Mattel says it 'deeply' regrets misprint on 'Wicked' dolls packaging that links to porn site

November 11, 2024 

Cynthia Erivo, left, and Ariana Grande arrive at the premiere of "Wicked" on Nov. 9, 2024, at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles.

 (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Toy giant Mattel says it “deeply” regrets an error on the packaging of its “Wicked” movie-themed dolls, which mistakenly links toy buyers to a pornographic website.

The error gained attention on social media over the weekend, where numerous users shared photos of the URL printed on the back of the boxes for the special edition dolls, which feature characters from the movie adaptation of “Wicked” set to hit theaters later this month. Instead of linking to Universal Pictures' official WickedMovie.com page, the website listed leads to an adult film site that requires consumers to be over 18 to enter.

In a statement sent to The Associated Press, Mattel said it was “made aware of a misprint on the packaging of the Mattel Wicked collection dolls," which it said are primarily sold in the U.S. “We deeply regret this unfortunate error and are taking immediate action to remedy this,” the company added.


Mattel did not confirm whether this action included removing unsold products with the incorrect link from stores. But as of Monday morning, at least some of these “Wicked” dolls appeared to be no longer available or not in stock on sites like Amazon, Target and Mattel's.

In the meantime, the company is advising consumers who already have the dolls to discard their packaging or obscure the link — and contact Mattel's customer service for more information.

Mattel unveiled its special “Wicked” collection earlier this year. Back in July, a promotion shared on Instagram showed Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, who star as Elphaba and Glinda in Universal Pictures' upcoming film, seeing the line's singing dolls for the first time.

The beloved Broadway musical has been split into two parts for its movie adaptation. The first chapter of “Wicked” will hit theaters on Nov. 22, with part two set for a fall 2025 release.


The Associated Press

 

Spirit Airlines flight hit by gunfire as gang violence shuts down Haiti's main airport

Violence comes on same day that a new interim prime minister was sworn in

The Associated Press · Posted: Nov 11, 2024 

A police officer looks on during an exchange of gunfire between gangs and police in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Monday. Firefights between gangs and police broke out in parts of Haiti's capital, the same day a new interim prime minister was expected to take over. (Odelyn Joseph/The Associated Press)

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Haiti's international airport shut down on Monday after gangs opened fire at a commercial flight landing in Port-au-Prince, prompting some airlines to temporarily suspend operations as the country swore in a new interim prime minister who promised to restore peace.

The Spirit Airlines flight headed from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Port-Au-Prince was close to landing in Haiti's capital when gangs shot at the plane, striking a flight attendant, who suffered minor injuries, according to the airline, the U.S. Embassy and flight tracking data. The flight was diverted and landed in the Dominican Republic.

Photos and videos obtained by The Associated Press show bullet holes dotting the interior of a plane.

The shooting appeared to be part of what the U.S. Embassy called "gang-led efforts to block travel to and from Port-au-Prince, which may include armed violence and disruptions to roads, ports and airports."

Spirit, JetBlue and American Airlines said Monday they were cancelling flights to and from Haiti. Air Transat also said in a statement it has cancelled its Nov. 13 flights between Montreal and Port-au-Prince.

Journalists take cover from the exchange of gunfire between gangs and police in Port-au-Prince on Monday. (Odelyn Joseph/The Associated Press)

JetBlue Airways said late on Monday it will extend a halt to all flights to and from Haiti through Dec. 2 after damage from a bullet to a plane returning from Port-au-Prince was discovered.

Earlier, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti issued a travel warning saying that the city's airport was shut down due to "gang-led efforts to block travel to and from Port-au-Prince, which may include armed violence and disruptions to roads, ports and airports."

"The U.S. Embassy is aware of a temporary pause in operations at [Toussiant Louverture International Airport] as of Nov. 11," the embassy's statement said. "The security situation in Haiti is unpredictable and dangerous."

In other parts of Haiti's capital, firefights between gangs and police broke out. Rounds of gunfire echoed through the streets as heavily armed officers ducked behind walls and civilians ran in terror. In other upper-class areas, gangs set fire to homes. Schools closed as panic spread in a number of areas.

New PM sworn in Monday

The turmoil comes a day after a council meant to re-establish democratic order in the Caribbean country fired the interim prime minister, Garry Conille, replacing him with businessman Alix Didier Fils-Aimé. The council has been marked by infighting and three members were recently accused of corruption.

As he was sworn in, Fils-Aimé said his top priorities were to restore peace to the crisis-stricken country and hold elections, which haven't been held in Haiti since 2016.

Haiti's new interim prime minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, centre, reacts after his inauguration ceremony in Port-au-Prince on Monday. (Odelyn Joseph/The Associated Press)

"There is a lot to be done to bring back hope," he said before a room of suit-clad diplomats and security officials. "I'm deeply sorry for the people ... that have been victimized, forced to leave everything they own."

The country has seen weeks of political chaos, which observers warned could result in even more violence in a place where bloodshed has become the new normal. The country's slate of gangs have long capitalized on political turmoil to make power grabs, shutting down airports, shipping ports and stirring chaos.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, meets with Garry Conille, then the Haitian prime minister, at United Nations headquarters in New York on Sept. 23. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

The United Nations estimates that gangs control 85 per of the capital of Port-au-Prince, while a UN-backed mission led by Kenyan police to quell gang violence struggles with a lack of funding and personnel, prompting calls for a UN peacekeeping mission.

Louis-Henri Mars, executive director of Lakou Lape, an organization working on peace building in violent areas of Haiti, said the political fighting has "allowed the gangs to have more freedom to attack more neighbourhoods in the city and expand their control of Port-au-Prince. Civilians, he fears, will suffer the consequences.

• Canada condemns 'horrifying' wave of gang violence in Haiti

"There will be more lives lost, more internal displacement and more hunger in a country where half the population is on the brink of starvation," he said.

The transitional council was established in April, tasked with choosing Haiti's next prime minister and cabinet, with the hope that it would help quell violence, which exploded after Haitian President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in 2021.

Transitional council plagued by infighting

The council was meant to pave the way to democratic elections. Gangs have capitalized on that power vacuum to make their own power grabs.

Conille railed against the council's decision to fire him, calling it an illegal overreach of its powers.

"This resolution, taken outside of any legal and constitutional framework, raises serious concerns about its legitimacy and its repercussions on the future of our country," he wrote in a letter.

WATCH | Flight attendant was grazed by bullet: 

Haiti’s international airport closed Monday after a passenger plane was hit by gunfire, reportedly injuring a Spirit Airlines crew member.

Organizations, including the Organization of American States, tried and failed last week to mediate disagreements in an attempt to save the fragile transition.

On Monday, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric urged all involved in Haiti's democratic transition "to work constructively together," although he stopped short of offering an opinion on the move to oust Conille.

"Overcoming their differences and putting the country first remains critical," he said. "What is important is that Haitian political leaders put the interests of Haiti first and foremost."

With files from CBC News and Reuters

Flight from Florida to Haiti diverted after gunfire hits plane over Port-au-Prince

Travellers walk in front of the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince in May 2024. (Orlando Barria/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock/File via CNN Newsource)

Caitlin Stephen Hu, Michael Rios and Ivana Kottasová
CNN
Digital
Updated Nov. 11, 2024 


Haiti swore in a new prime minister on Monday after a Spirit Airlines plane was hit by gunfire over the country’s capital Port-au-Prince, according to a diplomatic source in the country. The incident resulted in what the airline described as “minor injuries” to one of its crew members.

Spirit said Monday that its flight 951 from Fort Lauderdale in Florida to Port-au-Prince was diverted and landed in Santiago in the Dominican Republic, where “an inspection revealed evidence of damage to the aircraft consistent with gunfire.”The information you need to know, sent directly to you: Download the CTV News App

The airline said one of its flight attendants reported minor injuries and was being evaluated by medical personnel and that no other injuries were reported. It added that the aircraft has been taken out of service, and Spirit services to Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien have been suspended.

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Data reviewed by CNN from FlightRadar24 showed the plane descending to an altitude of 550 feet over Port-au-Prince’s Tabarre neighborhood, just east of the airport, before pulling up quickly and bypassing the runway.

Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s main international airport, has since paused operations following the incident, the diplomatic source told CNN.

The Haitian-based commercial airline Sunrise Airways told CNN that it has suspended flights until further notice. US-based carriers JetBlue and American Airlines have also cancelled flights to and from Haiti until Thursday.

Haiti has been ridden with widespread gang activity and political chaos for nearly a year, with international actors also impacted by direct violence in recent weeks. Last month, a United Nations helicopter was also hit by bullets while flying over Port-au-Prince. And in a separate incident in October, gangs targeted US embassy vehicles with gunfire, later prompting the evacuation of 20 embassy staffers.

In late February and early March, coordinated gang attacks forced the closure of both the airport and main seaport in the Haitian capital, choking off vital supplies of food and humanitarian aid to the Caribbean nation.

Police officers patrol the area during an exchange of gunfire between gangs and police in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Nov. 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)
New prime minister

The latest incident comes amid escalating political turmoil, following a vote by Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council to replace Prime Minister Garry Conille after less than half a year in office.

Businessman Alix Didier Fils-Aimé was formally sworn in as Haiti’s new prime minister on Monday at a ceremony attended by various government officials in Port-au-Prince.

He pledged to restore democracy and security across the country, which has been plagued by deadly gang violence for years. “We are in a transition, an immense project. Of course, the essential first project — and one necessary to the success of the transition — is the reestablishment of security!” he declared, drawing applause from those in attendance.

Haiti's new Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, right, shakes hands with Transition Council President Leslie Voltaire during his swearing-in ceremony in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Nov. 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

The transitional council tapped Didier Fils-Aimé for the job after eight of its nine voting members signed a declaration on November 8 to replace Conille, who had been in office for less than a year.Read more of the latest international headlines(opens in a new tab)

Copies of the signed declaration were leaked over the weekend and published on the country’s official gazette early Monday.

In a statement shared with CNN on Sunday, council member Fritz Jean said the council reached its decision after considering several issues with Conille’s tenure as prime minister. Among them, Jean said Conille had made decisions without informing the council and took on the duties of the president, such as engaging in diplomatic affairs.

Conille has not yet publicly commented on the resolution. CNN has reached out to the prime minister’s office for comment.

Conille’s predecessor Ariel Henry stepped down earlier this year amid spiraling gang violence.

Journalists take cover from the exchange of gunfire between gangs and police in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Nov. 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

Maryland

FIRST BLACK WOMAN GENERAL USA

Harriet Tubman awarded posthumous rank of general on Veterans Day


Tubman helped free several Black people from slavery and led soldiers on a gunboat raid during US civil war


Associated Press

Mon 11 Nov 2024 

The revered abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who was the first woman to oversee an American military action during a time of war, was posthumously awarded the rank of general on Monday.

Dozens gathered on Veterans Day at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad state park in Maryland’s Dorcester county for a formal ceremony making Tubman a one-star brigadier general in the state’s national guard.

View image in fullscreenHarriet Tubman in a photograph dating from 1860-75, provided by the Library of Congress. Photograph: Harvey B Lindsley/AP

Wes Moore, the governor, called the occasion not just a great day for Tubman’s home state but for all of the US.

“Today, we celebrate a soldier and a person who earned the title of veteran,” Moore said. “Today we celebrate one of the greatest authors of the American story.”

Tubman escaped slavery herself in 1849 and settled in Philadelphia. Intent on helping others achieve freedom, she established the Underground Railroad network and led other enslaved Black women and men to freedom. She then channeled those experiences as a scout, spy and nurse for the Union amy during the civil war, helping guide 150 Black soldiers on a gunboat raid in South Carolina.

Nobody would have judged Tubman had she chosen to remain in Philadelphia and coordinate abolitionist efforts from there, Moore said.

“She knew that in order to do the work, that meant that she had to go into the lion’s den,” Moore siad. “She knew that leadership means you have to be willing to do what you are asking others to do.”

The reading of the official order was followed by a symbolic pinning ceremony with Tubman’s great-great-great-grandniece, Tina Wyatt.

Wyatt hailed her aunt’s legacy of tenacity, generosity and faith, and agreed Veterans Day applied to her as much as any other service member.

“Aunt Harriet was one of those veterans informally, she gave up any rights that she had obtained for herself to be able to fight for others,” Wyatt said. “She is a selfless person.”

Tubman’s status as an icon of history has only been further elevated within the last few years. The city of Philadelphia chose a Black artist to make a 14-ft (4.3m) bronze statue to go on display next year. In 2022, a Chicago elementary school was renamed for Tubman, replacing the previous namesake, who had racist views. However, plans to put Tubman on the $20 bill have continued to stall.

Tvo.orgwww.tvo.org/article/why-harriet-tubman-made-st-catharines-her-home

Why Harriet Tubman made St. Catharines her home | TVO Today

Feb 14, 2019 ... While some moved on to other parts of Canada West, many of those Tubman aided, including members of her family, remained in St. Catharines. They ...

Slaverymonuments.orgslaverymonuments.org/items/show/60

Harriet Tubman (Salem Chapel, St. Catharines, Ontario)

Half bust portrait of Harriet Tubman situated in a meditation garden next to British Methodist Episcopal Church of Canada-Salem Chapel, St. Catharines, Ontario.

Thecanadianencyclopedia.cawww.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/harriet-tubman

Harriet Tubman | The Canadian Encyclopedia

Feb 5, 2014 ... According to the act, all refugee slaves in free Northern states could be returned to enslavement in the South once captured. Tubman therefore ...

Billionaires like Elon Musk don’t just think they’re better than the rest of us – they hate us

Zoe Williams

The ultra-wealthy talk about solving the climate crisis or ending inequality. But what they’re really interested in is outliving or escaping anyone poorer than them

Mon 11 Nov 2024 

Nearly three years ago, I started working on an idea for a book. It started out with the pretty mild proposition: we’re in a class war, but it’s a weird one, because one side is curiously coy. The capital class used to strut its stuff. It used to build libraries and great estates; it used to tell you it thought it was superior, and why. Now that it is billionaires on one side and everyone else on the other, they are like ghosts. They might tell you what they think, in Ted Talks, at Davos, but it can’t be real: according to them, all they care about is fixing climate change, solving inequality and bringing about world peace. Mysteriously, none of those things ever come about.

I dragged my feet a little bit, and while I did so, the billionaires got louder, and maybe truer to their authentic selves. Vladimir Putin, estimated to be worth billions, invaded Ukraine. Elon Musk bought Twitter. Sam Bankman-Fried got outed as not-a-billionaire – the billions turned out to either belong to someone else, be fictional, be priced in crypto, or all three – and a lot of his fantasies for the future came tumbling out in the same legal proceedings: a plan, stated in a memo, to purchase the sovereign nation of Nauru in order to construct a “bunker/shelter” that would be used for “some event where 50%-99.99% of people die [to] ensure that most EAs [effective altruists] survive” and to develop “sensible regulation around human genetic enhancement, and build a lab there”.



This same memo noted that “probably there are other things it’s useful to do with a sovereign country, too”. It distilled in a single paragraph the mind-map of the billionaire class: apocalypse fantasies and bunker futures; a fervent belief in their own, gene-level superiority; a hatred of any sovereignty higher than theirs; and an almost childlike lack of self-reflection, to the extent that you would call yourself an “effective altruist” just by dint of having fictionalised enough net worth to potentially help others, while simultaneously planning for a future in which all the others have perished.

It turned out a lot of billionaires had a plan for that event where 50-99.99% of us all died. An awesome number of them had a private island, or were looking for one. The OpenAI chief Sam Altman and the PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel were gonna split to New Zealand and go halvsies on a bunker. The Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa was by no means the only “high net worth individual” trying to shoot himself into space, though he was the only one who went on YouTube to describe his exploratory trip, rumoured to have cost $80m (£62m), to the International Space Station.

“I did not get aroused whatsoever,” he said. “When you wake up in the morning, it’s quite normal for us men to have a happy manhood.” But in two weeks on the ISS, “not even once did my manhood greet me with energy”.
What they’re trying to escape is civilisation, the rule of law, other people. They’re trying to escape us


More predictably, and to make matters worse, the lack of gravity made his penis float upwards, causing a perspective disturbance that “made it look like a child’s … I didn’t feel confident about my manhood in space,” he concluded.

What’s it to you, whether or not a billionaire can get an erection in space? Childlike lack of self-reflection, again. Between that and the coming apocalypse, the bunkers, the private islands, the space exploration, the dreams of colonising the sea and living on it, and the land wars, I couldn’t help but notice that what they’re trying to escape is civilisation, the rule of law, other people – bluntly, us. They’re trying to escape us.

When you add in their dreams of living for ever, of siring scores of children, the picture is even clearer: they hate us. They’re not neutral about us; we’re not mere flies on their windscreen. They think any one of them, living to be 700, is worth an infinite number of us in our prime. They think their children are more precious than our children. Who knows, maybe some billionaires don’t hate us or fantasise about our annihilation. But even one should be a red flag.

An excess of billionaires is destabilising politics – just as academics predicted
Zoe Williams

Then on 6 November, I realised the ship had sailed. This is an open secret now. The whole world has watched Musk seize a mature democracy, and you can see he hates us with one look at his face. You don’t even have to scroll through his X feed.

My procrastination wasn’t just uselessness (though a bit of that, sure); it was that I couldn’t keep my mind on this hatred for five minutes straight without getting distracted by something I loved. So while, without question, Musk is faster than me, more ambitious and more effective, I am happier than he is. To pilfer an uncharacteristically cheerful line from Albert Camus: in the midst of this billionaires’ winter, there is, within me and probably you, an invincible summer.

And that’s great, but we’ve still got an almighty class war on our hands.



Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

COLD WAR 2.0 SINOPHOBIA

Satellite images show China working on nuclear reactor for new warship

Copyright AP Photo

By Tamsin Paternoster with AP

Published on 11/11/2024 - 

Numerically, China's navy is already the worlds largest and has been rapidly modernising.

China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large warship, according to analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents.

The images are the clearest sign yet that Beijing is advancing towards producing its first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

Beijing already has the world's largest navy in terms of numbers, and has been rapidly modernising its fleet. Adding nuclear-powered carriers would be a major first step in realising China's ambitions for a global naval that could challenge the US.

“Nuclear-powered carriers would place China in the exclusive ranks of first-class naval powers, a group currently limited to the United States and France,” Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said.

Domestically, such a development would symbolise national prestige and fuel "domestic nationalism."

The discovery was unearthed by researchers at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California as they investigated a mountain site outside the city of Leshan in southwest China.

Initially suspecting China was building a reactor to produce plutonium or tritium for weapons, they concluded Beijing was focusing its efforts on a prototype reactor for a large warship.

The reactor, which documents indicate will soon be fully operational, is housed in a new facility known as Base 909 which houses six other reactors that are either operational, decommissioned or under construction.

The site is under the control of the Nuclear Power Institute of China, a subsidiary of the China National Nuclear Corporation, which is tasked with reactor engineering research and testing.

Contracts for steam generators and turbine pumps indicate the project involves a pressurised water reactor with a secondary circuit — a profile that is consistent with naval propulsion reactors, the researchers say.

“Nuclear Power Development Project most certainly refers to a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier development effort,” researchers wrote in a detailed 19-page report.

The People's Liberation Army Navy is already the world's largest with over 370 ships and submarines.

However, it still lags behind the US Navy in some respects — with the Washington's navy having eleven nuclear powered carriers allowing it to keep strike groups deployed around the world at all times.

The Pentagon has become increasingly concerned about China's rapid modernisation of its fleet, saying that its efforts align with China's "growing emphasis on the maritime domain and increasing demands."

Neither China’s Defence Ministry nor Foreign Affairs Ministry responded to requests for comment.

China has built ‘prototype’ nuclear reactor for carrier

AP, BANGKOK

Tue, Nov 12, 2024 

China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing the nation’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents provided to The Associated Press.

There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California is the first to confirm it is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship.


A photo released by Xinhua news agency shows China’s third conventionally powered aircraft carrier, the Fujian, in a maiden sea trial on May 7.

Photo: AP

Why is China’s pursuit of nuclear-powered carriers significant?

China’s navy is already the world’s largest numerically, and it has been rapidly modernizing. Adding nuclear-powered carriers to its fleet would be a major step in realizing its ambitions for a true “blue-water” force capable of operating around the globe in a growing challenge to the US.

Nuclear carriers take longer to build than conventional carriers, but once in operation they are able to stay at sea for much longer because they do not need to refuel, and there is more room on board for fuel and weapons for aircraft, thus extending their capabilities. They are also able to produce more power to run advanced systems.

Right now, only the US and France have nuclear-powered carriers. The US has 11 in total, which allows it to keep multiple strike groups deployed around the world at all times, including in the Indo-Pacific. However, the Pentagon is growingly increasingly concerned about China’s rapid modernization of its fleet, including the design and construction of new carriers.

China has three carriers, including the new Type 003 Fujian, which was the first both designed and built by China. It has said work is under way on a fourth, but it has not announced whether that would be nuclear or conventionally powered.

The modernization aligns with China’s “growing emphasis on the maritime domain and increasing demands” for its navy “to operate at greater distances from mainland China,” the US Department of Defense said in its most recent report to Congress on China’s military.

How did researchers conclude China has built a prototype reactor for a carrier?

Middlebury researchers were initially investigating a mountain site outside the city of Leshan in the southwest Chinese province of Sichuan over suspicions that China was building a reactor to produce plutonium or tritium for weapons. Instead, they said they determined that China was building a prototype reactor for a large warship.

The conclusion was based on a wide variety of sources, including satellite images, project tenders, personnel files and environmental impact studies.

The reactor is housed in a new facility built at the site known as Base 909, which is under the control of the Nuclear Power Institute of China.

Documents indicating that China’s 701 Institute, which is responsible for aircraft carrier development, procured reactor equipment “intended for installation on a large surface warship,” as well as the project’s “national defense designation” helped lead to the conclusion the sizeable reactor is a prototype for a next-generation aircraft carrier.

What does China say?

Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has tasked defense officials with building a “first-class” navy and becoming a maritime power as part of his blueprint for the country’s great rejuvenation.

China’s most recent white paper on national defense, dated 2019, said the Chinese navy was adjusting to strategic requirements by “speeding up the transition of its tasks from defense on the near seas to protection missions on the far seas.”

Sea trials had not even started for the new Fujian aircraft carrier in March when Yuan Huazhi (袁華智), political commissar for China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy, confirmed the construction of a fourth carrier.

Asked if it would be nuclear-powered, he said at the time that would “soon be announced,” but so far it has not been.

Neither the Chinese defense ministry nor its foreign ministry responded to requests for comment.

Even if the carrier that has been started is likely to another conventionally powered Type 003 ship, experts say Chinese shipyards have the capability to work on more than one carrier at a time, and that they could produce a new nuclear-powered vessel concurrently.

Why Sweden nixed new wind farms for fear of missing Russian missiles

By Linus Höller

DEFENSE NEWS
Nov 11, 2024

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen looks at wind turbines of the Middelgrunden offshore wind farm, in Oeresund between Denmark and Sweden, outside Copenhagen, on April 22, 2021. (Emil Helms/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images)

BERLIN — Sweden’s government this month blocked the construction of 13 offshore wind farms over concerns that they would shorten the country’s early-warning window for a Russian missile attack.

The decision marks another example in Europe of national security factors seeping into political decisions that were deemed civilian in nature before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.


In this case, the issue is about two dueling interests: sustainable-energy independence and surveillance of the national airspace. That is because wind farms can interact with radar signals, reducing the quality of the situational air picture or even outright blocking out parts of the sky.

“The reaction time in the event of a missile attack could go from 2 minutes to 60 seconds with wind farms in the way,” Swedish Defense Minister Pål Jonson wrote in a series of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter. They were accompanied by a schematic drawing of the wind farms casting a “shadow” behind them in which missiles and cruise missiles would stay undetected.

The perceived threat clearly comes from Russia, with Jonson pointing out that “the proximity to the heavily militarized” Russian exclave of Kaliningrad was “important in this context.”

Experts speaking to Defense News for this story said wind farm radar interference is a known issue. And some expressed concern that as more and more wind farms are built, the effects could get worse unless countermeasures are put in place.

“Radar interference can impede air traffic control, weather forecasting, homeland security, and national defense missions,” U.S. Department of Energy spokesperson wrote in an email to Defense News, while also stressing that “the vast majority of wind projects … pose no significant impacts to radar missions.”
Radar performance

There are a number of ways that wind turbines, and especially large groups of them, can mess with the readings from a radar system. For one, they can show up on the screen because, just like any other object, they bounce back the electromagnetic waves that radar relies on. The fact that they are moving – the blades are spinning, and the turbines can change orientation – can make it more difficult for analysts to filter out the noise and find actual threats in the skies.

With the wingtips rotating at a speed of up to 370 kilometers per hour (around 230 mph), they move fast enough for doppler radars to sense them as moving objects, resulting in a false positive on an operator’s screen.

Benjamin Karlson leads the Wind Turbine Radar Interference Mitigation program at the American Sandia National Laboratories. His team has tested various concepts at mitigating the problem, he said, but “there’s no silver bullet.” Radar-absorbent coating is expensive and leaves the problem of a blind spots; temporary shutoffs lead to losses for the operators of wind farms; and infill, or fallback, radars are but costly workarounds.

Governments and private companies have been aware of the issue for decades, with the topic first being presented to the U.S. Congress in 2006. Considerable research has occurred in both the U.S. and U.K.

In the United States, “the communication between the developers and the federal agencies has grown over the years,” said Karlson. The Department of Defense, Federal Aviation Administration, the country’s weather service NOAA and others all have a stake in approving new wind farm developments. Despite these hurdles, Karlson said he wasn’t aware of a single case where a wind farm proposal had to be denied outright, though adjusting the placement of individual turbines, or tweaking their dimensions, is a more common practice.

“Most potential conflicts are dealt with through minor and routine mitigation measures in the federal project evaluation process,” the Department of Energy said in a statement.


Radar systems vary greatly so what might work for one can be completely ineffective on another. Over-the-horizon radars, for example, might be especially affected by offshore wind farms. As the name suggests, these systems have a much greater range than other radars, which are generally limited to the line of sight of the antenna and so cannot see past the curvature of the earth.

The longer-range variants bounce their beams off the ionosphere layer of the atmosphere before the waves travel back close to the surface – where wind farms can get in the way and may completely block out the signal. “There is no way of mitigating that aside from not building turbines,” said Karlson.

In his announcement, the Swedish defense minister did not specify what radar systems’ signals the country was concerned about blocking, and Karlson said that there was not enough information to make an educated guess.

Additionally, “the wind farms could also lead to reduced intelligence-gathering capabilities and disrupt sensors used to detect submarines,” Jonson said in his announcement. Altogether, the construction would have “unacceptable consequences for Swedish security.”


“Clearly, the Swedish government thinks there is a big concern,” said Karlson.
Energy requirements

Simultaneously, wind energy presents a crucial pillar in the clean energy transition, a topic that has gained exceptional pertinence in a Europe starved for energy since the Russian war in Ukraine. Traditionally, Europe obtained a large part of its energy from Russia, which controls vast oil and gas reserves and over decades built a network of pipelines to European countries to sell its hydrocarbons at a competitive price. While the green-energy transition predates the war, it has been turbocharged by it: Russia has used its leverage over European energy supply as a leverage and a weapon in its hybrid warfare, while European leaders have rushed to ween their countries off of Russian gas and oil.

According to the Swedish Energy Agency, the “supply of electricity in Sweden is stable.” Simultaneously, however, the government agency warned that “Sweden will have rising electricity prices” as a direct result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The planned wind farms would have had the potential to contribute significantly to Sweden’s renewable energy production, with the rejected plans seeing turbines stretching all the way from the Åland Islands along the east coast down to Öresund.

While the government blocked the construction of the 13 proposed wind farms in the Baltic, it also greenlit the construction of the “Poseidon” wind farm off the country’s western – NATO-facing – coast, with a maximum of 81 turbines producing up to 5.5 terawatt hours per year.

Sweden’s government has committed itself to double the country’s annual electricity production in the next twenty years, in anticipation of higher consumption. A buildup of the country’s nuclear power capacity is supposed to bear the brunt of this burden, though critics have pointed out that demand is expected to increase faster than new power reactors can go online.

Similar trade-offs between wind farm construction and radar visibility have had to be made in other European countries. The British and French ministries of Defense have objected to developments over similar concerns, and various other government agencies across the continent have issued guidelines for distances that should be maintained between wind farms and different types of radar stations.

Both energy independence and climate change have increasingly entered the realm of national security in national government across Europe and the world, with leaders seeing them as integral parts of their countries’ defense and prosperity. The Swedish government’s decision points the spotlight on one dimension of this interaction that has, until now, flown under the radar.

 Linus Höller  is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He covers international security and military developments across the continent. Linus holds a degree in journalism, political science and international studies, and is currently pursuing a master’s in nonproliferation and terrorism studies.

Sweden Rejects 13 Baltic Sea Wind Projects on Risks to Security Against Russia Threats

By Lars Paulsson and Niclas Rolander

November 04, 2024 

(Bloomberg) -- Sweden rejected 13 offshore wind projects in the Baltic Sea deemed to pose a risk to the nation’s ability to protect itself against attacks from Russia.

Offshore turbines could hamper the activity of submarines and delay the ability to react to any incoming missiles, Defense Minister Pal Jonson said at a news conference in Stockholm on Monday. The security situation in the Baltic Sea is “extremely sensitive,” he said.

Sweden’s concern about Russian aggression has heightened following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which prompted the Nordic nation to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alongside neighboring Finland. The Swedish Armed Forces have also vetoed onshore wind parks on security grounds.

“It’s a very unfortunate decision,” said Hillevi Priscar, who runs Swedish operations at OX2 AB, one of the developers that had several projects rejected. “We are convinced that it’s possible to take advantage of Sweden’s unique conditions for offshore wind while at the same time build a stronger defense,” she said by email.

The Baltic Sea is an ideal place for offshore wind, with good and even wind speeds and a shallow seabed. Other nations in close proximity to Russia, including Poland and Germany, are expanding offshore wind, with a constructive cooperation between the industry and armed forces, Priscar said.

Other firms with projects that were rejected include Germany’s energy giant RWE AG and Norway’s state-owned utility Statkraft AS.

“Statkraft remains committed to developing offshore wind in Sweden and we continue our work with development of the five Swedish projects in our portfolio that are outside the Baltic Sea,” said Jakob Norstrom, head of Statkraft Sverige.

Despite the good conditions for offshore wind, hardly any has been built. Vattenfall AB, Sweden’s biggest power producer, has halted the development of a large project and threatened to pause another off the west coast, saying that they don’t make financial sense if firms have to pay for connections to the grid themselves.

The rejected projects would have had a combined output of about 140 terawatt-hours, or almost the same as the nation’s current demand. While all of them wouldn’t have been built, it’s a huge blow to the nation’s future power supplies, as concerns mount of the prospects of its planned nuclear revival.

While Sweden needs to roughly double its power production in the next few decades to meet the demands of the electrification of the economy, safety is the most important, Jonson said, adding that “the interests of the Armed Forces must weigh extra heavily on any decisions taken.”

With wind farms hampering signals, Sweden would have much less time to respond to any attack, Jonson said.

“Early warning is crucial, both to be able to counteract ballistic missiles and cruise missiles,” Jonson said. “It’s also crucial for the population to be able to seek shelter in the event of an attack on Sweden.”

One project on the west coast, known as Poseidon, was approved by the government.

(Updates with comments from developers from fourth paragraph.)

©2024 Bloomberg L.P.

Opinion

The U.S. could soon face a threat ‘more powerful’ than nuclear weapons

Researchers around the globe are tinkering with viruses far deadlier than covid-19.


Monkeypox mutation, a variant of smallpox. (Getty Images/iStock)

By Ashish K. Jha, Matt Pottinger and Matthew McKnight

THE CONVERSATION
November 11, 2024

President Richard M. Nixon’s bold 1969 decision to renounce biological weapons and spearhead a treaty to ban them helped contain the threat of a man-made pandemic for half a century.

But our inheritance from Nixon is now fading. And in this age of synthetic biology, unless we act quickly to deter our adversaries from making and using bioweapons, we could face disaster in the near future.



The nightmare of a biological holocaust is far from fanciful. A recent Post investigation showcased Russia’s reopening and expansion of a military and laboratory complex outside Moscow that was used during the Cold War to weaponize viruses that cause smallpox, Ebola and other diseases. In China, senior military officers have been writing for years about the potential benefits of offensive biological warfare. One prominent colonel termed it a “more powerful and more civilized” method of mass killing than nuclear weapons. An authoritative People’s Liberation Army textbook discusses the potential for “specific ethnic genetic attacks.”





At the same time, breakthroughs in gene-editing technology and artificial intelligence have made the manipulation and production of deadly viruses and bacteria easier than ever, for state and non-state actors alike. The 2019 outbreak of covid-19 in Wuhan, China, which might have involved an accidental leak of an artificially enhanced coronavirus, offers a sense of the stakes: Some 27 million people have died as a direct or indirect result of that virus. And researchers around the globe — civilian and military — are tinkering with viruses far deadlier than that one.
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The question is: How do we achieve bioweapons deterrence?



Treaties and conventions alone cannot solve this problem. Nor are nuclear deterrence models quite up to the task. The prospect of mutually assured destruction is unlikely to inhibit death-obsessed terrorists who have a better shot at acquiring bioweapons than nuclear weapons. Dictatorships might be tempted to unleash a bioweapon if they are confident the nations they target would struggle to pinpoint the source of the attack — and if the attackers believe they can do more damage to their enemies than to their own population. They might, for example, covertly vaccinate their people before launching an attack. Or they might succeed in developing pathogens capable of disproportionately affecting specific ethnic groups, as envisioned by Chinese generals.





The Cold War nonetheless offers useful lessons for democracies that have chosen to forgo bioweapons. Foremost is the importance of superior intelligence gathering and analysis. For deterrence to work, Washington and its allies must have a robust, pervasive system for tracking and, where possible, eliminating highly dangerous research around the world. This surveillance system must also harness cutting-edge technologies to quickly detect newly emergent pathogens, gauge their threat level and reliably pinpoint their source — whether natural or engineered.

Our current antiquated warning system depends heavily on foreign governments alerting U.S. health officials after cases of an unusual illness have begun to appear in clinics and hospitals. By then, it is sometimes too late to head off an epidemic, even where governments are competent, conscientious and transparent. Where governments are malign, callous and opaque, the results can be far worse. China, for example, deliberately concealed from other governments and the World Health Organization that covid-19 was highly transmissible, even by asymptomatic patients. Beijing also blocked all serious efforts to investigate the origin of the novel coronavirus.

This is why biological surveillance, detection and attribution must become a core national security function, and not merely a public health activity, of the United States and friendly nations. Congress, working in consultation with the Defense Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, should immediately establish and fund a new intelligence discipline: biological intelligence, or BIOINT, to mobilize allied governments and private companies to detect and assess high-risk scientific research and incipient biological threats.

The history of the U.S. nuclear forensics program provides a rough template. Fearing Nazi Germany’s potential to develop an atomic weapon, scientists affiliated with the Manhattan Project arranged in 1943 for the United States to scoop up German air and water samples to test whether that country was operating a nuclear reactor. A Cold War successor program equipped U.S. aircraft to sniff out radioactive particles over the Pacific Ocean, providing Washington with hard evidence that the Soviets had tested their first atomic bomb in 1949.

Nuclear intelligence, or NUCINT (a term that eventually gave way to a broader discipline called “measurement and signature intelligence,” or MASINT), was further refined to forensically discern the origin of nuclear materials used in bombs. The United States and its allies compiled databases of radiochemical and environmental signatures unique to individual uranium mines and processing facilities. The idea was to deter the covert sale of nuclear weapons by demonstrating that Washington could credibly trace the origin of a weapon even after detonation.

Similar experimental projects are underway today in the realm of biology. The United States has funded pilot programs to conduct environmental sampling and genetic testing of air and wastewater from laboratories, ships, military bases, embassies and key transportation hubs such as airports in several countries. (Full disclosure: Matthew McKnight, a writer on this op-ed, works at Ginkgo Bioworks, which has U.S. government contracts to conduct some of this work.) When combined with anonymized data from hospitals and pharmacies, a biological mosaic begins to emerge, providing analysts with a baseline of “normalcy” against which new biothreats can be quickly detected.

Techniques of molecular forensics mean a newly detected pathogen can also be sequenced and analyzed to determine whether it occurred naturally or through the machinations of scientists. As data libraries grow and AI models improve, analysts will become far less likely to be stumped by the origins of a new disease such as covid-19.

The main impediment to expanding and improving nascent U.S. BIOINT efforts isn’t technology but resolve. Congress recently watered down the Biden administration’s latest budget request for pandemic prevention. The “biosurveillance” network prescribed by the Pentagon’s 2023 Biodefense Posture Review also remains underfunded.

To be sure, effective BIOINT won’t by itself deter our adversaries. The United States must also show that it has the will to impose steep costs on those that pursue, much less employ, bioweapons. We must also learn how to respond to pandemics with vastly greater speed and dexterity than during the coronavirus pandemic. We must improve on the success of Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership that delivered coronavirus vaccines in record time, and replicate that model to mass-produce rapid tests, protective equipment and therapeutics quickly enough to mitigate the death and disruption that could be caused by a biological attack.

Yet these elements of deterrence won’t work unless they are underpinned first by world-class BIOINT. By proactively investing in robust biosurveillance, attribution capabilities and rapid countermeasure development, Washington and its allies can safeguard the promise of the life sciences revolution and ensure that biotechnology remains a force for good, not a new frontier of global catastrophe.

Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, was a White House covid-19 response coordinator in the Biden administration. Matt Pottinger, deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration, is chief executive of the geopolitical research firm Garnaut Global. Matthew McKnight is the head of biosecurity at Ginkgo Bioworks and a Belfer Center fellow at Harvard Kennedy School.

French pilots' union calls for strike over 

tax hike on flight tickets

Ben McPartland - ben@thelocal.com
Published: 11 Nov, 2024

France's national union of airline pilots (SNPL) has called for a strike on Thursday, November 14th to protest against a government plan to triple taxes on flights as part of its need to plug a hole in state finances.

The union has also called for a demonstration outside parliament.

The strike notice, concerns pilots for national carrier Air France as well as other carriers with pilots on French labour contracts.

On Monday it was not clear what disruption the strike would have on flights on Thursday. More information should be available by Wednesday.

A spokesperson for the SNPL said the strike was to protest "against the government's desire to raise an additional billion per year from the aviation sector."

The union is angry at the government's plan to increase the solidarity tax on airline tickets which was included in the 2025 budget.

The SNPL spokesperson said the tax will see a three-fold increase that was being put through "without consultation of stakeholders in the sector having taken place".

The solidarity tax is paid directly by the passenger, and is added on to the cost of their ticket - it is currently set at just under €3 per economy class ticket and €18 per first class ticket.

But under the new budget the tax will increase per passenger for a normal economy class ticket to €9.50 for a destination in Europe, €15 for flights to intermediate destinations, and will cost €40 for long-distant destinations.

There will be steeper increases for first class tickets and private jets. The cost of a business class ticket from Paris to New York would increase by €120, under plans voted through by MPs last week.

Flights to France's overseas territories and Corsica won't be included under the planned tax hike.

The SNPL pilots union believes the tax increase will ultimately lead to thousands of job losses in France.

"This social disaster will go hand in hand with the weakening of French operators or those operating regularly in France compared to their European and international competitors," said the union.

On Sunday, France's Transport Minister François Durovray defended this tax increase telling France Info that the benefits of the tax increase were two-fold.

"This tax has both the virtue of contributing to the restoration of state accounts, but there is also an environmental aim," he said referring to the huge carbon emissions from flights.

He believes this tax could encourage airlines "to put more sustainable fuel in planes".

Raising the levy, particularly for long-haul flights, is supposed to generate additional revenue of €1 billion.

But the final budget that will go into law is still subject to haggling and given Prime Minister Michel Barnier does not have a majority in parliament it is unclear if the levy will be part of the final text.