Food, fertilizer, fuel? 

Hunt is on for solutions to Caribbean’s exploding seaweed problem

2023/05/01

Most of the troubles plaguing the subtropical waters of Florida and the Caribbean revolve around disappearing marine life: coral reefs, fish populations, sea grass beds. It’s decidedly the opposite case with sargassum, the floating brown seaweed that has exploded in record-setting mass throughout the region.

Nothing can stop the stinky brown mats from carpeting beaches and shorelines through this summer: Sargassum quantities hit record levels in the Caribbean in April, according to researchers at the University of South Florida, and the scientists wrote in a May 1 report that sargassum totals are only “expected to increase over the next few months, with impacts of beaching events in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico worsening accordingly.”

The problem, the researchers wrote, is especially acute along the southern coasts of Hispanola, Jamaica and Puerto Rico. So there is increasing commercial and research interest in developing ways to put such an abundant and seemingly sustainable resource to use.

In Jamaica, for instance, one company started out converting sargassum to fertilizer or animal feed and has since turned to converting it into biofuel. Another company is farming a different kind of seaweed that produces agar, a jellylike substance used in a lot of health food products. There is regional and even global interest in determining whether seaweed farms and sargassum also could act as a “carbon sink” to offset greenhouse gas emissions.

Seaweed is, at least technically, edible. Some species of the floating algae have long been used in Asian cuisine and, when dried, in medicine. And while it’s not been commonly consumed in the Caribbean, it has been eaten by Jamaican fishers – at least in times of desperation.

“I’ve been at sea with other fishermen, stranded for days, starving. We happen on a big floating mass of grass and I witnessed men eat that grass like food. Men that are alive today to tell the tale,” said Romain Betty, who lives in the coastal town of Manchioneal. His story drew nods of agreement from others around him.

But recent research show sargassum comes with health risks and uncertainties that likely will keep it from winding up as part of anybody’s diet, said Jodiel Ebanks, beaches coordinator at the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) in Jamaica.

“We suggest a cautionary approach when dealing with sargassum due to the levels of arsenic and other heavy metals found in it,” she said. While it might sustain fishers for brief periods, there are too many unknowns at the moment to say what the impacts might be over the long term if used in the food supply – at least without considerably more study.

A series of new studies detected troubling arsenic levels in sargassum. Mexican researchers who measured the heavy metal concentrations in sargassum that washed up on Mexican beaches in 2020 found that 86% of the seaweed they sampled had arsenic levels above the legal limit for animal fodder under European regulations. It also found that sargassum-based fertilizers could transfer heavy metals into vegetables.

In Jamaica at least, those concerns have already taken sargassum off the table as an option for animal feed or fertilizer.

One startup called Awganic Inputs became known for turning sargassum into fertilizer and feed for goats, an island staple. But it pivoted from that when the new science broke. CEO Daviean Morrison recalls the transition with a scrunched brow. The questions about “trace amounts” of arsenic remain unresolved, he said.

“The details of what parts per gram and things like that, we’re not sure. So we just said until we can answer those questions ourselves we’ll stick with a method where there is no harm,” said Morrison. Awganic Inputs, located in the coastal parish of Clarendon, has since trademarked a new process to turn the sargassum into biofuel they call “ecoal.” That can potentially provide an alternative and plentiful fuel that would help protect Caribbean forests from being harvested to make charcoal.

Morrison employs fishermen to collect the algae from the beach and store it for drying. It’s enough for some to make a living. That’s welcome work when the sargassum makes fishing difficult. While drifting sargassum mats provide shelter for small crabs and other creatures that draw fish like mahi, too much of it also can make coastal fishing difficult, said Betty, the fisherman.

“Sometimes there is so much out there that it blocks up the boat engine,” he said. “Then we have to tip the boat up to remove the grass from it and just hope for the best.”

While promising, it’s far from clear if operations like Awganic Inputs could be scaled up enough to put a dent into annual sargassum blooms that scientists say have been increasing in recent years, fueled by increased nutrient pollution and climate change.

The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt — the official name for the collection of floating brown seaweed that sprawls across 5,000 miles from the Gulf of Mexico to the west coast of Africa — contained about 13 million tons of seaweed by the end of March, according to researchers at the University of South Florida’s Optical Oceanography Lab who have been monitoring the sargassum belt via satellite.

In Miami-Dade County, last year’s seaweed cleanup budget ran $3.9 million, and this year the county is estimating perhaps $6 million in expenses. That pays for heavy equipment scraping the beach clean daily at the height of the summer sargassum season and trucking it away to landfills.

In Jamaica, clearing many coastal beaches is far more labor intensive — and Awganic Inputs’s workers must follow standards meant to protect the coastal environment. NEPA has been stern in its warning against using heavy gear and vehicles on beaches, prohibiting the use of vehicles like tractors and trucks which can compact the sand and damage or destroy homes and nesting grounds for creatures like sea crabs and turtles.

“Removal should include non-intrusive methods such as raking by hand, beach-raking equipment such as perforated conveyor belts,” Ebanks said. Sargassum harvesters also must return sand that falls loose from drying areas to the beach. That’s done after the seaweed, heavy when sopping wet, becomes easier to handle as it dries before being delivered to Morrison for processing into biofuel.

With the economy of Caribbean countries like Jamaica heavily reliant on tourism, finding solutions that would keep the beaches attractive and accessible would be a huge boon. Turning seaweed into a money-making, job-creating enterprise would even be better.

Another Jamaica company, Kee Farms, is actually growing seaweed along the coast. It’s not drifting sargassum but another planted algae that can be harvested and processed for agar, which is used in health foods. Seaweed farming might also be used to capture and store carbon, helping offset damaging greenhouse emissions. There is an emerging, potentially lucrative global market for such operations. And companies like Kee Farms and aBritish firm, exploring the use of sargassum in vast sea pens, are exploring its viability.

Whether seaweed farming could put a dent in climate change remains highly uncertain, however, according to a 2021 research paper in Nature. It raises a long list of side-effects that could offset the benefits and might even make climate change worse.

So, for the near future at least, only currents and winds will shape how much sargassum rolls in on the next tide.

____

Taylor Gladstone is a journalist and author based in Jamaica who writes on environment, culture and other topic. His work on this story was supported by the Pulitzer Center. This story also was produced in partnership with the Florida Climate Reporting Network, a multi-newsroom initiative formed to cover the impacts of climate change in the state.

© Miami Herald

Costa Rican sloth antibiotics MAY offer hope for human medicine

Agence France-Presse
May 1, 2023

Experts say sloths appear to be infection resistant 

© Ezequiel BECERRA / AFP

The fur of Costa Rican sloths appears to harbor antibiotic-producing bacteria that scientists hope may hold a solution to the growing problem of "superbugs" resistant to humanity's dwindling arsenal of drugs.

Sloth fur, research has found, hosts bustling communities of insects, algae, fungi and bacteria, among other microbes, some of which could pose disease risk.

Yet, experts say, the famously slow-moving mammals appear to be surprisingly infection-proof.

"If you look at the sloth's fur, you see movement: you see moths, you see different types of insects... a very extensive habitat," Max Chavarria, a researcher at the University of Costa Rica, told AFP.

"Obviously when there is co-existence of many types of organisms, there must also be systems that control them," he said.

Chavarria and a team took fur samples from Costa Rican two- and three-toed sloths to examine what that control system could be.

They found the possible existence of antibiotic-producing bacteria that "makes it possible to control the proliferation of potentially pathogenic bacteria... or inhibit other competitors" such as fungi, according to a study published in the journal Environmental Microbiology.

'No infection'

The sloth is a national symbol in laid back Costa Rica, and a major tourist attraction for the Central American country.

Both the two-toed (Choloepus Hoffmanni) and three-toed (Bradypus variegatus) sloth species have seen their populations decline, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species.

They live in the canopies of trees in the jungle on the Caribbean coast, where the climate is hot and humid.

American Judy Avey runs a sanctuary in the balmy jungle to care for sloths injured after coming into contact with humans or other animals.

She treats and rehabilitates the creatures with a view to releasing them back into the wild.

"We've never received a sloth that has been sick, that has a disease or has an illness," she told AFP.

"We've received sloths that had been burned by power lines and their entire arm is just destroyed... and there's no infection.

"I think maybe in the 30 years (we've been open), we've seen five animals that have come in with an infected injury. So that tells us there's something going on in their... bodily ecosystem."

Avey, who established the sanctuary with her late Costa Rican husband, Luis Arroyo, had never even heard of a sloth back home in Alaska.

Since receiving her first sloth, whom she named "Buttercup," in 1992, she has cared for around 1,000 animals.

Penicillin inspiration

Researcher Chavarria took fur samples taken from sloths at the sanctuary to examine in his laboratory.

He began his research in 2020, and has already pinpointed 20 "candidate" microorganisms waiting to be named.

But he said there is a long road ahead in determining whether the sloth compounds could be useful to humans.

"Before thinking about an application in human health, it's important to first understand... what type of molecules are involved," said Chavarria.

An example of this is penicillin, discovered in 1928 by British scientist Alexander Fleming, who discovered that a fungal contamination of a laboratory culture appeared to kill a disease-causing bacteria.

His discovery of the world's first bacteria-killer, or antibiotic, earned him the 1945 Nobel Prize in medicine.

However, microbial resistance to antibiotics has been a growing problem, meaning some medicines no longer work to fight the infections they were designed to treat.

Antimicrobial resistance is a natural phenomenon, but the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in humans, animals and plants has made the problem worse.

The World Health Organization estimates that by 2050, resistance to antibiotics could cause 10 million deaths a year.

"Projects like ours can contribute to finding... new molecules that can, in the medium or long term, be used in this battle against antibiotic resistance," said Chavarria.

© 2023 AFP

Enigmatic human fossil jawbone may be evidence of an early Homo sapiens presence in Europe – and adds mystery about who those humans were

The Conversation
May 2, 2023, 

Close examination of digital and 3D-printed models suggested the fossil needs to be reclassified. Brian A. Keeling

Homo sapiens, our own species, evolved in Africa sometime between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago. Anthropologists are pretty confident in that estimate, based on fossil, genetic and archaeological evidence.

Then what happened? How modern humans spread throughout the rest of the world is one of the most active areas of research in human evolutionary studies.

The earliest fossil evidence of our species outside of Africa is found at a site called Misliya cave, in the Middle East, and dates to around 185,000 years ago. While additional H. sapiens fossils are found from around 120,000 years ago in this same region, it seems modern humans reached Europe much later.

Understanding when our species migrated out of Africa can reveal insights into present-day biological, behavioral and cultural diversity. While we Homo sapiens are the only humans alive today, our species coexisted with different human lineages in the past, including Neandertals and Denisovans. Scientists are interested in when and where H. sapiens encountered these other kinds of humans.

Our recent reanalysis of a fossil jawbone from a Spanish site called Banyoles is raising new questions about when our species may have migrated to Europe.
Homo sapiens fossils found in Europe

The first documented discoveries of human fossils were in Europe, just before Darwin’s 1859 publication of “The Origin of Species.” Ideas of evolution were being actively debated within European universities and scientific societies.

Many of the earliest fossil findings were Neandertals, a species that evolved in Europe by 250,000 years ago and became extinct around 40,000 years ago. They are also our closest evolutionary relatives and, because of ancient interbreeding, the genomes of people today include Neandertal DNA. Because of their early historical presence, Neandertal fossils had a big influence on how early researchers thought about human evolution.

The first fossil evidence of Neandertals was found in 1856 during quarrying activities from the Neander Tal (Neander Valley) in Germany. Paleontologists took the hint and started to search for human fossils in other caves and exposed areas that preserved ancient sediments.

More than a decade later, in 1868, paleontologists uncovered H. sapiens fossils at the site of Cro-Magnon in southern France. For much of the 20th century, the 30,000-year-old Cro-Magnon fossils represented the earliest fossil evidence of our species in Europe.

More recently, evidence for an earlier H. sapiens presence in Europe has come from two sites in Eastern Europe, including a partial skull from Zlatý kůň Cave in Czechia dating to 45,000 years ago, as well as more fragmentary remains from Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria dating to around 44,000 years ago. Ancient DNA analysis has confirmed that the fossils from these sites represent H. sapiens. Additional, potentially earlier, evidence is represented by a single tooth dating to 54,000 years ago from the Grotte Mandrin Cave in France.

This is where the human fossil from Banyoles comes into the story.

A new look at an old fossil find potentially pushes back the date when Homo sapiens lived in Europe.

Reinvestigating a ‘Neandertal’ mandible

Over a century ago in 1889, a fossil human lower jaw, or mandible, was found at a quarry near the town of Banyoles, in northeastern Spain. Pere Alsius, a prominent local pharmacist, first studied the mandible, and the fossil has been curated by his family ever since.

A number of anthropologists have studied the fossil over time, but it has not usually been included in discussions about H. sapiens in Europe. Most researchers instead argued it represented a Neandertal or showed Neandertal-like features, in part because the Banyoles fossil lacks a feature considered typical and diagnostic of our own species: a bony chin on the front of the mandible.

Researchers did not have a good idea of how old the Banyoles mandible was, with most believing it likely dated to the Middle Pleistocene (780,000-130,000 years ago). That age made it seem too old to represent H. sapiens. Thus, with the absence of a chin and the presumed early date, the designation as a Neandertal seemed to make sense.




Map of the Iberian Peninsula indicating where the Banyoles mandible (yellow star) was found, along with Late Pleistocene Neandertal (orange triangles) and H. sapiens (white squares) sites. Brian A. Keeling

Based on recent modern uranium-series and electron spin resonance dating, researchers now believe the Banyoles mandible is between 45,000 and 66,000 years old. This younger estimate overlaps with the early H. sapiens fossils from Eastern Europe.

Working with Spanish paleoanthropologists and archaeologists, we took another look at what species the fossil might represent. We relied on a CT scan to virtually reconstruct damaged or missing portions of the mandible and generated a 3D model of the complete fossil. Then, we studied its overall shape and distinctive anatomical features, comparing it to H. sapiens, Neandertals and other earlier human species.




Virtual reconstruction of the 3D model of the Banyoles mandible. Highlighted piece in blue indicates a mirrored element that researchers used to fill out missing sections. Brian A. Keeling

In contrast to earlier analyses, our results revealed that the Banyoles jawbone was most similar to H. sapiens fossils – not Neandertals.


When we examined the mandible’s bony features where muscle tendons and ligaments would have attached, it most closely resembled H. sapiens. We also found no unique bony features shared with the Neandertals. Additionally, when we used sophisticated 3D analysis techniques, we found that Banyoles’ overall shape was a better match with H. sapiens than with Neandertal individuals.

While nearly all of our evidence suggests this prehistoric human was indeed a member of our species, the lack of a chin remains puzzling. This feature is present in all human populations today and should be present in Banyoles if it is a member of our species.
Figuring out the closest match


How do we reconcile our results showing that Banyoles is a modern human with the fact that it lacks one of the most distinctive modern human features? We considered several possible scenarios.

When the mandible was discovered, it was still encased in a hard travertine block and only partially exposed. During initial cleaning and preparation of the specimen, it was accidentally dropped and the chin region was damaged. The fossil was subsequently reconstructed, with the damaged fragments aligned in their correct anatomical position, and the current state of the fossil does seem to accurately reflect an original chinless shape. Thus, the lack of a chin in Banyoles cannot be attributed to this initial incident.

Could the lack of a chin in the Banyoles fossil be a result of interbreeding with Neandertals, who also lacked a chin? Genetic evidence suggests that H. sapiens most likely interbred with Neandertals between 45,000 and 65,000 years ago, making this a possibility.

To assess this hypothesis, we compared Banyoles with an early H. sapiens mandible dating to about 42,000 years ago from a Romanian site called Peştera cu Oase. Ancient DNA analysis has revealed that the Oase individual had a Neandertal ancestor between four and six generations back, making it close to a hybrid individual. However, unlike Banyoles, this mandible shows a full chin along with some other Neandertal features. Since Banyoles shared no distinctive features with Neandertals, we ruled out the possibility of this individual representing interbreeding between Neandertals and H. sapiens.



Comparison of mandibles between H. sapiens, at left; Banyoles, center; and a Neandertal, at right. Brian A. Keeling

We’re left with two possibilities. Banyoles may represent a hybrid individual between H. sapiens and a non-Neandertal archaic human lineage. This scenario might account for the absence of the chin as well as the lack of any other Neandertal features in Banyoles. However, scientists haven’t identified any such non-Neandertal archaic group in the fossil record of the European Late Pleistocene (129,000-11,700 years ago), making this hypothesis less likely.

Alternatively, Banyoles may document a previously unknown lineage of largely chinless H. sapiens in Europe. Possible support for this hypothesis comes from the fact that early H. sapiens fossils from Africa and the Middle East show a less prominent chin than do living humans.

Additionally, ancient DNA research has shown that H. sapiens populations in Europe before 35,000 years ago did not contribute to the modern European gene pool. Thus, we believe the least unlikely hypothesis is that Banyoles represents an individual from one of these early H. sapiens populations.

Our study of Banyoles demonstrates how new discoveries about our evolutionary past do not solely rely on new fossil discoveries, but can also come about through applying new methodologies to previously discovered fossils. If Banyoles is really a member of our species, it would potentially represent the earliest H. sapiens lineage documented to date in Europe. Future ancient DNA analysis could confirm or refute this surprising result. In the meantime, the 3D model of Banyoles is available for other researchers to study and form their own conclusions.

Brian Anthony Keeling, Doctoral Candidate in Anthropology, Binghamton University, State University of New York and Rolf Quam, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Binghamton University, State University of New York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

An Illinois billionaire attacking Ohio voters also funded Jan. 6 and election deniers

Marilou Johanek, Ohio Capital Journal
May 2, 2023, 


Why is a fat cat in Illinois trying to influence lawmaking in Ohio that attempts to destroy the ability of citizens to amend their constitution? Good question. Kind of goes right to the heart of the phony Republican argument for making it near-impossible to pass citizen initiatives in the state: To protect the Ohio Constitution from meddling outside influences.

Yet here we are. On the cusp of Ohio House Republicans possibly approving their legislative initiative — to change the century-old standard for passing state constitutional amendments from a majority vote to a 60% threshold — a super-rich guy two states away is putting big money on passage of that anti-voter measure in the Statehouse.

You’ve probably never heard of this guy, Dick Uihlein. But the Chicago-area shipping supplies magnate and scion of the beer company “that made Milwaukee famous” is a right-wing sugar daddy. The German-American billionaire and his wife Liz are the Midwest version of the Koch brothers.
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A ProPublica report details the family’s generational history of pouring millions into far right causes and candidates. Uihlein’s father gravitated to ultraconservative political groups in the 1960s, including the John Birch Society, and supported politicians who embraced segregation. His son leaned into MAGA extremism.

Uihlein, who prefers to fly under the radar when he bankrolls campaigns, was exposed by the Daily Beast as one of the anonymous billionaires “in MAGA gear writing large checks” to groups trying to overturn the 2020 election. He was reportedly one of the biggest financial supporters of the Jan 6 rally.

Dick and Liz were the biggest Republican donors in the 2022 midterms. Period. The bulk of their largesse went to election deniers in the country or political action committees, including super PACs, that either directly backed their candidates or funded enterprises pushing false election claims.

The heir to the Schlitz brewing fortune doled out a ton of cash to underwrite groups that promoted the Big Lie and supported some of the most notorious allies of the disgraced ex-president. It is this GOP megadonor — who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on state and federal politics in the past decade fighting taxes, unions, abortion rights, “transgender ideology” and critical race theory — who now wants to use his wealth against Ohio voters.

The Illinois plutocrat is bankrolling a brand new super PAC in Ohio (that can spend unlimited amounts of his dough) to shut down our voice in the state. Uihlein funneled over $1 million to his political action committee and is its primary benefactor, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

Helping the billionaire create his spending vehicle in our state — to undermine our only recourse around an undemocratic legislature — is a Cincinnati attorney “with a history of running dark money organizations for anti-abortion organizations and activists on the Christian right,” reports Cleveland.com. Well, there you go. Those conspiring to shut down the people’s views on abortion rights, fair legislative districts, higher minimum wage, commonsense gun reform, etc., are marshaling forces with an out-of-state, hard-right Daddy Warbucks.


Uihlein’s deceptively named “Save Our Constitution” PAC started launching bizarre ads in southern Ohio. The targeted blasts aimed to pressure reticent Ohio House Republicans to approve an August ballot initiative that stifles the capacity of Ohioans to amend their constitution with a supermajority vote and punishing new requirements for ballot signatures.

In 30-second videos, dark shadowy images of Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden and AOC flash as a narrator urges lawmakers to “save Ohio’s Constitution from a radical liberal takeover” before it’s too late. (Wait, what??) The speaker warns that “the clock is ticking” and “conservatives across Ohio are demanding action” of key lawmakers (insert Speaker Jason Stephens name here).

Republican holdouts have the “power to stop them,” the ads intone, (Pelosi & Co.?) and “vote with conservatives.” Or else. Uihlein’s super PAC threatens to keep score of GOP legislators tempted to stand up for Ohio voters. Its sparse website, which screams that “Ohio’s Constitution is under attack,” promises the PAC “will be scoring this vote” (coming up in the Ohio House on the proposed constitutional change.)

“We will ensure that Ohio voters in 2024 are informed about legislators who say yes to this…and those who oppose it or prevent it from being brought to a vote” (a rebuke to Stephens). Ironically, the webpage — funded by deep pockets pushing special interests — declares that “Our Constitution has been hijacked by special interests.” Talk about projecting.

What the GOP moneybags in Chicago is trying to do with his Ohio campaign to save our constitution from us is nothing short of a radical conservative takeover of power from every Ohioan, Republican and Democrat. In that world the majority no longer rules. White nationalism does. The extremist minority seizes power. Opposing views are silenced.

A Big Lie promoter buying his way into Ohio politics to subvert our right of self-governance is no champion of democracy. The corrupt Statehouse Republicans, on the verge of passing a sinister assault on Ohio voters via a sneaky summertime election, are not on your side. Neither is the right-wing rubberstamp in the governor’s office.

The clock is indeed ticking. Pay attention. Or let a fat cat in Illinois call the shots on your life in Ohio.


Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and Twitter.

Texas prison guards throw nurse in isolation for explaining abortion: report

Matthew Chapman
May 2, 2023

Bars Prison Jail - Dan Henson:Shutterstock.com

An incarcerated woman in Texas was thrown into isolation by prison guards after they heard her debunking right-wing talking points against abortion, reported The Nation on Tuesday.

The problems started when Kwaneta Harris, a former nurse who was sentenced to 50 years in 2009 for killing and burying her romantic partner, began trying to fill in the sex education of women in adjacent cells in the Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville, Texas, where she has been locked up on high security since trying to forge a note from a judge to escape prison in 2016.

"One Wednesday in mid-April, Harris removed her headphones and heard the younger women shouting through their cell doors. That in itself wasn’t unusual, but the conversation soon had Harris at her own door. They were giving advice about avoiding pregnancy — and all of their advice was wrong," reported Victoria Law. "'You gotta let him in yo butthole before yo biscuit and be a toaster strudel, not a twinkie,' they shouted to a woman who was scheduled for release within a few months. Translation: To avoid pregnancy, a woman should have anal sex before vaginal sex. She should also be sure that the man ejaculated on her, not inside her." Harris corrected them.

Then, as other women began asking her questions, one asked her about "partial-birth abortion" — a right-wing term that doesn't actually have any medical meaning. Harris said, "that's not a thing" — and then a guard intervened.

"From her cell, Harris could see in only one direction. She did not see the man during the first part of her impromptu sex education discussion. But once she began dispelling myths about abortion, he stormed into view, yelling at her to shut up and threatening not only a disciplinary ticket for violating prison rules but even a new criminal charge, which could lead to additional prison time," said the report. "In response, the younger women cursed him out, even telling the officer that he was a 'partial birth abortion.' The officer took Harris’s identification card to write a disciplinary ticket and he threatened to file a new criminal charge against her, Harris said. After he stormed off, Harris began making phone calls from her prison-issued tablet to find out if the state had passed any post-Dobbs laws that might allow new charges to be brought against her."

Shortly after that incident, Harris was removed to another side of the cell, far away from any other prisoner so she couldn't speak to them anymore. Speaking to The Nation, she said the guards sent her a clear message: "Shut the hell up."

Scrapping could be next for Russia’s nuclear-powered battle cruiser

It is likely not cost-efficient to do the highly needed upgrade of the Northern Fleet’s 25-year old flagship “Pyotr Velikiy”.

The "Pyotr Velikiy" needs more upgrade than a simple docking like this one in the Kola Bay a few years back. Photo: Thomas Nilsen

By Thomas Nilsen
April 20, 2023

“Currently, the question about withdrawing “Pyotr Velikiy” from the Navy is under consideration. Based on the experience of repairing and modernizing the “Admiral Nakhimov” of the same class has shown that this is very costly,” a navy source said to state-owned news agency TASS.

Like in many speculations on the fate of older navy vessels, Russian state media send mixed information. Shortly after the TASS report came on Thursday, RIA Novosti quoted an unnamed source saying there are no plans to retire the huge warship.

The “Pyotr Velikiy” and “Admiral Nakhimov” are of sister ships, both of the Kirov-class, the only nuclear-powered surface warships in the Russian Navy.

The “Admiral Nakhimov” has not been in operation since the early 1990ties, and has since 1999 been at the yard in Severodvinsk undergoing repair, change of uranium fuel elements in the reactors and a refit to receive new weaponry, including modern cruise-missiles.

However, as repeatedly reported by the Barents Observer over the last decade, the re-commissioning of the warship has seen one postponement following the other. Current plans to set sail in 2024 today seem unlikely.

The “Pyotr Velikiy” was supposed to be docked in Severodvinsk as soon as “Admiral Nakhimov” joins the Northern Fleet.

The warship is armed with several types of cruise missiles, surface-to-air missiles, rocket launchers, torpedos and artillery. The hangar can house three helicopters.

April 18 marked the 25-years anniversary since “Pyotr Velikye” was commissioned. The ship has a crew of more than 700.

"It demonstrates the potential enormity of the problems society may face over the coming centuries"

 UiT scientists on the new data from the Barents Sea.

New Barents Sea study points to how global sea level will continue to rise.


Научно-исследовательское судно «Хелмер Ханссен» у северо-западного побережья Шпицбергена. Фото: Келвин Шеклтон

By  Elizaveta Vereykina
April 20, 2023

A recently published study from geologists at UiT The Arctic University of Norway has provided new insight into what was happening beneath the Barents Sea ice sheet around 15,000 years ago. The data gathered will help to better understand the processes occurring under present-day climate change.

What was discovered?

According to a global consensus of scientists it is virtually certain that global sea level will continue to rise over the 21st century. For the 900 million people (1 in 10 globally) living in coastal zones around the world now, including in coastal mega-cities, this danger is particularly acute.

“Unravelling the glacial changes that occurred in the marine setting of the Barents Sea during the warming at the end of the last ice age is important as it gives us a unique long-term perspective into how ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica today could respond in the future.” UiT researcher Dr Henry Patton says to The Barents Observer.

For the first time, this research which has been conducted over the last 5 years, has put some numbers on how fast this former ice sheet in the Barents Sea retreated.

“Like the present-day ice sheets, this Barents Sea ice sheet was immense, reaching up to 3 km thick in places, but we are starting to think that the whole system collapsed very quickly, raising global sea level by many metres in just a few centuries,” says Patton.

UiT team examining glacial sediments obtained in a core taken from the Barents Sea floor. The sediments are collected within a plastic liner roughly 10 cm wide (shown in the background). By examining the nature of these seafloor sediments more closely we can learn more about the type of environment they were deposited in. Photo: Mauro Pau, 2021

Newly discovered seafloor deposits have provided new information on how fast this vast ice sheet was shrinking through the central Barents Sea 15,000 years ago. The data the team found shows the ice sheet was retreating between 580 and 1600 m per year on average, for at least 91 years. At this pace, most of the ice sheet is likely to have disappeared from across the entire Barents Sea within 1000 years, raising global sea level by around 6 m in the process.

This geological data shows that the continuous, fast retreat of ice sheets over many decades, and possibly centuries, is not unprecedented under a rapidly changing climate. Chronological data constraining this ice-sheet collapse has previously been a long-standing knowledge gap.

Dr Henry Patton examining newly collected multibeam echosounder data in the instrument room onboard Helmer Hanssen. Photo by Mauro Pau, 2021.

“If our numbers are correct this collapse event would have contributed to an extraordinarily fast pace of sea level rise, - Dr Patton says - and it demonstrates the potential enormity of the problems society may face over the coming centuries if the current ice sheets continue to destabilise”.

Yet, he added, pinning down these future quantities of melt over the coming decades and centuries is not straightforward as the feedbacks that operate between the oceans, climate and ice are highly nonlinear.

How was it done?

To uncover information about the glacial past published in this study, the UiT team has been surveying and mapping the Barents Sea area from research vessels since 2020. Sometimes scientists would stay on the research ship for up to three weeks. The team in their research also incorporated open data collected by the Norwegian Hydrographic Service through the MAREANO programme.

Scientists Calvin Shackleton and Henry Patton with other team members in the ‘wet lab’ onboard Helmer Hanssen in 2015, waiting for a sediment core to be retrieved 300 metres below from the Barents Sea floor. When the team works on the ship deck it’s important for them to wear clothes that are visible and warm.

By piecing together these high-resolution snapshots surveyed from the Barents Sea floor - like in a jigsaw puzzle - a clearer picture of the glacial history of this region can emerge. The mapping included in this UiT study comes from a very remote region in the central Barents Sea, near the Norwegian - Russian border. Scientists believe this region hosted some of the last remnants of the last ice sheet before it finally melted away.Here you can use a map demonstrating an interactive reconstruction of the Eurasian ice sheet during the last ice age

Such observational data are vital for guiding numerical simulations that try to reconstruct the behaviour of the old ice sheets. Lead researcher of the study, Dr Calvin Shackleton from the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromsø, points out that satellite data, which has been used to monitor the present-day ice sheets over the last 40 years, are unable to observe the processes happening underneath the ice sheet. This makes the geological data left behind by these older ice sheets like in the Barents Sea such a valuable archive to investigate.

“The detection of traces of water at the interface between the ice sheet and seafloor is of importance as the water acts as a lubrication, allowing the ice above to flow faster and thus more quickly transfer its mass to the more climate-sensitive regions at lower elevations.”

From left to right: scientists Calvin Shackleton and Henry Patton onboard Helmer Hanssen with a glacial fjord in Svalbard in the background.

 Photo by Mariana Esteves

Research ship Helmer Hanssen acquiring data in the Barents Sea in 2020. 

Photo by Henry Patton.

Why is this important?

Continued sea level rise is one of the most concerning processes occurring around the planet now. There have been multiple statements at the highest political levels about an existential threat not only for big cities from London to Shanghai, but also for many small island nations.

Earlier this year the UN Secretary-General António Guterres pointed out in a statement: “For the hundreds of millions of people living in small island developing States and other low-lying coastal areas around the world, sea-level rise is a torrent of trouble….The impact of rising seas is already creating new sources of instability and conflict” he said.

According to Dr Patton, quantifying this sea level rise and being able to adapt to its impacts are key aspects driving the need to better understand the science behind present-day climate change. Specifically, as he says, it’s now visible from how water carved the seafloor and deposited sediments that meltwater was abundant beneath the Barents Sea ice sheet, and thus able to regulate how the ice above flowed as it collapsed. Some of this water, researchers think, was fed from the ice-sheet surface, showing that this Arctic ice sheet was increasingly susceptible to melting as temperatures in the atmosphere rose.

A contemporary glacier in the Swiss Alps. Photo by Henry Patton


Another recent study has similarly mapped glacial landforms in the Norwegian Sea, showing how fast the last ice sheet over Scandinavia retreated back into Norway at around the same time the Barents Sea ice sheet was also collapsing. The rates they found are exceptionally higher, at 55 to 610 m per day (in comparison to the 580 to 1600 m per year from UiT), and faster than anything ever observed today or in the last ice age. These very fast rates, however, were likely only ever sustained over a period of days to months.

Nevertheless, both studies highlight the profound speed by which ice sheets can quickly destabilise and lose mass, and provide a strong warning on the importance of better understanding the nature of contemporary climate change and its impact on society. People need to know what dangers to face in the future. But, as scientists say, the research is still ongoing:

“The Barents Sea is a very large place and the mapping of this glacial imprint left behind on the Barents Sea floor is still far from complete”, says Dr Patton.

The massive hole in the ice in today’s Switzerland, Gornergletscher in the Alps - that’s the way how water that melts on the surface can be transported underneath the ice to lubricate it, same as it happened in the past. Photo by Henry Patton

The geographical area of the conducted research on the border between Norway and Russia. The red line outlines a channel where water used to flow beneath the ice sheets. The green areas are sediment piles deposited by this water, and give indication of how fast the ice margin retreated.

"Protest region." Karelia gets another independent journalist on foreign agent list

Nataliya Yermolina has been doing journalism and civil society work for decades. She is the latest of several Karelians added to the "foreign agent" list.

Nataliya Yermolina was on the 21st of April included in the list of so-called "foreign agents."
Photo: Igor Podgorny  

SHE IS HOLDING A CLASSIC SLAVIC WOMANS DANCE FORM

By Atle Staalesen
April 25, 2023

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time,” Yermolina tells the Barents Observer.

“So far, I am only making fun of it all. I am experiencing the first moment of congratulations, I feel like a hero of the day or a person who has won something cool.”

“I have not yet realized the cons, but feel like on the crest of a wave,” she adds.

The north Russian region of Karelia today has the highest number of so-called foreign agents per capita in all of Russia. Yermolina is the fifth journalist and civil society activist from the region included in the list. She follows Georgii Chentemirov, the leader of the Karelian Journalism Union and reporter for the Barents Observer, that was included in the list in early April.

Status as “foreign agent” includes a stringent regime on labelling publications and social media contents, as well as comprehensive economic reporting to Russian authorities. It is not clear whether Yermolina intends to meet Moscow’s demands.

The Republic of Karelia has a population of about 530 thousands. It is located along the border with Finland and has for decades been involved in close cross-border cooperation with the neighbouring Nordic country.

Nataliya Yermolina established the Agriculture Club art center in Karelia.

 Photo: Darya Ananina

According to Yermolina, Karelia is a “protest region” because of its many descendants of exiled dissidents.

“We are all descendants of deportees, even back to the Tsarist times. It was expensive to exile people to Siberia, but Petrozavodsk [the Karelian capital] was not far away and all kinds of disobedient people were sent here to Karelia. They gave us a good-quality undergrowth,” she underlines.

Yermolina last year fled to Montenegro, and learned about her inclusion in the infamous list from friends.

She is known for he independent journalism and civil society activities. She is board member of the Karelian Union of Journalism, the only union of its kind in Russia that officially has condemned the new censorship laws in Russia.

Yermolina is also the person behind the Agriculture club, the art center in Petrozavodsk that organises courses, classes, exhibitions, concerts and movie festivals.

TikTok’s head of US trust and safety is leaving

He was a key leader for the separate entity TikTok recently created to try and avoid a US ban.

By Alex Heath
May 2, 2023

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

TikTok’s head of trust and safety for the US, Eric Han, is leaving the company on May 12th, according to two people familiar with the matter and an internal memo to employees I’ve seen.

His departure comes as TikTok is still trying to clench a deal to avoid a ban by the US government. Han has been leading TikTok’s safety teams in the US for several years, and in December, he was named the head of trust and safety for TikTok US Data Security (USDS), a separate entity created to convince the government that the app shouldn’t be banned.

In the memo to employees announcing his departure, Andy Bonillo, interim USDS general manager, said he will be “stepping in to lead USDS T&S on an interim basis” until “we identify Eric’s replacement for the longer term.” Bonillo’s title already says “interim” because the US government has yet to approve TikTok’s USDS proposal and would ultimately have the final say on who runs it.

Related My visit to TikTok’s transparency theater

“Over the past four years, Eric helped safeguard our U.S. community through an incredible stage of growth,” Bonillo said in the memo. “We remain dedicated to upholding our commitments to the TikTok community - both in the U.S. and around the world - as we continue to invest in trust and safety as a cornerstone of those efforts.”

After this story was published, TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan emailed me to say that Han’s role specifically focused on the “compliance, safety strategies, and moderation for content involving US users’ private data.” The implication is that he had little to no oversight of, say, the trust and safety efforts for TikTok’s video recommendations in the US, despite the company saying in December that he was leading the company’s US legal policy and threat intelligence teams in his new role.

“Outside USDS, TikTok’s global Trust and Safety team oversees the platform’s safety policies, processes, and systems for our global community, including the US,” Shanahan wrote in the email. “TikTok’s Head of Trust and Safety is based in Dublin with leaders across the US, Ireland, and Singapore. Our global Trust and Safety team develops global safety policies for the platform and oversees moderation of content that does not involve US users’ private data.”

TikTok’s fate in the US feels as uncertain as ever right now, with states like Montana trying to ban the app and the bipartisan RESTRICT Act making its way through Congress. The Biden administration has sent smoke signals indicating that TikTok’s USDS proposal isn’t enough to appease its national security concerns and that it will likely demand a full divestiture of TikTok from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. The Chinese government obviously doesn’t like that idea, which, as the saying goes, puts TikTok between a rock and a hard place.

Revelations from Sudanese and American officials about Wagner Group’s assistance to Rapid Support Forces (RSF) 

On April 24, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed “deep concern” about the activities of Wagner Group mercenaries in Sudan and asserted that the Russian private military company (PMC) “simply brings more death and destruction wherever it is involved.” Blinken’s dire warning followed revelations from Sudanese and American officials about Wagner Group’s assistance to Rapid Support Forces (RSF) chief Mohammed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo. These allegations included claims that Wagner supplied the RSF with surface-to-air missiles from its Khadim and Jufra installations in Libya or offered such weaponry from its stockpiles in the Central African Republic (CAR).

Although there is mounting evidence of the Wagner PMC’s clandestine support for Hemedti, Russia’s approach to the intra-military conflict in Sudan is more nuanced than it appears. Russia’s primary goal is not to see one or another side win the civil war but rather to thwart a democratic transition in Sudan, as continued authoritarian rule facilitates profits from Sudanese gold mines and the construction of a Russian Red Sea naval base in Port Sudan. These objectives will likely encourage Moscow to eschew a hard alliance with Hemedti and maintain favorable relations with his main rival, the chief of Sudan’s Armed Forces, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan.

Since hostilities erupted between Burhan and Hemedti on April 15, Russia has launched propaganda attacks on Sudan’s democratic transition process. In an April 25 statement, Moscow’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Anna Evstigneeva, claimed that “external powers tried to enforce the transfer of authority to civil powers artificially” and argued that the December 2022 democratic government transition framework was not sufficiently inclusive. Evstigneeva framed Sudan’s transition attempts as a catalyst for the Burhan-Hemedti conflict by stating that “fragile stability in the country fell prey to those attempts to establish a so-called democracy,” and she chastised efforts to make international assistance contingent on a civilian transition.

Evstigneeva’s comments were echoed by major Russian Telegram channels. The “Militarist” channel linked the Burhan-Hemedti conflict to Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland’s democracy promotion efforts in Sudan. Former Kremlin advisor Sergei Markov compared the Burhan-Hemedti clash to the conflicts between Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin during the Soviet Union’s final days and praised ousted President Omar al-Bashir as a Leonid Brezhnev-style stabilizing figure.

While Russia’s aversion to a democratic transition in Sudan mirrors its earlier responses to the 2011 Arab Spring and 2013-14 Euro-Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, it also underscores why authoritarianism is a necessary enabler of Russian interests in Sudan. As part of his sprawling business empire, Wagner Group chief and Kremlin-linked oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin oversees the “Russian Company,” a tightly guarded gold mining plant in al-Ibediyya, 200 miles north of Khartoum. Due to Russian collusion with Sudan’s military leadership, 16 gold smuggling flights reportedly left Khartoum International Airport for Russia in 2021-22. This smuggled gold allegedly provided the Kremlin with vital hard currency for Russia’s military operations in Ukraine. Although the Sudanese military authorities charged one Russian national for gold smuggling, they have allowed gold processing to resume at a key Wagner-linked facility and dropped probes against other employees. A civilian government in Khartoum, particularly one not intertwined with Russia’s smuggling nexus, would likely prosecute these crimes more vigorously.

Russia’s Port Sudan naval base ambitions also explain its support for Sudan’s military leadership. After meeting with his Sudanese counterpart, Ali al-Sadiq, on Feb. 9, 2023,  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that Russia and Sudan had finalized the terms for the Port Sudan facility’s construction. While the basing agreement needs Sudanese parliamentary approval to take effect, it is broadly supported by Sudan’s military brass. In March 2022, Hemedti likewise stated that Sudan should consider a naval base accord with Russia if it did not threaten its national security. As Russia’s base construction plans received backlash from local tribes and the United States, its Red Sea power projection ambitions could suffer under a pro-Western civilian Sudanese government.

Russia is not firmly aligned with either Burhan or Hemedti in the present armed conflict. And that non-aligned position is reflected in expert commentaries. In an April 17 RBC interview, IMEMO RAS Center for International Security researcher Stanislav Ivanov argued, “Whoever wins, the attitude toward Russia is unlikely to change.” Yet Institute of African Studies expert Sergey Kostelyanets contends that neither Burhan nor Hemedti will swiftly advance the Port Sudan base project if they prevail, as they wish to avoid antagonizing the West. Meanwhile, a prolonged conflict in Sudan is also not in Russia’s interests. Kostelyanets asserted, “Any military-political destabilization, and the current one is no exception, is a threat to such sensitive agreements as agreements on the creation of foreign bases.” Persistent instability would risk exacerbating violence in gold smuggling along the Sudan-CAR routes and necessitate further costly interventions by Wagner mercenaries. 

Even as the civil war continues to rage, Russia is unlikely to provide large-scale support for Hemedti. In an April 21 interview with The Financial Times, Hemedti insisted that the RSF has suspended military training links with Wagner Group. Moreover, there is substantial institutional mistrust of Hemedti inside the Kremlin. In a 2021 interview with this author, Russian State University for the Humanities Professor Sergei Seregichev contended that “Sudan’s revisions of the agreement on the Russian military base worsens the image of Hemedti as a reliable partner for Russia.” This suggests that the Wagner Group’s ability to support Hemedti could be limited to what Prigozhin can procure.

So as the conflict in Sudan drags on, Russia will probably try to position itself as a supporter of a diplomatic solution and hedge its bets in the Red Sea region. Shortly after the outbreak of hostilities, Prigozhin declared, “I want peace for the Sudanese people” and offered to mediate between Burhan and Hemedti. The Kremlin has backed African-led solutions to the Sudan crisis, which would contrast with how the West ignored African voices during the 2011 Libyan civil war. Prolonged instability in Sudan could also see Russia deepen its security partnership with neighboring Eritrea. “Rybar,” a major Russian Telegram channel, expressed tentative support for Russia’s construction of a low-cost logistics point in coastal Eritrea, as an alternative to the Port Sudan base agreement. 

Although Russia has vested interests in the Burhan-Hemedti conflict, it is unlikely to actively pursue a blanket destabilization strategy in Sudan. Instead, it is likely to balance close ties with both warring parties and continue actively opposing a democratic transition in Sudan. Regardless of whether Burhan or Hemedti ultimately prevails, Russia is well positioned to remain an influential stakeholder in Sudan and a vexing complication for the U.S.’s Red Sea security strategy.

Samuel Ramani is a tutor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, where he received his doctorate in March 2021, and an associate fellow at RUSI. His first book, Russia in Africa: Resurgent Great Power or Bellicose Pretender?, was published by Oxford University Press and Hurst and Co. in 2023. Follow Samuel on Twitter @samramani2. 

Photo by IBRAHIM ISHAQ/AFP via Getty Images

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