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Author: John Hanno
Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Bogan High School. Worked in Alaska after the earthquake. Joined U.S. Army at 17. Sergeant, B Battery, 3rd Battalion, 84th Artillery, 7th Army. Member of 12 different unions, including 4 different locals of the I.B.E.W. Worked for fortune 50, 100 and 200 companies as an industrial electrician, electrical/electronic technician.
Trump says states should decide on prosecuting women for abortions, has no comment on abortion pill
Christine Fernando – April 30, 2024
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (Justin Lane/Pool Photo via AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
CHICAGO (AP) — Former President Donald Trump says in a new interview it should be left to the states whether to prosecute women for abortions or whether to monitor women’s pregnancies. He declined to comment on access to the abortion pill mifepristone, which has been embroiled in an intense legal battle.
In an interview published Tuesday by Time magazine, Trump responded to questions about how he would handle various abortion questions if elected by repeatedly saying it should be left up to the states.
“You don’t need a federal ban,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said. “Roe v. Wade … wasn’t about abortion so much as bringing it back to the states. So the states would negotiate deals. Florida is going to be different from Georgia and Georgia is going to be different from other places.”
When asked if he would veto a bill that would impose a federal ban, he reiterated “it’s about states rights” and said “there will never be that chance” because Republicans, even if they take back the Senate in November, would not have the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and bring the bill to a vote.
Trump repeated his catchall states-rights response when asked if states should monitor women’s pregnancies so the government would know if they had an abortion. Amid debates about criminalizing women for getting abortions, including those who self-manage with medication, experts have raised alarm over how modern surveillance technologies could help law enforcement agencies track and investigate abortions.
Trump also deferred to the states when asked if a woman should be punished for getting an abortion after a state has banned or restricted the procedure.
“The states are going to make that decision,” Trump said. “The states are going to have to be comfortable or uncomfortable, not me.”
Democrats have recently seized on comments Trump made in 2016, saying “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions.
Abortion is a central campaign issue in the 2024 presidential election as Trump seeks a more cautious stance on the issue, which has become a vulnerability for Republicans and has driven turnout for Democrats. Trump’s deferring to individual states has drawn criticism from Democrats as well as conservatives and anti-abortion groups seeking a federal ban.
The national anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, which supports a national abortion ban, said in a statement that it was “disappointed in President Trump’s position of relegating a human rights issue to the states.” The organization also claimed Democrats would scrap the filibuster in order to “impose their agenda of abortion without limit on the entire country.”
As president, Trump appointed three justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who helped form the majority that overturned the constitutional right to abortion, and he has taken credit for that during his campaign. Earlier this month, he said he was “proudly the person responsible for the ending” of the 50-year-old ruling, Roe v. Wade.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has blamed Trump for a deluge of state abortion restrictions put into effect since the ruling two years ago. His campaign also has warned that a second Trump term could lead to nationwide abortion restrictions. Most recently, Biden blamed Trump for Florida’s six-week abortion ban during campaign events in the state last week.
“Donald Trump’s latest comments leave little doubt: If elected he’ll sign a national abortion ban, allow women who have an abortion to be prosecuted and punished, allow the government to invade women’s privacy to monitor their pregnancies, and put IVF and contraception in jeopardy nationwide,” Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said in a statement responding to the Time interview.
Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, also expressed doubts about Trump’s emphasis on moderation by leaving the issue up to the states.
“There is zero doubt in my mind that Trump will choose anti-abortion extremists and their horrifying agenda over American families every single chance he gets,” she said.
Trump declined to speak with Time about mifepristone as access to the abortion pill has been thrown into uncertainty amid a legal battle that’s made its way to the Supreme Court.
Advocates on both sides of the abortion debate also have long pressed Trump to make clear his views on the Comstock Act, a 19th Century law that has been revived by anti-abortion groups seeking to block the mailing of mifepristone. Trump declined to comment on the act, saying only that he has “pretty strong views” on the matter and would make a statement on it over the next 14 days.
“In Trump’s America, people will be punished for having abortions, the government will monitor women’s pregnancies, and he’ll weaponize and misuse the 19th-Century Comstock laws to try and criminalize doctors and outlaw abortion nationwide,” Jenny Lawson, executive director, Planned Parenthood Votes, said in a statement.
Trump’s comments were consistent with his recent strategy to show more moderation on abortion rights as he seeks to appeal to a general electorate. Trump has previously voiced disagreement with abortion restrictions in individual states, including Arizona’s Civil War-era ban and Florida’s six-week ban. In the Time interview, Trump repeated that he “thought six weeks is too severe.”
Trump on political violence in 2024: ‘If we don’t win, you know, it depends’
Jake Traylor and Scott Bland – April 30, 2024
Mark Peterson
Former President Donald Trumpsaid in a new interview with Time magazine that he doesn’t think there will be political violence around the 2024 election because he believes he’ll win — but that it “always depends on the fairness of an election.”
The comments came along with a statement that Trump would “consider” pardoning every person who has been charged or convicted for rioting at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after the then-president rallied his followers against what he has repeatedly and baselessly called a “rigged” election.
Trump also answered questions digging into his campaign position on abortion policy being left up to the states — and deflecting questions pressing him on any potential federal action, including his position on whether abortion medication should be available. And Trump reinforced past statements he has made on Russia doing “whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries who don’t pay their “fair share” and the extent of a military crackdown he plans to order on illegal immigration.
When Trump was asked in an initial interview about the prospect of more political violence in 2024, after the events following the 2020 election, he said no. “I think we’re gonna have a big victory. And I think there will be no violence,” Trump said.
But asked in a follow-up conversation about what will happen if he doesn’t win, Trump was equivocal.
“Well, I do think we’re gonna win,” Trump answered. “We’re way ahead. I don’t think they’ll be able to do the things that they did the last time, which were horrible. Absolutely horrible. So many, so many different things they did, which were in total violation of what was supposed to be happening. And you know that and everybody knows that. We can recite them, go down a list that would be an arm’s long. But I don’t think we’re going to have that. I think we’re going to win. And if we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.”
Trump also said that he’d be reluctant to hire people for a second administration who thought President Joe Biden won the 2020 election: “I wouldn’t feel good about it,” he said.
On the people charged and convicted of violent acts as Congress was preparing to certify the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump complained that they’ve faced a “two-tier system” but, when pressed, said, “I would consider that, yes,” when asked if he’d consider pardoning every single person prosecuted for their actions on Jan. 6.
‘The states are going to have to be comfortable or uncomfortable, not me’
Trump’s rare long-form interview included him talking through his position on leaving abortion policy up to states. When asked directly if he was comfortable with states deciding to punish women who access abortions after the designated state-specific ban, Trump said: “I don’t have to be comfortable or uncomfortable. The states are going to make that decision. The states are going to have to be comfortable or uncomfortable, not me.”
Then, asked if women’s pregnancies should be monitored by state governments to ensure they don’t get abortions after a certain timeline ban, Trump said: “I think they might do that. Again, you’ll have to speak to the individual states.”
Trump also dodged on the question of whether women should have access to abortion pills. As the interviewer noted that Republican allies of Trump have called “for enforcement of the Comstock Act, which prohibits the mailing of drugs used for abortions by mail,” Trump said he will be making a statement later but declined to outline his position.
“I will be making a statement on that over the next 14 days,” Trump said. In the follow-up interview on April 27, Time noted that Trump had not yet made the statement even though two weeks had passed.
“I’ll be doing it over the next week or two,” Trump said. “But I don’t think it will be shocking, frankly. But I’ll be doing it over the next week or two.”
Trump recently said that it should also be up to individual states to determine any penalty for doctors who perform abortions outside state law. He labeled a question about what he’d do on potential federal legislation on abortion a hypothetical “because it won’t happen. You’re never going to have 60 votes.”
‘I can see myself using the National Guard and, if necessary, I’d have to go a step further’
When asked about immigration, Trump reiterated a consistent campaign promise to use the U.S. military to remove undocumented immigrants from the country.
And Trump said he’d be willing to use other parts of the U.S. military besides the National Guard to address issues inland as well as the border, saying, “I can see myself using the National Guard and, if necessary, I’d have to go a step further.” When the interviewer noted the law preventing the deployment of the military against civilians, Trump claimed undocumented immigrants weren’t civilians and said: “These are people that aren’t legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country.”
Trump has previously vowed to relocate thousands of overseas U.S troops to the southern border to crack down on border security as well as promising to terminate “every open border policy of the Biden administration.”
Trump also floated the idea of migrant detention camps, calling it a “possibility” but something he hopes “we shouldn’t have to do very much of.”
At the core of Trump’s immigration promises over the last year is the use of local law enforcement, though policy specifics surrounding the idea have been scarce.
When asked to clarify, Trump proposed “police immunity from prosecution” and left the door open to possible incentives from the federal government for state and local police departments.
‘If you’re not going to pay, then you’re on your own’
Trump told Time, “Yeah, when I said that, I said it with great meaning, because I want them to pay. I want them to pay up. That was said as a point of negotiation. I said, Look, if you’re not going to pay, then you’re on your own. And I mean that.”
Trump also backed up comments that he wouldn’t “give a penny” to Ukraine unless other European countries started supporting Ukraine in “equalizing” amounts.
“I said I wouldn’t give unless Europe starts equalizing,” Trump said. “They have to come. Europe has to pay. We are in for so much more than the European nations. It’s very unfair to us. And I said if Europe isn’t going to pay, who are gravely more affected than we are, if Europe is not going to pay, why should we pay?”
Trump also conceded that a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine looks “very, very tough,” and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “rightfully” been criticized for the fact that Hamas was able to attack Israel on Oct. 7.
More than 30 years ago, the economists Rudiger Dornbusch (one of my mentors) and Sebastian Edwards wrote a classic paper on what they called “macroeconomic populism.” Their motivating examples were inflationary outbreaks under left-wing regimes in Latin America, but it seemed clear that the key issue wasn’t left-wing governance per se; it was, instead, what happens when governments engage in magical thinking. Indeed, even at the time they could have included the experience of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, which killed or “disappeared” thousands of leftists but also pursued irresponsible economic policies that led to a balance-of-payments crisis and soaring inflation.
Modern examples of the syndrome include leftist governments like that of Venezuela, but also right-wing nationalist governments like that of Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who insisted that he could fight inflation by cutting interest rates.
Will the United States be next?
I wish people would stop calling Donald Trump a populist. He has, after all, never demonstrated any inclination to help working Americans, and his economic policies really didn’t help — his 2017 tax cut, in particular, was a giveaway to the wealthy. But his behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic showed that he’s as addicted to magical thinking and denial of reality as any petty strongman or dictator, which makes it all too likely that he might preside over the type of problems that result when policies are based on quack economics.
Now, destructive economic policy isn’t the thing that alarms me the most about Trump’s potential return to power. Prospects for retaliation against his political opponents, huge detention camps for undocumented immigrants and more loom much larger in my mind. Still, it does seem worth noting that even as Republicans denounce President Biden for the inflation that occurred on his watch, Trump’s advisers have been floating policy ideas that could be far more inflationary than anything that has happened so far.
It’s true that inflation surged in 2021 and 2022 before subsiding, and there’s a vigorous debate about how much of a role Biden’s economic policies played. I’m skeptical, among other things because inflation in the United States since the beginning of the Covid pandemic has closely tracked with that of other advanced economies. What’s notable, however, is what the Biden administration didn’t do when the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates to fight inflation. There was a clear risk that rate hikes would cause a politically disastrous recession, although this hasn’t happened so far. But Biden and company didn’t pressure the Fed to hold off; they respected the Fed’s independence, letting it do what it thought was necessary to bring inflation under control.
Does anyone imagine that Trump — who in 2019 insisted that the Fed should cut interest rates to zero or below — would have exercised comparable restraint?
As a number of observers have noted, some of Trump’s policy proposals would surely raise inflation. An immigration crackdown would undermine one of the key factors that have allowed America to combine solid economic growth with falling inflation. Proposals for a wave of new tariffs would raise consumer prices — and the odds are that Trump would raise tariffs well beyond the 10 percent rate he’s been floating if it didn’t significantly reduce U.S. trade deficits, which it wouldn’t.
What’s really worrisome, however, are indications that a future Trump regime would manipulate monetary policy in pursuit of short-run political advantage, justifying its actions with crank economic doctrines.
The Federal Reserve is a quasi-independent institution, not because of any sacrosanct constitutional principle, but because nations have found that in practice it’s important to limit partisan influence over interest rates and money creation. But in recent weeks there have been reports that Trump advisers want to take away much of the Fed’s independence, presumably so that Trump could juice the economy and the stock market the way he wanted to in 2019.
There are also reports that Trump advisers, obsessed with the trade deficit, want to devalue the dollar, which would indeed help exports but would also be clearly inflationary — raising import prices and overheating a U.S. economy that is already running hot. (In fact, our economic strength is probably the main reason the dollar has been rising.)
And even as they talk about weakening the dollar, Trump advisers are reportedly discussing punishing other countries that reduce their use of the greenback — which seems both contradictory and to involve a delusional view of how much economic power even America possesses.
The details of these bad ideas are probably less important than the mind-set they reveal, one that rejects hard-learned lessons from the past and buys into economic fantasies.
And how would Trump respond if things went wrong? Remember, he suggested we look into fighting Covid by injecting disinfectant. Why expect him to be any less inclined to magical thinking in dealing with, say, a new surge in inflation?
Again, macroeconomic policy isn’t my biggest worry about what could happen if Trump returns to power. But it’s definitely a worry.
Why an Immunity Ruling in Trump’s Favor Might Not Alter the Shape of His Trial
Prosecutors believe Donald J. Trump’s official acts in trying to overturn the election should be admissible evidence even if the Supreme Court rules they cannot be the basis of the charges.
Charlie Savage – April 29, 2024
Even if the Supreme Court declares that former President Donald J. Trump cannot be charged for official acts, the special counsel, Jack Smith, may still be able to present a jury with the same set of evidence in the case. Credit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
But it is far from certain that such a ruling would derail the election subversion case against him. In fact, there is a scenario in which the court could render such a ruling without altering the charges or the array of evidence that the special counsel, Jack Smith, wants to present to a jury.
Mr. Trump faces four criminal counts over his efforts to overturn his loss of the 2020 election, but none are exclusively centered on conduct Mr. Trump undertook in his capacity as president. Rather, the indictment tells a story that mixes both official acts with private ones, meaning actions Mr. Trump took in his role as a candidate for office. It then declares that each charge arises from the entire picture.
Among the accusations: Mr. Trump spread false claims of voter fraud, plotted to recruit false slates of electors from swing states, pressured Vice President Mike Pence to use their existence to block Congress’s certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Electoral College victory, and urged lawmakers to use the attack on the Capitol by his supporters to delay any vote.
As of yet, no court has decided which of Mr. Trump’s actions are considered official presidential conduct, versus private, unofficial campaign activity. But during oral arguments before the Supreme Court on Thursday, Justice Amy Coney Barrett floated the possibility that Mr. Smith could “just proceed based on the private conduct and drop the official conduct.”
Crucially, however, a lawyer for Mr. Smith, Michael R. Dreeben, said that even if the court ruled out basing charges on Mr. Trump’s official actions, prosecutors believed that they could still lawfully present evidence about the official conduct as relevant context that would help jurors understand Mr. Trump’s private acts.
“There’s really an integrated conspiracy here that had different components,” Mr. Dreeben said. Mr. Trump, he added, used his official powers to try to ensure his private efforts to overturn the election were more likely to succeed, and the jury will need to see the entire picture to understand the sequence, why each step occurred and the gravity of the conduct.
Mr. Dreeben added that the facts of Mr. Trump’s official acts are relevant for interpreting his “knowledge and intent” about his private conduct.
A lawyer for Mr. Trump, D. John Sauer, urged the court to adopt a very different remedy. Not only should it find that Mr. Trump had immunity for his official actions, he said, but it should omit them from the case. Still, he acknowledged that Mr. Trump could be charged over private actions while he was president.
“The official stuff has to be expunged completely from the indictment before the case can go forward,” Mr. Sauer maintained.
But instead of eliminating any mention of official acts from the case, Mr. Dreeben said, the judge should simply instruct the jurors that they may consider the information about Mr. Trump’s official actions only as a guide. They would add to the jury’s understanding of Mr. Trump’s knowledge and intentions regarding his private actions, but would not be subject to criminal culpability, Mr. Dreeben said.
Samuel Buell, a Duke University professor of criminal law, said it was “quite ordinary” that information is admitted as relevant evidence even though it is not about an action that would itself be subject to a criminal charge. It is particularly common, he said, in cases involving conduct that occurred over a period of time and involved coordination among multiple people.
Still, this case, Mr. Buell noted, is complicated by its “novel territory.” Several justices, he said, had signaled concern about a ruling that would deter future presidents from exercising the powers of their office in a way the country needs for fear of future prosecution.
The bid to recruit false slates of electors may best illustrate how the competing visions of a remedy could play out should the court rule that Mr. Trump cannot be charged for his official actions.
According to the indictment, Mr. Trump worked with a private lawyer to oversee the electors’ recruitment, then pressured Mr. Pence to cite their existence as a reason to block the certification of Mr. Biden’s electoral victory.
If that effort to recruit fake electors were deemed an act that Mr. Trump undertook in his private capacity as a candidate for office, the jury could, of course, be told about it. But under Mr. Sauer’s vision, prosecutors could not raise Mr. Trump’s subsequent attempt to cajole Mr. Pence.
Under Mr. Dreeben’s view, prosecutors could do so because it is relevant to understanding Mr. Trump’s motive for soliciting the electors to start. In this instance, the trial would look more or less the same, no matter the court’s decision.
Should the justices narrow what kinds of actions can be the basis of charges against Mr. Trump, it would raise the question of what conduct in the indictment counts as official versus private. It would not be surprising if courts were to eventually deem his interactions with executive branch subordinates like Mr. Pence and Justice Department officials to have been official, and his efforts with campaign lawyers and aides as private.
Indeed, under questioning by Justice Barrett, Mr. Sauer conceded that a number of actions cited in the indictment sounded private.
Those included Mr. Trump’s work with a private lawyer to spread knowingly false claims of election fraud to spearhead his challenges to the election results; conspiring with another private lawyer to file a court document containing lies to support a challenge; and directing an effort to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification of Electoral College results.
Mr. Dreeben offered a more expansive interpretation of what counts as a private act. For example, Mr. Sauer maintained that the president “communicating with Congress about matters of enormous federal concern” should be understood as an official act. But Mr. Dreeben said that Mr. Trump’s actions in “trying to exploit the violence after Jan. 6 by calling senators and saying ‘please delay the certification proceeding’” were private campaign activity.
Regardless of how the court rules, its decision to take the immunity case has already helped Mr. Trump by delaying a trial that was once scheduled for March. He has long pursued a strategy of running out the clock on legal troubles, and if he can push off any trial until after the election and prevail in becoming president again, he could simply scuttle the case.
If the Supreme Court decides there is some immunity for Mr. Trump’s official acts, the dispute would most likely next return to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to distinguish which alleged actions in the indictment count as official and which as private.
To the extent prosecutors and defense lawyers disagree about how to consider some of Mr. Trump’s conduct, such a proceeding could preview parts of any eventual trial, including potential witness testimony about his words and deeds.
But Professor Buell said that if the judge ultimately ruled against Mr. Trump on one or more such matters, he probably could not appeal back up to the Supreme Court before a trial. Courts usually treat disputes over the nature of evidence as matters to be appealed after a guilty verdict, he said.
Secret document says Iran security forces molested and killed teen protester
Bertram Hill, Aida Miller and Michael Simkin – BBC Investigations April 29, 2024
Nika was just 16 years old when she disappeared during protests against Iran’s strict dress code for women [Atash Shakarami]
An Iranian teenager was sexually assaulted and killed by three men working for Iran’s security forces, a leaked document understood to have been written by those forces says.
It has let us map what happened to 16-year-old Nika Shakarami who vanished from an anti-regime protest in 2022.
Her body was found nine days later. The government claimed she killed herself.
We put the report’s allegations to Iran’s government and its Revolutionary Guards. They did not respond.
Marked “Highly Confidential”, the report summarises a hearing on Nika’s case held by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – the security force that defends the country’s Islamic establishment. It includes what it says are the names of her killers and the senior commanders who tried to hide the truth.
It contains disturbing details of events in the back of an undercover van in which security forces were restraining Nika. These include:
One of the men molested her while he was sitting on her
Despite being handcuffed and restrained, she fought back, kicking and swearing
An admission that this provoked the men to beat her with batons
There are numerous fake Iranian official documents in circulation, so the BBC spent months checking every detail with multiple sources.
Our extensive investigations indicate the papers we obtained do chronicle the teenager’s last movements.
[BBC]
Nika Shakarami’s disappearance and death were widely reported, and her picture has become synonymous with the fight by women in Iran for greater freedoms. As street protests spread across Iran in the autumn of 2022, her name was shouted by crowds furious at the country’s strict rules on the compulsory veil [hijab].
In Nika’s case, her family found her body in a mortuary more than a week after she disappeared from a protest. But Iran’s authorities denied Nika’s death was connected to the demonstration and, after conducting their own investigation, said that she had died by suicide.
Others around her chanted “death to the dictator” – referring to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
What she could not have known at the time is that she was being watched, as the classified report makes clear.
[BBC]
Addressed to the IRGC’s commander-in-chief, it says it is based on extensive talks with its teams that policed that protest.
Monitoring the demonstration were several undercover security units, the document’s account begins.
It says one of these – Team 12 – suspected the teenager “of leadership, due to her unconventional behaviour and repeated calls with her mobile phone”.
The team sent one of its operatives into the crowd, posing as a protester, to confirm Nika was indeed one of the demonstration’s leaders. Then, according to the report, he called in his team to arrest her. But she fled.
Her aunt had previously told BBC Persian that Nika rang a friend that night to say she was being chased by security forces.
Almost an hour passed before she was spotted again, says the report, when she was detained and put in the team’s vehicle – an unmarked freezer van.
[BBC]
Nika was in the rear compartment with three Team 12 members – Arash Kalhor, Sadegh Monjazy, and Behrooz Sadeghy.
Their team leader Morteza Jalil was up front with the driver.
The group then attempted to find somewhere to take her, the report says.
They tried a temporary police camp nearby but were turned away because it was overcrowded.
So they continued to a detention centre, a 35-minute drive away, whose commander initially agreed to admit Nika. But then he changed his mind.
“The accused [Nika] was constantly swearing and chanting,” he told investigators for the report.
“At that time, there were 14 other female detainees at the station and my perception was that she could agitate the others.
“I was worried she would cause a riot”.
Morteza Jalil once again contacted his IRGC HQ for advice, says the report, and was told to head to Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison.
En route, he said he began to hear crashing noises behind him coming from the pitch-dark rear compartment of the van.
We know what he was hearing, from the testimony outlined in the document from the men guarding Nika in the back.
[BBC]
One of them, Behrooz Sadeghy, said as soon as she had been put back into the van after being rejected by the detention centre, Nika had started to swear and shout.
“Arash Kalhor gagged her mouth with his socks but she started struggling. Then Sadegh [Monjazy] laid her on the chest freezer and sat on her. The situation calmed,” he told investigators.
“I don’t know what happened, but after a few minutes she started swearing. I couldn’t see anything, I could only hear fighting and bashing.”
But Arash Kalhor gave further chilling details.
He says he briefly turned on his phone torch and saw Sadegh Monjazy “[has] put his hand inside her trousers”.
Arash Kalhor said after that they lost control.
“He doesn’t know… who [was doing it], but he could hear… the baton hitting the accused [Nika]… ‘I started to kick and punch but really didn’t know if I was hitting our guys or the accused.'”
But Sadegh Monjazy contradicted Arash Kalhor’s statement, which he said was motivated by professional jealousy. He denied putting his hand in her trousers – but said he could not deny that he became “aroused” while sitting on her and touched Nika’s buttocks.
He said this provoked Nika – despite the fact her hands were tied behind her back – to scratch him and jolt so that he fell over.
[BBC]
“She kicked at my face, so I had to defend myself.”
From the van’s cabin, Morteza Jalil ordered the driver to pull over.
He opened the rear door to discover Nika’s lifeless body.
He said he cleaned the blood from her face and head – “which were not in a good condition”.
This echoes the state in which Nika’s mother says she eventually found her daughter in the mortuary, and Nika’s death certificate – obtained by BBC Persian in October 2022 – which states she was killed by “multiple injuries caused by blows with a hard object”.
Team leader Morteza Jalil admitted he didn’t try to find out what had happened.
“I was only thinking about how to transfer her and didn’t ask any questions of anyone. I only asked: ‘Is she breathing?’ I think it was Behrooz Sadeghy who answered, ‘no, she is dead’.”
With a killing on his hands, Jalil called the IRGC’s HQ for a third time.
On this occasion, he spoke to a more senior officer, codenamed “Naeem 16”.
“We already had deaths in our stations, and I didn’t want the number to rise to 20,” Naeem 16 told the investigation. “Bringing her to the base wouldn’t have solved any problems.”
He told Jalil to simply “dump her on the street”. Jalil said they left Nika’s body in a quiet street under Tehran’s Yadegar-e-Emam highway.
The report concludes that a sexual assault caused the fight in the rear compartment of the van, and that strikes from Team 12 had caused Nika’s death.
“Three batons and three Tasers were all used. It is not clear which one of the blows was the fatal one,” it says.
The report contradicts the government’s narrative of what happened to Nika. Nearly a month after her funeral, state television broadcast the results of the official investigation, which said Nika had jumped to her death from a building.
It showed CCTV of a person it claimed was Nika entering an apartment block, but Nika’s mother told BBC Persian in a phone interview that she could not “under any circumstances, confirm that person is Nika”.
“We all know that they are lying,” Nasrin Shakarami later told a BBC documentary, discussing authorities’ claims about the deaths of protesters.
[BBC]
The BBC Eye investigation was not just concerned with the content of the report, but whether it could be trusted as an artefact.
Sometimes, what appear to be official Iranian documents and other materials circulating on the internet are found to have been faked.
Most of these counterfeit documents, however, are easy to spot because they clearly diverge from official formatting – showing erroneous spacing and letter headings, or containing significant grammatical or spelling errors.
They might also include the wrong official slogan or logo for the year they purport to originate from, or an anachronistic title for a government agency or department, for example.
Another indicator is language that does not match the very specific style that tends to be used by Iranian official bodies.
The document our investigation centred on contained a few such inconsistencies. For instance, the “Naja” police force quoted in the report was known as “Faraja” at the time.
Therefore, to further test the document’s veracity, we gave it to a former Iranian intelligence officer who has seen hundreds of legitimate ones.
He rang the IRGC archive – using an official code issued each day to senior intelligence officers in Iran – to check if the case file this report was allegedly part of really existed and what it was about.
He received confirmation that it did, and that the report’s number showed it was part of a 322-page case file on anti-government protesters in 2022.
While we can never be 100% certain, this gave us confidence that it is genuine.
His unique access to the IRGC also helped us iron out another mystery – the identity of “Naeem 16”, the man who told the team to dump Nika’s body.
The former intelligence officer did this by making another call – this time to someone inside Iran’s military apparatus. He was told Naeem 16 is the call sign for a Captain Mohammad Zamani, serving in the IRGC.
That name is listed as one of the attendees at the five-hour hearing into Nika’s death that the report summarises.
We put the allegations to the IRGC and the Iranian government. They did not respond.
The men responsible for Nika’s death were not punished, so far as we know.
Nika with her sister Aida (R) who has herself now been arrested [Social media]
A clue as to why that might be the case can be found in the document itself. All of Team 12 – who were at the hearing – are listed in the report and to the right of their names is the group to which they belong: “Hezbollah”.
This refers to an Iranian paramilitary group, Hezbollah, unrelated to the Lebanese group of the same name. Its members are used by the IRGC but sometimes operate outside its jurisdiction, as the report seems to acknowledge:
“Since the above persons belonged to the forces of Hezbollah, following up this case beyond obtaining the necessary commitments and security guarantees has not been possible,” it says.
IRGC officer Naeem 16, on the other hand, was given a written reprimand, it adds.
As many as 551 protesters were killed by security forces during Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom movement, most of them by gunfire, according to the UN’s fact-finding mission.
The protests subsided after a few months due to the bloody crackdown by security forces. There followed a lull in activity by Iran’s morality police, but a new crackdown on breaches of the Islamic dress code began earlier this month.
Spring is tornado season in the U.S., but the tornadoes in Nebraska and Iowa were quite a bit farther north and east of what would be typical for tornadoes in late April, when tornado activity is more common in Oklahoma and Texas.
The outbreak did fit another pattern for severe weather events, however, that occur as the atmosphere transitions out of El Niño. And this is exactly what was happening in late April.
I study tornadoes and the conditions under which they form. Here’s how these storm systems develop and what El Niño has to do with it.
Preliminary reports of tornadoes and hail during severe storms on April 26, 2024, collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center. NOAAPreliminary reports of tornadoes and hail on April 27, 2024, collected by the Storm Prediction Center. NOAA.
The right conditions for a tornado
Two basic conditions are required to produce the rotating supercell thunderstorms that are capable of generating tornadoes:
Warm moist surface conditions and cold air above.
Winds that change in both speed and direction as you move up in the atmosphere, known as vertical wind shear.
Picture a kid who has a helium balloon at a party and releases it – the balloon floats upward. Like that helium balloon, the warm moist air is less dense than the surrounding colder air, so it rises, accelerating upward. This upward motion releases heat, moisture and energy, and causes thunderstorms to develop.
As with many severe weather outbreaks that occur in the U.S., the atmosphere became primed for storms as warm moist air at the surface was being transported northward from the Gulf of Mexico by a series of surface low-pressure systems.
Higher up, about halfway between the ground and where airplanes fly, atmospheric waves within and below the jet stream were transporting cold air through the middle part of the atmosphere. These waves, formally called Rossby waves and commonly referred to as troughs and ridges, also enhanced vertical wind shear.
A small atmospheric wave that moved through the Central Plains and Midwest on April 26, helped trigger the tornadoes in Nebraska and Iowa, including a large, destructive tornado in the suburbs of Omaha, Nebraska, and in the town of Minden, Iowa, about 30 miles away.
The following day, a bigger wave moved through Oklahoma, where tornadoes damaged several small towns that evening.
The two images show the short-wave trough, circled in red, and the longer wave, circled in orange, traveling behind it. On the left is April 26, with the short-wave trough moving through Nebraska. On the right, the longer wave is affecting Oklahoma and Kansas on April 27. TwisterData.com
What was especially important was how close these parameters were to the center of the surface low-pressure system and a warm front that extended just to the east of it. The tornado-producing storms were able to tap into that instability and draw on the strong vertical wind shear generated in the vicinity of the warm front.
Surface temperatures (colors), winds (barbs indicating direction the wind was blowing from), surface pressure (solid black contours) indicating the location of the low pressure system (L), the warm front (red line) and the region of favorable conditions (blue circle) on the evening of April, 26, 2024. Pivotal Weather
When El Niño decays, the atmospheric waves change and can become wavier, so they have a greater amplitude. That tends to enhance conditions needed for tornadoes.
The U.S. often sees more frequent tornadoes when the climate is transitioning out of El Niño. The strong El Niño of 2023-24 was decaying in April 2024, and forecasters expect it to be gone by summer.
Weather experts are getting better at predicting tornado conditions. It is not uncommon now to know days in advance of the actual event that an elevated threat exists. Forecasters have high-resolution weather models that can anticipate storms at an appropriate spatial scale to provide a sense of the likely organization of the storms and come close to the location.
The better we understand these storms’ attributes, the better those forecasts and warnings can become.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Jana Lesak Houser, The Ohio State University
An El Niño-less summer is coming. Here’s what that could mean for the US
Mary Gilbert, CNN Meteorologist – April 29, 2024
It may be spring, but it’s not too soon to look ahead to summer weather, especially when El Niño – a player in last year’s especially brutal summer – is rapidly weakening and will all but vanish by the time the season kicks into gear.
El Niño’s disappearing act doesn’t mean relief from the heat. Not when the world is heating up due to human-driven climate change. In fact, forecasters think it could mean the opposite.
What this summer’s weather could look like
El Niño is a natural climate pattern marked by warmer than average ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific. When the water gets cooler than average, it’s a La Niña. Either phase can have an effect on weather around the globe.
By June, forecasters expect those ocean temperatures to hover close to normal, marking a so-called neutral phase, before La Niña builds in early summer, according to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
But the strength of El Niño or La Niña’s influence on US weather isn’t uniform and varies greatly based on the strength of the phenomena and the season itself.
The influence of El Niño or La Niña on US weather isn’t as clear-cut in the summer as it is in the winter, especially during a transition between the two phases, said Michelle L’Heureux, a climate scientist with the Climate Prediction Center.
Temperature differences between the tropics and North America are more extreme in the winter, L’Heureux explained. This allows the jet stream to become quite strong and influential, reliably sending storms into certain parts of the US.
In the summer, the difference in temperature between the two regions isn’t as significant and the obvious influence on US weather wanes.
But we can look back at what happened during similar summers to get a glimpse of what could come this summer.
In short: It’s not cool.
The summer of 2016 was one of the hottest on record for the Lower 48. La Niña conditions were in place by midsummer and followed a very strong El Niño winter.
Summer 2020 followed a similar script: La Niña conditions formed midsummer after a weak El Niño winter but still produced one of the hottest summers on record and the most active hurricane season on record.
Then there’s the fact that these climate phenomena are playing out in a warming world, raising the ceiling on the extreme heat potential.
“This obviously isn’t our grandmother’s transition out of El Niño – we’re in a much warmer world so the impacts will be different,” L’Heureux, said. “We’re seeing the consequences of climate change.”
Current summer temperature outlooks for the US are certainly bringing the heat.
CNN Weather
Above-average temperatures are forecast over nearly every square mile of the Lower 48. Only portions of the Dakotas, Minnesota and Montana have an equal chance of encountering near normal, above- or below-normal temperatures.
A huge portion of the West is likely to have warmer conditions than normal. This forecast tracks with decades of climate trends, according to L’Heureux.
Summers have warmed more in the West than in any other region of the US since the early 1990s, according to data from NOAA. Phoenix is a prime example. The city’s average July temperature last year was an unheard-of 102.7 degrees, making it the hottest month on record for any US city. It was also the deadliest year on record for heat in Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located.
Forecasts also show a worrying precipitation trend for parts of the West.
CNN Weather
Large sections of the West and the central US are likely to be drier than normal. This dryness, combined with above-normal heat, which only amplifies the dryness, could be a recipe for new or worsening drought.
Wetter than normal conditions are in the forecast from the Gulf Coast to the Northeast. Stormy weather could be a consistent companion for much of the East – but whether it comes from typical rain and thunderstorms or tropical activity won’t be known for months.
A warming world generates more fuel for more tropical activity and stronger storms. La Niña tends to produce favorable atmospheric conditions to allow storms to form and hold together in the Atlantic.
“We anticipate a well above-average probability for major hurricanes making landfall along the continental United States coastline and in the Caribbean,” the group said in a news release.
Which foods have the most plastics? You may be surprised
Sandee LaMotte, CNN – April 22, 2024
“How much plastic will you have for dinner, sir? And you, ma’am?” While that may seem like a line from a satirical skit on Saturday Night Live, research is showing it’s much too close to reality.
Ninety percent of animal and vegetable protein samples tested positive for microplastics, teeny polymer fragments that can range from less than 0.2 inch (5 millimeters) down to 1/25,000th of an inch (1 micrometer), according to a February 2024 study. Anything smaller than 1 micrometer is a nanoplastic that must be measured in billionths of a meter.
Even vegetarians can’t escape, according to a 2021 study. If the plastic is small enough, fruits and vegetables can absorb microplastics through their root systems and transfer those chemical bits to the plant’s stems, leaves, seeds and fruit.
Salt can be packed with plastic. A 2023 study found coarse Himalayan pink salt mined from the ground had the most microplastics, followed by black salt and marine salt. Sugar is also “an important route of human exposure to these micropollutants,” according to a 2022 study.
Even tea bags, many of which are made of plastic, can release enormous amounts of plastic. Researchers at McGill University in Quebec, Canada found brewing a single plastic teabag released about 11.6 billion microplastic and 3.1 billion nanoplastic particles into the water.
Rice is also a culprit. A University of Queensland study found that for every 100 grams (1/2 cup) of rice people eat, they consume three to four milligrams of plastic — the number jumps to 13 milligrams per serving for instant rice. (You can reduce plastic contamination by up to 40% by washing rice, researchers said. That also helps reduce arsenic, which can be high in rice.)
Let’s not forget bottled water. One liter of water — the equivalent of two standard-size bottled waters — contained an average of 240,000 plastic particles from seven types of plastics, including nanoplastics, according to a March 2024 study.
“All of those chemicals are used in the manufacturing of plastic, so if a plastic makes its way into us, it’s carrying those chemicals with it,” Sherri “Sam” Mason, director of sustainability at Penn State Behrend in Erie, Pennsylvania, told CNN in a prior interview.
“And because the temperature of the body is higher than the outside, those chemicals are going to migrate out of that plastic and end up in our body,” Mason said.
“Those chemicals can be carried to your liver and your kidney and your brain and even make their way across the placental boundary and end up in an unborn child,” she said.
“There currently is no scientific consensus on the potential health impacts of nano- and microplastic particles. Therefore, media reports based on assumptions and conjecture do nothing more than unnecessarily scare the public,” a spokesperson for the International Bottled Water Association, an industry association, told CNN previously.
All types of proteins contained microplastics
In the February study, which was published in Environmental Research, researchers looked at over a dozen commonly consumed proteins, including beef, breaded and other types of shrimp, chicken breasts and nuggets, pork, seafood, tofu and several plant-based meat alternatives, such as nuggets, plant crumbles similar to ground beef and plant-based fish sticks.
Breaded shrimp contained the most tiny plastics by far, at well over an average of 300 microplastic pieces per serving. Plant-based nuggets came in second, at under 100 pieces per serving, followed by chicken nuggets, pollock fish sticks, minimally processed White Gulf shrimp, fresh caught Key West pink shrimp and a plant-based fish-like stick.
The least contaminated proteins were chicken breasts, followed by pork loin chops and tofu.
After comparing the results to consumer consumption data, researchers estimated the average exposure of American adults to microplastics could range between 11,000 and 29,000 particles a year, with a maximum estimated exposure of 3.8 million microplastics per year.
Fruits and vegetables tested high in plastics
The oceans are filled with plastics, and a number of studies have captured how those are ending up in the seafood we eat. However, fewer studies have looked at vegetables and land animal proteins, such as cattle and hogs, according to an August 2020 study.
The study, published in Environmental Science, found between 52,050 and 233,000 plastic particles under 10 micrometers — each micrometer is about the diameter of a rain drop — in a variety of fruits and vegetables.
Apples and carrots were the most contaminated fruit and vegetable, respectively, with over 100,000 microplastics per gram. The smallest particles were found in carrots, while the largest pieces of plastic were found in lettuce, which was also the least contaminated vegetable.
Plastics are everywhere
There are a staggering number of plastics in the world, today, according to a recent analysis — 16,000 plastic chemicals, with at least 4,200 of those considered to be “highly hazardous” to human health and the environment.
As these chemicals break down in the environment, they can turn into microplastics and then nanoplastics, particles so small science struggled for decades to see them.
A recent study that utilized brand new technology found the number of nanoplastics in three popular brands of water sold in the United States to be in between 110,000 and 370,000 per liter, if not higher. A liter is the equivalent of about two 16 ounce bottled waters. (The authors declined to mention which brands of bottled water they studied.)
Prior research using older technology had identified only about 300 nanoplastics in bottled water, along with bigger microplastics.
At least 16,000 plastic chemicals exist with least 4,200 of those considered to be “highly hazardous” to human health and the environment, a study found. – Lisovskaya/iStockphoto/Getty Images
Ways to reduce plastic
The levels of contamination found in bottled water reinforce long-held expert advice to drink tap water from glass or stainless steel containers to reduce exposure, Mason said. That advice extends to other foods and drinks packaged in plastic as well, she added.
“People don’t think of plastics as shedding but they do,” she said. “In almost the samewaywe’re constantly shedding skin cells, plastics are constantly shedding little bits that break off, such as when you open that plastic container for your store-bought salad or a cheese that’s wrapped in plastic.”
While science learns more about the plastics we consume, there are things people can do to reduce their exposure, according to experts.
· Try to avoid eating anything that has been stored in a plastic container. Look for food stored in glass, enamel or foil.
· Wear clothing made from natural fabrics and buy consumer products made from natural materials.
· Don’t microwave in plastic. Instead, heat food on the stove or by microwaving in glass.
· If you can, eat as much fresh food as possible, and limit purchase of processed and ultraprocessed foods wrapped in plastic.
Many Ukrainian Prisoners of War Show Signs of Trauma and Sexual Violence
Carlotta Gall and Oleksandr Chubko – April 28, 2024
Family members of Ukrainian soldiers who are prisoners of war meet with Lyudmila Denisova, left, the country’s former human rights ombudsman, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Oct. 16, 2023. (Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times)
KYIV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian marine infantryman endured nine months of physical and psychological torture as a Russian prisoner of war, but was allotted only three months of rest and rehabilitation before being ordered back to his unit.
The infantryman, who asked to be identified only by his call sign, Smiley, returned to duty willingly. But it was only when he underwent intensive combat training in the weeks after that the depth and range of his injuries, both psychological and physical, began to surface.
“I started having flashbacks, and nightmares,” he said. “I would only sleep for two hours and wake up with my sleeping bag soaking wet.” He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and referred for psychological care, and is still receiving treatment.
Ukraine is just beginning to understand the lasting effects of the traumas its prisoners of war experienced in Russian captivity, but it has been failing to treat them properly and returning them to duty too early, say former prisoners, officials and psychologists familiar with individual cases.
Nearly 3,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war have been released from Russia in prisoner exchanges since the 2022 invasion began. More than 10,000 remain in Russian custody, some of whom have endured two years of conditions that a United Nations expert described as horrific.
The Ukrainian government’s rehabilitation program, which has usually involved two months in a sanitarium and a month at home, is inadequate, critics say, and the traumas suffered by Ukrainian prisoners are growing with the length and severity of the abuse they are being subjected to as the war drags on.
Russia’s torture of prisoners of war has been well documented by the United Nations, with former inmates speaking of relentless beatings, electric shocks, rape, sexual violence and mock executions, so much so that one expert described it as a systematic, state-endorsed policy. Many detainees have also reported lingering symptoms such as blackouts and fainting spells stemming from repeated blows to the head that were severe enough to cause concussions.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, said in September that “about 90% of Ukrainian prisoners of war have been subjected to torture, rape, threats of sexual violence or other forms of ill-treatment.”
The Russian military did not answer a request for comment on the allegations of mistreatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Most of the released prisoners have returned to active duty after about three months of rest and rehabilitation, as the Ukrainian military, short of troops on the front line, has given relatively few medical exemptions to former prisoners of war.
A law passed this month will allow former prisoners of war the choice of returning to service or being discharged from the military, recognition that many have been subjected to severe mental and physical torture and need prolonged rehabilitation. Ukrainian officials acknowledged that there have been problems in providing sufficient care for former prisoners, but said they had now developed special centers for them using best international practices.
Ukrainian prosecutors have identified 3,000 former military and civilian prisoners who can serve as witnesses for a case they are building for the Ukrainian courts to charge Russian individuals and officials with mistreatment of prisoners. The prosecutors encouraged two of the former prisoners to speak to The New York Times.
One of them was Smiley, 22, who was captured at the beginning of the war when the Russian navy seized Ukrainian positions on Snake Island in the Black Sea. He spoke a year after his release, saying he hoped that shedding light on the conditions of Russian prisons would help not only his own rehabilitation, but also the thousands of prisoners of war still in captivity.
“My sister persuaded me to give my first interview,” he said. “‘You need to tell,’ she said. Maybe if we speak, it will help the treatment of our guys.”
A second Ukrainian serviceman made available by the prosecutors gave a lengthy interview but declined to give his name or call sign, because of the stigma surrounding the abuses he suffered.
The serviceman, 36, said he was taken prisoner along with several thousand soldiers and marines after a long siege at the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol in May 2022. He spent nine months in Russian captivity before being released in a prisoner exchange in early 2023.
He spent most of his time in three detention facilities in the Russian towns of Taganrog, Kamensk-Shakhtinsky and Kursk. He returned critically underweight and suffering from an injured spine and, like many others, blackouts, dizziness and ringing in the ears from frequent beatings on the head.
“I am not fainting any longer,” the serviceman said, “but I have difficulties with my back and concussion, and a squeezing all the time of the area around my heart.” Despite his injuries, he was ordered to return to light duty as a guard after only two months’ rest in a sanitarium.
“I don’t know if I could run a kilometer,” he said.
Prisoners were subjected to brutal daily beatings on their legs, backs and fingers, and mental and physical torture during interrogations, as well as hunger, cold and a lack of medical care, he said. Three men died in custody during his imprisonment, including one who died in the communal cell they shared, he said.
Some of the Russian units guarding or interrogating the prisoners were worse than others, the two former prisoners said, but there were consistent beatings every morning at roll call and torture at most detention facilities. Interrogations would last 40 minutes and often consisted of electric shocks, blows to the head and sexual abuse, real or threatened.
“They start with maximum violence,” the serviceman said. “They say ‘You are lying, you are not telling us everything.’ They put a knife to your ear or offer to cut off one of your fingers.”
Others would beat them on the back of the head so regularly that they lost consciousness, he said.
“If one gets tired, another takes over,” he recalled. “When you fall, they make you stand again. It can last 30 to 40 minutes. At the end they say, ‘Why did you not tell us everything immediately?’”
Smiley said much of the violence was of a sexual nature. One prison unit repeatedly struck the prisoners all over their bodies, including on the genitals, with batons that gave electric shocks, he said. On another occasion, he said, a cellmate was repeatedly kicked in the genitals during roll call, where the prisoners were lined up with their legs spread, facing a wall in a corridor. Smiley suffered permanent injury from an untreated broken pelvis from a truncheon blow and could not bend or lie down without assistance for two weeks.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has very limited access to prisoners of war held in Russia, was not permitted to visit him during his nine months of imprisonment, he added.
The second serviceman said he was forced to strip and place his genitals on a stool as his interrogators hit them with a ruler and lay a knife on them, threatening to castrate him.
Interrogators put him through a mock execution, firing a volley of gunfire beside him while he was blindfolded. They threatened him with rape, the serviceman said, making him choose what they should use — a mop handle or the leg of a chair. “Do you want to do it yourself or do you want us to help you?” they taunted him.
He said he was never actually penetrated, but others were raped. “After that you cannot walk normally,” he said. “You suffer for weeks. Other guys had the same treatment.”
“I think they had such an order to break us psychologically and physically so that we would not want anything else in life,” he said, adding that there were suicides in the Taganrog jail.
“You could hear the screams all day,” the serviceman said. “Impossible screams.” Sometimes during a lull, the prisoners could hear the voices of children playing outside, he said.
The ordeal for the former prisoners is by no means over once back home.
“The most difficult thing is having too many people around,” the serviceman said. “Everyone is peacefully walking in the park and you are still afraid that someone is listening, or that you might get shoved or say the wrong thing.”
Maj. Valeria Subotina, a military press officer and a former journalist who was also taken prisoner at Azovstal and who spent a year in women’s prisons in Russia, recently opened a meeting space in Kyiv called YOUkraine, for former prisoners.
“There are many triggers and people do not realize they still need care,” she said.
She returned to service three months after her release in April 2023, but found it hard to sit in an office. “I cannot bear someone approaching me from behind or standing behind me,” she said.
The government psychologists were not of much use, she said. “They often don’t know how to help us,” she said, and civilians often ask careless questions.
As a result, many former prisoners find returning to the front line easier than rejoining civilian life, she said, and only fellow survivors really understand what they are going through.
“We don’t want to feel pity,” she said, “because we are proud that we survived and we overcame this.”
Farmers warn food aisles will soon be empty because of crushing conditions: ‘We are not in a good position’
Nick Paschal – April 28, 2024
The United Kingdom is facing dire food shortages, forcing prices to skyrocket, and experts predict this is only the beginning.
What’s happening?
According to a report by The Guardian, extreme weather is wreaking havoc on crops across the region. England experienced more rainfall during the past 18 months than it has over any 18-month period since record-keeping began in 1836.
Because the rain hasn’t stopped, many farmers have been unable to get crops such as potatoes, carrots, and wheat into the ground. “Usually, you get rain but there will be pockets of dry weather for two or three weeks at a time to do the planting. That simply hasn’t happened,” farmer Tom Allen-Stevens told The Guardian.
Farmers have also planted fewer potatoes, opting for less weather-dependent and financially secure crops. At the same time, many of the potatoes that have been planted are rotting in the ground.
“There is a concern that we won’t ever have the volumes [of potatoes] we had in the past in the future,” British Growers Association CEO Jack Ward told The Guardian. “We are not in a good position and it is 100% not sustainable,” Ward added.
Why is it important?
English farmers aren’t alone — people are struggling to grow crops worldwide because of extreme weather.
Dry weather in Brazil and heavy rain in Vietnam have farmers concerned about pepper production. Severe drought in Spain and record-breaking rain and snowfall in California have made it difficult for farmers to cultivate olives for olive oil. El Niño and rising temperatures cut Peru’s blueberry yield in half last year. Everyone’s favorite drinks — coffee, beer, and wine — have all been impacted by extreme weather.
According to an ABC News report, the strain on the agriculture industry will likely continue to cause food prices to soar.
If these were just isolated events, farmers could more easily adapt — bad growing seasons are nothing new. The problem is that rising temperatures are directly linked to the increasing amount of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere.
Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, humans have burned dirty energy sources such as coal, oil, and gas, which release a significant amount of those gases. Our climate is changing so drastically that the 10 warmest years since 1850 have all occurred in the last decade.
“As climate change worsens, the threat to our food supply chains — both at home and overseas — will grow,” Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit analyst Amber Sawyer told The Guardian.
What can we do about it?
“Fortunately, we know many ways we can make the food system more resilient while reducing food emissions. The biggest opportunity in high-income nations is a reduction in meat consumption and exploration of more plants in our diets,” said Dr. Paul Behrens, an associate professor of environmental change at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
If we replace a quarter of our meat consumption with vegetables, we could cut around 100 million tons of air pollution yearly. It may seem strange to suggest eating more vegetables with the decline in crop production. However, reducing the land and water used for animal agriculture and diverting those resources to growing more produce would drastically help the declining food supply.
Growing our own food is also a great way to reduce our reliance on store-bought produce, and it can save you hundreds of dollars a year at the grocery store.
