A stunning fall for ex-Honduran president wanted in US

By MARLON GONZÁLEZ and CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez answers questions from the Associated Press, Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2019, as he leaves a meeting at the Organization of American States, in Washington. The U.S. government is formally requesting on Monday, Feb. 14, 2022, the arrest and extradition of ex-president Hernandez. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin,File)

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Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, center in chains, is shown to the press at the Police Headquarters in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2022. Police arrested Hernandez at his home, following a request by the United States government for his extradition on drug trafficking and weapons charges. (AP Photo/Elmer Martinez)


TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — The arrest of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and the images that followed — a leader shackled and paraded before the cameras like a common criminal — were a stunning reversal for a man who for years seemed impervious to growing allegations of corruption.

While president from 2014 until last month, he had the support of U.S. officials waging the war on drugs and some diplomats who did not see a better option. But less than three weeks out of office, his utility exhausted, the U.S. government moved for his extradition and the chance to make him an example in a region wracked by corruption.

Hernández was scheduled to make his initial court appearance in Tegucigalpa on Wednesday. He was arrested Tuesday at the request of the U.S. government on charges of drug trafficking, using weapons for drug trafficking and conspiracy to use weapons in drug trafficking.

U.S. prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have accused Hernández in recent years of funding his political rise with profits from drug traffickers in exchange for protecting their shipments.

For years, images were Hernández’s crutch. Accusations of ties to drug traffickers would stream from a New York City courtroom and Hernández would soon pop up in the United States or at an event with U.S. Embassy officials in Honduras, reinforcing the idea that he had U.S. government support and it was just bitter drug traffickers telling stories to seek revenge for his efforts against them.

All the while, popular discontent with his government grew in Honduras. There weren’t enough jobs, street gangs controlled entire towns and neighborhoods, drought and hurricanes hit swaths of the country in a devastating one-two punch and Hernández began to symbolize all their troubles.

Hondurans fled by the thousands, literally walking out of the country with nothing but a change of clothes in their knapsacks. Migrant caravans drew international attention and never lacked groups of young migrants shouting “Get out JOH!” using his initials.

“How great that they arrested him, he was very corrupt,” said Ilchis Álvarez, a Honduran migrant in southern Mexico.

“He was in the government for 12 years, caused a lot of people to migrate, there was a lot of corruption, there was a lot of unemployment,” said Álvarez, who was protesting Tuesday in Tapachula for Mexican authorities to give legal passage for migrants like himself to the U.S. border.

Álvarez said he lost his job in a wire factory during Hernández’s presidency because the president raised taxes. He spent two years looking for another job before becoming a cab driver, but still couldn’t support his two kids so a month ago he set out hoping to reach the United States.
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Another migrant, Zayda Vayadares, hadn’t even heard of Hernández’s arrest, but expressed joy. She was traveling with her 6-year-old autistic son. She said she never received help from the government.

“The country was bad economically (under Hernández), you could never find a job,” said Vayadares, who camped with other migrants in downtown Tapachula. “The gangs were always extorting and killing people.”

U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, who had pushed for sanctions against Hernández, said in a statement, “It was completely unacceptable that the U.S. government was supporting former President Hernández despite his extensive ties to narco-trafficking, including an alleged pattern of using campaign funds and taxpayer resources to protect and facilitate drug shipments to the United States.”

When Xiomara Castro’s third run for president gained traction with the help of timely alliances, Hondurans’ dissatisfaction coalesced around her candidacy. They swept her into office in last November’s elections intent on punishing Hernández and his National Party.

A catchy song played on a loop at Castro campaign events predicted that Hernández was headed for trial in New York.

On Tuesday, Castro’s Vice President Salvador Nasralla shared video of Hernández being led away from his home in shackles, writing: “This is what awaits the accomplices of Juan Orlando Hernández who produced so much pain, emigration and death for the Honduran people.”

José Heriberto Godoy, a 34-year-old Tegucigalpa businessman, said Hernández’s arrest was bound to happen. “It’s really what we expected.”

Still, the images of the handcuffed former president were hard to watch. “I really felt sorry for him because we are human and we have a heart,” he said.

Herson Vásquez said he thought of Hernández’s mother, wife and children, but also how corrupt his arrest made Honduras look to the rest of the world.

“If he’s guilty of all the crimes that they accuse him of he has to pay,” the 43-year-old music teacher said.

___

Associated Press writer Marlon González reported this story in Tegucigalpa and AP writer Christopher Sherman reported from Mexico City. AP writer Edgar H. Clemente in Tapachula, Mexico contributed to this story.

Report: Conspiracy theorists fuel bump in extremist killings
By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

A person carries a sign supporting QAnon during a protest rally in Olympia, Wash., on May 14, 2020. The QAnon conspiracy theory has been linked to acts of real-world violence, including last year's riot at the U.S. Capitol. In June 2021, a federal intelligence report warned that QAnon adherents could target Democrats and other political opponents for more violence. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

Newer strains of far-right movements fueled by conspiracy theories, misogyny and anti-vaccine proponents contributed to a modest rise in killings by domestic extremists in the United States last year, according to a report released Tuesday by a Jewish civil rights group.

Killings by domestic extremists increased from 23 in 2020 to at least 29 last year, with right-wing extremists killing 26 of those people in 2021, the Anti-Defamation League said in a report first provided to The Associated Press.

The ADL’s report says white supremacists, antigovernment sovereign citizens and other adherents of long-standing movements were responsible for most of the 19 deadly attacks it counted in 2021. The New York City-based organization’s list also included killings linked to newer right-wing movements that spread online during the coronavirus pandemic and former President Donald Trump’s presidency.

The ADL concluded that roughly half of the 2021 killings didn’t have a clear ideological motive, fitting a pattern that stretches back at least a decade.

The group’s tally included a shooting rampage in Denver by Lyndon James McLeod, who killed five people in December before a police officer fatally shot him. McLeod was involved in the “manosphere,” a toxic masculinity subculture, and harbored revenge fantasies against most of his victims, the ADL report notes.

Right-wing conspiracy theorists killed five people last year in two incidents, both involving “troubled perpetrators,” the ADL report says.

In August, California surfing school owner Matthew Taylor Coleman was charged with killing his two young children with a spear gun in Mexico. Coleman told an FBI agent that he was “enlightened” by conspiracy theories, including QAnon, and believed his wife had passed “serpent DNA” on to his children, according to a court affidavit.

A Maryland man, Jeffrey Allen Burnham, was charged with killing his brother, his sister-in-law and a family friend in September. Charging documents said Burnham confronted his brother, a pharmacist, because he believed he was poisoning people with COVID-19 vaccines.

“Prior to the coronavirus, the anti-vaccine movement in the United States did not have a particular ideological leaning and contained both left-leaning and right-leaning activists,” the ADL report says. “However, the politicization of the coronavirus and other factors have created many new anti-vaccine conspiracy adherents and given the anti-vaccine movement a distinctly right-wing tone it did not previously have.”

The QAnon conspiracy theory has been linked to other acts of real-world violence, including last year’s riot at the U.S. Capitol. In June, a federal intelligence report warned that QAnon adherents could target Democrats and other political opponents for more violence.

A core idea QAnon promotes is that Trump was secretly fighting a Satan-worshipping, child sex trafficking cabal of “deep state” enemies, prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites. QAnon hasn’t faded away with Trump leaving office.

Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the ADL’s Center on Extremism and author of Tuesday’s report, said the QAnon movement is still evolving and increasingly overlapping with other extremist movements, including vaccine opponents.

“Could it sort of dissipate into those or could it find some sort of new focus or new life? Or could it just hang around if Donald Trump is elected again in 2024 and take a new form then?” Pitcavage said during an interview. “It’s difficult to predict the future of those movements, so it’s difficult to predict whether they will continue to have this sort of similar effect on people.”

A dearth of mass killings in 2021 meant that last year’s tally was far lower than the totals in any year between 2015 and 2019, when killings by domestic extremists ranged from 45 to 78.

In other respects, the ADL data for 2021 mirrors long-term trends.

Right-wing extremists have killed at least 333 people in the U.S. over the past decade, accounting for three-quarters of all extremist-related killings, the report says.

The ADL distinguishes between killings that it considers to be driven by ideology and those that it found to be non-ideological or lacking a clear motive. Its report says the numbers for each category have been close to even over the past 10 years. The ADL concluded that 14 of the 29 extremist killings in 2021 were apparently motivated at least in part by ideology.

The ADL attributed 13 killings last year to white supremacists, three to anti-government extremists, two to Black nationalists and one to an Islamist extremist.

The group didn’t count the death of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, as an extremist killing. Sicknick collapsed and died hours after he was attacked by rioters who stormed the Capitol and interfered with Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral victory. In April, the Washington, D.C., medical examiner’s office ruled that Sicknick suffered a stroke and died from natural causes.

“Although it is clear that the Capitol attack could have contributed to, or even precipitated, the strokes that felled Sicknick, it cannot be definitely proven that he was murdered by a Capitol stormer,” the ADL report says.

Consumers 

PROLETARIAT left in the dark as corporate net-zero plans fail to add up

by Laurie Goering | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Monday, 7 February 2022

Scrutiny of carbon cutting pledges needs improvement, researchers say, with clearer labelling of "green" products to help buyers make genuinely climate-smart choices

• Net-zero climate plans from top firms lack credible detail

• Analysis finds 40% emissions cuts likely rather than 100%

• Greater scrutiny needed of product "carbon neutral" claims

LONDON, Feb 7 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Many top corporations with ambitious "net-zero" emissions pledges to tackle climate change lack a clear plan to achieve them, and are misleading consumers about how "carbon neutral" their products and services are, researchers warned on Monday.

Taken together, net-zero pledges by 25 top global companies - from Amazon to Google - add up to at best an average 40% reduction in emissions, they said in a report scrutinising firms responsible for 5% of the emissions driving global warming.

Read more: IN FOCUS - Achieving net-zero emissions

Only Maersk, a Denmark-based global shipping firm, was found to have a pledge of "reasonable integrity", while companies from Nestle to Unilever were found to have "very low integrity" plans, according to the NewClimate Institute report.

Unilever officials said they would use the analysis to "evolve their approach" to cutting emissions, while Nestle said the report "lacks understanding of our approach and contains significant inaccuracies".

Altogether, pledges by 21 of the 25 businesses examined were found to have "low" or "very low" evidence they could be met, researchers for the climate policy group said.

The weak showing by businesses that often cite global climate leadership suggests far greater scrutiny of all green claims is needed, as well as a much clearer labelling system to help buyers make real climate-smart choices, researchers said.

The big firms "are role models for tens of thousands of businesses who have similar ambitions", Thomas Day, a NewClimate Institute policy analyst, said at the online launch of the inaugural Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor.

If their pledges are "full of ambiguity and loopholes", as the report found, the chances of achieving global goals to curb climate change are limited, he and others said.

"Companies should be held responsible to the highest standards for what net zero means," he said.

He urged them to make realistic plans to cut emissions from their operations, products and supply chains by 90-95%, rather than relying heavily on carbon offsets.

PLEDGES GALORE

Commitments to achieve "net zero" emissions or "carbon neutrality" - made by nations, states, cities and more than 680 companies - have surged over the last few years and now cover 88% of global emissions, according to Net Zero Tracker.

As public concern about climate change rises, many companies are under "enormous and growing" pressure to show they are curbing emissions and acting on climate threats, said Day, one of the report's authors.

But whether those voluntary pledges are backed up with detailed and credible plans has had little scrutiny so far, analysts say.

The new report is an early attempt to fill that gap, with researchers admitting corporate data on emissions reductions is extremely challenging to collect and compare.

They also found that among firms pledging net-zero emissions - by eliminating them or "offsetting" them through projects such as planting carbon-absorbing trees elsewhere - the means of achieving the aim vary widely.

Some companies, such as Maersk, intend to cut nearly all emissions from their operations, products and supply chains, with offsets used only to mop up what is left.

That is in line with recommendations from the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTI), a body that provides guidance on establishing net-zero plans in line with climate science.

But other companies hope to meet their goals mainly by buying offsets, many of them "nature-based", researchers found.

That is a problem both because the supply of good-quality, verified offsets is limited and because carbon stored in forests could be released if they are burned in worsening fires or otherwise damaged, researchers said.

And if only a small share of emissions can be offset through nature investments, "it should not be the case that the wealthiest and most powerful companies claim that potential" when they could afford other options, said Silke Mooldijk, a NewClimate Institute policy analyst.

Other problems highlighted in the report include selecting a year with unusually high emissions as the level from which to measure future cuts, as well as including in that baseline emissions outside a firm's normal operations.

Many companies were also unclear about whether their goals cover emissions from their products and supply chains as well as their operations, or if and how they have signed deals to procure renewable energy for their operations, Mooldijk said.

In general, the net-zero pledges "cannot be taken at face value", she said.

"Some (of the firms) are taking climate leadership but they struggle to differentiate themselves from those who are greenwashing," she added.

Of the companies cited as having low-integrity net-zero plans, many said they welcomed scrutiny and were working hard to cut emissions even as their businesses grow.

They also said their plans were works in progress, with some already having won external approval, including under SBTI.

Many said they had engaged with the NewClimate Institute to clarify their efforts and, in some cases, update them.

But food and beverage giant Nestle said the new analysis contained "inaccuracies", while consumer goods firm Unilever said it had "different perspectives on some elements".

"Transparency and integrity in corporate climate commitments are of the utmost importance to Unilever," it added.

Tech company Google said it was "proud of the progress we're making", including boosting the number of carbon-free hours of operations in its data centres.

E-commerce and tech firm Amazon similarly said it was "on a path to powering our operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of our original target of 2030".

CONSUMER CHOICE

Gilles Dufrasne, a policy officer with non-profit group Carbon Market Watch, which made recommendations based on the analysis, said such scrutiny of corporate pledges was crucial to help consumers worried about climate change make good choices.

His father and 92-year-old grandmother had recently pointed out "carbon neutral" stickers on bananas they bought and asked him what those meant, he said.

"For neither of them could I really answer the question," he admitted. "The reality of what we're observing is we have way too many unsubstantiated green claims."

He called for broad terms like "net zero" and "carbon neutral" to be banned in advertising in favour of a more finely calibrated green ratings system for products, to help consumers make informed decisions and pressure firms to meet climate goals.

For now, people who want to buy green "cannot do that if they don't have the right information", he added.

Related stories:

EXPLAINER: What is net-zero and why does it matter?

More net than zero: Do carbon-cutting promises add up?

Scarce carbon storage threatens net-zero push as emissions keep rising

(Reporting by Laurie Goering @lauriegoering; editing by Megan Rowling. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate)((laurie.goering@thomsonreuters.com))

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Pandemic propels workers closer to four-day week
by Sonia Elks | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Wednesday, 9 February 2022 15:33 GMT

Workers are putting in longer hours than ever. Could a four-day week allow them to reclaim their time?


LONDON, Feb 9 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - British photographer Paul David Smith had long toyed with the idea of switching all his staff to a four-day week, but it was the flexibility and reliability they showed in the pandemic that gave him the confidence to take the plunge.

Almost a year later and his trust has been rewarded.

He says staff at his eponymous studio have kept on top of the workload despite their reduced hours.

And they are far happier, too.

Smith is part of a revolution underway in the world of work - staff do shorter hours for the same pay - which has been gathering pace as economies look to bounce back from COVID-19.

From Iceland to Australia, governments and business are testing shorter work weeks, be it in fashion or fast food.

With dozens of companies set to take part in Britain's biggest ever trial of a four-day week, joining similar pilots in five other countries, Smith is at the vanguard of a movement that some believe could reshape workplace norms.

"The big game-changer has obviously been the pandemic," said Joe O'Connor of 4 Day Week Global, the New Zealand-based organisation co-running the British trial.

"Companies have not been able to monitor presenteeism in the way they previously did," he said. "As a result, that's opened the door to consider something like the four-day working week."

ALL CHANGE

The pandemic forced mass change in office culture, as lockdowns that closed schools and offices resulted in a sudden shift to remote working and flexible hours as many people struggled to balance jobs with care responsibilities.

Many firms now offer increased flexibility in response to demand from workers, as the "great resignation" and tightening labour markets in countries such as the United States and Britain fuel competition for new staff.

Spain has offered its financial backing to a four-day week trial, Japan has urged companies to let staff drop a day, and New Zealand premier Jacinda Ardern is also a keen supporter.

Dozens of firms are already on board. Spanish fashion house Desigual switched to a four-day week last year, and consumer giant Unilever is trialling the shorter week across New Zealand.

O'Connor said there was huge British interest in the six-month trial, co-organised by think-tank Autonomy and researchers at Cambridge University, Boston College and Oxford University.

The organisation is also running three other mass pilots in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.

"Everyone's super excited - including myself," said Nathan Hanslip, chief executive of Yo Telecom, among those planning to take part when the British trial begins in June.

The extra day off will give workers extra "wellness, happiness and more family time", he added.

REMOTE CHALLENGES

The big question for employers - can workers sustain the same level of work but do it in fewer hours?

Early signs are largely positive, with research by Autonomy think-tank on two large-scale trials of shorter work weeks in Iceland finding that productivity did not dip in most workplaces and worker wellbeing "dramatically" improved.

Encouraging large-scale switches to shorter hours can also benefit entire economies and help reduce unemployment, said Arthur Donner, a Toronto-based economic consultant who produced a 1994 report to the Canadian government on working hours.

"It's a form of work sharing," he said, spreading the total workload between a larger pool of people.

But even as the pandemic built the case for flexible working and shorter hours, numerous reports have found that home workers put in longer hours as their habits changed.

Just take the ubiquity of online meetings in the pandemic.

"Discussions that were quick emails or a call have now turned into zoom routine meetings for 30 minutes to an hour," said Jalie Cohen of the HR services firm, The Adecco Group.

"We are working longer hours. But the outcomes and the productivity should be the focus."

Almost six in 10 workers said they could do their job in fewer than 40 hours a week, found surveys of some 15,000 people in 25 countries by The Adecco Group last year, even as the proportion working overtime rose by 14% in a year.

However, others wonder whether the shift to remote working, an increase in freelancing, and a digital 'always on' mentality, have all made the prospect of shorter hours even more remote.

"Think of all these people who are working from home now. How are you going to measure their working hours?" said Donner.

"When you answer an email at midnight from your boss, is that work? Of course it's work."





'NEW STANDARD'

Research from employers suggests many see the need to embrace greater flexibility but are cautious on major shifts.

It is "getting harder to align" the priorities of employers and employees over work/life balance expectations, said Scott Gutz, chief executive of global recruitment firm Monster.

Which might mean many firms may be too cautious to act.

In Britain, a January poll by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) found more than half of managers said their workplaces were considering or would consider a four-day week - but 73% thought it would not happen in the end.

Many managers still "believe it's too big a change for business leaders to make", said CMI chief executive Ann Francke - though she added the same might once have been said of remote and hybrid working.

"The five-day working week model isn't set in stone - once some firms start to adopt it, there is every chance it could snowball to be more mainstream," she said.

O'Connor at 4 Day Week Global agreed, saying he previously expected it would take 10 years to make the shorter week a "new standard" in workplaces - now he thinks it could be five.

"In a lot of sectors, this is going to go from being the ambition to being the norm very, very rapidly," he said.


(Reporting by Sonia Elks @soniaelks; Editing by Lyndsay Griffiths. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)

1st image from NASA's new IXPE X-ray telescope looks like a ball of purple lightning

NASA's newly-launched X-ray hunting probe has snapped its first science image and — wow — it's spectacular

Chelsea Gohd - 

© Provided by SpaceIXPE's first science image shows the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A.

The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) probe launched Dec. 9, 2021, on a mission to observe objects like black holes and neutron stars in X-ray light, shedding much-anticipated light on the inner workings of the cosmos. The probe spent its first month in space checking out its various systems to get ready to capture its first images, and now the IXPE team has released its very first science image.

The image shows Cassiopeia A, the remnants of a star that exploded as a supernova in the 17th century. That explosion sent shock waves outwards, heating up surrounding gasses and accelerating cosmic ray particles (high-speed electrons and atomic nuclei) to create a cloud of assorted matter, according to a statement from NASA. This cloud, as you can see in the striking image from IXPE, glows brilliantly in X-ray light.

Related: Our X-Ray universe: Amazing photos by NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory

It goes without saying that the image is visually stunning.

"The IXPE image of Cassiopeia A is bellissima, and we look forward to analyzing the polarimetry data to learn even more about this supernova remnant," Paolo Soffitta, the Italian principal investigator for IXPE at the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) in Rome, said in the NASA statement. ("Bellissima" means beautiful in Italian.)

Now, while the image's most striking feature is its almost-neon magenta color, it doesn't actually look like that in visible light. But this color, which represents X-ray radiation, is a helpful guide for scientists. The more saturated the color, the more intense the X-ray light. Additionally, veins of what resembles blue lightning in the image represent high energy X-rays seen by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

While the two telescopes both observe X-rays, they have different kinds of detectors so, by working together, they can produce more complete and detailed data, according to the statement.

Chandra's first image was also of Cassiopeia A after it launched all the way back in 1999. Chandra's early observations revealed that, at the center of the remnant, there must be a compact object like a black hole or neutron star.

"The IXPE image of Cassiopeia A is as historic as the Chandra image of the same supernova remnant," IXPE principal investigator Martin C. Weisskopf said in the NASA statement. "It demonstrates IXPE's potential to gain new, never-before-seen information about Cassiopeia A, which is under analysis right now."

Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Source of mysterious global tsunami found near Antarctica

When a mysterious series of temblors emanated from the uninhabited South Sandwich Islands, scientists all over the world found themselves scratching their heads in confusion.

Robin George Andrews - Yesterday 
National Geographic

© Provided by National GeographicThe remote South Georgia Island, pictured here, is the closest inhabited landmass to an unusual earthquake that sent tsunami waves rippling around the world. South Georgia Island and the uninhabited South Sandwich Islands, where the quake occurred, together make up a British Overseas Territory in the southern Atlantic northeast of Antarctica.

First a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck under the islands, a British Overseas Territory in the frigid waters of the southern Atlantic Ocean. Three minutes later, a magnitude 8.1 quake shook the region again.

These rumblings, which occurred on August 12, 2021, were not unusual on their own, since the islands sit atop a combative meeting of tectonic plates. The odd part is that they were followed by a tsunami powerful enough to show up on distant shores along the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Although the swell wasn’t destructive, it was the first since the catastrophic tsunami of 2004 to be recorded in three different oceans.


© Provided by National GeographicSouth Georgia Island's historic whaling stations, like this one at Grytviken, have been abandoned, but the British Antarctic Survey maintains a research station at King Edward Point. The South Sandwich Islands, meanwhile, are currently uninhabited. There is no geophysical monitoring station on these islands and no ocean-bottom seismometers, making earthquakes there difficult to study.

While certain types of earthquakes are known to cause tsunamis, the initial depth estimates for these quakes suggested they were too deep to sufficiently flex the seafloor and push a vast volume of water forth. “It was a big mystery, and a big challenge for the seismological community,” says Zhe Jia, a graduate student of geophysics at the California Institute of Technology.


© Provided by National GeographicGlaciers drape the coastline of the remote South Georgia Island. When the earthquake struck nearby in August 2021, it sent tsunami waves onto distant shores along the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

After spending months untangling this enigmatic earthquake sequence, Jia and his colleagues think they have figured out what happened. In a study published this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the team concluded that there were actually five major ruptures that day, the components of a single powerful quake that took place within a few minutes of each other. One of these ruptures, previously buried in the noisy seismic signals, was powerful and shallow enough to trigger the multi-ocean tsunami.

By deciphering this strange seismic event, geoscientists can develop a better understanding of how earthquakes generate tsunamis. “We rely heavily on initial seismic estimates to make a guess about whether an earthquake triggered a tsunami,” says Judith Hubbard, a structural geologist at the Earth Observatory of Singapore who was not involved with the study.


© Provided by National GeographicKing penguins, the second largest penguin species in the world, gather in the tens of thousands on South Georgia Island. Animals there would have been too far away to feel the August 2021 earthquake.

“I think the event is telling us more that our tsunami detection systems might not be good enough.”

The odd series of quakes has also made researchers wonder if we will ever fully grasp the many intricacies of our planet. “As time goes on, and we see more earthquakes, they tend to just get weirder and more complicated,” says Stephen Hicks, a seismologist at Imperial College London who was not involved with the study.
Descending plates, raised eyebrows

Deep below the isolated South Sandwich Islands, the South American tectonic plate plunges beneath the South Sandwich plate at a modest speed of 2.8 inches a year. The uneven grind between these two plates causes stress to build up over time. Sometimes that stress is released in earthquakes—including the kind that can generate tsunamis.

These large coastal waves are usually made when something displaces a lot of water. In this case, “the thing that triggers a tsunami is the deformation of the seafloor,” Hubbard says. But a quake here needs to be shallow enough for a tsunami like this to happen.

The magnitude 7.5 quake on August 12 occurred at a depth of 29 miles, so it “was very unlikely to have generated the global-spreading tsunami we observed much later,” Jia says. The magnitude 8.1 event just after was a slightly more suspicious event, with a shallower depth of 14 miles.

But the seismic signals from this earthquake sequence were seriously messy. The two quakes struck nearby one another in very rapid succession. The data are a bit like a recording of one person talking when another person starts shouting over them, creating a lot of indecipherable noise. Automated systems struggled to produce consistent values for the magnitude, location, and depth of the second temblor.

“We thought that we were all missing something,” Jia says.
Earthquake sandwich

Over the next few months, Jia and his team untangled that day’s messy web of seismic waves, removing interference and pinpointing individual ruptures within the chaos. Ultimately, they found that there weren’t two major ruptures involved in this event, but five, all striking within just 260 seconds.

“In a first-order sense, this is a single earthquake,” Hicks says. It was just complicated—and powerful. “It ruptured the vast proportion of this subduction zone.”

The first two quakes, both magnitude 7.2 events, lasted for just 23 and 19 seconds, respectively. These two ruptures, when combined, produced what was previously thought to be the single magnitude 7.5 event. The last two quakes—a magnitude 7.6 and 7.7, respectively—were also short-lived temblors.

The third rupture in the rock, however, sandwiched between the other four, stood out. Registering as a magnitude 8.2 event, it was extremely powerful, unleashing the majority of the entire five-part quake’s energy. It was also slow, taking 180 seconds to transpire. That was partly why it remained hidden for so long: The team wasn’t using the right kind of seismic searchlight.

The shapes of seismic waves from slower quakes are different from the sort you typically get with sudden ruptures. When Jia changed the filters on the data recorded by a global network of seismographs to search for far slower ruptures, the event suddenly jumped out.

In addition to being more powerful and longer lasting, this quake was quite shallow, with a depth of just 8.5 miles—perfectly capable of creating a global tsunami.
World-shaking weirdness

Earthquakes are rarely as straightforward as they initially appear. Sometimes, as with New Zealand’s 2016 Kaikōura earthquake, that complexity is plain to see. Like a rocky Rube Goldberg machine, the quake featured a rupture that jumped between a dozen different faults. But that quake’s puzzles could be more easily solved.

“In that case, you’re talking about surface rupture,” says Kasey Aderhold, an earthquake seismologist at the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology who wasn’t involved with the new study. “It ruptures all these different faults, and they’re right up top. We can walk around on them and look at them.”

Not so for the South Sandwich Islands’ strange quake of 2021. “It’s deep, it’s under the ocean, it’s in a pretty remote place. You can’t touch it or walk around on it,” Aderhold says. There is no geophysical monitoring station on these islands, no ocean-bottom seismometers listening to the creaking subduction zone.

The researchers were only able to untangle the geological workings thanks to the Global Seismographic Network—an open-access, planet-wide network of 152 seismometers jointly operated by the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Science Foundation. “It’s really important,” Jia says. Without its nodes recording the seismic rumbles coming from remote earthquakes, strange events like this one would be impossible to decode.

As with most complex quakes, some mysteries remain. The magnitude 8.2 rupture most likely triggered the tsunami, but the specifics aren’t yet clear.

“A lot of tsunamis actually involve submarine landslides, which can be triggered by earthquakes,” says Robert Larter, a marine geophysicist at the British Antarctic Survey. “I’m personally wondering if that’s the case here.” The only way to check would be to peruse the seafloor—perhaps with a sonar-equipped boat, or with robotic submersibles—and compare its appearance to older bathymetric maps.

Geologists also wonder whether the subduction zone under the South Sandwich Islands could continue to unleash strong quakes. Last year’s rupture was expansive and potent. “Does this mean that this probably won’t rupture in such a large event for another, what, 500, 1,000 years?” Hicks wonders. A lack of instrumentation in the region makes this “a really difficult question to answer.”

The good news is that this quintuple quake’s discovery will bolster scientists’ ability to see similar events coming next time. “This offers the opportunity to detect these kinds of slow-rupture events from the seismic data, and with that we could more quickly and accurately trigger warnings,” Hubbard says.

The bad news is that this won’t be the last time an earthquake bamboozles scientists hoping to offset their more destructive elements. As Larter puts it: “The natural world is full of surprises.”

Craters Only Ever Seen on Other Planets and Moons Discovered in Wyoming

Impact craters that have only ever been seen on other planets and moons have been discovered in Wyoming.

Orlando Jenkinson - Yesterday

In a study published in the Geological Society of America Bulletin, scientists have announced the finding of secondary impact craters clustered in a field unlike anything else found on Earth before. The findings raise the possibility of a much larger impact crater yet to be discovered in the region.

Secondary impact craters are formed by debris from the larger initial impacts made by material crashing into a planet or moon from space. When such impacts occur at a high enough speed, the destruction they cause can eject material that cuts the secondary craters, which appear as elongated scars, into the surrounding land.

The paper compared the Wyoming craters to formations found not on Earth but elsewhere in the solar system. These included planets and moons that have thinner atmospheres than Earth, like Mars, Mercury and Ganymede—a moon orbiting the distant gas giant planet Jupiter.

Researchers said their work had uncovered a large number of craters—31 in total—in what they have called the Wyoming Crater Field, while more than 60 other structures that could be other impact craters await confirmation. They found the craters in a triangular area between the cities of Laramie, Douglas and Casper.

Images that accompanied the research showed the strange, stretched structures of the craters that appeared like close-ups of the moon or Mars.


© Kent Sundell, Casper CollegeAerial view of the secondary impact craters found in Wyoming. Kent Sundell, Casper College


© Kent Sundell, Casper CollegeKent Sundell, Casper College


© Kent Sundell, Casper CollegeKent Sundell, Casper College

"The trajectories indicate a single source and show that the craters were formed by ejected blocks from a large primary crater," project leader Thomas Kenkmann, professor of geology at the University of Freiburg, Germany, said in a statement. "Secondary craters around larger craters are well known from other planets and moons but have never been found on Earth."

The speed at which these impacts occurred was incredibly fast—researchers said ballistics modeling indicated the impacts happened at between 700 and 1,000 meters per second (1,500 to 2,200 miles per hour), as fast as a speeding bullet.

Such high-speed impacts also ejected materials far out from where they occurred according to the scientist's modeling. The paper said that material thrown out from the impact sites could travel between six and 430 miles away.

The paper said that despite the clear evidence of secondary impact craters, the site of the initial larger impact which created them was still unknown. Its modeling proposed a site somewhere on the border between Wyoming and Nebraska.

They said the findings represented a rare phenomenon on Earth because our planet's thicker atmosphere typically breaks meteors up into smaller fragments prior to collision.

"Here, for the first time, evidence is provided that secondary cratering has been possible on Earth," the study said.

Fly Me to the Moon: Worldwide Cislunar and Lunar Missions

February 15, 2022

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT

Fly Me to the Moon examines planned cislunar and lunar missions over the next decade from countries around the world. This compilation showcases the growth of satellites, rovers, and experiments intended to extend humanity’s reach more firmly into cislunar space and on the Moon. While many missions are focused on the discovery of water and ice on the lunar surface, others are building sustainable long-term transportation and habitation services for future human stay in space and on the Moon.

This report is made possible by general funding to CSIS.

Sheikh Jarrah quagmire could reignite fighting in Gaza, senior source warns

Source says further simmering of state of affairs in the contested East Jerusalem neighborhood 'must be prevented', slams lawmakers using situation to score political clout

Itamar Eichner|

Published: 02.15.22  YNET

The ongoing unrest in East Jerusalem's contested Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood could rekindle hostilities with Gaza Strip militant factions, a senior Israeli source warned on Tuesday.

Security forces have been clashing with both Palestinian and right-wing activists in recent days in a new wave of violence in the flashpoint after far-right legislator MK Itamar Ben Gvir opened a makeshift parliamentary office in Sheikh Jarrah in response to Palestinians firebombing a Jewish home in the neighborhood over the weekend.

Riots in East Jerusalem's contested Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood

(Photo: Amit Shabi)

"There has been a deterioration in the security situation in the area. Knesset members are coming there to stir up tensions. Escalation must be prevented and Jerusalem is a sensitive place," the source said in a media briefing.

The source further criticized Ben-Gvir, as well as members of the predominately Arab Joint List — MKs Ahmad Tibi, Ofer Cassif and Osama Saadi — who arrived in the neighborhood Sunday and picked a quarrel with right-wing activists there.

“I know very well what brings people there. [They seek] to cause provocations and burn the house down. We have established a state that has a monopoly over using force, there is no need for vigilantism for that,” he said.

Joint List MKs Ahmad Tibi, Ofer Cassif and Osama Saadi in Sheikh Jarrah

(Photo: Haim Goldich)

"We must stand up for the security of the residents of the neighborhood... But avoid provocations that would lead us to bad places."

The warning came days after Hamas spokesman Muhammad Hamada, warned that "settlers' attacks on Sheikh Jarrah, led by Itamar Ben Gvir, are a game of fire that could ignite all of Palestine."

"The ramification of such attacks are explosive and could backfire," he said as he called on Palestinians in Jerusalem and on the West Bank to "mobilize for the residents of Sheikh Jarrah."

Police clash with Palestinian protesters in Sheikh Jarrah on Sunday

(Photo: Yoav Dudkevitch)

Israel Police also warned of the ongoing situation, saying that "bad actors have been spreading misinformation and disinformation about various events in the area over social networks, along with violent and inflammatory online discourse and improper attempts to ignite the area."

YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP

Pastor Greg Locke threatens to dox ‘witches’ that infiltrated wife’s Bible book club
AMERIKA 2022

Justin Vallejo
Tue., February 15, 2022,

The Tennessee pastor known for burning so-called "witchcraft" books like Harry Potter and Twilight has threatened to expose six supposed "witches" in a new video that has gone viral.

Pastor Greg Locke, who styles himself as a prophet for predicting Donald Trump would beat "demon-possessed" Joe Biden, went on a wild sermon against the so-called "witches" that infiltrated his congregation.

In the video taken on 13 February, Mr Locke demanded the six "get out" or he would expose them during the next sermon to his Global Vision Bible Church this coming Sunday.

"Three of you are in this room right now. Three of you in the room right now. You better look in my eyeballs, we ain’t afraid of you, you stinkin’ witch, you devil-worshipping Satanist witch. We cast you out in the name of Jesus Christ! We break your spells, we break your curse. We got your first name, we got your last name, we even got an address for one of you!" he screamed.

"You so much as cough wrong, and I’ll expose you in front of everybody in this tent, you stinkin’ witch!" he added. "You were sent to this church to destroy us. You were sent to this church to lure us in. You were sent to this church to cast a spell — listen, some of you been sick? Cause you befriended that witch!"

HIS DUCK WALK HAS NOTHING ON GRUCHO


The clip, posted to Twitter by former Jeopardy! Champion Hemant Mehta and viewed more than 600,000 times, comes after Mr Locke made news for hosting a burning of books and movies earlier in February.

He said Harry Potter, Twilight, tarot cards, Ouija boards, healing crystals, idol statues and spell books are "100 per cent witchcraft", adding his "haters" can laugh all they want.

"If you think we’re crazy, then scroll on. We’re exposing the Kingdom of Darkness for what it is. It’s time for people to be delivered," he said before the book burning.

BOOK BURNING 2022

A Tennessee pastor invited his congregation to ban ‘occultic’ books like ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Twilight’ on Wednesday, 2 February, 2022.

 (Screengrab of Greg Locke Facebook Live video)

Mr Locke has been one of the most out-spoken propagators of QAnon lore, calling Mr Biden a "sex-trafficking, demon-possessed mongrel" who is part of a secret cabal that operates child-trafficking tunnels beneath the White House.

He insists that Mr Trump is the "legitimate president" but has since had a falling out with the former president over his support of Covid-19 vaccines.

In his latest sermon on Sunday, he said two of the witches infiltrated the congregation through his "wife’s ladies’ Bible study".

Pastor Greg Locke of Global Vision Bible Church holds services in the church parking lot on March 29, 2020 in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. (Getty Images)

"We got all six of their names. All six of them ... So you got a choice. You can leave with your spells, all by yourself, or I’ll show up next Sunday with a stage full of brooms, and I’ll give you one and I’ll fly your tail up out of this place in the name of Jesus," he said.

"But we ain’t playing your spell-castin’, witchcraft nonsense sage-burning games."

Global Vision Bible Church did not respond to The Independent’s request for comment.

REAL WITCHES DON'T JOIN BIBLE CLASS THEY WATER SKI