Safety investigators board Titan’s support ship after fatal implosion

Josh Payne, PA Chief Reporter in St John's, Canada
Sat, 24 June 2023 

A team of investigators has boarded the main support ship of the Titan submersible after it returned to the harbour following the deep-sea vessel’s fatal implosion.

Flags on board the Polar Prince were at half-mast as it arrived at the port in St John’s in Newfoundland on Saturday, after four passengers and the pilot of Titan were killed in the incident near the wreckage of the Titanic.

Police and safety investigators could be seen on board the vessel after the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) of Canada announced it would be the subject of an investigation.

The Polar Prince docked in St John’s harbour on Saturday (Jordan Pettitt/PA)

TSB officials could be seen boarding the Polar Prince shortly after it docked.

The Associated Press reported that the TSB said the US Coast Guard will lead the investigation after they declared the loss of Titan to be a “major marine casualty”.

Rib boats could be seen towing what appeared to be the Titan submersible’s launch platform away from the Polar Prince and further along the port.

Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) boats had already started to return to St John’s harbour on Friday as the recovery operation began to wind down.

British adventurer Hamish Harding and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood were killed on board the Titan submersible, alongside the chief executive of the company responsible for the vessel, Stockton Rush, and French national Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

In a statement issued before ships began to return to the port, the CCG said the search and rescue operation had concluded.

The CCG said one of its vessels would remain on the scene and would “provide assistance and support to the recovery and salvage operations as requested by Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre Boston”.

Police could be seen on board the Polar Prince shortly after it docked (Jordan Pettitt/PA)

The TSB said a team of investigators had been deployed to St John’s to “gather information, conduct interviews and assess the occurrence”.

In its own statement, the safety body said the investigation would be carried out “in accordance with the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board Act and international agreements”.

The TSB will not determine civil or criminal liability and conducts investigations for “the advancement of transportation safety”.

A number of tributes have been paid to those who died on the deep-sea vessel, including from Mr Harding’s sons, who issued statements on Saturday describing him as a “loving father, family man and a determined and tireless businessman”.

The investigation comes after the BBC reported that emails from Mr Rush showed he had dismissed safety concerns over the Titan submersible.

In the exchanges with deep-sea exploration specialist Rob McCallum, OceanGate’s chief executive said he was “tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation”.

The Titan submersible catastrophically imploded close to the wreckage of the Titanic (OceanGate Expeditions/PA)

The Titan submersible lost contact with the tour operator an hour and 45 minutes into the two-hour descent to the wreckage, with the vessel reported missing eight hours after communication was lost.

In the days that followed the gone-missing report, the US Coast Guard said the vessel had a depleting oxygen supply that was expected to run out on Thursday.

A report from The Wall Street Journal said the US navy had detected a sound in the search area for the submersible on Sunday that was consistent with an implosion.

The Associated Press, citing a senior military official, reported that the navy passed on the information to the Coast Guard, which continued its search because the data was not considered by the navy to be definitive.

'The Titanic sub tragedy was a major disaster waiting to happen'


Letter writer

Bournemouth Echo UK
Fri, 23 June 2023 


Rescue teams are searching for the missing submersible Titan before its oxygen supply runs out (American Photo Archive/Alamy/PA)

WORLD news media for four days is locked on the missing Titanic submarine in the North Atlantic.

I worked myself on the ship-board side of a dive support vessel in the 1970s.

Highly trained professional deep sea divers spend thirty days at a time in saturation chambers.


Twelve hours shifts operating on the sea floor from a diving bell.

Then 12 hours in saturation chambers, 20 feet by seven feet diameter, back on the dive support ship.

During all this time breathing a mixture of oxygen and helium to match diving depth pressures.

You need nerves of steel.

Very level temperament.

Huge endurance.

Not a place by any means for amateurs.

On the missing Titanic sub operated by OceanGate Expeditions, as far as we know the vessel had very little certification, being operated as an experimental project.

An absolute horror story.

A major disaster waiting to happen.

On one count no-one should be diving on what is an ocean grave.

It should be left in peace in memory of all who died so terribly 15th April 1912. Not turned into a commercial tourist enterprise.

On a second count – astonishing that any paying passengers, so called adventurers, should be taken as tourists on the dives.

And on a third count – hundreds died when a refugee boat sank off Greece last week, with reports of children stuck in holds.

So terrible but that passes out of the news cycle within 48-hours.

The Titanic sub is a terrible tragedy. For all of us our worst nightmare.

But then hugely expensive adventurism when we have so much real need to deal with.

JEFF WILLIAMS

Jubilee Road, Poole

CRT 

 UK Village Marks Struggle Against US Army Racism In WWII

Eighty years later, English villagers are remembering a racist row between Black and white American soldiers.

Danica Kirka

AP
Jun 24, 2023, 

BAMBER BRIDGE, England (AP) — The village of Bamber Bridge in northwestern England is proud of the blow it struck against racism in the U.S. military during World War II.

When an all-Black truck regiment was stationed in the village, residents refused to accept the segregation ingrained in the U.S. Army. Ignoring pressure from British and American authorities, pubs welcomed the GIs, local women chatted and danced with them, and English soldiers drank alongside men they saw as allies in the war against fascism.

But simmering tensions between Black soldiers and white military police exploded on June 24, 1943, when a dispute outside a pub escalated into a night of gunfire and rebellion that left Private William Crossland dead and dozens of soldiers from the truck regiment facing court martial. When Crossland’s niece learned about the circumstances of her uncle’s death from an Associated Press reporter, she called for a new investigation to uncover exactly how he died.

The community has chosen to focus on its stand against segregation as it commemorates the 80th anniversary of what’s now known as the Battle of Bamber Bridge and America reassesses its past treatment of Black men and women in the armed forces.


Clinton Smith, chair of Preston Black History Group is seen this week outside the Ye Olde Hob Inn in Bamber Bridge near Preston, England.
JON SUPER VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

“I think maybe it’s a sense of pride that there was no bigotry towards (the soldiers),” said Valerie Fell, who was just 2 in 1943 but whose family ran Ye Olde Hob Inn, the 400-year-old thatched-roof pub where the conflict started. “They deserved the respect of the uniform that they were wearing. … That’s how people felt about it.”

That was in stark contrast to the treatment Black soldiers received in the wartime Army, which was still segregated by law.

The men of the 1511th Quartermaster Truck Regiment (Aviation) stationed at Bamber Bridge complained that they received poor food and often had to sleep in their trucks when they stopped at white bases, according to evidence presented during the court martial proceedings. They also said white military police harassed Black troops, hassling them for minor transgressions that were often ignored for other soldiers.

EXPORTING SEGREGATION

Black soldiers accounted for about 10% of the American troops who flooded into Britain during the war. Serving in segregated units led by white officers, most were relegated to non-combat roles such as driving trucks that delivered supplies to military bases.

U.S. authorities tried to extend those policies beyond their bases, asking pubs and restaurants to separate the races.

Bamber Bridge, then home to about 6,800 people, wasn’t the only British community to resist this pressure. In a country that was almost entirely white, there was no tradition of segregation, and after four years of war people welcomed any help they received from overseas.

What’s different about Bamber Bridge is the desire of local people to preserve this story and pass it on to others, said Alan Rice, co-director of the Institute for Black Atlantic Research at the University of Central Lancashire.

“If we’re going to have a fight against racism or fascism, these are the stories we need to talk about,” Rice said. “If you’re fighting fascism, which these people were, it’s ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous, that the U.S. Army (were) encouraging a form of fascism — segregation.”

Clinton Smith, head of the Black history group in nearby Preston, was among those who revived interest in the Battle of Bamber Bridge in the 1980s when he discovered bullet holes in the side of a bank and started asking long-time residents what had happened.

That helped attract wider interest, with local blogger Derek Rogerson publishing a short book, “The Battle of Bamber Bridge: The True Story,’’ that includes photos of Black troops hosting a Christmas party for village children and watching movies with kids perched on their laps. A filmmaker, Danny Lyons, compiled oral histories.

Last year, the local government council installed a plaque outside the Hob Inn that outlines the community’s relationship with the soldiers, the violence and its aftermath.

The story “just can’t be allowed to wither on the vine,” Smith said. “As much as it’s withered, we’re just now trying to rejuvenate it whilst maintaining the accuracy.’’

THE BATTLE OF BAMBER BRIDGE

Despite their friendships with the GIs, villagers weren’t able to head off the violence when Black soldiers, frustrated by their treatment and angry about news of race riots in Detroit, faced off with military police outfitted with batons and sidearms.

On that hot June night, Private Eugene Nunn was sitting at the Hob Inn bar when a white military police officer threatened to arrest him for wearing the wrong uniform. British soldiers and civilians intervened.

“Everyone was saying, ‘Leave him alone. He just wants a drink. It’s a hot day,’’’ Fell said as she recounted her mother’s story. “People just didn’t understand this viciousness.’’

When Nunn left the pub, the police were waiting. Tempers rose. A bottle smashed against the windshield of the police Jeep. Things escalated from there.

It wasn’t until 4 a.m. that order was restored. Military authorities sought severe penalties to head off unrest at other bases.

Thirty-seven Black soldiers were charged with mutiny, riot and unlawful possession of weapons, and some 30 were convicted on some or all of the charges. Most received sentences of between three and 15 years in prison, combined with loss of pay and dishonorable discharges. As the allies prepared for the D-Day landings, many of the sentences were shortened to time served so the men could be cycled back into the war effort.

While the court martial criticized the white officers for poor leadership, the records give no indication that either they or the military police were disciplined.

LONGSTANDING CHANGE

Ken Werrell, a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate and retired professor of history at Radford University in Virginia, studied the court martial proceedings and reviewed other military records for an article published in 1975.

The documents show the accused were badly treated, Werrell told The Associated Press.

But the broader story is that senior generals, focused on improving morale and performance, quickly ordered changes in the treatment of Black troops. Many of the officers commanding Black units were replaced, additional recreation facilities were provided and the army deployed more racially mixed military police patrols.


Bamber Bridge sits near Preston, England.
JON SUPER VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

“In this way, the Bamber Bridge affair was more than just a minor incident in World War II,” Werrell wrote. “It was one of a number of incidents in the Black’s and America’s continuing crusade for freedom.”


President Harry Truman in 1948 ordered the end of segregation in the U.S. military, though it took years to fully achieve that goal. Lloyd Austin, a Black man and retired four-star general in the Army, is now secretary of defense.


That progress was too late for Crossland, a former railroad worker was 25 when he died. Evidence in the court martial proceedings provided little detail on how he was killed, saying only that he was found gravely injured with a bullet near his heart. Officers said they believed he had been caught in cross-fire between two groups of Black soldiers.


Investigators placed most of the blame for the violence on the Black soldiers, describing them as a “mob” that was “determined on revenge at any cost,” according to reports submitted during the court martial proceedings. But locals say they knocked on doors and told people to stay inside to avoid getting hurt.


RE-ASSESSING HISTORY


Nancy Croslan Adkins, the daughter of one of William’s brothers, said she was never told about the circumstances of her uncle’s death. The family later changed the spelling of its last name.


Adkins, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, wants to know more about what happened at Bamber Bridge.


“Having dealt with direct discrimination myself by integrating the school system in North Carolina, and the racial injustice that my parents faced, I would love an investigation,” she said.


Aaron Snipe, the spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in London, said he couldn’t prejudge any military decision, but President Joe Biden’s administration has shown a willingness to “right the wrongs of the past.”

The U.S. Navy earlier this month issued a formal apology to the families of 15 Black sailors who were dishonorably discharged in 1940 after complaining that they were forced to serve as mess attendants who made beds and waited on tables. Earlier this month, the Army renamed a base for William Henry Johnson, a Black soldier who was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award, almost a century after he was wounded 21 times while beating back attacking forces during World War I.

Snipe also said he planned to pay tribute to the people of Bamber Bridge at an 80th anniversary event.


“Part of this story is about their unwillingness to accept segregation orders or regulations that were pushed on them,” he said. “They pushed back … at a time where it might have been more convenient for local folks to just go along with what the United States, the United States military, had said. They’re to be commended for that.”


Associated Press writer Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, and researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

Spending time in nature is associated with decreased smartphone usage, study finds

2023/06/23


New research published in Environment and Behavior explored the relationship between spending time in green spaces and smartphone use. Unlike previous studies that relied on participants’ own reports, this study used geolocation data to determine if people were in green spaces. The findings showed that those who spend more time in green spaces tend to use their smartphones less.

Using smartphones excessively has been linked to negative outcomes like shorter attention spans, impaired thinking, and reduced well-being. That’s why there’s growing interest in understanding what influences smartphone use and finding ways to develop healthier technology habits.

Research has consistently shown that being in nature has positive effects on our well-being. It can reduce stress, improve our mood, enhance our thinking, and make us feel better overall. This has led to the Attention Restoration Theory (ART), which suggests that being in nature can restore our attention after dealing with the demands of daily life, including smartphone use.

While the benefits of nature exposure and the detrimental effects of excessive smartphone use are well-documented individually, the relationship between these two phenomena remains relatively unexplored. Understanding how greenspace exposure may influence smartphone use has important implications for promoting a healthy balance between technology and nature engagement.

Previous studies have provided some insights into this relationship. For instance, research has shown that individuals who spend more time in nature tend to engage in less screen time overall, including smartphone use. Additionally, studies have found that nature exposure can reduce the desire to use smartphones and decrease the frequency of checking mobile devices. However, these studies have primarily focused on self-reported measures of nature exposure and smartphone use, which may be subject to biases and inaccuracies.

To address these limitations, Kelton Minor and colleagues aimed to provide a more objective and comprehensive examination of the relationship between greenspace exposure and smartphone use among young adults. By utilizing mobile screen activity and geolocation data, the researchers could capture real-time smartphone usage patterns and objectively measure the time spent in green spaces. This approach allowed for a more accurate assessment of the association between nature contact and smartphone activity.

To conduct this study, the research team utilized a large sample of 701 young adults in Denmark, primarily undergraduate students. The participants were given smartphones with an app that recorded their smartphone usage, location, and mobility for two years. The data was collected with the students’ consent, and they could view and delete their own data at any time.

The researchers used this data to examine the relationship between the participants’ smartphone use and their exposure to natural environments. They categorized the locations into two main contexts: greenspaces (such as parks and nature reserves) and urban environments. They used geolocation data and land cover maps to determine where the participants were located during 15-minute intervals.

Within each 15-minute interval, the researchers measured three aspects of smartphone use: screen time, texting, and phone calls. They focused on outgoing communication activities to understand how environmental exposures influenced the participants’ digital behaviors.

The study found that young adults who spent more time in green spaces used their smartphones less. This suggests that being in green spaces may protect young adults from excessive smartphone use. On the other hand, outgoing smartphone communication (such as texting and calling) increased in recreational areas like parks and urban areas for visits shorter than two hours.

“Greentime, or time outdoors, has long been recommended as a way to restore our attention from the demands of daily life, yet before our study, little was known about whether nature provides a way for people to disconnect from the mobile devices that now follow us into the great outdoors,” said lead author Kelton Minor, a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University’s Data Science Institute.

“While past research suggested that short trips to city parks might provide a digital detox, we saw texting and phone calls actually go up. It was really the longer visits to wilder areas, like forests or nature preserves, that helped people get off their screens and wrest back their attention from their smartphones.”

The researchers also found that longer visits to natural environments had larger effects on reducing smartphone usage. However, even short to moderate visits to nature were found to improve digital impulse inhibition compared to urban settings. Staying in one place within greenspaces had a greater impact on reducing smartphone screen use compared to being on the move.

The findings of this study contribute to the growing body of research on the relationship between nature exposure and smartphone use. The results suggest that spending time in green spaces may help individuals regulate their smartphone usage and reduce the potential negative effects of excessive screen time. This has important implications for promoting healthy technology habits and enhancing well-being among young adults.

It’s important to note some limitations of this study.The sample mostly consisted of undergraduate students, so we can’t say for sure if the findings apply to other populations. Future research should include more diverse participants to ensure the results hold up.

Overall, this study provides valuable insights into how being in green spaces affects smartphone use among young adults. The findings suggest that spending time in nature can help reduce excessive smartphone use and promote well-being. “Prescribing more time in natural areas within the biosphere may be a relevant intervention for young adults in need of a digital break from the cybersphere,” the researchers wrote.

The study, titled “Nature exposure is associated with reduced smartphone use,” was authored by Kelton Minor, Kristoffer Lind Glavind, Aaron J. Schwartz, Christopher M. Danforth, Sune Lehmann, and Andreas Bjerre-Nielsen.

© PsyPost

‘Very troubling’: U.S. honeybees just suffered second deadliest year on record

Olivia Rosane

Common Dreams
June 23, 2023,

Working bees on honey cells (Shutterstock)

The year that spanned April 1, 2022 to April 1, 2023 was the second deadliest on record for U.S. honeybees.

Beekeepers lost 48.2% of their managed hives, according to the initial results of the Bee Informed Partnership's annual Colony Loss and Management Survey, released Thursday.

"This is a very troubling loss number when we barely manage sufficient colonies to meet pollination demands in the U.S.," Jeff Pettis, a former government bee scientist and current president of the global beekeeper association Apimondia who was not involved in the study, toldThe Associated Press. "It also highlights the hard work that beekeepers must do to rebuild their colony numbers each year."

"Beekeepers are under substantial pressure to recover from losses by creating new colonies every year."

Honeybees—and pollinators in general—are essential to biodiversity and agriculture, helping around three-quarters of the world's flowering plants and around 35% of its crops to reproduce. Honeybees alone pollinate more than 100 crops including nuts, vegetables, berries, citrus, and melons, according to the AP.

But in 2006, U.S. beekeepers began to report an alarming trend, The Hillexplained. Worker bees would simply abandon their hives, leaving the queen and larvae to die on their own. The emergence of "colony collapse disorder," as the phenomenon came to be known, prompted the University of Auburn in Alabama and the University of Maryland to team up to survey American beekeepers on rates of colony collapse through the nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership.

The worst year for colony survival was 2020 to 2021, when 50.8% of hives were lost. That loss doesn't mean that a beekeeper goes out of business; rather, they find a way to rebuild their hives, but doing it again and again takes a toll.

"Although the total number of honey bee colonies in the country has remained relatively stable over the last 20 years (~2.6 million colonies according to the USDA NASS Honey Reports), loss rates remain high, indicating that beekeepers are under substantial pressure to recover from losses by creating new colonies every year," the report authors wrote.

Nathalie Steinhauer, lead survey author and University of Maryland bee researcher, told the AP that "the situation is not really getting worse, but it's also not really getting better."

During 2022 to 2023, it was the winter that hit particularly hard, with 37.4% of hives lost, the survey found. This was 13.2 percentage points higher than last year's loss and 9.9 percentage points higher than the average. More than 60% of beekeepers also reported unacceptable losses during winter 2022-2023—or losses above 21.3% of their hives.

While honeybees face many threats, the leading cause of collapse reported by the beekeepers was the Varroa destructor mite, a parasite that makes bees more susceptible to viruses. The harm varroa causes has increased over time, Steinhauer told the AP. While it once took a 60% infestation to harm a colony, an infestation of just 1-2% can now have devastating consequences.

Another important cause of loss during 2022 and 2023 was "adverse weather." U.S. Department Agriculture research entomologist Jay Evans, who was not a part of the survey, told the AP that, in Washington, D.C., a spate of unusual 80°F days in January tricked bees into emerging earlier from winter habits only to face challenges when temperatures plunged again. In general, a change in seasonal rhythms can lead to a mismatch between the spring emergence of bees and the blooming of the flowers they rely on, The Hill pointed out.

"The impact of climate change on bee colony survival is real and can go undetected."

Other types of extreme weather—from heat to rainfall—can also take a toll. Hurricane Ian destroyed as many as 300,000 beehives in Florida in September 2022, as The New York Times reported in December, though the survey did not mention this.

"The impact of climate change on bee colony survival is real and can go undetected," Pettis told the AP.

Bee health can also be undermined by the spraying of pesticides and a lack of plant biodiversity that limits bees' food, scientists said.

The survey results come as wildlife advocacy groups celebrate National Pollinator Week from June 19 to 25. This year's week is focusing on how the climate crisis impacts pollinators.

"Pollinators are dying because their food and homes are disappearing, diseases have increased, and rising temperatures and natural disasters are affecting their ability to survive—all of which are related to climate change," the Pollinator Partnership wrote on its website.

Protecting pollinators can help lessen climate impacts by improving the health of the surrounding environment.

"Combined," the group said, "these results make planet earth a safer place for us to live."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

OLIVIA ROSANE  is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Like dogs, wolves recognize familiar human voices

Agence France-Presse
June 24, 2023

Grey wolf (Shutterstock)

Here, wolfie, wolfie, wolfie!

Like dogs, wolves recognize and respond to the voices of familiar humans more than strangers, according to a study that has implications both for the story of canine domestication and our broader understanding of the natural world.

Holly Root‑Gutteridge of the University of Lincoln, a co-author of the paper that appeared in Animal Cognition this week, told AFP a longstanding theory held that dogs' ability to distinguish human voices was a consequence of generations of selective breeding.

"So we wanted to look at wolves, because obviously nobody has been selecting so that wolves can recognize human voices," she said.

Root‑Gutteridge and colleagues carried out experiments across five zoos and wildlife parks in Spain, involving a total of 24 gray wolves, both male and female, aged between one and 13.

The team set up speakers and first played the animals the voice of a number of strangers that they would "habituate" to, in other words, get bored of, because they decided it was not salient to them.

Then, they played the wolves the voice of their keeper who would say familiar things to them in Spanish, such as "Hey, what's up wolves?" or "Hello little ones, good morning, how's it going?"

In gestures that would be instantly recognizable to any dog owner, the wolves raised their heads, pricked their ears up, and turned towards the speaker.

To test the effect wasn't random, the researchers went back to playing the wolves recordings of strangers, and found they once more lost interest.

Finally, to make sure the wolves genuinely knew their keepers' voices, rather than just knowing words that the familiar humans would normally say to them, the team mixed things up and had the keepers utter a stream of unfamiliar phrases.

Once more the results held up.

'Listening to us'

The fact that the wolves engaged with disembodied voices played through speakers echoes what's been seen in dogs from the era of gramophones -- as captured in a famous painting entitled "His Master's Voice" -- to today's video doorbells, though it's not yet known whether our pooches enjoy this or it frustrates them.

In terms of implications, Root‑Gutteridge said it was significant that wolves possessed the ability to distinguish between humans despite the fact that our species went our separate evolutionary ways tens of millions of years ago.

Before this, there had been limited study on the topic of how animals differentiate between the vocalizations of other species. Research had shown our close cousins, gorillas listen to people, but that was expected.

Big-brained elephants have also been found to distinguish the gender, age, and ethnicity of humans by their voices, assigning less threat value, for example, to women and children, in addition to being more fearful of the elephant-spearing Maasai than the agrarian Kamba.

Given the new finding, "chances are, lots of species are listening to us and getting to know us as individuals," Root‑Gutteridge said.

And it's not all about us, she said. Dogs could be listening to the neighbors' cats and understanding the difference between one meow or the other, for example.

"If the abilities are that general, it means that animals might be having a lot more cross species interactions than we had thought about before."


© Agence France-Presse

Amnesty International condemns U.K. extradition of Julian Assange to U.S.

WikiLeaks founder faces charges under Espionage Act of 1917 in leaks of sensitive information, documents

By Brad Matthews - The Washington Times - Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Embattled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has the support of Amnesty International, which condemned this weekend Britain’s planned extradition of Mr. Assange to the United States.

“Allowing Julian Assange to be extradited to the US would put him at great risk and sends a chilling message to journalists the world over,” Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard said in a statement.

“Diplomatic assurances provided by the US that Assange will not be kept in solitary confinement cannot be taken on face value given previous history,” she added


Mr. Assange’s WikiLeaks media organization has published classified documents and other sensitive material shared anonymously, leading to years of hiding from legal repercussions.

After spending seven years in Ecuador’s embassy in the U.K., Mr. Assange was incarcerated to wait for extradition at a London prison starting in 2019.

The administration of former President Trump charged Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917, and Britain’s Conservative government has been cooperating with the U.S. extradition request.

SEE ALSO: New York Times, other newspapers pen open letter calling on feds to stop prosecution of Assange

American prosecutors contend that Mr. Assange assisted former U.S. military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in the theft and publication of classified information that was posted on WikiLeaks by September 2011.

Manning was convicted in 2013, released from a military prison in 2017 after getting a commutation from former President Obama, then convicted in a separate case relating to WikiLeaks before being released again in March 2020.

Amnesty International has condemned the Assange extradition quest on the grounds of press freedom and calls for the charges to be dropped against Mr. Assange.

“We call on the UK to refrain from extraditing Julian Assange, for the US to drop the charges, and for Assange to be freed,” Ms. Callamard said.

Mr. Assange has influential backers elsewhere as well.

In November 2022, the editors of the New York Times, Britain’s The Guardian, Germany’s Der Spiegel, France’s Le Monde and Spain’s El Pais newspapers penned an open letter calling for an end to the prosecution of Mr. Assange.

Brazilian President Ignacio Lula da Silva in May denounced the lack of support being given to Mr. Assange.

“It is an embarrassment that a journalist who denounced trickery by one state against another is arrested, condemned to die in jail and we do nothing to free him. It’s a crazy thing,” Mr. Lula said.

Mr. Assange is an Australian national and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said later in May that “nothing is served from the ongoing incarceration of Julian Assange.”

Australian opposition leader Peter Dutton also has called for Mr. Assange’s release.

SINGAPORE

RIP

Heartbreak and grief: 1,000 attended funeral of worker who died in Tanjong Pagar worksite collapse

Andrew Wong and BNB Diviyadhaarshini


SINGAPORE – As the noise from media coverage and funeral preparations faded, Mr Raja Manickam found himself on an Air India Express flight from Singapore to India on June 17 with the body of his grand-nephew, Mr Vinoth Kumar.

The latter had died two days earlier when a wall collapsed during demolition works at the Fuji Xerox Towers building in Tanjong Pagar.

Mr Vinoth, 20, was the sole casualty in the accident.

Upon touching down in Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu state, Mr Raja, 44, escorted his grand-nephew’s body in an ambulance to Mr Vinoth’s village in Veeranamalai, six hours away.

The Straits Times has stayed in touch with Mr Raja, who is currently at home in Tirupattur, Tamil Nadu.

Speaking to ST by phone, Mr Raja said he could not bring himself to break the news to Mr Vinoth’s parents.

“After the accident, I told only my family about what happened and that I’m coming home. I didn’t know how to tell his parents that I’m coming back with their son’s body.”

He arrived in Veeranamalai at dawn last Sunday.

Mr Vinoth’s parents suspected something was wrong as crowds began to gather outside their house. Then they saw their son’s body.

“I cannot even explain how much they cried. They cried until they couldn’t even breathe,” Mr Raja said quietly.

He told ST that the funeral was attended by nearly 1,000 people, including family members, villagers and those from surrounding villages.

“The whole village was wailing and falling at my feet, asking why I brought him back as a corpse,” he said.

Mr Raja was too distraught to sleep till four days after the funeral. He also had no appetite, managing to drink only a glass of milk at the time.

“The past few days have been difficult for me. I don’t think I can forget what happened for the rest of my life,” he said.

MORE ON THIS TOPIC

‘I can only keep crying’: Grand-uncle of worker who died in Tanjong Pagar worksite collapse

Tanjong Pagar structure collapse: Worker killed was walking on path outside worksite

ItsRainingRaincoats, a charity here for the benefit of migrant workers, said that around 85 people have contacted it offering help to Mr Vinoth’s family since news of the tragedy broke.

“We helped connect these donors to Mr Raja directly, so they can transfer money to his bank account,” said the organisation’s founder Dipa Swaminathan.

She told ST that the charity has since stopped directing people to Mr Raja, after estimating that the family has received enough funds to tide them over until the insurance payout.

Under Singapore’s Work Injury Compensation Act, the compensation for death caused by work injuries is between $76,000 and $225,000.

“I’m proud of Singapore and the community for coming forward to help. This proves that we are a compassionate society. We can be moved by the plight of a stranger to take action,” Ms Dipa said.

Mr Vinoth Kumar was found dead under the rubble of the Fuji Xerox Towers building in Tanjong Pagar during demolition works on June 15. 

PHOTO: SAAMUDI KARTHIK

Mr Raja said Mr Vinoth’s mother has not left her house since the funeral and has barely eaten. Relatives have resorted to feeding her spoonfuls of glucose to give her the strength to stand.

“We cannot even afford to grieve. We are too poor to continue crying. Poor people cannot grieve for too long. Money is still a concern,” he said.

Mr Raja has three children aged between seven and 15. He will now also care for Mr Vinoth’s parents and younger brother.

“After he died, I made a promise that I would take care of his parents and younger brother. I will take care of them like I take care of my family,” he said.

Despite his own family’s concerns over the dangers of his work, Mr Raja will return to Singapore to continue working after the rites have been completed.

“I cannot be scared to lose my life. I need the money for my family,” he said.

Another workplace death had occurred on June 12, when a worker was electrocuted while installing solar panels on the rooftop of a building.

In 2022, there were 46 workplace deaths – the highest number recorded since 2016, when 66 people died. The spate of work-related deaths and injuries led the Ministry of Manpower to impose a six-month heightened safety period from Sept 1, 2022, to Feb 28, 2023. This was extended to May 31 to curb a worrying rise in workplace deaths.

Under the Workplace Safety and Health Act, first-time corporate offenders can be fined up to $500,000, while individuals can be fined up to $200,000, jailed for up to two years, or both.

 

Another lithium-ion battery fire at Manhattan e-bike shop as workers clean site of deadly Chinatown blaze that killed four

2023/06/24
Firefighters take a reading after dousing the exploded batteries on Saturday, June 24, 2023, in New York. - Theodore Parisienne/New York Daily News/TNS

NEW YORK — Residents of Manhattan’s Chinatown were rattled again Saturday when a fire blew the lid off a barrel filled with lithium ion batteries outside the e-bike business where a raging blaze left four people dead.

No one was injured in the blast, which happened as contractors hired by the city were removing the dangerous batteries outside the HQ E-Bike Repair at 80 Madison Ave. around 12:30 p.m., said FDNY spokesman Jim Long.

An eyewitnesses said the barrel lid popped three stories into the air before landing as the cleanup from Tuesday’s deadly fire continued. Authorities later placed the removal of batteries on hold until further notice.

“I heard the explosion,” said Thiy Alsaidi, who works at a nearby deli. “It’s the third time the fire reignited. It’s very dangerous. I was really scared. It’s a dangerous scenario.”

The fire began as the barrel was loaded onto a truck, with pressure likely created by lingering heat from the batteries blamed for the incident that brought 20 firefighters to the scene, officials said.

The FDNY quickly doused the blaze before spraying down the other barrels to prevent any further problems. Similar fires occurred there on Thursday and Friday.

“There shouldn’t be e-bike stores in residential neighborhoods,” said one unnerved local man. “The way they run these stores should be regulated ... That’s really scary.”

Firefighters on the scene were drilling holes into the remaining barrels to decrease the pressure and prevent a recurrence.

Four Chinatown residents were killed early Tuesday after the 12:15 a.m. e-bike fire tore through the repair shop previously cited for unsafe conditions.

Two senior citizens were severely injured but expected to recover from injuries they suffered in the blaze, which began inside the business on the ground floor of of the six-story retail and residential building.

HQ E-Bike Repair was targeted twice by authorities since 2021 and fined $1,600 last year for violations including charging batteries stacked alongside one another and plugged into extension cords.

According to city officials, 13 New Yorkers were killed and another 71 injured in lithium ion battery fires so far this year. In contrast, only four deaths were linked to the batteries in 2021.

Ten other e-bike shops were cited in the last week, with four inspected after calls to the 311 hotline.

In the Tuesday fire, flames and billowing smoke quickly spread through the building above the business, with panicked residents fleeing into the darkness outside.

“It’s very shocking, very nerve-wracking,” said a local man after the Saturday scare. “There’s so many barrels with batteries in them.”

Theodore Parisienne/New York Daily News/TNS

Solar is saving Texans from widespread power outages amid extreme heat: analysts

Julia Conley, Common Dreams
June 24, 2023

Technician checking solar panels on roof (Shutterstock)

A sweltering heatwave has gripped Texas over the last two weeks, pushing temperatures to 115°F in parts of the state—but its status as a new leader in the development of solar power has reportedly protected many in the state from a catastrophic loss of power.

An intense heat dome—in which an area of high pressure traps heat underneath it—has settled over northern Mexico and is expected to persist next week and potentially beyond, likely causing the heat index to reach high into the 100s across Texas and top 120° in the southern part of the state in the coming days.

Extreme weather has placed millions of Texans in harm's way before, notably during a winter storm in February 2021 that plunged much of the state into a prolonged blackout when natural gas power plants faced outages, as a federal review later found, contrary to claims by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott that the state's wind turbines failed residents by freezing.
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But this month, reported The New York Times on Friday, "the lights and air conditioning have stayed on across the state," and analysts have linked the continuation of power to Texas's doubling of the amount of solar energy it's generated since early 2022.

While Texas has built its reputation in recent decades as a center of oil and gas production in the U.S., "solar is producing 15% of total energy right now," University of Texas research scientist Joshua Rhodes told the Times. The state now leads the nation in renewable energy, with 17 gigawatts of solar power operational this year.

"They have this narrative that they push that they need more dispatchable power plants and need more gas plants. It's a very politically driven narrative by many of the state leaders.

The amount of solar power produced in the state is expected to double again by the end of 2024, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

Doug Lewin, president of clean energy consulting firm Stoic Energy in Austin and host of the Texas Power Podcast, toldInside Climate News on Friday that Republican leaders in Texas aren't likely to acknowledge that the state's solar power boom is helping residents to avoid blackouts.

"They have this narrative that they push that they need more dispatchable power plants and need more gas plants," he told the outlet. "It's a very politically driven narrative by many of the state leaders."

The GOP-controlled Texas Legislature passed a $10 billion program to incentivize new natural gas power plant development last month, and recently made an unsuccessful attempt to pass new permitting requirements and restrictions for renewable energy producers.

As Republican lawmakers remain committed to promoting the very energy sources that are fueling the climate emergency—and making extreme heatwaves like the one enveloping Texas five times more likely to occur, an analysis of federal data showed earlier this month—Lewin noted this week that fossil fuel-powered plants have been struggling to provide energy amid the heat.

"Renewables are definitely saving the grid and saving our wallets," Alison Silverstein, an independent energy consultant based in Austin, told the Times on Friday.

Energy demand next week is expected to reach record levels in Texas as the Gulf Coast is expected to see temperatures of "at least 110°F every day," according to the National Weather Service.

‘How could we build over dead bodies?’ Some Surfside families want a memorial, answers

FIRST NATIONS ASK THE SAME QUESTION

2023/06/24

D.A. Varela/Miami Herald/TNS

MIAMI — Before Saturday’s official remembrance of the 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse, some relatives of the 98 who died at that Surfside spot expressed their anger at all levels and angles of the government response:

Recovery. Investigation. A memorial and future use of the site.

An hour before the official remembrance and half a block south, Martin Langesfeld — whose sister Nicole Langesfeld and brother-in-law Luis Sadovnic died in the collapse — spoke the displeasure felt by some families. Langesfeld was joined by members of September’s Mission, a nonprofit formed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in 2001 for helping natural and civil disasters victims.

And National Institute for Standards and Technology’s June 15 release of its collapse investigation’s preliminary findings didn’t necessarily help mollify their anger.

“How is it possible that a building collapses in the middle of the night in 12 seconds, where you feel the safest in your own home and ends up like this?” Langesfeld said. “How is it possible that after NIST gets allocated over $22 million the only answers they give us is a hypothesis is the reason for this collapse is there are violations in place from Day 1?”

Developer Damac International has submitted plans to the city for buidling a 57-unit, 12-story building on the site.

“How could we build over dead bodies in America?” Langesfeld said while standing in a grassy area across Collins Avenue from where his sister died. “It’s not public information, but we received 33% of my sister Nicky’s body. Where is the rest? Simply vanished in the hole behind me. And, Surfside calls it respect to add another luxurious building? That is not respect.

“It’s hard to accept the fact that there’s going to be a another building on that site, but we’re not trying to stop that building from going up,” he continued. “What we’re trying to do is incorporate a memorial on the site of the collapse and work with the developer in a respectful way, where the city of Surfside and the developer can look out for his profit holders. And, we, the families, can look for our respect.”

D.A. Varela/Miami Herald/TNS

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