Jimmy Carter raised climate change concerns 35 years before the Paris Accords

BILL BARROW
Sun 5 January 2025 




President Jimmy Carter speaks against a backdrop of solar panels at the White House, June 21, 1979, in Washington. (AP Photo/Harvey Georges, File)

PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — When Jimmy Carter chose branding designs for his presidential campaign, he passed on the usual red, white and blue. He wanted green.

Emphasizing how much the Georgia Democrat enjoyed nature and prioritized environmental policy, the color became ubiquitous. On buttons, bumper stickers, brochures, the sign rechristening the old Plains train depot as his campaign headquarters. Even the hometown Election Night party.

“The minute it was announced, we all had the shirts to put on — and they were green, too,” said LeAnne Smith, Carter’s niece, recalling the 1976 victory celebration.

Nearly a half-century later, environmental advocates are remembering Carter, who died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100, as a president who elevated environmental stewardship, energy conservation and discussions about the global threat of rising carbon dioxide levels.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to abandon the renewable energy investments that President Joe Biden included in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, echoing how President Ronald Reagan dismantled the solar panels Carter installed on the White House roof. But politics aside, the scientific consensus has settled where Carter stood two generations earlier.

“President Carter was four decades ahead of his time,” said Manish Bapna, who leads the Natural Resources Defense Council. Carter called for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions well before “climate change” was part of the American lexicon, he said.

Wearing cardigans and setting standards

Former Vice President Al Gore, whose climate advocacy earned him the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, called Carter “a lifelong role model for the entire environmental movement.”

As president, Carter implemented the first U.S. efficiency standards for passenger vehicles and household appliances. He created the U.S. Department of Energy, which streamlined energy research, and more than doubled the wildnerness area under National Park Service protection.

Inviting ridicule, Carter asked Americans to conserve energy through personal sacrifice, including driving less and turning down thermostats in winter amid global fuel shortages. He pushed renewable energy to lessen dependence on fossil fuels, calling for 20% of U.S. energy to come from alternative sources by 2000.

But laments linger about what 39th president could not get done or did not try before his landslide defeat to Ronald Reagan.





Addressing climate change

Carter left office in 1981 shortly after receiving a West Wing report linking fossil fuels to rising carbon dioxide levels in Earth’s atmosphere. Carter’s top environmental advisers urged “immediate” cutbacks on the burning of fossil fuels to reduce what scientists at the time called “carbon dioxide pollution.”

“Nobody anywhere in the world in a high government position was talking about this problem” before Carter, biographer Jonathan Alter said.

The White House released the findings, which drew forgettable news coverage: The New York Times published its story on the 13th page of its front section. And with scant time left in office, there were no tangible moves Carter could make, beyond the energy legislation he had already signed.

The report recommended limiting global average temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. Thirty-five years later, in the 2015 Paris climate accords, participating nations set a similar goal.

“If he had been reelected, it’s fair to say that we would have been beginning to address climate change in the early 1980s,” Alter told the AP. “When you think about that, it adds a kind of a tragic dimension, almost, to his political defeat.”

Reagan ended high-level conversations about carbon emissions. He opposed efficiency standards as government overreach and rolled back some regulations. His chief of staff, Don Regan, called the solar panels “a joke.”

Pursuing energy independence

Despite Carter’s emphasis on renewable sources, the fossil fuel industry benefited from his push toward U.S. energy independence.

Collin O’Mara, CEO of the National Wildlife Foundation, pointed to coal-fired power plants built during and shortly thereafter Carter’s term, and his deregulation of natural gas production, a move O'Mara called “a precursor” to widespread fracking. Bapna noted Carter backed drilling off the coasts of Long Island in New York and New England.

Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, pointed to Carter’s Synthetic Fuels Corporation, a short-lived effort to produce fossil fuel alternatives that “would have meant much higher carbon emissions.”

But Carter had the right priorities, especially on research and development coordinated through the Energy Department, Nadel said. “He allowed us to have a national approach rather than one agency here and another there."

Stewarding God's creation

Carter’s environmental interests had deep roots going back to a a rural boyhood filled with hunting and fishing and working his father’s farmland.

“Jimmy Carter was an environmentalist before it was a real part of the political discussion — and I’m not talking about solar panels on the White House,” said Dubose Porter, a longtime Georgia Democratic Party leader. “Just focusing on that misses how early and how committed he was.”

His early years influenced Carter as governor, Porter said, when he boosted Georgia's state parks system and opposed Georgia congressmen who wanted to dam a river. Carter paddled the waterway himself and decided its natural state trumped the lucrative federal construction proposal.

In Washington, Carter continued sometimes unwinnable fights against funding for projects he deemed damaging and unnecessary. He found more success extending federal protection for more than 150 million acres (60.7 million hectares), including redwood forests in California and vast swaths of Alaska.

Randall Balmer, a Dartmouth College professor who has written on Carter's faith, said he saw himself as a custodian of divinely granted natural resources.

“That’s a real connection that young evangelicals still have with him today,” Balmer said.

Condemning consumerism

Carter won the presidency amid energy shortages rooted in global strife, especially in the oil-rich Middle East, so national security and economic interests dovetailed with Carter’s religious beliefs and affinity for nature, Nadel noted.

Carter compared the energy crisis to “the moral equivalent of war,” and as inflation and gas lines grew, he called for individual sacrifice and sweeping action on renewable energy.

“Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns,” Carter warned in 1979. “But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning.”

That “malaise” speech — dubbed so by the media despite Carter not using the word — was unique in presidential politics for its condemnation of unchecked American consumerism. Carter celebrated that more than 100 million Americans watched. By 2010, Carter acknowledged in his annotated “White House Diary” that his speech was a flop, but said it proved to be prescient for advocating bold and direct action on energy.

“You can say the Carter presidency is still producing results today,” said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, whose 2020 presidential run focused on climate action. “I’ve learned in politics that timing is everything and serendipity is everything.”

___

Former Associated Press reporter Drew Costley contributed from Washington, D.C.

Opinion - We cannot afford to delay modernizing the US power grid

William S. Becker, opinion contributor
Mon 6 January 2025

THE HILL



During his first presidency, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to modernize America’s outdated infrastructure. As it turned out, it was President Biden who worked with Congress to appropriate $1.2 trillion to repair and update the nation’s power lines, pipes, bridges and highways.

Without a single Republican vote, Biden also managed to win the largest-ever investment in clean and renewable energy.

Nothing is more critical to the nation’s future than its energy supplies and how we distribute and use them. Now, the ball will be passed again to Trump and a new Republican-controlled Congress.

Although the infrastructure and energy bills are on the books, incoming leaders will try to influence how the money is spent. Rather than allowing the nation’s clean-energy transition to proceed, they could redirect the appropriations to far less essential purposes or spend them on last century’s energy: fossil fuels. We can’t let that happen.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure bill will lay the foundation for clean and renewable energy in the United States by spending $65 billion — the largest such investment in American history — on a modern electric transmission and distribution system.

That system is often called the biggest machine ever built. It consists today of 11,000 generation plants, 5.5 million miles of transmission and distribution lines (enough to stretch to the moon and back 46 times), 180 million power poles, 3,000 electric utilities, 590 oil and gas rigs, 2.5 million miles of gas pipelines, 560 active coal mines and three separate regional electric grids that mainly transmit alternating current.

In 1982, energy visionaries Amory and Hunter Lovins published a study commissioned by the Defense Department to assess the system’s security. The Lovins warned that America relied on a “continuous electrical supply (that) depends on many large and precise machines, rotating in exact synchrony across half a continent, and strung together by an easily severed network of aerial arteries whose failure is instantly disruptive.”

They warned, “The size, complexity, pattern, and control structure of these electrical machines make them inherently vulnerable to large-scale failures: a vulnerability which government policies are systematically increasing. The same is true of the technologies that deliver oil, gas, and coal to run our vehicles, buildings, and industries. Our reliance on these delicately poised energy systems has unwittingly put at risk our whole way of life.”

That assessment is still accurate. Fossil fuels have triggered economic recessions and brought the world to the brink of permanent environmental catastrophe. Power outages cost U.S. businesses $150 billion annually and households a similar amount. Extreme weather is responsible for more than 80 percent of blackouts. Because of global climate change, power interruptions have increased 67 percent in the U.S. since 2000. Millions of Americans have also found themselves without electricity because tree branches touched powerlines, squirrels chewed through system components, or vandals took potshots at transformers.

Now, the big machine faces modern challenges, including power-hungry electric vehicles, data farms, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency mining, and a resurgence in domestic manufacturing.

During the last decade, energy-efficiency gains have kept America’s electric demand relatively stable despite the growing population and economy. Now, a single query using ChatGPT uses nearly 10 times the electricity of a Google search. Analysts say data center power demands could triple in the U.S. over the next three years.

The good news is that nonpolluting, inexhaustible energy has become the least expensive and quickest way to generate electricity. Some 126 million solar panels on 4.3 million rooftops already contribute to the nation’s power supply, along with 75,000 wind turbines, nearly 4,200 large solar farms and 2,100 hydroelectric dams. However, we need vastly more. We have the natural resources and technologies to provide it, but we must modernize and expand the grid to move clean energy to where it’s needed.

As Amory Lovins says today, “We’ve got 21st-century technology and speed colliding head-on with 20th and 19th-century institutions, rules, and cultures.”

“Our grid is at a make-or-break moment,” according to Willie L. Phillips, chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. “(The grid) is being tested every single day in ways that we’ve never seen before. We’re not talking about regular demand. We’re talking about dramatic increases of demand on our system.”

One idea gaining traction at the U.S. Department of Energy and Google is to locate power-hungry data operations where renewable resources are available and equip them with microgrids that can detach from the larger grid during outages. Several data operations could be served by the same assets if they are co-located in “energy parks.”

Other experts point out that the transmission system could move electricity over long distances more economically by connecting renewable energy assets with load centers using high-voltage, direct current (HVDC) lines. They can be routed along existing rights of way and buried to keep them safe from weather and to minimize NIMBYism. The Energy Futures Initiative says the nation is underinvesting in HVDC today even though it’s “the backbone grid that is important for economic growth, reliability, resiliency, and the proliferation of low-cost clean energy.”

One challenge is the number of actors and stakeholders in America’s electric system. They include three transmission regions, utilities, independent power producers, standards organizations, grid operators, government agencies, and consumer and environmental groups. Fortunately, under Biden’s Energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, the U.S. Department of Energy has issued a comprehensive grid modernization strategy, the coordinated product of nine DOE offices and 14 national laboratories.

For the sake of America’s future, we should hope that Trump, Congress and decision-makers nationwide use the strategy to optimize the benefits of every dollar. After all, it was Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, DC power and America’s first power plant, who said, “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” He also said, “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.”

William S. Becker is a former regional director at the U.S. Department of Energy and author of several books on climate change and national disaster policies, including the “100-Day Action Plan to Save the Planet” and “The Creeks Will Rise: People Co-Existing with Floods.”

Trump 'ill-informed' to attack 'success story' of UK wind industry

Sky News
 Mon 6 January 2025 


Energy groups have hit back at incoming US president Donald Trump after his attack on the UK's wind turbines.

On Friday, the president-elect told the UK to "get rid of windmills" and to re-open the North Sea to exploration for oil and gas.

But wind power is a boon for energy security in Britain, said industry body Energy UK, which represents clean power and fossil fuel power companies, but not those that explore for new oil and gas.

And Energy UK spokesperson said: "Offshore wind is a UK success story - a big part of why the UK now gets the majority of its power from clean sources, as well as increasing our energy security and bringing economic benefits to different parts of the country."

Volatile gas prices are to blame for recent record energy bills suffered by UK consumers, and domestic clean power like wind will reduce the country's dependency on gas, they added.

There is also very little gas left in the North Sea anyway, said Jess Ralston from energy and climate thinktank ECIU, as Sky News analysis has previously shown.

"Whatever your policy on it, the North Sea is running out of gas, so unless we start to reduce our gas demand and build out more renewables, we'll just have to import more gas from abroad."

The wind industry is "thriving and supports jobs and economic growth all over the country", she added.

There are 30,000 UK jobs in the offshore wind industry, according to the Offshore Wind Industry Council (OWIC), and the number is set to rise to 100,000 under government plans to triple capacity to 43-50GW by 2030.

OWIC says each new gigawatt of wind adds £2bn-3bn to the UK economy.

The Crown Estate also says UK offshore wind is a "success story", providing enough energy to power the equivalent of 50% of UK homes.

The government, which has set out to make the UK a "clean energy superpower", said an extra £34.8bn of private investment has poured into home-grown clean energy industries since it was elected in July.

Meanwhile China, the US's major economic rival, is powering ahead with wind energy, installing two-thirds of all new wind and solar in the world.

But the UK still relies on oil and gas for 75% of its energy, and the offshore fossil fuel projects still support about 100,000 jobs. Offshore Energy UK (OEUK), whose members include the offshore oil and gas industry, says the UK should maximise what remains in order to support jobs and the economy.

Tessa Khan from Uplift, which campaigns against oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, said on Friday: "Ill-informed attacks on the UK's efforts to become a clean energy superpower will not change reality - the nation has burnt most of its gas, and what's left of our oil is mainly exported."

She accused Mr Trump, who takes office on 20 January, of "looking after the interests of US oil and gas firms".

The UK government last week said it was looking forward to working with the new US president, but that the UK needed to "replace our dependency on unstable fossil fuel markets with clean, homegrown power controlled in Britain".

The government spokesperson added: "Our priority is a fair, orderly and prosperous transition in the North Sea in line with our climate and legal obligations, and we will work with the sector to protect current and future generations of good jobs."

Trump Calls on the UK to Open Up the North Sea and Get Rid of Wind Farms

Wind turbines overtake gas as top source of British energy

Hannah Boland
Mon 6 January 2025

THE TELEGRAPH

Ed Miliband is expected to double the UK’s onshore wind capacity to almost 30 gigawatts - Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Wind turbines have overtaken gas as Britain’s biggest source of electricity as the Government pushes ahead with plans to make the nation more reliant on renewable energy.

Wind accounted for 29pc of the UK’s electricity last year, while gas tumbled to around a quarter. In the previous year, 2023, gas represented 32pc of the UK’s generation mix.

According to data from the National Energy System Operator (Neso) that was compiled by Bloomberg, this marked the lowest level for gas since 2013, when more energy came from coal. The Neso figures include storage and electricity imports.

The latest figures, which show the growing importance of wind power, come as Labour steps up a drive to “decarbonise” the nation’s electricity system by 2030. This will mean stopping using the UK’s 32 main gas-fired power stations as a normal source of power, although gas will likely still be needed during periods of calm weather.

The Energy Secretary is racing to approve swathes of green energy projects across the UK, with the Government saying this would create a “more secure energy system for Britain” as well as lower bills for consumers.

Last month, Ed Miliband unveiled his Clean Power 2030 Action Plan which included a move to classify wind turbines and solar farms as “nationally significant infrastructure projects”.

This would allow them to be treated with the same level of importance as airports and power plants, effectively blocking residents and councils from standing in the way of green energy projects and paving the way for thousands more wind turbines to be built across Britain.


If Mr Milliband’s bill is passed, onshore wind capacity is expected to double from 15 gigawatts (GW) to almost 30GW, equal to around 3,000 turbines.

Offshore wind capacity will also increase. The UK currently has about 2,800 offshore wind turbines.

The Government is aiming to get offshore wind capacity up from 15GW to 50GW over the next six years, which would mean installing an extra 3,500 wind turbines by 2030.

Neso has suggested that the UK will be able to have periods where it uses no gas as early as 2025.

However, there is still the issue of intermittency with huge variation in how much energy is coming from renewable sources at any given time.

In early November, for example, Britain’s wind generation plunged to virtually zero, with wind farms only meeting between 3pc and 4pc of the UK’s electricity demand and gas-fired plants needed for around 60pc.

At the time, Chris Stark, head of the Government’s “mission control” for clean power, said it was clear that the UK needed more energy storage.

“Gas, in effect, provides most of our ‘backup’ service today, but we want to replace it with something low-carbon,” he wrote on the social network X.

Long silenced by fear, Syrians now speak about rampant torture under Assad

SARAH EL DEEB and MALAK HARB

AP
Updated Mon 6 January 2025

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Handcuffed and squatting on the floor, Abdullah Zahra saw smoke rising from his cellmate’s flesh as his torturers gave him electric shocks.

Then it was Zahra’s turn. They hanged the 20-year-old university student from his wrists until his toes barely touched the floor and electrocuted and beat him for two hours. They made his father watch and taunted him about his son’s torment.

That was 2012, and the entire security apparatus of Syria’s then-President Bashar Assad was deployed to crush the protests that had arisen against his rule.

With Assad’s fall a month ago, the machinery of death that he ran is starting to come out into the open.
It was systematic and well-organized, growing to more than 100 detention facilities where torture, brutality, sexual violence and mass executions were rampant, according to activists, rights group and former prisoners. Security agents spared no one, not even Assad’s own soldiers. Young men and women were detained for simply living in districts where protests were held.

As tens of thousands disappeared over more than a decade, a blanket of fear kept the Syrian population silent. People rarely told anyone that a loved one had vanished for fear they too could be reported to security agencies.

Now, everyone is talking. The insurgents who swept Assad out of power opened detention facilities, releasing prisoners and allowing the public to bear witness. Crowds swarmed, searching for answers, bodies of their loved ones, and ways to heal.

The Associated Press visited seven of these facilities in Damascus and spoke to nine former detainees, some released on Dec. 8, the day Assad was ousted. Some details of the accounts by those who spoke to the AP could not be independently confirmed, but they matched past reports by former detainees to human rights groups.

Days after Assad’s fall, Zahra – now 33 -- came to visit Branch 215, a detention facility run by military intelligence in Damascus where he was held for two months. In an underground dungeon, he stepped into the windowless, 4-by-4-meter (yard) cell where he says he was held with 100 other inmates.
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Each man was allowed a floor tile to squat on, Zahra said. When ventilators weren't running -- either intentionally or because of a power failure -- some suffocated. Men went mad; torture wounds festered. When a cellmate died, they stowed his body next to the cell's toilet until jailers came to collect corpses, Zahra said.

“Death was the least bad thing,” he said. “We reached a place where death was easier than staying here for one minute.”

Assad's system of repression grew as civil war raged

Zahra was arrested along with his father after security agents killed one of his brothers, a well-known anti-Assad graffiti artist. After they were released, Zahra fled to opposition-held areas. Within a few months, security agents returned and dragged off 13 of his male relatives, including a younger brother and, again, his father.

They were brought to Branch 215. All were tortured and killed. Zahra later recognized their bodies among photos leaked by a defector that showed the corpses of thousands killed while in detention. Their bodies were never recovered, and how and when they died is unknown.
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Rights groups estimate at least 150,000 people went missing after anti-government protests began in 2011, most vanishing into Assad’s prison network. Many of them were killed, either in mass executions or from torture and prison conditions. The exact number remains unknown.

Even before the uprising, Assad had ruled with an iron fist. But as peaceful protests turned into a full-fledged civil war that would last 14 years, Assad rapidly expanded his system of repression.

New detention facilities sprung up in security compounds, military airports and under buildings — all run by military, security and intelligence agencies.

Touring the site of his torture and detention, Zahra hoped to find some sign of his lost relatives. But there was nothing. At home, his aunt, Rajaa Zahra, saw the pictures of her killed children for the first time. She had refused to look at the leaked photos before. She lost three of her six sons in Branch 215 and a fourth was killed at a protest. Her brother, she said, had three sons, now he has only one.

“They were hoping to finish off all the young men of the country.

Syrians were tortured with ‘the tire’ and ‘magic carpet’

The Assad regime's tortures had names.

One was called the “magic carpet,” where a detainee was strapped to a hinged wooden plank that bends in half, folding his head to his feet, which are then beaten.

Abdul-Karim Hajeko said he endured this five times. His torturers stomped on his back during interrogations at the Criminal Security branch, and his vertebrae are still broken.

“My screams would go to heaven. Once a doctor came down from the fourth floor (to the ground floor) because of my screams,” he said.

He was also put in “the tire.” His legs were bent inside a car tire as interrogators beat his back and feet with a plastic baton. When they were done, he said, a guard ordered him to kiss the tire and thank it for teaching him “how to behave.” Hajeko was later taken to the notorious Saydnaya Prison, where he was held for six years.

Many prisoners said the tire was inflicted for rule violations -- like making noise, raising one’s head in front of guards, or praying – or for no reason at all.

Mahmoud Abdulbaki, a non-commissioned air force officer who defected from service, was put in the tire during detention at a military police facility. They forced him to count the lashes — up to 200 — and if he made a mistake, the torturer would start over.

“People’s hearts stopped following a beating,” the 37-year-old said.

He was later held at Saydnaya, where he said guards would terrorize inmates by rolling a tire down the corridor lined with cells and beat on the bars with their batons. Wherever it stopped, the entire cell would be subjected to the tire.

Altogether, Abdulbaki spent nearly six years in prison over different periods. He was among those freed on the day Assad fled Syria.

Saleh Turki Yahia said a cellmate died nearly every day during the seven months in 2012 he was held at the Palestine Branch, a detention facility run by the General Intelligence Agency.

He recounted how one man bled in the cell for days after returning from a torture session where interrogators rammed a pipe into him. When the inmates tried to move him, “all his fluids poured out from his backside. The wound opened from the back, and he died,” he said.

Yahya said he was given electric shocks, hanged from his wrists, beaten on his feet. He lost half his body weight and nearly tore his own skin scratching from scabies.

“They broke us,” he said, breaking into tears. “Look at Syria, it is all old men ... A whole generation is destroyed.”

But with Assad gone, he was back visiting the Palestine Branch.

“I came to express myself. I want to tell.”

The mounting evidence will be used in trials

Torture continued up to the end of Assad’s rule.

Rasha Barakat, 34, said she and her sister were detained in March from their homes in Saqba, a town outside Damascus.

Inside a security branch, she was led past her husband, who had been arrested hours earlier and was being interrogated. He was kneeling on the floor, his face green, she said. It was her last brief glimpse of him: He died in custody.

During her own hours-long interrogation, she said, security agents threatened to bring in her sons, 5- and 7-years-old, if she didn’t confess. She was beaten. Female security agents stripped her and poured cold water on her, leaving her shivering naked for two hours. She spent eight days in isolation, hearing beatings nearby.

Eventually she was taken to Adra, Damascus’ central prison, tried and sentenced to five years for supporting rebel groups, charges she said were made up.

There she stayed until insurgents broke into Adra in December and told her she was free. An estimated 30,000 prisoners were released as fighters opened up prisons during their march to Damascus.

Barakat said she is happy to see her kids again. But “I am destroyed psychologically … Something is missing. It is hard to keep going.”

Now comes the monumental task of accounting for the missing and compiling evidence that could one day be used to prosecute Assad’s officials, whether by Syrian or international courts.

Hundreds of thousands of documents remain scattered through the former detention facilities, many labeled classified, in storage rooms commonly underground. Some seen by the AP included transcripts of phone conversations, even between military officers; intelligence files on activists; and a list of hundreds of prisoners killed in detention.

Shadi Haroun, who spent 10 years imprisoned, has been charting Assad’s prison structure and documenting former detainees’ experiences from exile in Turkey. After Assad’s fall, he rushed back to Syria and toured detention sites.

The documents, he said, show the bureaucracy behind the killings. “They know what they are doing, it is organized.”

Civil defense workers are tracking down mass graves where tens of thousands are believed to be buried. At least 10 have been identified around Damascus, mostly from residents’ reports, and five others elsewhere around the country. Authorities say they are not ready to open them.

A U.N. body known as the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism has offered to help Syria's new interim administration in collecting, organizing and analyzing all the material. Since 2011, it has been compiling evidence and supporting investigations in over 200 criminal cases against figures in Assad’s government.

Robert Petit, director of the U.N. body, said the task is so enormous, no one entity can do it alone. The priority would be to identify the architects of the brutality.

Many want answers now.

Officials cannot just declare that the missing are presumed dead, said Wafaa Mustafa, a Syrian journalist, whose father was detained and killed 12 years ago.

“No one gets to tell the families what happened without evidence, without search, without work.”




















18
Syria Machine of Death
A portrait of ousted Syrian president Bashar Assad lies on the ground at Branch 215, a detention facility run by military intelligence during Bashar Assad's regime in Damascus, Syria, on Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Strong earthquake kills at least 95 people in western China near Mount Everest 

TIBET IS NOT CHINA

Ken Moritsugu
Tue, January 7, 2025 





The Associated Press

BEIJING (AP) — A strong earthquake killed at least 95 people in Tibet on Tuesday and left many others trapped as dozens of aftershocks shook the high-altitude region of western China and across the border in Nepal.

Officials in the region said at a brief news conference that 130 others were injured, state broadcaster CCTV said.

Video on CCTV showed orange-suited rescue workers climbing piles of debris blocking homes in a heavily damaged village, while chunks that had been knocked off buildings littered streets and crushed cars in other areas.

State media reported that about 1,000 houses were damaged and 130 people were injured in addition to the deaths, citing the Tibet earthquake relief headquarters.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake measured magnitude 7.1 and was relatively shallow at a depth of about 10 kilometers (6 miles). China recorded the magnitude as 6.8.

The epicenter was about 75 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Mount Everest, which straddles the China-Nepal border. The area is seismically active and is where the India and Eurasia plates clash and cause uplifts in the Himalayan mountains strong enough to change the heights of some of the world’s tallest peaks.

About 50 aftershocks were recorded in the three hours after the earthquake, and the Mount Everest scenic area on the Chinese side was closed after the quake.

About 1,500 fire and rescue workers were deployed to search for people, the Ministry of Emergency Management. Two hundred soldiers joined the search, CCTV said.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping. called for all-out efforts to rescue people, minimize casualties and resettle those whose homes were damaged. Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, was dispatched to the area to guide the work.

CCTV said there are a handful of communities within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the epicenter, which was 380 kilometers (240 miles) from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and about 23 kilometers (14 miles) from the region’s second-largest city of Shigatse, known as Xigaze in Chinese.

The average altitude in the area around the epicenter is about 4,200 meters (13,800 feet), the China Earthquake Networks Center said in a social media post.

In Nepal, authorities asked officials in the mountainous area near the epicenter to search for any casualties or damage.

The National Emergency Operation Center in Kathmandu said people in northeastern Nepal strongly felt the earthquake but there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage to houses.

A police officer in Solukhumbu district, where Mount Everest is located, said by telephone that there were no reports of damage. The area, often crowded with climbers and hikers, was empty in the depth of winter. Many residents move to the south to avoid the harsh winter.

About 230 kilometers (140 miles) from the epicenter in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, the earthquake woke up residents and sent them running out of their homes into the streets.

There have been 10 earthquakes of at least magnitude 6 in the area where Tuesday's quake hit over the past century, the USGS said.

___

Associated Press writer Binaj Gurubacharya in Kathmandu, Nepal, and researcher Yu Bing in Beijing contributed to this report.

Ken Moritsugu, The Associated Press

arthquake rocks Tibet

Our Foreign Staff
Mon 6 January 2025 
THE TELEGRAPH

Rescue workers are searching for survivors in Xigaze - Xinhua

A powerful earthquake has rocked the northern foothills of the Himalayas near one of Tibet’s holiest cities, killing at least 32 people and shaking buildings in neighbouring Nepal, Bhutan and India.

The quake hit on Tuesday morning, with its epicentre located in Tingri, a rural county known as the northern gateway to the Everest region, at a depth of 6.2 miles, according to the China Earthquake Networks Centre.

The impact of the quake was felt across the region of 800,000 people, which is administered by Shigatse, the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism.

The US Geological Survey recorded the magnitude as 7.1, while China said it was 6.8.
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Villages in Tingri reported strong shaking during the quake, which was followed by numerous aftershocks with magnitudes of up to 4.4.

Crumbled shop fronts could be seen in a video on social media showing the aftermath from the nearby town of Lhatse, Reuters reported.

The quake has destroyed homes in Tibet - Xinhua

Local government officials were liaising with nearby towns to gauge the impact of the quake and check for casualties, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

At least 38 people had been injured, Xinhua reported, citing the regional disaster relief headquarters.

Tremors were also felt in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu some 250 miles away, where residents ran from their houses.

“We felt a very strong earthquake. So far we have not received any report of injuries or physical loss,” said Anoj Raj Ghimire, chief district officer of Solukhumbu district in Nepal, at the foot of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain.

“We have mobilised police and other security forces as well as locals to collect information about the damage,” he added.

People in Kathmandu ran from their homes as buildings shook on Tuesday morning - Sunil Sharma

The quake also jolted Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, and in the northern Indian state of Bihar which borders Nepal.

So far, no reports of any damage or loss to property have been received, officials in India said.

Southwestern parts of China, Nepal and Northern India are frequently hit by earthquakes caused by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates.

A huge quake in China’s Sichuan province in 2008 killed almost 70,000 people, while a magnitude 7.8 tremor struck near Kathmandu in 2015, killing about 9,000 people and injuring thousands in Nepal’s worst ever earthquake.

6.8 magnitude earthquake strikes near holy city in Tibet

LEAH SARNOFF and WILL GRETSKY

ABC
Mon 6 January 2025

A 6.8 magnitude earthquake reportedly killed at least nine people in Shigatse, Tibet, after striking near the country's holy city on Tuesday morning local time.

According to China Earthquake Networks Centre, the earthquake occurred in Dingri County, Shigatse City, Tibet, just after 9 a.m. with a focal depth of 10 kilometers.

Many houses collapsed near the epicenter, according to reports.

The Chinese media also reported that as of 10 a.m. local time, multiple aftershocks were recorded, the largest of which was 4.4.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.


Tibet earthquake: At least 53 dead as 7.1-magnitude quake felt in Nepal, Bhutan and India

Alisha Rahaman Sarkar and Shweta Sharma
Mon 6 January 2025 
AFP

Tibet earthquake: At least 53 dead as 7.1-magnitude quake felt in Nepal, Bhutan and India

The death toll from a powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake in a mountainous Tibetan region that caused massive tremors in Nepal, Bhutan and India on Tuesday morning soared to 53.

The earthquake, which struck at 9.05am local time, was centred in Tibet’s Tingri County in Xigaze City at a depth of about 10km, the US Geological Survey reported. The epicenter was in the rural Chinese county known as the northern gateway to the Everest region. China’s earthquake centre had placed the magnitude at 6.8.
Nearly 62 others have been reported injured on the Tibetan side, China’s state-run news agency Xinhua reported.

Chinese president Xi Jinping said all-out search and rescue efforts should be carried out to minimise casualties, properly resettle the affected people, and ensure a safe and warm winter.

Nepalese people look on after rushing out of their homes after experiencing an earthquake in Kathmandu (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Videos showed crumbled shops in the aftermath from the nearby town of Lhatse, with debris spilling out onto the road.

"It shook quite strongly here, everyone is awake, but we don't know about any damages yet," government official Jagat Prasad Bhusal in Nepal's Namche region told AFP.

Mount Everest sightseeing tours in Tingri, where foreign climbers come to prepare for ascend, have been cancelled for Tuesday morning, according to a tourism staff member who spoke to local media. They also confirmed that the sightseeing area has been completely closed.

The tremors were felt in India, Bhutan and Bangladesh, forcing people to step out of their houses. So far, India, Nepal and Bhutan have reported no casualties from the earthquake.

Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) said the tremors were felt in seven hill districts bordering Tibet.

“So far we have not received any information of any loss of life and property,” NDRRMA spokesperson Dizan Bhattarai told Reuters. “We have mobilised police, security forces and local authorities to collect information,” he said.

"A reporter learned from the Tibet Autonomous Region earthquake bureau that people have been killed, involving three townships including Changsuo township, Quluo township, and Cuoguo township in Dingri County," Xinhua news agency reported. It added many buildings had collapsed in Tingri County following the quake.

Nepalese people stand after rushing out of their homes after experiencing an earthquake in Kathmandu (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Tremors were felt in Nepal's capital Kathmandu some 400km away from the epicenter, where residents ran from their houses.

“We felt a very strong earthquake. So far we have not received any report of injuries or physical loss,” said Anoj Raj Ghimire, chief district officer of Solukhumbu district in Nepal.

“We have mobilised police and other security forces as well as locals to collect information about the damage,” he told Reuters.

The epicenter was located where the Indian and Eurasian plates clashed and caused uplifts in the Himalayan mountains strong enough to change the heights of some of the world’s tallest peaks.

There are about a handful of communities within 5km of the epicentre, which is 380km from the Tibetan capital, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

There have been 29 earthquakes with magnitudes of 3 or higher within 200km of the Shigatse quake in the past five years, all of which were smaller than the one that struck on Tuesday morning.

In November 2023, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake shook northwestern Nepal, killing at least 138 people and injuring dozens.

In 2015, a magnitude 7.8 quake struck near Kathmandu in neighbouring Nepal, killing about 9,000 people and injuring thousands in that country's worst earthquake

A huge quake in Sichuan province in southwestern China in 2008 killed almost 70,000 people.


Quake in China's Tibet kills 53 with tremors felt in Nepal, India

Isabel KUA
Mon 6 January 2025

AFP

Map showing shake intensity in the region of Tibet and Nepal affected by a 6.8-magnitude earthquake on January 7. (AFP/AFP)

A devastating earthquake in China's remote Tibet region killed at least 53 people and collapsed "many buildings" on Tuesday, state media reported, with tremors also felt in neighbouring Nepal's capital Kathmandu and parts of India.

Videos published by China's state broadcaster CCTV showed houses destroyed with walls torn apart.

Rescue workers waded through rubble strewn across the ruins in the aftermath of the earthquake, footage showed, while some gave locals thick blankets to keep warm.

Surveillance images published by CCTV showed people running through a store's aisles as shelves shook violently, sending objects like toys tumbling to the ground.

In the town of Lhatse, videos geolocated by AFP showed debris scattered in front of streetside eateries.

The powerful quake struck Dingri county with a magnitude of 6.8 near the border with Nepal at 9:05 am (0105 GMT), according to the China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC). The US Geological Survey reported the tremor as magnitude 7.1.

"Fifty-three people have been confirmed dead and 62 injured as of Tuesday noon, after a 6.8-magnitude earthquake jolted Dingri County in the city of Xigaze in Xizang Autonomous Region at 9:05 am Tuesday," Xinhua news agency said.

Over 1,000 houses have sustained varying degrees of damage, it added.

"Dingri county and its surrounding areas experienced very strong tremors, and many buildings near the epicentre have collapsed," state broadcaster CCTV said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday emphasised "the full-scale search and rescue efforts, minimizing casualties to the greatest extent possible, properly resettling affected residents, and ensuring their safety and warmth through the winter", CCTV added.

Xinhua said that "local authorities are reaching out to various townships in the county to assess the impact of the quake".

Temperatures in Dingri are around minus 8 degrees Celsius (17.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and will drop to minus 18 this evening, according to the China Meteorological Administration.

Disaster relief aid, including cotton tents, quilts and items for high-altitude and frigid areas, had been dispatched by central authorities to areas impacted by the quake, Xinhua said.

The high-altitude county in the Tibet region is home to around 62,000 people and situated on the Chinese side of Mount Everest.

While earthquakes are common in the region, Tuesday's quake was the most powerful recorded within a 200-kilometre radius in the last five years, the CENC added.

- 'Shook quite strongly' -

As well as Kathmandu, areas around Lobuche in Nepal in the high mountains near Everest were also rattled by the tremor and aftershocks.

"It shook quite strongly here, everyone is awake," said government official Jagat Prasad Bhusal in Nepal's Namche region, which lies nearer to Everest.

But no damage or deaths had been reported so far and security forces had been deployed, Nepali Home Minister spokesman Rishi Ram Tiwari said.

Nepal lies on a major geological faultline where the Indian tectonic plate pushes up into the Eurasian plate, forming the Himalayas, and earthquakes are a regular occurrence.

In 2015, nearly 9,000 people died and more than 22,000 were injured when a 7.8-magnitude quake struck Nepal, destroying more than half a million homes.

Some tremors were felt in Bihar state in India but no injuries were reported.

Three people were killed and dozens injured after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck along the mountainous China-Kyrgyzstan border in January last year.

A quake in December 2023 in northwest China killed 148 people and displaced thousands in Gansu province.

That quake was China's deadliest since 2014, when more than 600 people were killed in southwestern Yunnan province.

In the December 2023 earthquake, subzero temperatures made the aid operation launched in response even more challenging, with survivors huddled around outdoor fires to keep warm.

pfc-isk/je/cwl

INDIA

Journalist Mukesh Chandrakar who exposed corruption found murdered in septic tank

Namita Singh
Mon 6 January 2025


Fears have been raised over the safety of journalists in India after an investigative reporter was murdered and buried in a septic tank.

Mukesh Chandrakar, 28, who ran a YouTube channel called Bastar Junction in the central Chhattisgarh state, had been missing since 1 January.

His reporting had uncovered alleged irregularities in a £11.8m road project in the Bastar region, a hotbed of Maoist insurgency, prompting a government inquiry.

After his family raised the alarm, police found the journalist’s body at a site owned by a local contractor who had been angry at his reporting.

The Press Council of India and the Editors Guild of India have demanded a thorough inquiry, describing Chandrakar’s death as a matter of “grave concern” and urging the government to prioritise the safety of journalists, particularly those involved in field and investigative reporting. Protests have been staged by journalists in Bijapur demanding punishment for the perpetrators.

"Mukesh Chandrakar was close to me. May his soul rest in peace and may God give strength to his family. Vishnu Deo Sai has assured to provide aid to his… pic.twitter.com/TjTyo6qNrb

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) January 4, 2025

Police said Chandrakar’s body was found on 3 January at a work site owned by a distant relative, Suresh Chandrakar. He was arrested, along with his brother Ritesh and two others.

According to a report by India Today, the postmortem revealed the journalist had been brutally killed, suffering five broken ribs, 15 fractures to the head, a broken neck and having his heart ripped out.

Bastar police chief Sundarraj P told a news conference: “Our investigation revealed that Ritesh Chandrakar was related to Mukesh and the two frequently interacted. On 1 January at 8pm, they spoke on the phone before both went to Suresh Chandrakar’s compound in Chattanpara for dinner. An argument ensued when Ritesh accused Mukesh of interfering with their construction work.”

Ritesh and another man “then attacked Mukesh with an iron rod, placed his body in a septic tank, and sealed it”, he added.

Chhattisgarh state chief minister, Vishnu Deo Sai, condemned the killing as a “heartbreaking” and “profound loss to journalism and society”, adding: “The culprits will face the harshest punishment.”

Deputy chief minister Vijay Sharma announced the formation of a special investigation team to fast-track the case.

Chandrakar was previously recognised for his role in securing the release of police commando Rakeshwar Singh Manhas, who had been abducted by Maoist militants in 2021.

Chhattisgarh, rich in minerals but mired by corruption and violence, remains one of India’s most perilous regions for journalists.

India itself is a dangerous place for journalists, ranking 159 in the World Press Freedom Index out of 180 countries, according to Reporters Without Borders.

SOME PEOPLE ARE ABOVE THE LAW

Elon Musk's Tesla convicted repeatedly for failing to cooperate with UK police

Tristan Kirk
Mon 6 January 2025 

Elon Musk’s Tesla car company has racked up at least 16 criminal convictions and had to pay out nearly £20,000 after repeatedly failing to co-operate with UK police.

The British arm of the motoring firm has been taken to court by a host of British police forces over the last year, after letters from officers went unanswered.

Police were looking for the details of speeding Tesla drivers, and when there was no reply the company itself was prosecuted.

The Standard first highlighted the trend last May, when at least 15 criminal convictions had been accumulated by Tesla.

A fresh conviction was recorded against the company last month at Oxford magistrate court, again for failing to co-operate with a police request for information.

Typically, criminal cases have centred on speeding offences involving a Tesla believed to be rented from the company on a long-term lease.

Tesla did not respond to a request from The Standard to explain the repeated failures to cooperate with police forces, including the Metropolitan Police, Hampshire Constabulary, and Thames Valley Police.

A Tesla Cybercab is displayed at the Los Angeles Auto Show, in Los Angeles (REUTERS)

Musk himself has spent the last few weeks aiming personal attacks at Prime Minister Keir Starmer, calling for Home Office minister Jess Philips to be jailed, and suggesting King Charles should dissolve Parliament to spark a UK General Election.

On Sunday, Musk posted a social media message calling for Nigel Farage to be replaced as Reform UK leader, after days of outspoken support for the right-wing party.

Court papers obtained by the Standard show that motorists are avoiding punishment for criminal offences as a result of Tesla not cooperating with police.

One Tesla driver was caught at almost 100mph on the A3 in Petersfield in Hampshire, but remained unidentified because the firm failed to answer a police request for information. Another driver was caught speeding in west London near to a primary school but was also spared punishment.

Letters from police have been addressed to Tesla Financial Services at luxury offices in Hammersmith, a service centre in West Drayton, west London, and an address in Manchester.

The firm, which has its global headquarters in Austin, Texas, has been headed by chief executive and largest shareholder Musk since 2004, and is a leading name in the field of electric vehicles.

Fines, costs and court fees totalling £19,166 have now been imposed on Tesla as a result of the criminal cases, all brought through the Single Justice Procedure.

One of the drivers not named by Tesla was suspected of three separate driving offences, which would have put them on the cusp of an automatic ban.

Drivers suspected of speeding on the roads in England typically receive an initial letter from the police, asking them to confirm who was behind the wheel at the time of the alleged offence.

Notices of intended prosecution can follow. Motorists who amass 12 penalty points within three years face an automatic road ban.

However, speeding drivers in rented or company cars have to be named before they can face prosecution.

Common virus could be behind Alzheimer’s in some people, scientists say

Vishwam Sankaran
Mon 6 January 2025

Brain’s immune cells, light blue and purple, shown interacting with amyloid plaques, red, linked to Alzheimer’s disease (Jason Drees/Arizona State University)

A chronic gut infection caused by a common virus may be linked to the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, a new study has found.

Cytomegalovirus, or HCMV, is one of nine herpes viruses that most people are exposed to in the first few decades of life. Unlike most herpes viruses, however, it is not considered to be sexually transmitted.

Researchers at Arizona University in the US found the virus may linger in the gut and travel to the brain via the vagus nerve that connects the two.

Once there, it may trigger immune system changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease, according to the study, published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia.

“We think we found a biologically unique subtype of Alzheimer’s that may affect 25-45 per cent of people with this disease,” the study’s co-author, Ben Readhead, said.

If the findings are validated by further research, existing antiviral drugs could be tested to treat or prevent this form of Alzheimer’s disease. This can be supported by a blood test currently in development to identify patients with an active HCMV infection.

“This subtype of Alzheimer’s includes the hallmark amyloid plaques and tau tangles — microscopic brain abnormalities used for diagnosis – and features a distinct biological profile of virus, antibodies and immune cells in the brain,” Dr Readhead said.

In some people who develop a chronic intestinal infection from HCMV, the virus may travel to the brain via the bloodstream or through the vagus nerve.

Once in the brain, the virus prompts immune cells called microglia to turn on their expression of a gene called CD83 which has been linked in a previous study to Alzheimer’s.

While microglia are initially protective against infections, a sustained increase in their activity may lead to chronic inflammation and neuronal damage – implicated in the progression of diseases like Alzheimer’s.

An earlier study, published last year in the journal Nature, found the postmortem brains of research participants with Alzheimer’s disease were more likely than those without the neurological condition to harbour CD83 microglia.

It also found an antibody in their intestines suggesting that an infection likely contributed to this form of Alzheimer’s.

In the latest study, scientists examined spinal fluid from the same individuals and found these antibodies were specifically against cytomegalovirus. They also found HCMV in the vagus nerve, indicating this is the route the virus takes to enter the brain.

Researchers used lab-grown brain cell models to show the virus can induce changes related to Alzheimer’s such as the production of amyloid and tau proteins linked to the death of nerve cells.

Further independent studies are needed to put the new findings to the test, however, researchers said.

French marine park closes over law banning orca shows

Sun, January 5, 2025 

The closure has saddened many

A marine park in southern France shut its doors permanently on Sunday following a 2021 law banning shows featuring whales and dolphins. Marineland's two remaining orcas, the last ones in captivity in the country, now face an uncertain future.

A French marine park on Sunday closed down definitively over a 2021 law banning shows featuring marine mammals, leaving uncertain futures for the two last orcas in captivity in the country, hundreds of other animals as well as dozens of staff.

The closure of the park was marked by a final show by its two orcas, Wikie and Keijo who were received with rapturous applause by crowds who came for its last day of operations.

Attendance had fallen sharply in recent years but many visitors and employees alike expressed their dismay.

"Our hearts are in pieces," said Salome Mathis, a young keeper who came to say goodbye to her former colleagues at the water park.

The two orcas -- also known as killer whales -- themselves face an uncertain future.

Animal activists had been angered by Marineland's plans to transfer its two killer whales to Japan, a move France's ecology minister said she opposed over Tokyo's more lax animal welfare laws.

It employed 103 permanent staff and some 500 seasonal workers.

(AFP)

Read also:
France temporarily bans Bay of Biscay fishing to protect dolphins
What next for Wikie and Keijo? NGOs call for Marineland’s orcas to be sent to a sanctuary


Closure of French marine park sparks outcry over future of its two orcas

Jack Guy, CNN
Mon, January 6, 2025 

The closure of a marine zoo in the south of France has sparked intense debate over the future of its inhabitants, including two beloved orcas.

Marineland Antibes, near Cannes, closed for good on Sunday, with management citing legislation banning shows featuring cetaceans such as dolphins and whales, which the French government passed in 2021.

The law, which will come into effect in December 2026, also bans direct contact between visitors and cetaceans.

French lawmakers passed a ban on shows featuring whales and dolphins in 2021. - Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images

In a statement published December 4, Marineland said it was shutting its doors because 90% of visitors to the park come to watch the orca and dolphin shows.

It said it had taken the decision with “deep sadness,” and was working closely with French authorities to rehome the animals.

At present, though, it is unclear what will happen to the park’s two orcas – a 23-year-old female named Wikie and her son Keijo, 10 – as well as 12 dolphins.

Marineland initially planned to send Wikie and Keijo to a marine park in Japan. This plan met with uproar from animal rights groups, which said the move would be harmful to their wellbeing, citing the fact that Japan still practices whaling and does not have equivalent laws to European countries on the treatment of animals.

The French government then stepped in, publishing a report in which it said that the only acceptable options were to send the orcas to a new sanctuary in Nova Scotia, Canada, or to rehouse them at the Loro Parque marine park in Tenerife, which is part of the Spanish Canary Islands.

Loro Parque has housed orcas since 2006 and would offer similar conditions to Marineland, according to the government report.

But animal rights campaigners are pushing for the whales to be rehoused in the Canadian sanctuary, where they would no longer be made to perform in shows.

Muriel Arnal, president of French animal rights organization One Voice, told CNN that the sanctuary is the best option for the mother-son pair.

“Japan is not at all a good solution,” she said, adding that Loro Parque would also pose problems.

“They would continue to live in captivity, in smaller pools,” in the Spanish park, Arnal said, adding that Wikie and Keijo would probably be separated so that Wikie could reproduce, breaking the family bonds that help orcas deal with the stresses of life in captivity.

And while there is a risk in moving the orcas to a sanctuary, a plan is in place to transfer them first to a sea pen before releasing them into a 44-hectare (109-acre) area of ocean, Arnal said.

The orcas will remain at Marineland while their fate is decided, she added, with public pressure increasing.

“It’s incredible how many people are mobilizing around this,” Arnal said.

CNN has contacted Marineland Antibes for comment.

'Humans are all they know' - Fate of Killer whales uncertain as marine zoo shuts

George Sandeman - BBC News
Sun, January 5, 2025 


An orca leaping out of the water while performing at Marineland Antibes on 2 January [AFP]


The fate of two killer whales is uncertain following the closure of a marine zoo in France on Sunday.

Campaigners and the zoo's managers have been locked in disagreement about what should happen to the orca whales with the French government already blocking one proposal to rehome them.

Last month Marineland Antibes, located near Cannes in the French Riviera, said it would permanently shut on 5 January following new animal welfare laws.

The legislation, which bans the use of dolphins and whales in marine zoo shows, was passed in 2021 but comes into effect next year.

Marineland, which describes itself as the largest of its kind in Europe, currently keeps two killer whales - Wikie, 23, and her 11-year-old son Keijo.

The killer whale that can 'speak'


France bans captive breeding of dolphins

Managers say shows featuring killer whales and dolphins attract 90% of Marineland's visitors – and that without it the business isn't viable.

Several destinations for the whales have been proposed but there is disagreement on where they should go and what should happen to them.

Most experts agree that releasing the two whales, which are Icelandic orcas specifically, into the wild would not be suitable as both were born in captivity and would not have the skills to survive.

"It's a bit like taking your dog out of the house and sending him into the woods to live freely as a wolf," says Hanne Strager.

In 2023 the marine biologist published The Killer Whale Journals, which details her decades long interest in the ocean predator and how they behave

"Those whales, that have spent their entire lives in captivity, their closest relationship is with humans. They are the ones who have provided them with food, care, activities and social relations.

"Killer whales are highly social animals, as social as we [humans] are, and they depend on social bonds. They have established those bonds with their trainers … They depend on humans and that is the only thing they know."

Campaigners want Wikie and Keijo to be sent to a sanctuary instead of zoos in Japan and Tenerife [AFP]

A deal to send Wikie and Keijo to a marine zoo in Japan, backed by managers at Marineland, caused outcry among campaigners who said they would receive worse treatment.

Last November the French government blocked the deal, saying the animal welfare laws in Japan were relaxed compared to those in Europe and that the 13,000km (8,000 mile) journey would cause stress to the orcas.

Another option is to send them to a Spanish marine zoo in the Canary Islands.

Loro Parque, in Tenerife, complies with European animal welfare standards but campaigners fear Wikie and Keijo will still be made to perform there.

There have also been several orca deaths there in the last few years.

A 29-year-old male called Keto passed away in November and three other orcas died there between March 2021 and September 2022.

Loro Parque say scientific examinations of those three orcas by the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria show the deaths were unavoidable.

Katheryn Wise, from the charity World Animal Protection (Wap), tells the BBC: "It would be devastating for Wikie and Keijo to end up in another entertainment venue like Loro Parque – from one whale jail to another."

Wap want the orcas to be rehomed in an adapted ocean bay.

"[We and] many others have urged the government of France to do everything it can to facilitate the movement of the orcas to a sanctuary off the coast of Nova Scotia."
'We'll close off a bay for them'

The organisation hoping to build the facility in eastern Canada say it would be able to attract funding if it received a commitment from the French government to send the two whales there.

The Whale Sanctuary Project (WSP) proposes to close off an area of seawater measuring 40 hectares (98 acres) with nets.

Wikie and Keijo could then use the large expanse of water, with human support from vets and welfare workers, until the end of their lives.

The average lifespan of a male killer whale is about 30 years, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agency. Females usually live about 50 years.

"Life at the sanctuary will be as close as is possible to what they would have experienced growing up in the ocean," say the WSP. "It will be a new life that will make up for so much of what went before."

This kind of project has been done before.

Keiko, the orca that starred in the 1993 move Free Willy, was rescued from captivity in 1996 before being taken to a bay in Iceland in 1998.

Unlike Wikie and Keijo, he was born in the wild and was able to relearn some of the necessary survival skills while living in the bay for four years.

He eventually left with a pod of orcas he had joined and swam to Norway where he died in 2003 following an infection.

Strager warns that the proposed sanctuary might feel as alien to Wikie and Keijo as open ocean would.

"We have this conception that animals enjoy freedom in the same sense we do, 'now they are free and they will love it.'

"We don't know if they see freedom the same way ... Are they going to be scared because it is so different to what they're used to? I don't know."

She tells the BBC: "I don't think there are any good solutions for animals that have been kept in captivity their whole lives."

Pamela Anderson called for the closure of Marineland Antibes at a protest in 2017 [AFP]

More than 4,000 animals will be moved out of Marineland, which was founded in 1970 by Count Roland de la Poype.

He was a decorated fighter pilot who fought during World War Two before establishing himself in the plastics industry and opening Marineland due to his interest in sea life.

The closure of his passion project is the latest step in a campaign targeting marine zoos that has gained momentum over the last 15 years.

The actress Pamela Anderson called for the closure of Marineland in 2017 and held a protest outside its entrance saying "captivity kills".

In 2013, the documentary Blackfish detailed how an orca called Tilikum killed trainer Dawn Brancheau after a show at SeaWorld Orlando in 2010.

He grabbed her and dragged her into the water where he tore off her arm and drowned her.

The film also outlines how Tilikum was also involved in the deaths of two other people.

Researchers interviewed in the film argued that orcas captured from the wild and trained to perform become violent in captivity.

Tilikum was involved in the deaths of three people while kept captive at SeaWorld [Getty Images]

Visitor numbers and financial revenues at SeaWorld suffered in the aftermath of the documentary and in 2016 they suspended their captive breeding programme.

They rejected calls to release their remaining orcas into the wild, saying they would likely die if left to fend for themselves.

Eighteen months ago they opened a new marine zoo in the United Arab Emirates, SeaWorld's first outside the US.

The new facility in Abu Dhabi is a $1.2bn (£966m) venture with state-owned leisure developer Miral and boasts the largest aquarium in the world.

There aren't any orcas on show here but, to the dismay of campaigners, dolphins still are.

Wap have helped convince Expedia not to sell any more holidays involving performances by dolphins in captivity and want other travel companies to do the same.

"Blackfish was more than a hit – it was a phenomenon," writes the scientist Naomi Rose in a report by Wap. "I am convinced it pushed western society past the tipping point on the subject of captive cetaceans."

SeaWorld orca that killed trainer dies


SeaWorld San Diego hosts final orca show


New rules for SeaWorld orca whales

Ukraine's drone jammers are proving decisive amid a new push on Russian soil, pro-Kremlin milbloggers say

Matthew Loh
Mon, January 6, 2025 

 Business Insider

Ukraine's new attack in Kursk is featuring some impressive drone jamming, Russian military bloggers said.

The bloggers reported that Ukrainian forces were able to break through because of "powerful electronic warfare."

it's made it difficult for Russian drone operators to work in the area, they wrote.

Ukraine launched a renewed offensive in Russia's Kursk region on Sunday, where Russian pro-war bloggers say Kyiv's drone jammers have been working exceptionally well.

The "Operation Z" channel, a collection of dispatches from Russian war correspondents, wrote that the attack had focused on the Bolshesoldatsky district, to the northeast of the Ukrainian-held pocket in Kursk.

"In order to break through, the Ukrainian Armed Forces covered the area with powerful electronic warfare systems, making it difficult for our UAVs to operate," wrote the Telegram channel, which has over 1.6 million subscribers.

Razvedos Advanced Gear & Equipment, a Russian military news Telegram channel with over 152,000 subscribers, echoed those comments in a post on Sunday.

"It cannot be said that they were not expected in this direction, but they managed to VERY effectively use electronic warfare," it wrote of the fighting in Bolshesoldatsky.

Roman Alekhine, a military blogger with about 218,000 subscribers, wrote on his channel: "The enemy has covered the attack area with electronic warfare, so many drones are useless."

Alekhine later posted that some Russian drone operators were still able to switch to unjammed frequencies.

Sergei Kolyasnikov, another military blogger with about 498,000 subscribers, reported that about 10 Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles had entered the Bolshesoldatsky region.

"The area is covered with some powerful electronic warfare, nothing is flying at all," he wrote.

The specifics of Ukraine's new push this week into Russian territory are still unclear. Kyiv initially launched a surprise counteroffensive into Kursk in August, where it took an estimated 480 square miles of Russian land but has been slowly pushed back since.

Ukraine has stayed mostly silent on the matter. But Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation run by Ukraine's national security and defense council, alluded to an assault on Sunday by posting that Russian troops in Kursk "were attacked from several directions and it came as a surprise to them."

Andriy Yermak, chief of staff for Ukraine's president, also hinted at an attack by writing on his Telegram channel that Russia was "getting what it deserves" in Kursk.

Meanwhile, Russia has outright declared that Ukraine had attacked again.

"On January 5, at about 09:00 Moscow time, in order to stop the advance of Russian troops in the Kursk direction, the enemy launched a counterattack with an assault group consisting of two tanks, a barrier vehicle, and 12 combat armored vehicles with troops in the direction of the Berdin farm," its defense ministry told state media.

As reports of Ukraine's jamming efforts emerged, the defense ministry published a video of a Russian drone operator coordinating a tank strike on an unknown target in a forested area, saying he was working in Kursk.

The Ukrainian and Russian Defense Ministries did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Electronic warfare has increasingly been key on the battlefield as both Russia and Ukraine turn to cheap drones for reconnaissance, loitering munitions, and close-range bombing runs.

One development has seen both sides deploy wired drones. These use long fiber optic cables unfurled from a spool as the aerial system takes flight, allowing it to bypass jamming systems.

Should they become mainstream, they may pose yet another challenge for militaries that are already spending big on preparing against drone threats. The US, for example, is paying some $250 million to Anduril, Palmer Luckey's defense startup, for 500 drones and an electronic warfare system called Pulsar.