aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere — without starry-eyed assumptions that Moscow is a depleted force.




Opinion by Lee HockstaderLee Hockstader has been The Post's European Affairs columnist, based in Paris, since 2023. Previously he was a member of the Post editorial board; a national correspondent, a foreign correspondent, and a local reporter. He was awarded The Post's Eugene Meyer Award for lifetime achievement in 2014follow on X hockstader

Antiwar film or propaganda? ‘Russians at War’ draws protests at festivals.

Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s deputy prime minister, expressed “grave concerns” about the documentary screened by the Toronto International Film Festival.

By Amanda Coletta and Jada Yuan
September 18, 2024 

TORONTO — The plan, Anastasia Trofimova says, was to shine a light on an underreported aspect of Russia’s war on Ukraine. The Canadian Russian director says she spent seven months embedded with a Russian battalion, without the permission of the country’s defense officials, to produce her documentary.

“Russians at War” chronicles the life of disorganized and disillusioned Russian soldiers, many of whom have been drafted into service or have signed up for the money, the conflict’s purpose growing more elusive each passing day.

In its short life, the joint Canadian French production has drawn opprobrium and protests from Kyiv to Ottawa. Supporters say it’s an antiwar film that captures an element of conflict that hasn’t been much covered: the views, fears and sacrifices of its instigators.

Opponents say it’s Kremlin propaganda.

The documentary has drawn controversy since it premiered this month at the Venice Film Festival. Andriy Yermak, the former producer who runs Ukraine’s presidential office, called its inclusion “disgraceful.” Kyiv this week added Trofimova to its list of national security threats.

But the criticism intensified ahead of screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival, drawing in Canada’s deputy prime minister and Ukrainian diplomats. Canada is home to the largest population of Ukrainians outside Ukraine and Russia.

One of the film’s funders withdrew support. Amid “significant threats” to festival operations and safety, organizers made the “unprecedented” move to suspend screenings.

Opponents say the film “whitewashes” the crimes of Russian aggressors, fails to challenge their false claims and omits the Ukrainian perspective. They warn that it risks weakening Western support for Ukraine. Some question whether it should exist at all.

“It’s not the time to evoke sympathy for Russian soldiers because they continue to occupy us, fire missiles at populated areas and the director won’t show this in her film,” Ukrainian filmmaker Olha Zhurba said in a Facebook post.

Supporters say it’s less “Triumph of the Will,” the 1935 Nazi propaganda documentary, than “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the antiwar epic that showed the horrors of World War I through the eyes of young German soldiers. Pulling the film from festivals, they say, would be a form of censorship and could set a dangerous precedent.

“Pretty much the entire discussion has been framed so far by people who have not seen” it, Trofimova told The Washington Post. (Trofimova worked as a Russian-language interpreter for The Post during reporting for an article published in July, before “Russians at War” was released.

After suspending screenings last week, organizers showed the film Tuesday, two days after the awards were handed out and the festival officially closed.

Cameron Bailey, the festival’s chief executive, said staff were targeted in hundreds of incidents of verbal abuse, which included threats of sexual violence. At the screening Tuesday, he defended the decision to include it in the program and to finally screen it.

“I believe that surrendering to pressure from some members of the public or from a government when it comes to presenting any cultural product can become a corrosive force in our society,” Bailey said.

The documentary team didn’t set out to make a film about Russian soldiers. Oscar-nominated producer Cornelia Principe approached Trofimova at the start of the conflict to suggest a film about antiwar protests in Russia.

But the plan changed when Trofimova had a chance encounter on a train with a man in a Santa suit named Ilya. He was a Ukrainian from eastern Ukraine fighting for Russia. She wanted to know more.

“On the one hand, I had the Russian media who are saying that these are these faceless heroes who never bleed,” Trofimova said. “And then most of the reports in the Western media are talking about all these awful war crimes. And it’s just a question I had to answer for myself.” She asked to embed with Ilya’s support battalion.

The film’s opponents say it’s inconceivable that Trofimova could have embedded with the battalion without the permission or knowledge of Russia’s Defense Ministry. She says she sought approval from the unit’s commanders. None granted it, she said, but none turned her away.

When Trofimova arrives in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, the battalion is in disarray. Only 300 of its 900 members are left, and “half are crippled,” one says. They’re awaiting the arrival of 300 new conscripts.

They’re armed with Soviet-era weaponry that they do not know how to operate. A new arrival, carrying only a knife and a flashlight, is killed in battle. One soldiers says he hasn’t been paid. Another takes shrapnel to the lips after a comrade fails to attach a grenade to a drone properly.

Some of the troops say they’re motivated by patriotism. Others were lured by money. One says he joined because he feared he would slip back into drug addiction. Several say they don’t know what they’re fighting for.

Many become disillusioned. They dismiss pro-Moscow media as “propaganda” and “lies.” They complain that they are being sent to the front like “blind kittens.”

“They say the only way back to Russia is feet first,” one soldier says. “If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have come. Because I, too, had life plans.”

Principe, the producer, said she doubted Russian authorities would be “happy” about a documentary that “doesn’t make the Russian army look very good.”

But some of the criticism is aimed less at what’s in the film than what’s not.

One soldier — nom de guerre: “Cartoon” — tells Trofimova that he must vanquish “Nazis” in Ukraine. The characterization goes unchallenged.

When she asks him about reports that Russians are committing war crimes, he dismisses them: “Why would they?” There’s no mention that a U.N. commission and other bodies have concluded that Russian soldiers have committed war crimes.

Principe said the scene shows that the soldier “has been isolated from the reality of what’s going on.” The words are his, she said, not the film’s.

Trofimova, who quit a sister channel of Russian state media outlet RT in 2020, said she began receiving threats when it was announced that the film would premiere in Venice. But the support she received there, she said, was overwhelming. So many people approached her in tears, she said, that she began to avoid the festival grounds.

That was not the case in Canada.

The documentary was funded in part by the public broadcasters of Ontario and British Columbia. Ontario’s TVO accessed support through the Canada Media Fund, a nonprofit funded in part by the federal government.

TVO initially defended the documentary, calling it “an antiwar film” made at “at great personal risk to the filmmaker.” But four days later, TVO’s board chair said the broadcaster would “no longer be supporting or airing” it.

Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s deputy prime minister, said she shared the “grave concerns” of Ukrainian diplomats and diaspora groups. Freeland, a former foreign minister, has Ukrainian heritage.

“We as a country have to be very, very clear that there can be no moral equivalency in our understanding of this conflict,” she told reporters last week. “... It’s not right for Canadian public money to be supporting the screening and production of a film like this.”

Trofimova, who studied in Canada, called Freeland’s comments “shocking.”

“That was the first time, definitely in my memory, that a Canadian elected official has overstepped her mandate and pretty much demanded to censor the work of a Canadian artist,” she said.

Outside the screening Tuesday, several dozen demonstrators chanted “Shame on Canada!” and “Russians lie, Ukrainians die!”

Iryna Melnykova bought two tickets to each of the two screenings Tuesday. Not because she intended to go, the Ukrainian Canadian said, but to prevent others from seeing it. She hasn’t seen it, she said; the trailer was enough.

“I don’t want to listen to any stories, any explanations, any justifications” from Russians, she said. “They are war criminals.”

Susan Oppenheim decided to see the film after politicians began criticizing it. She said it was far from Russian propaganda.

“I think it was clear that the group of soldiers that she embedded with were teenagers,” she told The Post. “They knew nothing. They have no idea what’s going on, and they did say more than once, ‘Don’t watch Russian television.’”

David L. Stern, Serhiy Morgunov and Serhii Korolchuk in Kyiv contributed to this report.




By Amanda ColettaAmanda Coletta is a Toronto-based correspondent who covers Canada and the Caribbean for The Washington Post. She previously worked in London, first at the Economist and then the Wall Street Journal.follow on X @a_coletta

By Jada YuanJada Yuan is a writer for The Washington Post's Style section focusing on culture and entertainment, after several years covering national politics and two very different First Ladies. She spent 2018 circumnavigating the globe as the first 52 Places Traveler for The New York Times, and was a longtime culture writer for New York magazine. follow on X @jadabird