Sierra Space unveils Dream Chaser space plane ahead of 1st flight to ISS (video)

Meredith Garofalo
Fri, February 2, 2024 

SANDUSKY, Ohio — Ohio, the home of the Wright Brothers, is known as the "Birthplace of Aviation." But the state also has some serious spaceflight bona fides, as we were reminded during an event on Thursday (Feb. 1).

On that day, NASA and the Colorado-based company Sierra Space gave reporters an up-close look at Dream Chaser, a private space plane that's scheduled to fly its first-ever mission to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year.

The event took place at NASA's Neil Armstrong Test Facility here in Sandusky. The robotic Dream Chaser and its cargo module — vehicles named "Tenacity" and "Shooting Star," respectively — were stacked vertically, as they will be during launch. The duo stood 55 feet tall (16.8 meters) — roughly the length of a school bus!

Related: Dream Chaser enters final testing ahead of 2024 debut space flight

a black and white space plane stands vertically inside a large white-walled room, with scaffolding in the background.

"In order to convert bold dreams into bold action, it requires an enormous amount of tenacity, perseverance, confidence, determination and passion. And so we name our products after these emotional characteristics that get you through the hard times," former NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, who's now Sierra Space's chief medical officer, said during Thursday's event.

"Building Tenacity has been hard," he added. "There's been a lot of things that we've found collectively that didn't always work right the first time. And we learned a lot that Tenacity has gotten us through the last six years, so there was no other name."

Tenacity's highly anticipated debut will ferry cargo to the ISS for NASA. That uncrewed demonstration mission will help advance science in space and continue to spur a burgeoning economy in low Earth orbit.

Sierra Space's Dream Chaser space plane

But before the inaugural journey can begin, Tenacity and Shooting Star must complete a variety of tests. That's what's happening here in Sandusky: The spacecraft are being put through their paces at the NASA center's Mechanical Vibration Facility. These trials expose the vehicles to the various harsh environments they'll experience on a mission, such as the jarring they'll get during launch, which will occur atop a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket.

"All the testing we've done over the last six years as well developmental testing, all the autonomy and aerodynamics — the remaining testing is the environmental testing of what the vehicle will actually see on the launch pad during the Vulcan ride up," Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice said on Thursday. "The testing is associated with replicating the environment of space, the vacuum of space; that's going to be done in the thermal vac chamber."

Sierra Space received a Commercial Resupply Services-2 (CRS2) multi-year contract from NASA in 2016, to provide at least six ISS cargo delivery missions. According to a recent release from NASA, this is part of an ongoing effort to increase the options of commercial resupply in low Earth orbit.

NASA continues to team up with U.S. private industry when it comes to transporting cargo and astronauts to the station. For example, the agency signed commercial crew deals with Boeing and SpaceX back in 2014. Elon Musk's company has already launched seven operational crewed missions to the ISS and is gearing up for number eight. (Boeing, on the other hand, aims to launch the first crewed test flight of its Starliner capsule this spring.)

The growing involvement of private players in ISS resupply could boost science returns in a big way down the road, NASA officials and exploration advocates say.

"They're continuing the lifeline for the research in zero g that the ISS is doing now and that we hope to do for the future, and we're talking about new materials," Marshburn said.

"A lot of people don't realize that the cytoskeletal structure of both human cells and bacteria actually changes in weightlessness and changes how they react," he added. "NASA has been able to develop new vaccines, crystal growth, all kinds of things you can do in weightlessness. I think we are just at the first few footsteps in a brand-new world with what we are going to be able to do once we start flying."

While Shooting Star will hold true to its name and burn up in Earth's atmosphere after its one and only mission is done, Tenacity will land and be prepped for another liftoff. Indeed, the space plane is designed to fly up to 15 missions.

Tenacity will carry more than 7,800 pounds (3,540 kilograms) of cargo on its first flight, though it could tote up to 11,500 pounds (5,215 kg) on future missions. The space plane is designed to bring home more than 3,500 pounds (1,590 kg) of cargo and experiment samples, while more than 8,700 pounds (3,950 kg) of garbage can be disposed of in the cargo module on reentry.

Related: Meet 'Tenacity': 1st Dream Chaser space plane gets a name

Sierra Space's Dream Chaser space plane

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Dream Chaser's builders aimed to create something both very reusable and very reliable.

"If we're a company that wants to benefit life on Earth, we want to understand what the impact is on it," Vice said. " And so we designed this vehicle to use even a very special fuel; it's hydrogen peroxide and refined kerosene, so that we don't use really hazardous materials. And so it's very unique — we think the ability to fly multiple times on a single vehicle allows us to have a smaller footprint every time we fly."

Launch of Tenacity and Shooting Star is currently targeted for the first half of this year, from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. After liftoff, teams from Sierra Space's Dream Chaser Mission Control Center in Louisville, Colorado, NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston will work together to monitor the flight, control the spacecraft, and make in-orbit demonstrations to help certify the system for future missions.

"The research that's done on space station is tremendous, but broader than that, the learning of this huge community is increasing our ability to travel to and from space and learn from it," Phil Dempsey, transportation integration manager for NASA's International Space Station Program, said during Thursday's event.

"There are people sitting at home, you ask them a question — why should I go do that, why should our tax dollars go to that? It's not so much for any one individual reason, but the learning that we have as an industry and as mankind because of space travel and the difficulty of space travel," Dempsey said. "It contributes to what we can do as an overall group of people here on the Earth as we look to do things off the Earth, or enhance work on the Earth or research that benefits us."

New-wave reactor technology could kick-start a nuclear renaissance — and the US is banking on it

Angela Dewan, Ella Nilsen and Lou Robinson, CNN
Thu, February 1, 2024 

Off the Siberian coast, not far from Alaska, a Russian ship has been docked at port for four years. The Akademik Lomonosov, the world’s first floating nuclear power plant, sends energy to around 200,000 people on land using next-wave nuclear technology: small modular reactors.

This technology is also being used below sea level. Dozens of US submarines lurking in the depths of the world’s oceans are propelled by SMRs, as the compact reactors are known.

SMRs — which are smaller and less costly to build than traditional, large-scale reactors — are fast becoming the next great hope for a nuclear renaissance as the world scrambles to cut fossil fuels. And the US, Russia and China are battling for dominance to build and sell them.

The Biden administration and American companies are plowing billions of dollars into SMRs in a bid for business and global influence. China is leading in nuclear technology and construction, and Russia is making almost all the world’s SMR fuel. The US is playing catch-up on both.

There’s no mystery behind why the US wants in on the market. It already lost the wind and solar energy race to China, which now provides most of the world’s solar panels and wind turbines. The big problem: The US hasn’t managed to get an SMR working commercially on land.

Russia's floating nuclear power plant, Akademik Lomonosov, leaving the service base Rosatomflot on August 23, 2019. - Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

SMRs are potentially an enormous global market that could bring money and jobs to the US, which is trying to sell entire fleets of reactors to countries, rather than the bespoke, large-scale power plants that notoriously go over budget and way past deadline.

While SMRs provide less energy — typically a third of a traditional plant — they require less space and can be built in more places. They are made up of small parts that can be easily delivered and assembled on site, like a nuclear plant flatpack.

Most countries are trying to rapidly decarbonize their energy systems to address the climate crisis. Wind and solar now provide at least 12% of the world’s power, and in some places, like the European Union, they provide more than fossil fuels. But there’s an increasing sense of urgency to clean up our energy systems as extreme weather events wreak havoc on the planet and as challenges with renewables remain.

For some experts, nuclear energy — in all forms, large or small — has an important role to play in that transition. The International Energy Agency, which outlined what many experts say is the world’s most realistic plan to decarbonize, sees a need to more than double nuclear energy by 2050.

“There’s definitely a huge race on,” said Josh Freed, who leads the Climate and Energy Program at the think tank Third Way. “China and Russia have more agreements to build all sorts of reactors overseas than the US does. That’s what the US needs to catch up on.”
US targets Russia’s and China’s neighbors

The US is trying to sell SMR technology to countries that have never used nuclear power in their histories. To convince them that SMRs are a good option, they’ll need to pitch hard on safety.

Globally, the construction of conventional nuclear power plants dipped following the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, and fell again after Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011, data from the World Nuclear Industry Status Report shows. They started to tick up soon after, but new projects were heavily concentrated in China.

Most of the world has been cold on nuclear for the past decade or so.

But a nuclear renaissance is coming, the IEA says. The organization predicts nuclear power generation globally will reach an all-time high in 2025. That’s because several traditional nuclear plants in Japan that were put on pause after Fukushima will soon be restarted, and new reactors in China, India, South Korea and Europe will start operating.

It seems that decades-old fears over the safety of nuclear are starting to fade, and people — or their governments at least — are weighing the benefits against the risks, including the problem of storing radioactive waste, which can remain dangerous for thousands of years. That could create a more hospitable market for countries looking to export SMRs.

If SMRs help boost the popularity of nuclear energy, they could become a powerful way to address climate change. Nuclear power, generally, doesn’t emit planet-warming carbon pollution when used and generates more energy per square meter of land use than any fossil fuel or renewable, according to an analysis by Our World in Data.

At the COP28 climate talks in Dubai in December, the US led a pledge to triple the world’s nuclear energy capacity, which 25 nations have now signed onto. And the US government has earmarked $72 million to its international SMR program, known as FIRST, to provide countries with a whole suite of tools — from workshops to engineering and feasibility studies — to provide them with everything they need to buy an SMR fleet made in America.

But bigger money is coming in the form of loans from state financial institutions, like the US Export-Import Bank and its International Development Finance Corporation, which have offered up $3 billion and $1 billion, respectively. Those have gone to two SMRs in Poland designed by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, a US-Japanese partnership headquartered in North Carolina.

The US and American companies are also finding success in Southeast Asia — a region where many countries are seeking to loosen their ties with China — as well as central and eastern Europe, where some nations that depend on Russian gas are trying to cut their reliance on Vladimir Putin’s increasingly hostile nation.

These efforts could threaten Russia’s ambitions abroad. Russia has already built or designed nuclear plants — the traditional type — for China, India, Bangladesh, Turkey, Slovakia, Egypt and Iran. Russia is also courting countries with the Akademik Lomonosov in Siberia: The CEO of Russia’s state-owned nuclear company said last year that dozens of countries had expressed interest in Russian-made floating SMRs.

Russia has another edge: its state nuclear company supplies almost all the world’s demand for SMR fuel — enriched uranium known as HALEU.

But the US and UK, among others, are investing in their own fuel production at home. That’s essential — two SMR demonstration projects, one by X-energy in Texas and another by Bill Gates’ TerraPower in Wyoming, were awarded government support to get up and running by 2028. They will need fuel to do so.

China isn’t building many nuclear plants abroad but as the only country to have an SMR in operation on land, it’s in a good position to win a large share of the market.

An aerial view of the core module of China's Linglong One, the world's first commercial SMR, installed on August 10, 2023 in Changjiang Li Autonomous County in Hainan province. - Luo Yunfei/China News Service/VCG/Getty Images

It’s very difficult for American nuclear energy companies to compete with those from countries like Russia and China, which have state-run utilities that don’t have to prove their power is economical.

“Our nuclear vendors are competing against cheap, natural gas in the US,” said Kirsten Cutler, a Senior Strategist for Nuclear Energy Innovation at the US State Department. “Abroad, they’re competing against authoritarian-backed entities who are throwing in a lot of political pressure and package deals.”

But Cutler points out that nuclear deals create decades-long relationships with other countries that require trust and benefit from stability.

“Who are you going to have that relationship with? Countries recognize the risks of working with authoritarian-backed suppliers and seek partners that will strengthen their independence and their energy security,” Cutler said. “These are not trivial decisions. They’re really important 50 to 100-year decisions, and they seek the United States.”

Flexing diplomatic muscle

If the US intends to prove it can deliver an SMR, it’s not unreasonable to expect the technology to be economically viable — something the country is struggling to show.

In 2020, Oregon-based NuScale’s SMR design was the first in the country to win regulatory approval. But it announced in November 2023 it was pulling the plug on an Idaho-based demonstration project that could have ushered in the next wave of SMRs. Its costs had nearly doubled, which meant the project wouldn’t have been able to generate power at a price people would pay.

Much like large-scale nuclear plants, NuScale’s primary issue was high costs, as already expensive building supplies converged with tight supply chains, inflation and high interest rates.

It was a major blow to the argument that SMRs would be cheaper and faster to build than traditional reactors.

“It certainly dampens the excitement abroad,” said John Parsons, a senior lecturer at MIT and a financial economist focused on nuclear energy. “It makes a big difference in the marketing if the US is out there making it happen. Then people who are interested in nuclear have an easier case in their country.”

In a November statement, NuScale expressed confidence it could keep and find other customers for its power domestically and abroad.

The US is trying to flex its muscle in diplomatic circles to win this race, too.

US climate envoy John Kerry was among the most vocal supporters of nuclear energy at the COP28 climate summit. And according to an analysis by climate consultancy InfluenceMap, the US was the only foreign country to lobby the European Union to include nuclear power in its official list of energy sources the bloc considers “green,” and therefore eligible for central funding. The State Department said it does not comment on diplomatic activities when asked to confirm its lobbying.

US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on December 6, 2023. - Thomas Mukoya/Reuters

While the US nuclear industry struggles with budgets and timelines, its rigorous approach to projects may have some payoff.

European allies, for example, trust the US’ Nuclear Regulatory Commission, particularly on safety standards, the Third Way’s Freed said. If an SMR is licensed by the NRC and built in the US, then it “gets the gold seal” of approval from other countries, he added.

But if the US wants to really make nuclear energy from SMRs more economically viable, it will have to take a look at its fossil fuel production.

“The target here is to produce electricity cheaper than coal and gas plants,” Parsons said. These fossil fuel plants are “terribly simple and cheap to run — they’re just dirty,” he added.

Even if there can be a dramatic takeoff in the US’ SMR industry, it will still take years to scale up. It will probably take until the end of this decade to even glean whether it’s viable, said Mohammed Hamdaoui, vice president of renewables and power at research firm Rystad Energy.

And that’s a problem — the scientific consensus is that the world needs to make deep sustained cuts to carbon pollution this decade to ward off catastrophic climate change.

“I don’t see it being a big player in the energy mix until the second part of the next decade,” Hamdaoui said. “It’s going to take time.”

Nuclear power on the moon: NASA wraps up 1st phase of ambitious reactor project

Andrew Jones
Fri, February 2, 2024 

Illustration of a small, faraway moon base on the hilly, crater-marked surface of the moon.

NASA is wrapping up the design phase of a project to develop concepts for a small, electricity-generating nuclear fission reactor for use on the moon.

The Fission Surface Power Project aims to develop safe, clean and reliable energy sources on the moon, where each nighttime lasts around 14.5 Earth days. Such a system could play a big role in the agency's Artemis program for lunar exploration.

NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy announced contracts to three companies — Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse and IX (a joint venture of Intuitive Machines and X-Energy) — for the initial phase back in 2022.

Related: NASA funds nuclear probes for icy moons, huge new space telescopes and other far-out tech ideas

The trio were tasked with submitting an initial design for a reactor and subsystems, estimated costs and a development schedule that could pave the way for powering a sustained human presence on the lunar surface for at least 10 years.

"The lunar night is challenging from a technical perspective, so having a source of power such as this nuclear reactor, which operates independent of the sun, is an enabling option for long-term exploration and science efforts on the moon," Trudy Kortes, program director for technology demonstration missions within NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, said in a Jan. 31 statement.

A reactor could be especially useful at the lunar south pole, where permanently shadowed regions are thought to have trapped water ice and other volatiles.

NASA next plans to extend Phase 1 contracts to refine the project's direction for Phase 2, which involves final reactor design for a lunar demonstration. Open solicitation for Phase 2 is expected to open in 2025.

"We're getting a lot of information from the three partners," said Lindsay Kaldon, Fission Surface Power project manager at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. "We'll have to take some time to process it all and see what makes sense going into Phase 2 and levy the best out of Phase 1 to set requirements to design a lower-risk system moving forward."

After Phase 2, the target date for delivering a reactor to the launch pad is in the early 2030s, NASA stated.

The agency set requirements for a 40-kilowatt reactor that uses low-enriched uranium and weighs no more than 13,200 pounds (6,000 kilograms). Beyond certain constraints, the agency allowed for flexibility, allowing the companies to bring creative and diverse approaches for technical review.

In the U.S., 40 kW can, on average, provide electrical power for 33 households, according to NASA.

Artist's impression of two spacesuited astronauts working on the moon.

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The reactor plan is one of a number of new nuclear plans for space, including launching a nuclear-powered spacecraft, named DRACO, by early 2026.

NASA also recently awarded contracts for developing more efficient Brayton power converters, which are essential for converting thermal power from nuclear fission into electricity, to Rolls Royce North American Technologies, Brayton Energy and General Electric.
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Extreme heat, wildfire smoke harm low-income and non-white communities the most, study finds

DORANY PINEDA
Fri, February 2, 2024 

FILE - Firefighters watch as the Fairview Fire burns on a hillside, Sept. 8, 2022, near Hemet, Calif. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Extreme heat and wildfire smoke are independently harmful to the human body, but together their impact on cardiovascular and respiratory systems is more dangerous and affects some communities more than others.

A study published Friday in the journal Science Advances said climate change is increasing the frequency of both hazards, particularly in California. The authors found that the combined harm of extreme heat and inhalation of wildfire smoke increased hospitalizations and disproportionately impacted low-income communities and Latino, Black, Asian and other racially marginalized residents.

The reasons are varied and complicated, according to the authors from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Structural racism, discriminatory practices, lack of medical insurance, less understanding of the health damages and a higher prevalence of multiple coexisting conditions are among the reasons.

Infrastructure, the surrounding environment and available resources are also factors. Homes and work places with air conditioning and neighborhoods with tree canopy cover are better protected from extreme heat, and some buildings filter smoke from wildfires and insulate heat more efficiently. Areas with access to cooling centers, such as libraries, also offer more protection.

“Even if you’re very susceptible — you have a lot of comorbidities — you may have many opportunities to not be impacted, not being hospitalized, not having to go to the ER, but if you live in a place that is quite remote that does not have access to a lot of social services or amenities, ... it may be more trouble,” said Tarik Benmarhnia, a study author and climate change epidemiologist at UC San Diego.

Experts warn that climate change — which is worsening extreme weather events such as droughts, heat waves and wildfires — will increase the frequency and intensity in which they occur simultaneously.

While the study focused on California, similar patterns can be found in other parts of the western United States such as Oregon and Washington state, in parts of Canada including British Columbia, and in regions with Mediterranean climate, said Benmarhnia.

Researchers analyzed California health records — broken down by 995 ZIP codes covering most of the state's population — during episodes of extreme heat and toxic air from wildfires. They discovered that between 2006 and 2019, hospitalizations for cardiorespiratory issues increased by 7% on days where both conditions existed, and they were higher than that in ZIP codes where people were likelier to be poor, nonwhite, living in dense areas and not have health care.

California's Central Valley and the state's northern mountains had higher incidences of both hot weather and wildfires, likely driven by more forest fires in surrounding mountains.

Residents in the Central Valley agricultural heartland are particularly vulnerable to the adverse health effects of both because they are likelier to work outdoors and be exposed to pesticides and other environmental hazards, said Benmarhnia.

Beyond the health risks, being hospitalized has other significant consequences, such as losing hours of work or school, or being left with hefty medical bills.

During extremely hot days, the human body has a harder time cooling itself off through sweating, said Christopher T. Minson, professor of human physiology at the University of Oregon, who wasn't part of the study. The body can become dehydrated, forcing the heart to beat faster, which elevates blood pressure.

“If you’re dehydrated or if you have any kind of cardiovascular disease, ... you’re going to be less able to tolerate that heat stress, and that heat stress can become very, very dangerous,” he said.

Some particles found in wildfire smoke can enter easily through the nose and throat, eventually arriving at the lungs, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The smallest particles can even enter the bloodstream.

The combination of heat and smoke can cause inflammation in the body, Minson said, which is “going to make all your cardiovascular regulation worse, and you’re going to be at even more risk of heart attacks and other problems like long term, poor health outcomes from that. So it’s definitely a snowball effect.”

A 2022 study by the University of Southern California found that the risk of death surged on days when extreme heat and air pollution coincided. During heat waves, the likelihood of death increased by 6.1%; when air pollution was extreme, it rose by 5%; and on days when both combined, the threat skyrocketed to 21%.

When Dr. Catharina Giudice worked at a hospital in Los Angeles, she noticed an uptick of emergency room visits from patients with various health conditions on extremely hot days. When wildfires blazed, she saw more people with exacerbated asthma and other respiratory diseases.

As climate change fuels the intensity and frequency of heat waves and wildfires, Giudice worries about the low-income and minority communities that are less adapted to them.

“For a variety of reason, they tend to feel climate change much worse than other non-underserved communities, and I think it's really important to highlight this social injustice aspect of climate change,” said the emergency physician and fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who was not part of the study.

The authors noted that agencies like the National Weather Service and local air quality districts issue separate advisories and warnings on days of extreme heat and toxic air. But they argue that “issuing a joint warning earlier considering the compound exposure would be beneficial.”

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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

How an Antarctic cruise passenger’s illness led to the discovery of a new penguin colony

Sarah Knapton
Fri, February 2, 2024 

The ship came across a colony of chinstrap penguins at Diaz Rock

 - Alamy, Sarak Knapton


The remote Antarctic island of Diaz Rock should have been deserted, yet when penguin experts turned their binoculars on the outcrop, tiny eyes were looking back. Guarding their ascetic stone nests there emerged a completely undiscovered colony of chinstrap penguins, the endearing little species which appears to have a King’s Guard bearskin strap tattooed onto its face. The rocky refuge is Antarctica’s newest penguin colony discovered to date, and lies close to Astrolabe Island and the fearsome volcanic extrusion of steep peaks known as the Dragon’s Teeth.

Boats sailing between the stone fangs are said to have “flossed” the island. Yet the new colony was not discovered by a dedicated scientific expedition, or satellite imagery, but when the Viking Octantis cruise ship I was sailing on was forced to alter her course after a passenger became desperately ill.

Originally, the itinerary should have taken us to Damoy Point, a former transfer station for the British Antarctic Survey, as well as Mikkelsen Harbour, once a popular refuge for whalers caught out by the treacherous katabatic winds. But with a critically ill patient on board, the schedule was ripped up and Captain Jorgen Cardestig made a mercy dash for the nearest airport at King George Island in the South Shetlands for an emergency evacuation to Chile.

The passenger was air-lifted to hospital successfully, but with a day’s sailing lost, the voyage had to be rerouted from the Gerlache Strait towards the Weddell Sea, leaving the ship sailing into waters unknown not only to the passengers, but also most of the crew. Here was an opportunity for real off-plan exploration, and by a stroke of good fortune, the ship was carrying penguin counters Hayley Charlton-Howard and Dr Mairi Hilton from the Antarctic conservation group Oceanites.

Viking is known for its commitment to science, allowing a large number of researchers to tag along on its Antarctic voyages, and recently endowing a chair at the University of Cambridge.

Under the new itinerary, the Octantis was now bound for Astrolabe Island, a three-mile-wide volcanic mass lying in the Bransfield Strait, with a colony of chinstrap penguins that had not been surveyed since 1987.

Sarah Knapton journeyed to Antarctica with Viking Cruises

There are thought to be around 1.6 million pairs of chinstraps on the Antarctic Peninsula, but their numbers are falling by 1.1 per cent per year, largely as a result of fewer krill – their main food source – due to climate change and sea ice retreat.

Previous counts had found more than 3,000 nesting chinstrap penguins on Astrolabe but the counters were keen to find out how they were fairing. So, on a sunny January morning, with calm seas and cerulean skies, we struggled into our waterproofs and life jackets and took a rigid inflatable boat to the island.

Dozing Weddell seals on the shore opened one eye to glance lazily at us, before resuming their slumber. Petrels, skuas and snowy sheathbills squawked overhead. And there, on the rocks, were thousands of chinstrap penguins, camped on steep slopes with their fluffy chicks, many having climbed up to vertiginous and seemingly uninhabitable cliff edges to nest.

Sarah discovered more than expected during her Antarctica cruise - Sarah Knapton

The colony was full to bursting and appeared to be thriving. But it was not Astrolabe that was causing excitement among the penguin counters, but nearby Diaz Rock. Penguins are often smelt before they are seen, but this time it was the pinkish hue of their guano, rather than its cloying stench, that alerted the Oceantisis team to a new site.

“We went around the back of the island to fly the drone and we thought ‘that looks like it’s covered in some suspiciously pink stains’,” said Dr Hilton, “That’s a tell-tale sign penguins are nearby.

“When we first got there, we only could see cormorants so we were a little bit disappointed. We got the binoculars and had a closer look. And it turned out that there were in fact some chinstraps there, we think between about 40 and 50 chinstrap penguin nests. So, that’s a brand new colony for us.”

She added: “Finding a penguin colony only happens once every three or four years. So this is a really big privilege for us to be able to do that. That was a really good day.”

It is a theme of Antarctica that adversity and discovery tend to go hand in hand, with tragedy written into the landscape. We sailed close to Wiencke Island in the Gerlache Strait, named in honour of Carl August Wiencke, a German seaman swept to his death on Adrien de Gerlache’s Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897–1899.

We visited Paulet Island, another major penguin colony and where the Swedish Antarctic Expedition was stranded for the winter in 1903. Remains of their stone cabin are still visible as well as a cairn built at the highest point to attract the attention of rescuers.

In 1915, Ernest Shackleton aimed for the island after the Endurance sank in Weddell Sea, hoping to use stores left behind by the Swedish crew, but drifted too far east.

Not far away is Danco Island, commemorating Emile Danco who died of a heart condition after being forced to endure the long Antarctica winter trapped in the pack ice with his Belgica crew mates. On that expedition, penguins were clubbed to death and eaten to stave off scurvy during the sunless months, kept on leashes as pets, and even slung over the side of the Belgica as feathery fenders, to prevent ice floes grating against the wooden hull.

Today, under the Antarctic Treaty, all 18 species of penguins are legally protected and it is unlawful to hunt them, collect their eggs or interfere with the birds in any way.

On our trip alone we saw more than 300,000, the seas often writhing in a moving penguin soup, as the animals arced in and out of the water in a trait known as porpoising, a behaviour practised by dolphins and whales, but not, curiously, porpoises.

As well as chinstraps, there are two other species of penguin on the Antarctic peninsula, including the easily-spooked Adélies that will often flee en masse like panicked maître-des. The gentoos give off a more insouciant air, except when their chicks are terrorised by raiding skuas, when they will stretch out their necks to the sky and scream in fury.

The International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO) insists on strict rules for landing parties, and every stray cat hair was plucked from our clothing before we left the ship and we were thoroughly hosed down on our return. Passengers are banned from sitting or kneeling on land and are instructed to keep 5 metres clear of the wildlife, a tricky request when so many curious penguins are keen for a closer look.

It is a far cry from the 1980s when cruise passengers were encouraged to play golf off the side of Antarctic cruise ships, and shoot clay pigeons. But despite the measures many penguins are still declining, and avian flu has now reached the region, leading to fears that tourist visits to the Antarctic will only spread disease further and exacerbate the declines.

Visitors to the continent have now reached 100,000 a year and there is a constant tension between conservation and tourism. Researchers on board the Viking ships are pragmatic about the influx. Carrying out science at the end of the world is expensive and difficult, and hitching a ride is the only way many of them can access the area.

On board the Octantis, scientists have access to state-of-the-art wet labs, and are repurposing the ship’s former Covid PCR testing lab to run genetic tests on phytoplankton to see if populations are changing as more freshwater floods into the area from glacial melting.

Elsewhere, sonars are being fitted to the ships so they can map the seabed, providing crucial data on past glaciation, while Viking’s expedition ships are the only civilian vessels in the world which are designated official NOAA / the United State’s National Weather Service weather balloon stations.

Viking is also the first cruise line in the world to publish a scientific paper, after submarine passengers spotted the rare giant phantom jellyfish – a bizarre 30ft creature resembling a giant ribbon attached to a flying saucer.

Jason Hayden, the chief scientist on the Viking Octantis, said: “Having this opportunity to tag along with Viking Cruises is amazing, the funding that it would take for my lab to come with its own research vessel is near impossible.

“When people say, ‘hey this is a pristine environment and you should not go there’ I say there is something called a baseline study, and if you don’t know what the baseline is you don’t know if it’s been screwed up or not.

“It has to be done in a responsible way, which is what we do. Everyone who comes to Antarctica knows how special it is, and the more people who feel the place is special the more it will be protected.”

In such a remote location, getting a true picture of penguin numbers is difficult, and arguably, every extra eye helps. Just this week, the British Antarctic Survey announced that satellite images had shown four previously unknown emperor penguin breeding sites, including a site at Halley Bay which had been thought abandoned. Without our cruise, the world would not know about the new chinstrap colony. Who knows what other colonies are waiting to be found in the next bay.

King penguin swims hundreds of miles from Antarctic to show up on Australian beach

Namita Singh
Fri, February 2, 2024 


A king penguin was spotted at a south Australian beach, about hundreds of miles from its home in the Antarctic.

“We were up high on the beach. We stopped and it kept on walking up towards us," said Jeff Campbell, president of Friends of Shorebirds South East, which was doing a survey of bird population in Kingston South East when it encountered the penguin.

"Then it did some displays towards us and then did its really strange braying calls, putting its head back and then bowing to us and then it came really, really close to us. We didn’t go toward it; it came toward us,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as he theorised that the bird might have “never seen a human before”.

"It was a young bird. It’s come from a sub-Antarctic island like Heard Island or Macquarie Island and has landed here, so [it’s] probably never encountered a human before and didn’t know humans could be dangerous,” he told the outlet.

Though it was a surprise, Mr Campbell said, the long journey of penguins from was not unheard of. A king penguin was spotted at Port MacDonnell, near Mount Gambier about two decades ago, in 2004.

Dr Julie Mc Innes, from the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, Ecology and Biodiversity, told the Guardian that it would have possibly come to the mainland “to moult” – a period when penguins shed all feathers.

It typically takes three to four weeks and often begins around February, according to New Zealand’s Yellow-eye Penguin Trust. “During the moult, because plumage is not waterproof and the body is not well insulated, they cannot go to sea to feed, and may lose three to four kg in weight.

“They are confined to shore as they wait for their old feather coat to be replaced,” read the organisation’s website.

Ice and fire: Antarctic volcano may hold clues to life on Mars

Juan RESTREPO and Juan BARRETO
Fri, February 2, 2024 

The volcano has been active for thousands of years, erupting most recently in 1967, 1969 and 1970, devastating British and Chilean bases and forcing the evacuation of an Argentine base (Juan BARRETO)

On Deception Island in Antarctica, steam rises from the beaches, and glaciers dot the black slopes of what is actually an active volcano -- a rare clash of ice and fire that provides clues to scientists about what life could look like on Mars.

The horseshoe-shaped isle in the South Shetland Islands is the only place in the world where ships can sail into the caldera of an active volcano.

In the waters here, some 420 kilometers (260 miles) from Chile's Port Williams, fish, krill, anemones and sea sponges survive, while unique species of lichen and moss grow on the surface in an ecosystem of extreme contrasts.

The island, uninhabited by people, is home to perhaps the world's largest colony of chinstrap penguins, seabirds, seals and sea lions.

The volcano has been active for thousands of years, with the most recent eruptions -- in 1967, 1969 and 1970 -- devastating British and Chilean bases and forcing the evacuation of an Argentine base.

Yet life always returns and thrives on an island where water temperatures in steam vents, or fumaroles, have been measured at around 70 degrees Celsius (158 degrees Fahrenheit), even as air temperatures can plummet to -28 degrees.

It is "similar to Mars because there what we have is a planet with (a past of) immense volcanic activity ... where currently there are very cold conditions," Spanish planetary geologist Miguel de Pablo told AFP.

"It is the best possible approximation that we can make to understand Mars without stepping on" that planet, added de Pablo.

- A rich history -

The analysis of rocks on Deception Island complements the work of engineers, scientists and astronomers who study Mars from afar.

In 2023, researchers with the US space agency NASA concluded that Mars once had a climate with cyclical seasons, conducive to the development of life, according to evidence found on the red planet by the Curiosity rover.

Scientists believe an immense volcanic eruption changed the planet's atmosphere and led to the appearance of oceans and rivers that later evaporated.

Even though temperatures on Mars are far lower now -- estimated by NASA at about -153 degrees Celsius -- "Antarctic conditions can help us understand if the conditions for the development of life could, or could have, existed on Mars," said de Pablo.

Another Mars rover, Perseverance, landed on the planet in February 2021 to look for signs of past microbial life.

The multitasking rover will collect 30 rock and soil samples in sealed tubes to be sent back to Earth sometime in the 2030s for lab analysis.

The South Shetlands are claimed by Britain, Chile and Argentina but are not administered by any one country. The 1959 Antarctic Treaty states they shall be used "for peaceful purposes" and guarantees "freedom of scientific investigation."

Deception Island, first visited by British sealers in 1820, has a rich history, with abandoned scientific bases and an old whaling station rusting in the icy air.

Wilson Andres Rios, a researcher and captain of a Colombian navy frigate conducting a scientific expedition in Antarctica, said the hunting of seals and whales from the island in the early 20th century was "indiscriminate."

In 1931, a Norwegian whaling station on the island closed when the price of whale oil slumped.

Then, in 1944, Britain established a base there as part of a secret wartime mission to occupy Antarctic territories.

After several evictions and eruptions, the island is now dedicated to scientific research.

And, under the scientists' wary eyes, thousands of tourists now arrive on cruises.

That phenomenon, said Natalia Jaramillo, scientific coordinator of the Colombian expedition, is "worryingly increasing."

bur-das/lv/mar/db/fb/bbk

Lava from Iceland volcano spied from space (satellite photo)

Samantha Mathewson
Fri, February 2, 2024 


Satellite photo of an icy landscape, with a blotch of dark indicating a newly solidified lava flow.

Solidified lava surrounds the small Icelandic town of Grindavík in a new satellite photo, following recent volcanic eruptions.

Satellite imagery taken on Jan. 27 by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission shows dark patches of solidified lava near the fishing village of Grindavik in Iceland's Reykjanes Peninsula. Areas covered in the solidified lava stand out against the contrast of freshly fallen white snow, ESA officials said in a statement describing the new image.

The Svartsengi volcano system, located roughly 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) north of Grindavík, erupted on Dec. 18 and Jan. 14, triggering lava flows and emergency evacuations of the town. The first eruption, which lasted until Dec. 21, occurred at Sundhnukagigar — a row of craters just outside the town of Grindavík — which previously erupted over 2,500 years ago. The second eruption, which lasted until Jan. 16, occurred near Hagafell mountain, located much closer to Grindavík.


Related: Satellite sees glowing Iceland volcano (photos)


bright red magma can be seen in an overhead photo of a coastal town

ESA's Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite previously captured infrared signals from the active lava flows on Jan. 17. At the time, the satellite images showed the bright red glow of the lava flow's heat as it neared Grindavík.

Magma has continued to accumulate beneath Svartsengi since the last eruption, causing concerns that new eruptive fissures may open without warning due to heavily fractured land that allows for magma to readily reach the surface, the Iceland Met Office (IMO) said in a statement.

"It should be noted that, although the overall hazard level for Grindavík has been reduced by one level, the hazard associated with fissures remains very high," IMO representative said in the statement. "The current hazard is now referred to as 'subsidence into a fissure,' describing the danger that may be present where fissures are hidden beneath unstable surfaces that could collapse and develop sinkholes."

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Current estimates of magma accumulation suggest the land has been rising at a rate of approximately 0.3 inches (8 millimeters) per day, which slightly exceeds the recorded rate of uplift before the eruption on Jan. 14. However, computational models are being updated to gain more precise measurements, IMO representatives wrote.

"At this point, it is challenging to determine exactly how much magma has accumulated beneath Svartsengi since the eruption ended on January 16th," IMO representatives said. "Low levels of seismic activity persist and are mostly concentrated around Hagafell. The current seismic activity aligns with that observed in the area following the previous eruption."

Fake news, online hate swell Indonesia anti-Rohingya sentiment

Nisya KUNTO
Fri, February 2, 2024 

A Rohingya refugee baths a child at a temporary shelter in Banda Aceh in January 2024, part of a wave of more than 1,500 refugees arriving in Indonesia in recent months (CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN)

Arriving on a rickety boat in western Indonesia from squalid Bangladesh camps after weeks at sea late last year, hundreds of Rohingya refugees came to shore only to be turned around and pushed back.

The persecuted Myanmar minority were previously welcomed in the ultra-conservative Aceh province, with many locals sympathetic because of their own long history of war. But a wave of more than 1,500 refugees in recent months has been treated differently.

A spate of online misinformation in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation has stoked what experts say is rising anti-Rohingya sentiment culminating in pushback, hate speech and attacks.

In December, hundreds of university students entered a government function hall in Banda Aceh city hosting 137 Rohingya, chanting, kicking refugees' belongings and demanding they be deported. The refugees were relocated.

"The attack is not an isolated act but the result of a coordinated online campaign of misinformation, disinformation and hate speech," the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said.

On social media, anti-Rohingya videos have been spreading since late last year, racking up more than 90 million views on TikTok alone in November, according to Hokky Situngkir, TikTok analyst at Bandung Fe Institute.

It began after some local media outlets reported the Rohingya's arrival with sensational headlines, said Situngkir.

The reports have framed the mostly Muslim Rohingya as criminals with bad attitudes and Indonesian community leaders have reinforced this narrative.

Some TikTok users have reshared the sensational articles and videos, which would help generate more views and money.

"Sometimes when the sensation is too big, it turns out to be misinformation," Situngkir told AFP.

- 'Seems coordinated' -

President Joko Widodo has called for action against human traffickers responsible for smuggling Rohingya and said "temporary humanitarian assistance will be provided" to refugees while prioritising local communities.

But a few days after the attack on a refugee shelter, the Indonesian navy pushed away a Rohingya boat approaching the Aceh coast.

Jakarta -- not a signatory of the UN refugee convention -- has appealed to neighbouring countries to do more to take in the Rohingya.

On TikTok, dozens of fake UNHCR accounts have flooded Rohingya videos with comments.

"If you don't want to help, just give them one empty island so they can live there," one read, presented as if it was written by a real UNHCR account.

A post sharing a report that Indonesia's Vice President Ma'ruf Amin was considering moving the refugees to an island was viewed three million times.

A verified account wrote underneath: "Big no! It is better to expel them, no use in sheltering them."

Ismail Fahmi, analyst for social media monitor Drone Emprit, told AFP the narrative "seems coordinated" but presented as if "it was organic".

The campaign started with posts from anonymous confession accounts, and then several users with large followings replied with anti-Rohingya messages, making the narrative appear to be trending, he said.

Locals say social media is making such anti-Rohingya sentiment appear widespread, but that was not reflected across Aceh day-to-day.

"It seems massive when we observe it on social media," said Aceh fishermen community secretary-general Azwir Nazar, acknowledging that Rohingya defenders online were treated as a "common enemy".

But, he said, "In reality, in our daily lives, things seem normal."

- Election narrative -

Some of the most viewed videos peddling misinformation showed overcrowded vessels claiming to be ships carrying Rohingya to Indonesia.

The footage, viewed millions of times on TikTok, actually showed ferry passengers on domestic Bangladesh routes, according to an AFP Fact Check investigation.

Another video claimed Rohingya damaged an East Java refugee centre –- more than 2,300 kilometres (1,429 miles) from Aceh.

An AFP Fact Check investigation debunked the claim through interviews with authorities who said the perpetrators were not Rohingya.

The videos were uploaded on TikTok and video platform Snack, then reposted on other social media sites like Facebook and by local media outlets with millions of followers, boosting the misinformation's reach, AFP's Fact Check team found.

AFP, along with more than 100 fact-checking organisations, is paid by TikTok and Facebook parent Meta to verify videos that potentially contain false information.

Both organisations declined AFP requests for comment.

Some videos and comments were also related to this month's presidential election.

Some mocked candidate Anies Baswedan, saying he supports the Rohingya because he recommended they be housed "in a separate place" to avoid conflict.

Others praised front-runner and Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto who has said Indonesia should "prioritise our people".

But in several presidential debates so far, the candidates have not mentioned Rohingya migration.

For some in Aceh, anti-Rohingya feelings have stemmed from frustration at a lack of a government solution.

But the inflated anti-refugee posts have left them wondering if that feeling is genuine.

"Only Allah knows whether (the posts are) all humans," said Nazar.

"Or perhaps, with the technology now, there might be AI or robots involved."

sty-nk/jfx/sco


Out of options, Rohingya are fleeing Myanmar and Bangladesh by boat despite soaring death toll

KRISTEN GELINEAU
Updated Thu, February 1, 2024 





Ethnic Rohingya people sit on a beach after they land in Kuala Parek Beach, East Aceh, Aceh province, Indonesia, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024. Across a treacherous stretch of water, the Rohingya came by the thousands, then died by the hundreds. And though they know the dangers of fleeing by boat, many among this persecuted people say they will not stop — because the world has left them with no other choice.

 (AP Photo/Husna Mura)

SYDNEY (AP) — Across a treacherous stretch of water, the Rohingya came by the thousands, then died by the hundreds. And though they know the dangers of fleeing by boat, many among this persecuted people say they will not stop — because the world has left them with no other choice.

Last year, nearly 4,500 Rohingya — two-thirds of them women and children — fled their homeland of Myanmar and the refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh by boat, the United Nations’ refugee agency reported. Of those, 569 died or went missing while crossing the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, the highest death toll since 2014.

The numbers mean one out of every eight Rohingya who attempted the crossing never made it, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said last week.

Yet despite the risks, there are no signs the Rohingya will stop. On Thursday, Indonesian officials said another boat carrying Rohingya refugees landed in the country’s northern province of Aceh.

Fishermen provided food and water to 131 Rohingya, mostly women and children, who had been on board, said Marzuki, the leader of the local tribal fishing community, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

Some passengers told officials they had been at sea for weeks and their boat's engine had broken down, leaving them adrift, said Lt. Col. Andi Susanto, commander of the navy base in Lhokseumawe.

“Southeast Asian waters are one of the deadliest stretches in the world and a graveyard for many Rohingya who have lost their lives,” says Babar Baloch, UNHCR’s spokesperson for Asia and the Pacific. “The rate of Rohingya who are dying at sea without being rescued — that’s really alarming and worrying.”

Inside the squalid refugee camps in Bangladesh, where more than 750,000 ethnic Rohingya Muslims fled in 2017 following sweeping attacks by Myanmar’s military, the situation has grown increasingly desperate. Not even the threat of death at sea is enough to stop many from trying to traverse the region’s waters in a bid to reach Indonesia or Malaysia.

“We need to choose the risky journey by boat because the international community has failed their responsibility,” says Mohammed Ayub, who is saving up money for a spot on one of the rickety wooden fishing boats traffickers use to ferry passengers 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) from Bangladesh to Indonesia.

Global indifference toward the Rohingya crisis has left those languishing in the overcrowded camps with few alternatives to fleeing. Because Bangladesh bans the Rohingya from working, their survival is dependent upon food rations, which were slashed last year due to a drop in global donations.

Returning safely to Myanmar is virtually impossible for the Rohingya, because the military that attacked them overthrew Myanmar’s democratically elected government in 2021. And no country is offering the Rohingya any large-scale resettlement opportunities.

Meanwhile, a surge in killings, kidnappings and arson attacks by militant groups in the camps has left residents fearing for their lives. And so, starving, scared and out of options, they continue to board the boats.

Ayub has lived in a sweltering, cramped shelter for more than six years in a camp where security and sanitation are scarce, and hope even scarcer. There is no formal schooling for his children, no way for him to earn money, no prospects for returning to his homeland and no refuge for his family amid spiraling gang violence.

“Of course I understand how dangerous the boat journey by sea is,” Ayub says. “We could die during the journey by boat. But it depends on our fate. … It’s better to choose the dangerous way even if it’s risky, because we are afraid to stay in the camps.”

Two hundred of the people who died or went missing at sea last year were aboard one boat that left Bangladesh in November. Eyewitnesses on a nearby boat told The Associated Press that the missing vessel, which was crowded with babies, children and mothers, broke down and was taking on water before it drifted off during a storm as its passengers screamed for help. It has not been seen since.

It was one of several distressed boats that the region’s coastal countries neglected to save, despite the United Nations refugee agency's requests for those countries to launch search and rescue missions.

“When no action is taken, lives are lost,” says UNHCR’s Baloch. “If there is no hope restored in Rohingya lives either in Myanmar or in Bangladesh, there are no rescue attempts, (then) sadly we could see more desperate people dying in Southeast Asian seas under the watch of coastal authorities who could act to save lives.”

Six of Mohammed Taher’s family members were aboard the boat that vanished in November, including his 15-year-old brother, Mohammed Amin, and two of Taher’s nephews, ages 3 and 4. Their ultimate destination was Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country where many Rohingya seek relative safety.

Taher and his parents now struggle to sleep or eat, and spend their days agonizing over what became of their loved ones. Taher’s mother saw a fortune teller who said her relatives were still alive. Taher, meanwhile, dreamed that the boat made it to shore, where his relatives took refuge in a school and were able to bathe in warm water. But he remains unconvinced their journey ended so happily.

And so he has vowed to tell everyone to stay off the boats, no matter how unbearable life on land has become.

“I will never leave by boat on this difficult journey,” Taher says. “All the people who reached their destination are saying that it’s horrific traveling by boat.”

Yet such warnings are often futile. Ayub is now preparing to sell his daughter’s jewelry to help pay for his spot on a boat. While he is frightened by the stories of those who didn’t make it, he is motivated by the stories of those who did.

“Nobody would consider taking a risk by boat on a dangerous journey if they had better opportunities,” he says. “Fortunately, some people did reach their destination and got a better life. I am staying positive that Allah will save us.”

___

Associated Press writer Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.

More than 100 Rohingya refugees escape from Malaysian detention centre

Maroosha Muzaffar
Fri, February 2, 2024 

More than 100 Rohingya refugees escape from Malaysian detention centre

More than 100 Myanmar migrants fled from a Malaysian detention centre after protests, with one killed in a road accident.

Officials said that more than 100 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar escaped from the Bidor facility in the northern state of Perak on Thursday night.

The Malaysian immigration department said in a statement that some 115 of the men were Rohingya refugees and the remaining 16 were of other Myanmar ethnicities.

Director-general of the immigration department Ruslin Jusoh said in a statement that 131 detainees escaped from a centre in Perak state late Thursday.

District police chief Mohamad Naim Asnawi was quoted by the national Bernama news agency as saying that the immigrants escaped from the men’s block after a riot broke out at the detention centre.

This is the second time Rohingya refugees have fled a temporary detention centre in Malaysia.

In 2022, 528 Rohingya refugees protested and fled from the detention facility in northern Penang state. Six lost their lives while crossing a highway, and the majority of the escapees were recaptured.

Malaysia, a country that does not recognise refugee status, has historically been a popular refuge for ethnic Rohingya escaping oppression in Myanmar or from refugee camps in Bangladesh.

However, in the past few years, Malaysia has started to reject boats filled with Rohingya refugees and has detained thousands in overcrowded detention facilities, intensifying its efforts to clamp down on undocumented migrants.

Meanwhile, search operations for over 100 escapees were ongoing on Friday.

Nearly one million Muslim Rohingyas fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar amid waves of violence starting in August 2017 when armed attacks, massive-scale violence, and serious human rights violations forced the community to flee their homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.

The United Nations describes the Rohingya as “the most persecuted minority in the world”.

The Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority, have resided for centuries in what is now predominantly Buddhist Myanmar – previously referred to as Burma. Although they have been inhabitants of Myanmar for numerous generations, the Rohingya are not acknowledged as an official ethnic group and have been deprived of citizenship since 1982, rendering them the largest stateless community globally, according to UNHCR.

Additional reporting with agencies

'I Was Wrong': Ex-Trump White House Adviser Makes Surprise Confession On Fox Business

Ed Mazza
Updated Fri, February 2, 2024 

One of Donald Trump’s leading economic advisers now admits he was wrong about the predictions he made for the economy under President Joe Biden.

“Mea culpa,” Fox Business host Larry Kudlow said on the air Thursday. “I was wrong about the slowdown and the recession, so was the entire forecasting fraternity.”

Fox News host Sandra Smith, however, tried to get him to back out of it.

“I don’t think you were wrong,” she said.

But Kudlow, who was director of the National Economic Council under Trump for nearly three years, stuck with it.

“The Fed, everyone was wrong,” he said, referring to widespread predictions of a recession in 2022 and 2023 that never came to fruition.

Kudlow noted that unemployment numbers will come out Friday after a month of headline-making layoffs.

“My guess is that the Federal Reserve is looking more closely at that than inflation,” Smith said in a clip posted on Mediaite, noting that the agency is hoping to tame inflation, which could lead to job losses.

“If the labor market takes a significant hit, we could see a significant downturn in the American economy,” she predicted.

Kudlow made a similar confession about the strength of the economy last month when the gross domestic product GDP jumped faster than expected.

“He gets his due,” Kudlow said of Biden. “If I were he, I would be out slinging that hash, too. No problem.”

He did, however, add that a chunk of the growth was from government spending.

‘Large’ metallic creature — thought extinct for 100 years — rediscovered on island

Moira Ritter
Fri, February 2, 2024 at 3:25 PM MST·4 min read


Tom Terzin has been fascinated by beetles since he was a child.

“They behave like tiny natural robots,” Terzin said in a Jan. 30 University of Alberta news release. “They crawl around obeying simple rules. If there’s an obstacle in their way they usually go around it, which is generally how a robot would behave.”

That’s why the researcher and biology professor participated in two expeditions to the Philippines to search for beetles and collect samples, he told McClatchy News in a Feb. 2 email.


While sifting through the specimens he collected from Northern Negros National Park on Negros Island, Terzin spotted something unusual, according to the university. It was a short-nosed weevil known as Metapocyrtus (Orthocyrtus) bifoveatus, which was thought to be extinct.

The “colorful” species had not been seen on the island in 100 years. Researchers believed it was killed off after its habitat in the rainforest’s lowlands was “wiped out by deforestation.”

“In the world of insects, it’s almost like discovering a dodo bird,” Terzin said.
Discover more new species

The specimen Terzin found is the first female of the species recorded, according to a study published Dec. 8 in the journal Topola Poplar.

The species is “large to medium sized,” Terzin and his co-author, Bangoy Shirley, said in the study. The female beetle measured about 0.5 inches.

Metapocyrtus (Orthocyrtus) bifoveatus have “metallic green and blue scales” on their head beneath oval-shaped eyes, the researchers said. The upper half of their body is “shiny, smooth” and “rusty brown” with a collar covered by “metallic green and blue scales.”

The lower half of the species’ body is “smooth” and “reddish-brown to black.” It is covered in “round metallic mixed green and blue scales,” and it has two “shiny brown spots” on its sides that lack scales.

Photos show the brightly colored new species.

Metapocyrtus (Orthocyrtus) bifoveatus was last seen on Negros Island 100 years ago, scientists said.

Terzin found the Metapocyrtus (Orthocyrtus) bifoveatus specimen in a rainforest at about 4,600 feet above sea level, according to the study.

“Somehow this species has managed to survive in higher altitudes of over 1,000 meters (3,280 feet), which shows a struggle for life, that they refused to become extinct from deforestation,” he said in the university’s release.
A new species of weevil

Terzin spotted another strange specimen while sorting through his collection from the park: a black bug that didn’t have the same “metallic sheen” as similar weevils.

It was a new species.

“This guy was a bit strange, some sort of rebel in refusing to mimic the species,” Terzin said.

Identified as Metapocyrtus (Trachycyrtus) augustanae, the new species is small, and the single female specimen measured about 0.26 inches, according to the study.

The new species is “strange,” according to Terzin.

The “small-sized” weevil has a gray-black body with “several prominent yellow” bristle-like protrusions, researchers said. The lower half of its body is “rough,” and its “oval” eyes are black.

Scientists named the new species after the University of Alberta’s Augustana campus, where Terzin works.

The female specimen was found in a rainforest habitat about 4,600 feet above sea level.

Terzin said the discovery of the new species is exciting.

“It could mean there’s a redirection of the habits of these species, evolutionarily speaking, and being only known from a single specimen, for now, indicates it’s probably a rare species,” he said.

‘They’re like asteroids’

Continuing to learn about weevils is necessary because they can possibly become pests, according to Terzin.

“They’re like asteroids that cross the Earth’s orbit,” he said. “Some of them can be dangerous, but they’re even more dangerous if we don’t know about them. So it’s important to monitor their population — and that means we first need to discover them.”

Terzin also encountered a third type of “rare” weevil while visiting Kanlaon National Park in the Philippines, he said in his email.

Known as Eumacrocyrtus canlaonensis, the “large sized” creatures have a “shiny rusty brown” upper body with “dense semi-metallic gray-bluish scales” on their sides, according to the study. Their lower bodies are “dark brown or black, smooth” and “covered in round semi-metallic gray-bluish scales.”

When Terzin was in the park in 2016, the previously dormant Kanlaon Volcano erupted. Since then, the area where Eumacrocyrtus canlaonensis specimens were collected has been closed, according to Terzin.

“My brief encounter with E. canlaonensis may be the last one,” he said.