A torso, a tattooed arm, 'just parts:' Cops took and shared graphic photos of the Kobe Bryant crash site. Then came the cover-up.

"The fact that you have the sheriff's department allegedly acting like criminals, covering up crimes, that's a huge problem."

Erin Snodgrass,Azmi Haroun
Sun, August 21, 2022 

Kobe Bryant with his daughter Gianna at the WNBA All Star Game at Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas in July 2019.

Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY via Reuters

The first full week of the trial between Vanessa Bryant and LA County came to a close on Friday.

Plaintiffs' attorneys zeroed in on LA sheriff's deputies' efforts to hide photos of the crash site.

A legal expert told Insider that the testimony could spell trouble for the department.

The eighth day of Vanessa Bryant's trial against Los Angeles County reached an emotional fever pitch on Friday as the NBA widow took the stand to deliver heart-wrenching testimony about the loss of her husband and 13-year-old daughter.

Vanessa Bryant is suing the county and other defendants over allegations that LA sheriff's deputies and LA County Fire Department captains took and shared graphic photos of the January 2020 helicopter crash that killed nine people, including NBA star Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna.

Vanessa Bryant testified this week that after she learned about the photos, she felt she had two choices: "try to live my life or end it." Dressed in all black and frequently breaking down in tears, Bryant's testimony was undeniably affecting.

The preceding seven days in the LA courtroom were noticeably devoid of extreme emotion as a revolving door of LA sheriff's deputies and fire captains took the stand and testified about their involvement in the county-wide circulation of gruesome pictures from the crash site.

A county coroner early in the trial described the scene's utter carnage, offering jurors insight into the horrifying images likely captured by the first responders who snapped improper photos — some including human remains — that would make their way to several people in the aftermath of the crash, ultimately prompting an agency-wide effort to keep them contained.

Among the wreckage was a deluge of remains, including a dismembered torso, the coroner testified last week. The majority of the victims had to be scientifically identified because their wounds were so extreme, she said. Kobe Bryant was partially identified by his skin tone and the tattoos on his arm. A bartender who saw photos later said "there were just parts."

As the deputies and captains implicated in the spread of the photos took the stand one by one this past week, they offered myriad reasons for why they took, and then shared, the graphic photos: curiosity got the better of them; they believed it was part of their job; or, as two back-to-back deputies testified, it was a way to "alleviate stress."

But the most damning consequences stemming from the trial are unlikely to fall upon individual deputies, Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told Insider this week. The real trouble, he posited, is hanging over the already scandal-ridden agency at the heart of the case.

"This case is important, obviously," Rahmani said. "But there's gonna be political and legal ramifications for the sheriff's department above and beyond this case."

A lawyer for the county refuted Rahmani's analysis of the trial thus far in a statement to Insider.

"To the contrary, the testimony in this trial has repeatedly shown that County emergency personnel responded heroically to the January 2020 helicopter crash and that since then, the County has successfully prevented any of its site photography of the incident from ever being publicly disseminated," Mira Hashmall, partner at the Miller Barondess law firm and lead outside counsel for Los Angeles County in the Vanessa Bryant case, said.

"It is undisputed these images do not exist in the media or on the Internet, and the families have never seen them. A neutral forensic examination confirmed there are no remaining photos containing victims' remains," Hashmall added. "The County is not responsible for the Plaintiffs' decision to publicize in this trial the graphic details of the fatal injuries suffered by their loved ones — precisely the information the County has worked tirelessly over the last two and a half years to keep confidential."

Investigators work the scene of a helicopter crash that killed former NBA basketball player Kobe Bryant and his teenage daughter, and seven others in Calabasas, Calif., on Jan. 27, 2020.(AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File)

A department's attempt to contain controversy

Plaintiff's lawyers thus far have zeroed in on the extensive efforts LASD took to keep the photos a secret in the aftermath of the crash, including issuing a department-wide deletion order.

The agency's attempts may have even proved successful, Rahmani said, if not for the work of intrepid reporters and the brazenness of certain deputies.

A private citizen just days after the crash filed a complaint with the agency after he said he witnessed an LASD deputy trainee showing a bartender photos of victims' remains while at a Norwalk bar.

Less than a month later, a woman who lost family members in the crash also filed a complaint with the county fire department after witnessing a group of LA fire captains and their partners looking at photos from the crash while at an awards gala.

The first complaint prompted the head of LASD, Sheriff Alex Villanueva, to issue a sprawling deletion order to "not let the photos see the light of day," kicking off a deeply reactive department response that has led plaintiff's attorneys to accuse the agency of a cover up.

When a Los Angeles Times reporter began probing into the complaint and erasure a month after the crash, the department feigned ignorance. Chief Jorge Valdez, then a media relations captain, alongside Villanueva lied to the newspaper, denying any knowledge of the complaint or deletion order, Valdez testified earlier this week.

Meanwhile, a USB containing surveillance footage of the incident at the bar sat on Valdez's desk for nearly a month without any official review. It wasn't until two days after the bombshell LA Times piece was published that the department started its own internal investigation into the spread, Valdez testified.

"The biggest takeaway," Rahmani said of the trial's first week, "is how shady the LA County Sheriff's Department is."

Deputies' stories have changed numerous times from what they said in the internal investigation to what they said in depositions and on the stand this past week. Deputies have also claimed failed memory while on the stand.

Plaintiff's attorneys this week provided testimony suggesting the department's efforts to cover up the scandal went even further than previously reported.

A tech expert hired by Bryant's lawyers told the courtroom on Wednesday that a September 2021 analysis found that deputies "violated fundamental forensic policies" when they deleted the crash site photos. Nine of eleven phones turned in by LASD staff for the analysis were new since the January 2020 crash, and another – the phone that was used to show crash site photos at the bar – was reset to factory settings, rendering any attempt to use metadata to track the spread of photos impossible.

Lawyers for the victims have accused the sheriff's department of deleting evidence.

Bryant's legal team sent a letter on March 2, 2020, notifying the county of litigation and asking for the preservation of any evidence. As a law enforcement agency, the sheriff's department almost certainly would have known, or been informed by legal counsel that they needed to preserve evidence in the case, Rahmani said.

While it's unclear when exactly new LASD phones were purchased or reset after the crash, if deputies destroyed or failed to preserve key evidence after it became clear that litigation was imminent, it would be considered "spoliation of evidence," Rahmani said.

Such actions could lead to repercussions, he added, including the judge issuing adverse jury instructions or even civil or criminal prosecution of the deputies — though Rahmani said such an extreme response is unlikely in the case at this point.

Villanueva was the final witness to take the stand this week. As the county's first witness, he defended the deletion order in full, saying "the longer we delayed, it was a universe that was expanding infinitely."

The sheriff offered new insight into the specifics of the order, saying he told deputies to come forward with any photos and details about who had sent them in exchange for no disciplinary action.

"Dealing with a crisis is more important than policies," Villanueva said, as he described the initial crash scene as "utter bedlam," with fans and media descending upon the ravine. "There was no playbook for a situation like this."

Disagreeing with previous interviews from March 2020, where he said that only the coroner's office and NTSB should have taken photos, Villanueva testified this week that information he's gleaned since then about the brush fire and the threat of "looky-loos" at the crash site meant that some of his staff did the right thing by taking photos at the crash scene to "preserve the scene" for federal investigators.

Vanessa Bryant, center, the widow of Kobe Bryant, leaves a federal courthouse in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022.(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Scandal after scandal at the embattled LASD

The agency in recent years has battled a barrage of negative press stemming from a slew of misconduct allegations.

The Times in 2018 first reported the existence of "deputy gangs" operating within the department, though the secretive cliques have reportedly been an agency issue for decades. Subsequent revelations about the number of subgroups have kept the department embroiled in controversy.

Then, about a year after the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash, the agency was once again on the defense, after sheriff officials tried to keep quiet an incident in which a deputy knelt on the head of a handcuffed inmate for multiple minutes. The deputy in question was also involved in the Kobe scandal, accused of taking and sharing photos of the crash site.

The compounding crises could spell trouble for Villanueva, who is locked in a "pretty big fight" for his political career ahead of the upcoming November election, Rahmani said.

The sheriff's department, which has policing jurisdiction in smaller, more rural, often poorer areas than the Los Angeles Police Department, has much less oversight than the citywide agency, Rahmani said. As a result, the people impacted by LASD policing often don't have the means to bring sweeping lawsuits against the powerful organization, he added.

But Vanessa Bryant did.

It's not impossible to imagine that the one-time NBA wife could be the nail in Villanueva's career coffin, Rahmani posited, especially if the county is ultimately hit with a massive judgment in the case.

"The fact that you have the sheriff's department allegedly acting like criminals, covering up crimes, that's a huge problem."

Read the original article on Insider

Russia's 'most hidden crime' in Ukraine war: Rape of women, girls, men and boys

Laura King
Sun, August 21, 2022 

A woman who gave her name only as S. sits in a chair in her home in Makariv, Ukraine, a town that had been under Russian occupation. She says a Russian soldier taunted her after her neighbor was raped and killed. 

(Kyrylo Svietashov / For The Times)

The Russian soldier taunted her: Your friend, he sneered, is lying on the floor, raped and naked and dead.

S., a Ukrainian writer and government worker in her early 60s, froze at his words. Her neighbor Tetiana, a bold, dark-haired 37-year-old widow, had quickly attracted the attention of Russian soldiers who, within days of the Feb. 24 invasion, captured and occupied the small town of Makariv, about 30 miles west of the capital, Kyiv.

“She would defy them,” said S., still shaken and sorrowful as she described the harrowing events of five months earlier, before late-winter chill gave way to spring, then high summer. “She would tell them: ‘I’m not afraid of you.’”

S. holds the door of her home, which was kicked in by Russian forces.

 (Kyrylo Svietashov / For The Times)

Weeks would pass before the outside world learned of the horrors that occurred in streets and basements and back gardens of these once-tranquil suburbs and satellite towns, which were occupied for roughly a month before Russian forces in early April broke off a failed bid to seize the capital.

Townspeople who were unable or unwilling to flee endured the first wave of what Western governments and Ukrainian officials would later describe as a systematic campaign of atrocities by Russian forces against civilians: torture, execution-style killings, starvation.

And rape.

Little by little, month by month, investigators have laid the groundwork for what are now more than 25,000 active cases of suspected war crimes, covering a wide variety of offenses.

Investigators compile narratives from witness testimony, from forensic examinations of mutilated corpses that are still regularly turning up — outside Kyiv, one body was recently found stuffed beneath a manhole cover — from intercepted communications by Russian soldiers describing their own acts, or from surveillance cameras that before the war monitored traffic and deterred shoplifters.

As the war nears the six-month mark, however, cases involving sexual assault are proving particularly resistant to documentation.

A woman on a bicycle passes the home of S.'s slain neighbor

 in Makariv, Ukraine. (Kyrylo Svietashov / For The Times)

The prosecutor general’s office said last week there are “several dozen” criminal proceedings underway involving sexual violence committed by Russian military personnel. But police, prosecutors and counselors say the true number is likely far larger, in part because of reluctance to report such attacks.

“Sexual violence in this war is the most hidden crime," Ukrainian civil-society activist Natalia Karbowska told the U.N. Security Council in June.

A complex tangle of reasons underpins that silence. Some, like Tetiana, did not live to tell their stories. Some fled the country, joining an enormous exodus, and are not in contact with Ukrainian authorities. Others feel ashamed, clinging to the belief that they could somehow have prevented what befell them. Or a sexual attack might have taken place in the context of separate, overwhelming wartime loss: a home destroyed, a loved one killed.

Still others look to the near-industrial-scale atrocities occurring elsewhere — daily bombardment of civilian areas; the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian POWs last month in what evidence suggests was a deliberate mass execution by Russian forces; reports of torture, detention and abductions in currently occupied areas – and convince themselves that they ought to quietly put their private agonies behind them.

“They think others suffered more,” said Nadiia Volchenska, a 32-year-old Kyiv psychologist who co-founded a network that connects sexual assault victims with counselors. She said people who had been raped or sexually abused in the course of this conflict — most are women and girls, but many are men and boys — are often reluctant to speak even in confidence with a therapist, let alone go to police or other investigators and provide a detailed account.

A fence damaged by Russian forces sits in front of S.'s home in Makariv, which was under Russian occupation early in the war on Ukraine. (Kyrylo Svietashov / For The Times)

“Quite often, after making a first contact with us,” she said, “people will simply vanish.”

Rape as a weapon is as old as war itself. The objective, say those who deal with such cases, is to humiliate and degrade, to break the spirit of defenders, to shatter families and communities, to instill a sense of hopelessness and despair. It often leaves wreckage too profound to repair.

“Of course it is not about sexual gratification,” said Natalya Zaretska, a military psychologist by training who is currently a volunteer in the Territorial Defense Forces, working with people in the formerly occupied territories in the Kyiv oblast, or province. “Rape is one instrument that is used to try to achieve this goal of subjugation.”

Ukrainian officials believe a Russian campaign of terrorism against civilians was sanctioned at the highest levels, rather than the work of rogue troops. The Kremlin has derided well-documented atrocities in occupied areas as a fabrication, so for Ukraine, compiling proof and moving ahead with prosecutions is considered vital, even if such a reckoning takes many years.

“Evil must be punished, or it will spread,” said Andriy Nebytov, the police chief for the Kyiv region.

Authorities are circumspect about the specifics of sexual assault cases under investigation, but in a statement in response to written questions from the Los Angeles Times, the prosecutor general’s office cited a few representative examples.

In the town of Chernihiv, north of the capital, a Russian unit commander used “physical and psychological violence” against a 16-year-old girl, threatening to kill family members if she resisted his sexual advances, or to hand her over to others to be gang-raped instead. In Brovary, east of Kyiv, a serviceman has been indicted in absentia for repeatedly raping the wife of a slain civilian. In another case in that same district, soldiers singled out one woman for assault, herding others into a locked basement. Another, Ukrainian officials say, was raped with her young child nearby.

In carefully couched language, the prosecutor’s office cited obstacles faced by investigators, including the need to protect the privacy of minors and to avoid re-traumatizing survivors. But sheer stigma was described as the overriding factor.

“Women who have been raped,” the statement said, “do not want to spread such information about themselves.”

Those who lived under Russian occupation earlier in the war describe a nauseating sense of constant fear.

A damaged home in Makariv, Ukraine. (Kyrylo Svietashov / For The Times)

S., who did not want even her full first name used because some of the troops who occupied Makariv back in March are still in Ukraine, is working with the authorities to try to identify those involved in Tetiana’s assault and death. Some of the occupiers addressed one another by names or nicknames, aiding in this process.

On her smartphone, S. showed photos of individual soldiers sent to her by prosecutors, who for months have tracked the unit’s activities and obtained images of the suspects from social media and elsewhere. She recognized several, including ones who came regularly to her house and to Tetiana’s simple brick home next door to loot and carouse and threaten. She particularly feared one, a Chechen, whose erratic behavior made her think he was on drugs.

When the Russians first arrived, S. was caring for her 90-year-old mother, who was in fragile health and adamantly refused to leave. But in the ensuing weeks, the soldiers’ violence and volatility persuaded her that they must seize any chance to escape.

A neighbor man was shot by soldiers, eventually dying of his wounds, and S. was told his wife had been sexually assaulted. (That woman declined to speak with journalists about what had happened.) One day, a young soldier came to S.’s own house and tried to get her to go upstairs with him. Fearing he intended to rape her, she tried to dissuade him by noting the 30-year disparity in their ages.

In the midst of this, other soldiers came to the house, telling the would-be assailant he was needed elsewhere, and he eventually left with them. S. felt a rush of terrified relief.

On the day that she, her mother, Tetiana and a home health aide had been promised a ride to safety with a neighbor, her friend was nowhere to be found. Troops again burst into S.’s house, with one of them behaving bizarrely and demanding a bandage for an injury. After downing a shot of vodka, he blurted out news of her friend’s fate.

In Makariv, S. still thinks often of her neighbor Tetiana, of her humor, her quirks, her determination. S. looks out at the house her friend once lived in, trying to picture her vibrant and alive. (Kyrylo Svietashov / For The Times)

Soldiers refused to let her see Tetiana’s body, S. said. Eventually, a serviceman she believed to be an ethnic Buryat from Siberia offered to let her speak to someone he said knew the full story. That soldier told S. that Tetiana had been raped by several others, and that the Chechen was the one to stab and kill her. Ordered to bury the naked corpse, the soldier told S. they first wrapped the body in a blanket.

“I felt shame that she is dead and I am still alive,” she said months later on a heat-heavy summer afternoon, brewing tea for visitors and keeping an eye on her mother dozing in an armchair nearby. “I have that guilt.”

Rape counselors say that with many instances of assault having taken place early in the war, some of those people may be recovering their equilibrium enough to talk about what happened to them.

“Sometimes we see this around six months later, the beginning of a willingness to open up,” said Volchenska, the Kyiv therapist. “But now we expect a wave of similar cases from Kherson” — a southern city seized by Russia early in the invasion, which Ukrainian forces hope to retake.

“The problem is that you need to feel safe to talk,” she said. “And really nowhere in the country is safe.”

In Makariv, S. still thinks often of Tetiana — her humor, her quirks, her determination. Every day, she looks out on the now-empty house her friend once lived in, trying to picture her vibrant and alive. She remembers Tetiana telling her about a dream she’d had, during the frightening days of occupation.

“In it, she was on the cloud, flying,” S. said. “It was so peaceful. It was so good.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

China Accounts For Nearly Half Of The World’s Renewable Energy Capacity


Editor OilPrice.com
Sun, August 21, 2022 

Despite big talk from the West, China is pumping huge amounts of funding into its renewable energy sector as it seeks to become competitive in its green energy operations. Heavy investment in research and development has helped China develop several innovative technologies to support its renewable energy rollout. In addition, government subsidies on electric vehicles (EVs) have helped to increase uptake and build a strong consumer market.

The U.S. has just passed its biggest climate change bill, with $370 billion in subsidies going toward solar and wind energy development, electric vehicles, and other clean energy projects. The U.S. introduced the bill to help it reach its ambitious emissions targets between 2030 and 2050. The other benefit of boosting its renewable energy industry is the ability to become more competitive with other major world powers, such as China.

However, China achieved $380 billion in public and private sector clean energy investments in 2021 alone. In addition, thanks to its strong manufacturing and construction industries, China can build large-scale wind and solar farms at a rapid pace. And this is just the latest in China’s green energy achievements, having been investing in clean energy for years. This is not to say that China isn’t still a massive polluter. In 2021, China’s carbon emissions exceeded those of all developed nations combined. But its contribution to the development of the global renewable energy sector is substantial.

The Chinese government started pumping funds into solar and wind power over a decade ago, seeing the potential for green investments to make it a world leader in renewables, as well as helping it alleviate some of the worsening air pollution being seen across major cities. China supported private companies investing in renewables by extending credit and introducing several subsidies to encourage green energy use over coal. Now, China provides nearly half of the world’s renewable energy capacity, as home to the world’s largest solar plant and further planned construction meaning its solar capacity could double this year. China continues to dramatically outpace the U.S in its solar and wind energy output.

China has used its renewable energy industry to support its economy, making it more competitive with other major powers at a time when everyone’s transitioning to green. BloombergNEF (BNEF) head of China analysist Nannan Kou stated “Green infrastructure is the most important investment area that China is relying on to boost its weak economy in the second half of 2022.” China has seen $41 billion in solar investments in the first six months of 2022, supporting its goal of 1,200 GW of wind and solar capacity by 2030. By comparison, the U.S. invested $7.5 billion in solar over the same period.

While several clean energy bills driven by the Democrats were halted in the U.S., particularly Obama’s Clean Energy Plan which was quashed under Trump, China has been passing green bills for years. Last year it introduced its 14th five-year plan, from 2021-2025, in which it makes several ambitious targets including deriving 25 percent of China’s energy from non-fossil fuel resources by the end of the decade and supplying at least half of the electricity demand increase by renewables. China has exceeded its energy targets in the past three five-year-plans and is expected to continue excelling in renewable energy.

Innovative technologies are helping China to advance its renewable energy sector with digitalization technologies such as 5G, smart grids, and distributed energy resources, and the electrification of end uses helping to provide the structural change China requires to transition from a fossil fuel-driven energy industry to green powered. The electrification of China’s power system will help increase demand, and the rollout of new digital technologies is expected to contribute to developing a more decentralized system.

But all this green energy investment has not meant a huge reduction in the country’s emissions, with China still having a long way to go to achieve its emissions peak in 2030 before trending downwards. Last year, ahead of the COP26 climate summit, China set a target to peak its carbon dioxide emissions before 2030, also aiming to decrease its “carbon intensity” (measuring its emissions per unit of GDP) by 25 percent by this date, compared to 2005 levels.

Many world powers have criticized China for not being ambitious enough in its carbon targets. In addition, China still relies heavily on coal. China pledged last year that it would no longer construct overseas coal plants, making many think it may be turning its back on coal, only to double down on several domestic coal developments. At present, China continues to be the world’s biggest emitter, responsible for around 27 percent of global emissions. And despite its renewable energy developments, this issue is expected to continue without greater efforts to transition nationally away from coal, oil, and gas to greener alternatives. Yet, the U.S. will certainly have to reconsider the quantity of renewable energy funding required to knock China off the top spot.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

Nearly 50% Of Africa Has No Access To Power, Could Renewables Help?


Editor OilPrice.com
Sat, August 20, 2022 

The African region has gained significant attention recently for its burgeoning oil and gas industry, with new oil-rich states across Africa hoping to meet the continued global demand for fossil fuels. However, several African countries are also developing green energy strategies and investing in renewables.

The African Union is expected to present a five-page document highlighting the benefits of developing the region’s oil and gas industry at COP27 later this year. Not only will the growth of the industry help several countries to develop their economies, but it will also present opportunities for oil and gas companies to invest in their low-carbon fossil fuel potential while global demand remains high, bridging the gap in the green transition. But this is just the start of Africa’s energy boom, as it also looks to take advantage of its vast renewable resources.

In 2019, IRENA presented the case for the scaling up of renewable energy deployment in Africa. It highlighted the region’s substantial renewable energy sources, saying that Africa has the potential to play a leading role in shaping a sustainable energy future. However, poor supply reliability, leading to blackouts and making many countries rely on fossil fuels, was holding back both energy and general economic development. The IRENA report nevertheless stated that the “continent’s massive biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar and wind power have the potential to rapidly change Africa’s current realities.”

When the report was published, 600 million people across Africa had no access to power, around 48 percent of the total African population. But IRENA suggested that Africa could meet around a quarter of its energy needs with clean energy by 2030. This would require an increase from 42 GW of renewable electricity to 310 GW to provide half of the region’s electricity demand, with an annual investment of around $70 billion until 2030.

Several African countries have already developed strategies and targets in support of renewable energy development including Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, and South Africa, leading the region’s transition efforts. Several smaller countries have also set green energy goals. And investments in solar power across the region have already increased significantly. In 2021, Daniel-Alexander Schroth, acting director for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency at the African Development Bank (AfDB), stated “We recently saw Solar PV tariffs below $0.04 making it the cheapest form of electricity generation and the logical choice for additional capacity.”

Between 2019 and 2020, the capacity of solar and wind power in Africa increased by 11 percent and 13 percent respectively. But they’re not the only renewable resources being developed, with hydropower capacity increasing by 25 percent over the same period. A PricewaterhouseCoopers report stated that the total installed capacity of renewables in Africa grew by over 24 GW between 2013 and 2020, with an anticipated increase from 1.8 exajoules in 2020 to 27.3 EJ by 2050. However, PwC believes it will cost at least $2.8 trillion for Africa to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century.

According to PwC, Africa has the potential to develop 59 TW of wind energy capacity and is using just 0.01 percent of this potential at present, with 6,491 MW installed and 1,321 MW under construction in 2021. Africa had 9,604 MW of solar capacity, with 7,158 MW under construction, with the biggest solar projects in place in South Africa, Egypt, and Algeria. Bioenergy is expected to contribute around 10 percent of Africa’s renewable energy supply by 2050. Hydropower is also very underutilized, with just 11 percent of the low-cost electricity source in operation, with significant potential to also develop geothermal power.

In terms of nuclear power, South Africa is the only country on the continent with a commercial nuclear power plant. But another 100 MW nuclear power facility is under construction in South Sudan. In addition, several countries, including Ghana, Kenya, Egypt, Morocco, Niger, and Nigeria have consulted the IAEA about their nuclear potential, with aims to develop a nuclear power program.

However, to establish a strong renewable energy sector, Africa will require support from the international community, particularly in terms of funding. In an IEA event, held in Paris, earlier this year, ministers and stakeholders around the globe agreed on the “need for strengthened international action to address existing barriers to clean energy investment and to promote capital deployment across the continent.”

Foreign investment in African renewables is already increasing, with U.S. investors working with USAID and Prosper Africa to explore the green energy potential in South Africa. This is part of the U.S. government’s initiative to increase trade and investment between African nations and America. In COP26, some of the world’s richest states pledged $8.5 billion in climate grants and concessional loans to South Africa. However, it will need significantly more private funding to curb its coal and oil production and develop its renewable energy sector.

In other areas, U.K. company TuNur announced it would be investing $1.5 billion in a 500 MW solar power plant in Tunisia. Meanwhile, the British International Investment (BII) Plc, the development-finance arm of the government, intends to invest $6 billion over the next half a decade in Africa, mainly in renewable energy and digital infrastructure. BII Chief Executive Officer Nick O’Donohoe stated, “We have been a significant investor in power in Africa, originally in fossil-fuel power, and over the last three or four years, almost exclusively renewable power.”

In addition to its significant low-carbon oil and gas potential, the African region could become a renewable energy powerhouse. However, with limited infrastructure in place and restrictions in national funding for renewable energy developments, the international community must direct energy investments to the region to establish a strong renewable energy sector that can support global energy development in a net-zero future.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

The Man Who Wants To Release Thousands of Wooly Mammoths Into the Arctic
Aristos Georgiou - 

 Artist's reconstruction of two woolly mammoths. Colossal Biosciences is attempting to develop an elephant-mammoth hybrid with that could thrive in the Arctic tundra.

Woolly mammoths, the iconic giants of the last ice age, went extinct around 4,000 years ago.

But one company is trying to revive the species—or at least something resembling it—and the scientist at the head of the project envisions thousands of these animals roaming the Arctic.

Colossal Biosciences is a start-up launched by tech entrepreneur Ben Lamm and renowned geneticist George Church that is aiming to resurrect the woolly mammoth, or more accurately to create a genetically engineered Asian elephant that will be cold-resistant and have all the core biological traits of its extinct relative.

The company also announced this week that it is working on the de-extinction of the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger.

While not an exact replica, the hybrid animal will look like a woolly mammoth and be capable of inhabiting the same ecosystem that the extinct animal once roamed.

The science side of the ambitious (and somewhat controversial venture) is being guided by Church, whose pioneering work has contributed to the development of DNA sequencing and genome engineering technologies.

Church leads synthetic biology research efforts at Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. He is also a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, while also holding positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), among other institutions.

Church has co-authored hundreds of scientific papers, has dozens of patents to his name, and has set up more than 20 companies. He has long dreamed of bringing back the woolly mammoth, and after teaming up with Lamm, this dream could become a reality, although significant scientific and logistical obstacles will need to be overcome first.

Genome Editing Examples

Colossal's aim to create a hybrid elephant with woolly mammoth traits—such as thick fur and layers of insulating fat, among other cold climate adaptions—will involve the use of advanced gene editing technology.

Church told Newsweek that the approach is very similar to research one of his companies has demonstrated with pigs, where scientists made roughly 40 edits to the genome of these animals in order to make their organs suitable for transplantation into humans.

He said Colossal was planning to make a similar number of edits in cells taken from Asian elephants, an endangered species that is the woolly mammoth's closest living relative, sharing around 99.6 percent of its DNA.

"Indeed, the Asian elephant and the woolly mammoth are closer to each other than either of them is to the African," Church told Newsweek.

In order to determine which edits to make, Colossal's researchers have to compare elephant genomes to that of the woolly mammoth to identify where the key differences are. Fortunately, some mammoth remains have been preserved remarkably well, with some tissue samples containing intact DNA, from which researchers can build at least partial genomes.

Once the differences are identified, scientists can begin making genetic edits to cells taken from Asian elephants with the aim of creating a more mammoth-like animal. The number of edits will be similar to the 40 or so made to the pig genome in previous research.

"We'd typically use CRISPR [Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats], or a variety of other editing tools, to edit the cell by going in and adding DNA. And then we take the nucleus out of that cell and put it into an egg.

"Then we implant that into a surrogate mother and wait, in the case of elephants, 22 months. Then you've got a calf. That's classical cloning, as was done with Dolly the Sheep," Church said. "The point is not to resurrect a species, but to resurrect individual genes in a constellation that would help specifically with cold tolerance."
Artificial Womb or Surrogate Mother

Another method that the Colossal team is working on in parallel is to develop the elephant-mammoth hybrid embryo in an artificial womb instead of using a surrogate mother.

The surrogate would likely be an African elephant rather than an Asian one because it is a larger species that will have less difficulty delivering an elephant hybrid and is slightly less of a conservation concern.

"We will let it develop outside the body as kind of happens for a little while in in vitro fertilization. But then, we want to carry it further, all the way to term," Church said.

This has never been done before for any mammal, but researchers have previously made headway in some animals. For example, a team at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia managed to support a fetal lamb for four weeks, although the size of a mammoth calf, which usually weighs more than 200 pounds at birth, will present a far greater challenge.

While using a surrogate mother is more feasible because the technology has already been demonstrated (to some extent at least) in other mammals, Church said most of the team favors the artificial womb approach—despite the technological challenges—because it can scale better and doesn't interfere with the reproduction of living elephants.

Colossal's goal, which Church said was "not necessarily a promise," is to produce a viable elephant-mammoth hybrid in six years.
Environmental Benefits

If Colossal does manage to achieve this, the company hopes that introducing enough of them into the wild could restore the health of the Arctic environment and decelerate melting of the Arctic permafrost, a process which releases vast quantities of greenhouse gases, threatening efforts to curb climate change.

Mammoths were keystone species that were vital to maintaining the health and biodiversity of the ecosystems in which they inhabited. The loss of mammoths over the last few thousands years has contributed to a reduction of grasslands, which once efficiently absorbed carbon, in the Arctic regions. Now this ecosystem is dominated by mossy forests and wetlands.

Restoring these grasslands could help to prevent the thaw and release of greenhouse gases within the arctic permafrost, according to Colossal.

"Elephants tend to knock down trees, and hence restore grasslands," Church said. "So, there'll be a mixture of trees and grass, rather than right now, there's almost no grass."

"The main side effect that we're interested in is the maintenance of cold arctic soil by [elephants] trampling the snow to let the cold air in in the winter."

In addition, grasslands do a better job of reflecting sunlight than trees currently found across the Arctic because they are lighter in color. Thus, more grassland, would help to cool the ecosystem.

Church said Colossal is focusing on the regions of the Arctic that have the highest carbon content because more methane—a potent greenhouse gas—would be released if we let the permafrost thaw from these areas.

"The carbon content of these carbon-rich areas add up to more than the rest of the forests of the world put together," Church said.
Thousands Roaming the Arctic

If Colossal is able to produce viable elephant-mammoth hybrids, according to Church, the plan, ideally, would be to have tens of thousands of these animals roaming the Arctic.

"There was on the order of one mammoth per square kilometer. And so we think that tens of thousands would be very impactful, possibly preventing more methane release than all the human activity put together each year," he said.

The idea is to have hubs, Church said, which will have an incubator in the middle. "Then the elephant herds will spread out radially from that," he said.

The timeline to reach these kinds of numbers would be extraordinarily long-term if breeding using elephant surrogates was required.

"But if we can produce an arbitrary number of eggs in the lab, and then grow those in parallel, then there's no reason why we couldn't produce the entire set that we need right after this six-year milestone," Church said.

"So as soon as the six-year milestone is over, then we scale it up to tens of thousands dispersed in these hubs. And then it would take probably about 10 years before they're really seriously migrating. Elephants are really good walkers—in their lifetime, they would cover roughly more than two trips around the world if they were going in a straight line."
Ethical Concerns

Colossal's plans have faced criticism, with some experts questioning the feasibility of developing the elephant-mammoth hybrids in the first place, or arguing that the animals might not have the desired effect on Arctic ecosystems if they are introduced in significant numbers.

Others, meanwhile, have raised ethical concerns, noting that elephants are highly intelligent, social creatures that form strong bonds with their mothers.

"You don't have a mother for a species that—if they are anything like elephants—has extraordinarily strong mother-infant bonds that last for a very long time," Heather Browning, a philosopher at the London School of Economics, previously told The New York Times.

"Once there is a little mammoth or two on the ground, who is making sure that they're being looked after?"

In response to critiques like these, Church said Colossal was working with groups that have significant experience dealing with elephant orphans.

"This is an unfortunate consequence of poaching and natural death and so forth," he said. "There's a great deal of knowledge about how to make artificial milk and how to nurture them with minimal herd involvement."

He also pointed to other rewilding efforts that have been characterized as being successful, such as the reintroduction of captive-bred California condors to the wild.

"Some of those involve various training methods where they train the next generation if there's unavailability of adults. So, for example, the California condor, they use little adult Condor puppets, hand puppets to do some of the feeding and behavior training and so forth."

Nepal’s holy Bagmati River choked with black sewage, trash

Tainted by garbage and raw sewage that is dumped directly into the waterway, Nepal’s holiest river has deteriorated so greatly that today it is also the country’s most polluted.

The polluted Bagmati River flows to an exit point from Kathmandu, Nepal, Tuesday, April 26, 2022. Tainted by garbage and raw sewage that is dumped directly into the waterway, Nepal’s holiest river has deteriorated so greatly that today it is also the country’s most polluted, dramatically altering how the city of about 3 million interacts with the Bagmati on daily, cultural and spiritual levels. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

August 17, 2022

By 

Binaj Gurubacharya

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — High on a mountain in the Himalayas, pristine drops fall from the mouth of a tiger statue installed at a stream thought to form the headwaters of the Bagmati River, long revered as having the power to purify souls. From there it wends its way downhill past verdant forests and merges with other waterways, irrigating fields of rice, vegetables and other crops that are a livelihood for many Nepalese.

But as the Bagmati reaches the valley of Kathmandu, the capital, its color changes from clear to brown and then to black, choked with debris, its contents undrinkable and unsuitable even for cleaning. During the dry season, an overwhelming stench pervades the area by its banks.

Tainted by garbage and raw sewage that is dumped directly into the waterway, Nepal’s holiest river has deteriorated so greatly that today it is also the country’s most polluted, dramatically altering how the city of about 3 million interacts with the Bagmati on daily, cultural and spiritual levels.

In the capital, the Bagmati’s sludge oozes past several sacred sites, including the Pashupatinath Temple, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979. The sprawling complex comprises a golden-roofed main temple dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, surrounded by hundreds of smaller ones.

Hindus flock to the riverbanks in Kathmandu to worship at shrines and celebrate festivals. Women dip in the river to wash away sins during Rishipanchami, a day for worship of the seven sages revered as enlightened beings guiding humanity through the ages. Visitors also wade in during the festival of Chhath, praying to the sun god Surya. During Teej, married women come to pray for the health and prosperity of their husbands, and single women, to find a good one.

Families have long carried the bodies of deceased loved ones to these banks to wash the feet of the dead on a stone slab and sprinkle their faces with river water. Beliefs hold that that washes away a person’s sins and sends their soul to heaven before their physical remains are cremated atop heaps of wood, also alongside the river, and their ashes scattered into the waters.

People still bring departed loved ones to the Bagmati, but many no longer dare to have any contact with its contents. While the bodies are still cremated here, they’re cleansed with purified water bought in nearby stores.

“That is no more now. The water is so dirty and stinks. People are forced to bring bottled water and do the rituals,” 59-year-old Mithu Lama, who has been working with her husband at the Teku ghat cremation grounds since she married him at age 15, said on a recent day as she stacked wood for a funeral pyre.

Grieving families who resort to bottled water typically are loath to discuss it openly, for having failed to follow the sacred funeral tradition.

People have also traditionally collected river water to sprinkle on their homes to purify them. The river is significant to Buddhists, too, many of whom cremate bodies on the Bagmati’s banks.

Born and raised next to the Bagmati, Lama recalled using its waters for cooking, bathing, washing and even drinking. Today that feels like a long-ago dream dashed by decades of dumping human waste and refuse, and one she doesn’t expect to see again anytime soon.

“I now have serious doubt that it will be cleaned in my lifetime,” Lama said. “Not that there has not been any efforts, there have been several cleaning campaigns, but there are more people dirtying it. People are the problem.”

Indeed, there have been efforts by both private volunteers and the government to clean up the river. Among those initiatives, every Saturday for the past seven years hundreds of volunteers have gathered in Kathmandu to pick up garbage and remove trash from the Bagmati.

There almost every weekend is Mala Kharel, an executive member of the governmental High Powered Committee for Integrated Development of the Bagmati Civilization, which was set up to help clean up the river. She volunteers her time not only for cleanup duty but to raise awareness among the population about avoiding pollution.

Kharel said that over the years the campaign has succeeded in collecting about 80% of garbage along the riverbank, recovering all sorts of refuse from decaying animals to even, shockingly, the bodies of dead babies dumped there. But the pickup efforts admittedly fall short of perfection, in part since frequent disruptions to trash collection services encourage more dumping than they can keep up with.

In addition, many thousands of people have built huts, shacks and brick homes illegally along the river and refuse to leave.

As for the sewage, according to Kharel, the committee is working on several projects including the construction of canals and pipes, built parallel to the river, to connect to sewer lines and prevent their waste from reaching the Bagmati. It also is considering a treatment plant, and working on upstream dams where rainwater can be captured and stored during the monsoon season and released during the dry months to flush the river, moving the waste downstream from Kathmandu.

Work on the pipe and canal system began around 2013, but no completion date has been announced. Construction on two dams is ongoing — but said to be near done — while another remains in the process of getting started. But campaigners have high hopes for the near term.

“In the next 10 years, I am hoping the river will be flowing clear and the banks will be clean and lined with trees,” Kharel said. “We are working hard with this target.”

That optimism isn’t shared by everyone. Some environmentalists aren’t sure the dams, for instance, will be of much help.

“There is too much expectations from these dams. Bagmati is a natural river and not a canal that can be cleaned so easily,” said Madhukar Upadhya, a watershed expert who studies the river closely and said its bed no longer has any sand left.

Instead, today it’s lined with clay and mixed with chemicals dumped by industrial activity such as handwoven carpet makers, popular in the 1990s but now banned from the capital.

“So much damage has already been done to it,” Upadhya said, “that it can perhaps be cleaned to some degree but not restored to its past glory.”

Hindu priest Pandit Shivahari Subedi, who has spent three decades on the stone steps between the Bagmati and the Pashupatinath Temple performing rituals for devotees, takes a similarly dim view of the various cleanup campaigns he has seen. Divine intervention, he believes, is needed.

“There have been too many assurances from political leaders and top people, but they have all not been fulfilled. … It looks like unless the gods create some kind of miracle, the Bagmati will not return to its glory,” Subedi said. “To clean the water naturally, by the grace of god, there needs to be huge flooding of water flushing the dirt.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Ayurveda’s spiritual science makes inroads among foodies and healers

At the intersection of science and religion, the ancient art of ayurveda is attracting believers seeking to improve their health by treating soul and body.

Photo by Annie Spratt/Unsplash/Creative Commons

August 17, 2022

By 

Richa Karmarkar

(RNS) — Over the course of two centuries, ayurveda — the ancient philosophy of the Indian subcontinent — has spread West, informing ideas about healthy lifestyles with holistic skin care, diet and exercise. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have propelled ayurveda further into the mainstream, as housebound yogis, chefs and spa owners — believers, if not Hindus — percolated new techniques and businesses based on the practices developed since it began more than 3,000 years ago.

New York City has become a hub of the ayurveda trend, where the creative forces behind new ayurvedic restaurants, spas, health clinics and yoga studios are collaborating, working out how to apply the philosophy to their disciplines authentically, to avoid turning the trend into a simple marketing gimmick.

Ayurveda can be traced back to the Hindu scripture known as the Four Vedas and translates literally as “knowledge of life” (or, more precisely, “systematic knowledge of the life span”). As a health regimen, it offers herbal remedies for internal ailments, based on the idea that the mind, body and soul are connected to the elements and that health problems arise when these elements are out of balance. It emphasizes the body’s material composition, or prakriti, and its energies, or doshas.

Often referred to as a “spiritual science,” ayurveda is intended to help followers along their own journeys to self-realization. 

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Though it doesn’t demand adherence to Hinduism or any single faith, ayurveda still thrives in Hindu-majority India, where the pandemic spawned increased demand for ayurvedic products and services that improve immunity and respiratory capacity. It was there, in Vrindavan, one of the country’s holiest cities, that Divya Alter met ayurvedic practitioners who helped her heal from autoimmune and chronic digestive illnesses she’d suffered for years.

Ayurvedic preparations displayed in Delhi, India, in 2016. Photo by Hans Vivek/Wikipedia/Creative Commons

She stayed in Vrindavan for five years, studying ayurveda, bhakti spiritual philosophy and Sanskrit. “My sick body became my biggest obstacle in my spiritual life,” said Alter. “I realized that the body is a gift from God, and I’m meant to take care of it so I can evolve on my spiritual path.”

After moving to New York City in 2009, Alter, who is Bulgarian, and her husband, Prentiss, founded Bhagavat Life, a nonprofit culinary school dedicated to teaching ayurvedic principles of local, freshly made, seasonal food. The school established the United States’ first Ayurvedic Culinary Certification in 2015. Two years later, Divya Alter published “What To Eat For How You Feel,” which collects her recipes and teaches the basics of ayurvedic eating. 

“Part of my work is to preserve and present authentic practice and to teach it in a way that’s very easy to understand and very easy to apply,” said Alter.

Divya Alter has co-founded Bhagavat Life and Divya’s Kitchen in New York City. Photo by Rachel Vanni

The school has grown from four students to more than 500 in just five years, growth Alter attributes to New Yorkers’ increased desire for organic and plant-based nutrition. She points to the attention paid to the city’s mayor, Eric Adams, a vegan whose public health policies advocate healthy eating.

In 2016, the Alters opened Divya’s Kitchen in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, calling it “modern cuisine based on ancient principles.” The menu offers curries and other South Asian-influenced dishes and lasagna incorporating bechamel sauce made from cashew or sunflower milks.

Until recently Divya’s had company in the Ayurveda Cafe, an Upper West Side restaurant opened more than two decades ago by Tirlok Malik, an India-born filmmaker and actor who learned ayurveda directly from Dr. Vasant Lad, subject of the 2018 documentary “The Doctor From India” that tells the story of the prominent ayurvedic physician’s mission to bring ayurveda to Westerners.

Malik has a simple view of ayurvedic philosophy: “Ayurveda says accept everything, reject nothing and choose what is good for you,” he said.

The cafe fell victim to COVID-19’s upheavals and closed in July, but besides being a local favorite, it attracted those with special dietary needs, including strict Buddhists and Jews but also those who looked to plant-based food for healing. 

Shaun Kaminoff, a regular patron, traveled to India to get ayurvedic treatment for his chronic pain. He said ayurveda’s focus on healing the whole person, rather than just diseases and symptoms, inspired him to find ayurveda when he came back to the U.S.

Kaminoff said besides his pain, ayurveda can calm the nerves in an intense city. “You want to do something to counteract the environment you’re in,” he said.

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Bhaswati Bhattacharya. Photo via Indic Academy

Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya, a holistic medicine practitioner and a clinical assistant professor at New York’s Weill-Cornell Medical College, said ayurveda is reaching a tipping point in its acceptance in the American medical community. In recent years Bhattacharya has been invited to share her knowledge of ayurvedic medicine to both the Food and Drug Administration and the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health.

As the use of natural Indian herbs and supplements for ailments grows and as doctors recognize to treat each person according to their physical needs, she said, the medical field needs decision-makers and drug executives to advocate for ayurvedic cures.

Robert Graham, founder of Fresh Medicine, said the largest obstacle to achieving the adoption of ayurveda in the conventional medical model is mistrust in its reliability. “The next integration of this field is proving its safety and efficacy,” said Graham, a Harvard-trained physician of internal and integrative medicine.

Robert Graham. Photo via Fresh Medicine

Though Indigenous healing practices have shaped the health care model for communities of color for years, Graham said, case studies are not enough. Large, well-funded research projects are necessary to overcome skepticism.

That skepticism is slowly fading. Before being invited to the national stage by government health agencies, Bhattacharya said, she was considered a “quack” doctor by many of her American colleagues.

Groups such as the National Ayurvedic Medical Association are working hard to spread knowledge and awareness of the profession through classes and conferences in hopes of normalizing ayurveda for American audiences.

The website of Johns Hopkins University’s medical school includes a page on ayurveda, which says it can have positive effects as a “complementary therapy” when combined with conventional medicine, but “should not replace standard, conventional medical care, especially when treating serious conditions.”

But while some schools that teach ayurvedic medicine have gained approval as educational institutions, ayurvedic practitioners are still not licensed in the United States, and there is no national standard for ayurvedic certification. 

The U.S. pharmaceutical industry, too, which commonly puts barriers on which medicines are made available to citizens, has also resisted further inroads. Ayurvedic medicines are considered dietary supplements, rather than drugs, so they are not required to meet the safety and efficacy regulations of conventional medicines. 

As pandemic-scarred Americans search for better, more holistic ways to protect and improve their health, ayurveda’s practitioners say, these last obstacles will fall. “The biggest sale is ayurveda speaking its truth,” said Bhattacharya. “When they heal using ayurveda, then ayurveda has a real potential of having them as a champion.”