Russia loses 15 of its so-called ‘invincible’ T-90M tanks in Ukraine, GS reports
March 17, 2023
15 Russian T-90M Proryv tanks have already been destroyed in Ukraine
Like much of its expensive, top-of-the-line military equipment, Russia’s occupying forces have chosen to keep its T-90M tanks – the most technologically-advanced they possess – from combat actions.
They turned out to be not so “unbeatable” or “perfect” as Russia pretended, Rudyk said.
“As of today, the Russian Armed Forces have lost 15 T-90Ms in Ukraine. We are talking only about those cases that have indisputable evidence in the form of photo and video footage. It is likely that the occupiers have lost many more of them,” the Military Media Center reported Rudyk as saying.
The first record of a T-90 M Breakthrough tank being destroyed was in Kharkiv Oblast on May 4, 2022. Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces eliminated the vehicle with a Carl Gustav rifle in Staryi Saltiv.
An inspection of the incapacitated tank revealed that the T-90M is “the upper limit of what the Russian military-industrial complex has been able to squeeze out of Soviet developments.” According to Rudyk, Russia not only does not produce electronics for it, but also tries to conceal information about the origin of some components.
“Sometimes the situation reaches the point of absurdity — Russia simply passes it off as its own development. The much-hyped Kalyna fire control system has only Russian markings,” Rudyk said.
Russian mass manufacturing of these tanks now has turned into piece-by-piece production due to the sanctions. Therefore, Russia, suffering heavy losses and trying to break through the Ukrainian defense, is forced to decommission old and “naked” T-62 and T-72 tanks.
Russia has lost 3,504 tanks since the start of the large-scale war against Ukraine, including 12 over the past 24 hours, according to the latest General Staff’s update.
First Republic, SVB, Credit Suisse: The latest banks in trouble and why
Ellen Francis – March 17, 2023
Signage is displayed on an ATM outside of a First Republic Bank branch in Manhattan Beach, California, on March 13, 2023. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images) (PATRICK T. FALLON via Getty Images)
First Republic Bank is the fourth bank to face a crisis in the past week, as banking and government officials try to dispel fears of a wider financial meltdown.
Here’s a recap of some of the latest troubled banks, and what this could mean.
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What is First Republic Bank and why did it need rescuing?
It’s a San Francisco lender founded in 1985 that specializes in private banking and wealth management. Its shares plunged earlier this week, raising the specter of a third major U.S. bank implosion in days.
This is why 11 of the largest banks in the United States stepped in with an announcement on Thursday that they would deposit a total of $30 billion into their smaller peer. The bid to stabilize First Republic Bank was coordinated partly by federal officials, The Washington Post reported, and it came on the same day that Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen told lawmakers that the U.S. “banking system is sound.”
The intervention, seen as one of the most sweeping in modern U.S. banking history, highlighted concerns in Washington and on Wall Street after the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank last week.
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How did Silicon Valley Bank’s failure spark fears of a global financial crisis?
Financial regulators closed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which catered to venture capitalists and start-ups, about a week ago, making it the second-biggest bank failure in U.S. history.
Depositors had rushed to withdraw their money after the firm filed a notice that it was selling billions in assets to shore up its finances. The bank was tightly linked to the tech industry, which is beset by layoffs.
Such a rapid collapse – the first major U.S. banking scare since the crisis that sparked the Great Recession – sent shock waves through the financial system, and it prompted fears that money needed to pay tech workers could be lost or frozen.
That’s because bank deposits in the United States are only insured by the federal government for up to $250,000. At SVB, more than 90 percent of depositors had accounts over that limit – many of them exceeding it by millions of dollars. Businesses couldn’t pay workers if their accounts were frozen or, worse, if SVB hadn’t actually had enough money to cover withdrawals from uninsured accounts.
So last weekend, U.S. officials announced plans to guarantee deposits and to create a new central bank lending program, maintaining assurances that the situation is different from the financial crisis of 2008. The Biden administration also said taxpayers will bear no cost for the backstop, although critics note that the deposit insurance is funded by fees levied on banks, which could, in turn, raise costs for customers.
The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission have launched investigations into the SVB collapse and the actions of its senior executives, as questions also emerged about regulators missing warning signs.
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Is this connected to the Signature Bank collapse?
Regulators closed Signature Bank, a New York-based financial institution crucial to the cryptocurrency industry, last weekend after a deposit run.
The demise of an institution also enmeshed in the tech industry was prompted in part by the fallout after SVB, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) told a news conference.
Signature Bank served many clients deeply involved in cryptocurrency, which had a sharp drop in value last year, while other depositors included law and real estate firms. Officials extended the same deposit protections to its customers.
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What happened with Credit Suisse this week?
A giant European bank with assets spanning the globe, Credit Suisse had disclosed “material weaknesses” in its financial reporting, before announcing this week it would borrow up to $53.7 billion from Switzerland’s central bank to reinforce its finances.
Credit Suisse’s troubles predated SVB’s collapse, and they’re not caused by the same factors that brought down the U.S. banks. But the failure of SVB spooked markets, and the Swiss bank’s announcements made investors fearful of a broader contagion.
The liquidity lifeline to Credit Suisse from the Swiss central bank – which Reuters described as the first one taken by a major global bank since 2008 – appeared to calm European markets in the immediate aftermath of the announcement.
The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein, Pranshu Verma and Adela Suliman contributed to this report.
U.S. grapples with forces unleashed by Iraq invasion 20 years later
Arshad Mohammed and Jonathan Landay – March 16, 2023
U.S. grapples with forces unleashed by Iraq invasion 20 years later
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – From an empowered Iran and eroded U.S. influence to the cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria to combat Islamic State fighters, the United States still contends with the consequences of invading Iraq 20 years ago, current and former officials say.
Then-U.S. President George W. Bush’s 2003 decision to oust Saddam Hussein by force, the way limited U.S. troop numbers enabled ethnic strife and the eventual 2011 U.S. pullout have all greatly complicated U.S. policy in the Middle East, they said.
The end of Saddam’s minority Sunni rule and replacement with a Shi’ite majority government in Iraq freed Iran to deepen its influence across the Levant, especially in Syria, where Iranian forces and Shi’ite militias helped Bashar al-Assad crush a Sunni uprising and stay in power.
The 2011 withdrawal of the U.S. troops from Iraq left a vacuum that Islamic State (ISIS) militants filled, seizing roughly a third of Iraq and Syria and fanning fears among Gulf Arab states that they could not rely on the United States.
Having withdrawn, former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2014 sent troops back to Iraq, where about 2,500 remain, and in 2015 he deployed to Syria, where about 900 troops are on the ground. U.S. forces in both countries combat Islamic State militants, who are also active from North Africa to Afghanistan.
“Our inability, unwillingness, to put the hammer down in terms of security in the country allowed chaos to ensue, which gave rise to ISIS,” said former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, faulting the U.S. failure to secure Iraq.
Armitage, who served under Republican Bush when the United States invaded Iraq, said the U.S. invasion “might be as big a strategic error” as Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, which helped bring about Germany’s World War Two defeat.
MASSIVE COSTS
The costs of U.S. involvement in Iraq and Syria are massive.
According to estimates published this week by the “Costs of War” project at Brown University, the U.S. price tag to date for the wars in Iraq and Syria comes to $1.79 trillion, including Pentagon and State Department spending, veterans’ care and the interest on debt financing the conflicts. Including projected veterans’ care through 2050, this rises to $2.89 trillion.
The project puts U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Syria over the past 20 years at 4,599 and estimates total deaths, including Iraqi and Syrian civilians, military, police, opposition fighters, media and others at 550,000 to 584,000. This includes only those killed as a direct result of war but not estimated indirect deaths from disease, displacement or starvation.
U.S. credibility also suffered from Bush’s decision to invade based on bogus, exaggerated and ultimately erroneous intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
John Bolton, a war advocate who served under Bush, said even though Washington made mistakes – by failing to deploy enough troops and administering Iraq instead of quickly handing over to Iraqis – he believed removing Saddam justified the costs.
“It was worth it because the decision was not simply: ‘Does Saddam pose a WMD threat in 2003?'” he said. “Another question was: ‘Would he pose a WMD threat five years later?’ To which I think the answer clearly was ‘yes.'”
“The worst mistake made after the overthrow of Saddam … was withdrawing in 2011,” he added, saying he believed Obama wanted to pull out and used the inability to get guarantees of immunity for U.S. forces from Iraq’s parliament “as an excuse.”
‘ALARM BELLS RINGING … IN THE GULF’
Ryan Crocker, who served as U.S. ambassador in Iraq, said the 2003 invasion did not immediately undermine U.S. influence in the Gulf but the 2011 withdrawal helped push Arab states to start hedging their bets.
In the latest example of waning U.S. influence, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed on Friday to re-establish relations after years of hostility in a deal brokered by China.
“We just decided we didn’t want to do this stuff anymore,” Crocker said, referring to the U.S. unwillingness to keep spending blood and treasure securing Iraq. “That began … with President Obama declaring … he was going to pull all forces out.”
“These were U.S. decisions not forced by a collapsing economy, not forced by demonstrators in the street,” he said. “Our leadership just decided we didn’t want to do it any more. And that started the alarm bells ringing … in the Gulf.”
Jim Steinberg, a deputy secretary of state under Obama, said the war raised deep questions about Washington’s willingness to act unilaterally and its steadfastness as a partner.
“The net result … has been bad for U.S. leverage, bad for U.S. influence, bad for our ability to partner with countries in the region,” he said.
A debate still rages among former officials over Obama’s decision to withdraw, tracking a timeline laid out by the Bush administration and reflecting a U.S. inability to secure immunities for U.S. troops backed by the Iraqi parliament.
Bolton’s belief that removing Saddam was worth the eventual cost is not held by many current and former officials.
Asked the first word that came to mind about the invasion and its aftermath, Armitage replied “FUBAR,” a military acronym which, politely, stands for “Fouled up beyond all recognition.”
“Disaster,” said Larry Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff.
“Unnecessary,” said Steinberg.
(This story has been refiled to fix the spelling of former U.S. President Barack Obama’s name in paragraph 5)
(Reporting By Arshad Mohammed and Jonathan Landay; Additional reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by William Maclean)
Researchers followed 12,388 people around 71 years old for about a decade and found those who took a vitamin D supplement had a 40 percent lower chance of developing dementia than those who did not.
However, experts stress caution about the results. “It is important to note that this study is an observational study, not an intervention, so it cannot establish causation,” said Dr. Claire Sexton, DPhil, the senior director of scientific programs and outreach at the Alzheimer’s Association, in an emailed statement. “Also, a significant limitation to the study is that neither vitamin D levels at baseline and follow-up, nor dose and duration of supplementation, were available or analyzed.”
Sexton says further research is needed. Experts, including one of the study’s authors, discussed the research and the importance of discussing supplements with your doctor.
Principal investigator Dr. Zahinoor Ismail, MD, FRCPC, treats patients with clinical dementia and researches early identification and prevention. He wanted to look into the effects of using vitamin D in advance of dementia.
“The genesis of the project came when I was reading some literature and saw there were potential vitamin D effects on behavioral symptoms in Alzheimer’s,” says Dr. Ismail, a professor at the University of Calgary.
Researchers collected data from the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center (NACC) database in the U.S. Participants were dementia-free (normal cognition) or had mild cognitive impairment at baseline and had an average age of 71.2 years old. Most participants (80 percent) were white.
Researchers tracked patients for about 10 years. Of the 12,388 patients, 2,700 developed dementia. Researchers discovered vitamin D habits differed among participants. The dementia risk in patients who had taken vitamin D was 15 percent compared to 26 percent in patients who never had taken supplements.
Researchers accounted for age, gender, race, education and depression, and ultimately concluded that vitamin D supplementation could lower dementia by 40 percent compared to no exposure. Why might this finding be?
“Vitamin D can help prevent or clear the abnormal proteins that cause Alzheimer’s Disease,” Dr. Ismail says.
The impact of vitamin D supplementation was more pronounced in women participants. Dr. Ismail says they found that supplementation was associated with a 50 percent lower dementia risk in females but only 25 percent among males.
“We postulated that it is related to perimenopause and menopause…in those periods, there is a loss of estrogen,” Dr. Ismail says. “Estrogen activates vitamin D.”
The benefits of vitamin D supplementation were also greater in participants who had normal cognition versus those who entered the study with mild cognitive impairment. “The earlier the intervention the better when it comes to prevention,” Dr. Ismail says.
While the study design has its flaws, one expert feels the information has importance.
“Understanding the relationship between vitamin D and Alzheimer’s disease, or other diseases potentially causing dementia, is important because it may be possible that with optimizing vitamin D levels we could potentially have some control over our risk for development of dementia,” says Dr. Marzena Gieniusz, MD, the medical director of the Alzheimer’s and Dementia Care Program at Northwell Health, New York.
As Dr. Sexton Said—and Dr. Ismail agrees—the study design calls for a caveat.
“The big caveat is that it’s not a randomized control trial,” Dr. Ismail says.
If the study were a randomized control trial (RCT), one group would get vitamin D, and another would receive a placebo. Researchers would compare at a follow-up, explains Dr. Nikhil Palekar, MD, the director of the Stony Brook Center of Excellence for Alzheimer’s Disease and the director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Clinical Trials Program with Stony Brook Medicine.
“It’s interesting,” Dr. Palekar says. “They have a large [sample size]. People with exposure to vitamin D had 40 percent lower rates of dementia. It’s an amazing number. The problem is that they didn’t look at other stuff that patients were on. They could have been taking other supplements that may have helped. They didn’t look at what dose they were on. They didn’t look at how often or how long people took vitamin D—a month? A year? Five years?”
In other words, “It sounds impressive, but there are lots of caveats,” says Dr. Palekar.
Dr. Ismail notes that it’s challenging—and not exactly feasible—to conduct a randomized trial that involved giving someone a vitamin D placebo for a decade. He cited ethics (“The research ethics board wouldn’t support this”) and feasibility (“I don’t think anyone would consistently take a drug for 10 years knowing that it might be a placebo”).
“We are left gathering evidence and making recommendations based on shorter RCTs, on longer organizational cohorts with large samples like ours, and ensuring there is a biological plausibility,” he says.
Talk to Your Provider
In her statement, Dr. Sexton emphasized speaking to a provider before starting any supplementation, including vitamin D.
“Always talk to your health care provider before starting supplements or other dietary interventions, and let them know which ones you are already taking,” Dr. Sexton says.
Dr. Ismail agrees, noting that vitamin D is fat-soluble and can be toxic or affect bone health at a high level. Further, providers can run bloodwork to give customized recommendations for dosing. Your doctor also understands your medication history, including any other vitamins, supplements or medications you are on (and if they don’t, tell them).
“[Vitamin D supplements] can potentially interact with other supplements and over-the-counter medications, as well as certain prescription medications,” Dr. Gieniusz says. “Just like prescription medications, supplements can have side effects and can sometimes cause more harm than good in the setting of certain medical conditions.”
Strange activity and number of Russian ships in Black Sea
Ukrainska Pravda – March 16, 2023
Ukrainian defenders have noted an atypical Russian activity in the Black Sea; Russians have deployed 20 ships and a large number of units of the auxiliary fleet ships there.
Source: Nataliia Humeniuk, Head of the Joint Press Centre for Operational Command Pivden (South), during the national 24/7 broadcast on 16 March
Quote: “We are carefully monitoring the naval group in the Black Sea and the actions of the enemy.
Atypical activity and number of ship groups were recorded. There are currently 20 units in the Black Sea, including 4 missile carriers, one of them is underwater; the total salvo is 28 missiles that can be equipped for launch.”
Details: Also, according to Humeniuk, many units of the auxiliary fleet were recorded at sea.
All the ships are scattered, so maybe the Russians want to find the wreckage of the American drone they talked about earlier.
Humeniuk noted that the occupiers are trying to “cover the naval operations in the Black Sea as much as possible and are trying to hide their actions” from the Ukrainian defenders, but careful observation gives results, and the defenders see and understand Russia’s steps ahead.
Background:
The US Air Force issued a statement on 14 March, which said that a Russian Su-27 fighter jet damaged an American MQ-9 Reaper reconnaissance and strike UAV over the Black Sea during an interception, as a result of which the drone had to be sunk.
The US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, John Kirby, noted that while Russian intercepts of US aircraft over the Black Sea are not uncommon, Tuesday’s episode was unique regarding how “dangerous, unprofessional and reckless” Russia’s actions were.
The Ministry of Defence of Russia stated on Tuesday evening that their Su-27 fighter jets had nothing to do with the crash of the MQ-9 Reaper American UAV in the Black Sea. In addition, they said it approached annexed Crimea and was flying in violation.
The US Department of Defense, in turn, said it was working to declassify visual information related to the incident in the international airspace over the Black Sea.
NBC News reported that the highest levels of the Kremlin approved the aggressive actions of Russian military fighter jets against a U.S. military drone over the Black Sea.
Arctic sea ice thins in 2 big jumps, and now more vulnerable
Seth Borenstein – March 15, 2023
FILE – The midnight sun shines across sea ice along the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, July 23, 2017. A new study Wednesday, March 15, 2023, says the thickness of sea ice dropped sharply in two sudden events about 15 years ago. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Climate change attacked crucial Arctic sea ice thickness in two sudden big gobbles instead of steady nibbling, a new study says.
A little more than 15 years ago, sea ice quickly lost more than half its thickness, becoming weaker, more prone to melting and less likely to recover, according to the study that emphasizes the importance of two big “regime shifts” that changed the complexion of the Arctic.
Those big bites came in 2005 and 2007. Before then, Arctic sea ice was older and misshapen in a way that made it difficult to move out of the region. That helped the polar area act as the globe’s air conditioner even in warmer summers. But now the ice is thinner, younger and easier to push out of the Arctic, putting that crucial cooling system at more risk, the study’s lead author said.
Before 2007, 19% of the sea ice in the Arctic was at least 13 feet thick (4 meters) — taller than most elephants — but now only about 9.3% of ice is at least that thick. And the age of the ice has dropped by more than a third, from an average of 4.3 years to 2.7 years, according to the study in Wednesday’s journal Nature.
It cited “the long-lasting impact of climate change on the Arctic sea ice.”
“Ice is much more vulnerable than before because it’s thinner, it can easily melt,” said study lead author Hiroshi Sumata, a sea ice scientist at the Norwegian Polar Institute. Thicker sea ice is crucial to all sorts of life in the Arctic, he said.
The study shows “how the Arctic sea ice environment has undergone a fundamental shift,” said Walt Meier, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, who wasn’t part of the research. “This paper helps explain why the sea ice has not recovered from those big drops.”
Past studies concentrated more on the extent of Arctic sea ice, or how widespread it is, because that’s easily measured by satellites, which don’t observe volume well. But 90% of the sea ice eventually is pushed out of the Arctic through the Fram Strait by Greenland, so Sumata overcame the challenges of measuring from space by focusing his observations on that ground-based choke point.
He found that first ice was getting younger, which made it thinner and more uniform, and easier to push out through the Fram Strait. Thicker ice has all sorts of edges and weird shapes that make it harder to force out of the Arctic because of aerodynamics, but that’s not the case for sleeker, younger ice, Sumata said.
Scientists had known before that sea ice was shrinking in extent and getting thinner, but this “flushing” is key, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, who wasn’t part of the study.
“Such flushing episodes have reduced the residence time of ice in the Arctic Ocean by more than a year so there’s less time for it to thicken and it’s the thick ice that’s resistant to melting out,” Serreze said in an email. “But since the Arctic is quickly warming up, we’re probably past the point of hoping the Arctic Ocean can recover.”
What likely happened in 2005 and 2007 were periods with warm, large, ice-free open water in the Arctic that exceeded periods of previous summers, Sumata said. White ice reflects the sun’s rays, but the dark ocean absorbs it and warms up — something called ice albedo feedback. This cycle of warmer water made it harder for ice to form, survive and get thicker, he said.
Once the ocean has accumulated that heat, it can’t go back easily. So in the future more big warmer shifts can happen to make ice thinner and weaker, but don’t count on sudden, healing cooling changes, scientists said.
Sumata and Serreze think those sudden warm jumps will happen soon and are surprised they haven’t quite happened yet. Recent projections predict the Arctic ocean will be ice free in parts of summer in 20 to 30 years.
Sea ice thickness and overall Arctic health is crucial even to areas thousands of miles away that don’t freeze up, Sumata said.
“It will affect the entire Earth because the north and south pole is something like a radiator of the Earth, the air conditioning system of the Earth,” Sumata said. “And the situation we observed indicates the air conditioner is not working well.”
Texas announces takeover of Houston schools, stirring anger
Juan A Lozano and Paul J. Weber – March 15, 2023
People hold up signs at a news conference on Friday, March 3, 2023, in Houston while protesting the proposed takeover of the city’s school district by the Texas Education Agency. Local and federal officials say state leaders are preparing to take over the Houston Independent School District over allegations of misconduct by district board members and the yearslong failing performance of one campus. ( Juan A. Lozano/AP Photo) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
HOUSTON (AP) — Texas officials on Wednesday announced a state takeover of Houston’s nearly 200,000-student public school district, the eighth-largest in the country, acting on years of threats and angering Democrats who assailed the move as political.
The announcement, made by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s education commissioner, amounts to one of the largest school takeovers ever in the U.S.
It also deepens a high-stakes rift between Texas’ largest city, where Democrats wield control locally and state Republican leaders have sought increasing authority in the wake of election fumbles and pandemic restrictions.
Other big cities including Philadelphia, New Orleans and Detroit in recent decades have gone through state takeovers, which are generally viewed as last resorts for underperforming schools and are often met with community backlash. Critics argue that past outcomes show little improvement following state interventions.
The state began making moves toward a takeover of the Houston Independent School District in 2019, following allegations of misconduct by school trustees, including inappropriate influencing of vendor contracts, and chronically low academic scores at one of its roughly 50 high schools.
The district sued to block a takeover, but new education laws subsequently passed by the GOP-controlled state Legislature and a January ruling from the Texas Supreme Court cleared the way for the state to seize control.
Schools in Houston are not under mayoral control, unlike in cities such as New York or Chicago, but as expectations of a takeover mounted, the city’s Democratic leaders unified in opposition.
Most of Houston’s school board members have been replaced since 2019. District officials also say the state is ignoring academic strides made across city schools.
Race is also an issue because the overwhelming majority of students in Houston schools are Hispanic or Black. Domingo Morel, a professor of political science and public services at New York University, has studied school takeovers nationwide and said the political dynamics in Texas are similar to where states have intervened elsewhere.
The demographics in Houston, Morel said, are also similar.
“If we just focus on taking over school districts because they underperform, we would have a lot more takeovers,” Morel said. “But that’s not what happens.”
Big, stinky blob of algae takes aim at Florida beaches. What’s causing it? Is it climate change?
Dinah Voyles Pulver, USA TODAY – March 15, 2023
Beachgoers in Florida and the Caribbean could be greeted by heavy blankets of smelly seaweed in the weeks ahead as a 5,000-mile swath of sargassum drifts westward and piles onto white sandy beaches.
Sargassum, a naturally occurring type of macroalgae, has grown at an alarming rate this winter. The belt stretches across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to Florida and the Yucatan Peninsula and is as much as 200 to 300 miles wide.
“This year could be the biggest year yet,” even bigger than previous growths, said Brian Lapointe, an algae specialist and research professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute.
The belt is already beginning to wash up in the Florida Keys and Barbados and elsewhere in the region, but researchers don’t know where the bulk of it could wind up.
The monstrous seaweed bloom is just one more example of a growing global invasion of macro and microscopic algal blooms thriving on an increasing supply of nutrients such as nitrogen in freshwater and marine ecosystems.
This image based on satellite photos shows the massive belt of sargassum seaweed blooming across the Atlantic Ocean and drifting onto beaches in Florida and the Caribbean.
What is causing the algal blooms?
In addition to the unsightly piles of sargassum along the coast, some species produce toxins that affect the food chain or deplete the oxygen in the water when they start to decay, causing fish kills and the die-off of other marine species.
Key quote: “These nutrients are the common thread that ties all the algal blooms together,” whether it’s sargassum, red tide, or blue green algae, Lapointe said. It’s also linked to the “brown tide” bloom in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon that has been blamed for killing thousands of acres of seagrass, leading to the starving deaths of hundreds of manatees.
Beachgoers make their way through mounds of seaweed along the shoreline in Ormond Beach, Tuesday, May 25, 2021.
Isn’t sargassum naturally occurring?
Yes. Christopher Columbus wrote about floating mats of it in the Atlantic Ocean.
“It’s not a bad thing to have the sargassum in the ocean,” said Brian Barnes, an assistant research professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Sea turtle hatchlings swim from Florida beaches to the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic, where they spend their early lives floating and foraging in the grass.
“If it all stays offshore, we wouldn’t really have a problem,” Barnes said. But the macroalgae has mushroomed in size over the past 12 years or so, which makes it more likely to see large piles of seaweed that make it difficult to walk, sit or play on beaches.
The trend was first documented on satellite in 2011.
In some cases, there’s so much seaweed that local governments must use heavy equipment and dump trucks to haul it away, LaPointe said.
He has linked the surge in sargassum to flow from the Mississippi River, extreme flooding in the Amazon basin, and the mouth of the Congo, where upwelling and vertical mixing of the ocean can bring up nutrients that feed the blooms. He said deforestation and burning also may contribute.
Phytoplankton blooms increasing in size and frequency
Blooms of much smaller algae – a microscopic species known as phytoplankton – increased in size and frequency around the world from 2003 to 2020, the researchers concluded in the Nature study.
“We’ve seen something pretty similar in a lot of the things we study,” Barnes said. “We’re seeing such massive blooms now.”
The coastal phytoplankton study, by Lian Feng at the Southern University of Science and Technology in China and other researchers, used images from NASA’s Aqua satellite. They found:
Blooms affected more than 8% of the global ocean area in 2020, a 13.2% increase from 2003.
Bloom frequency increased globally at a rate of nearly 60%.
Europe and North America had the largest bloom areas.
Africa and South America saw the most frequent blooms, more than 6.3 a year.
Australia had the lowest frequency and smallest affected area.
Is climate change affecting algae blooms?
Blooms have been at least indirectly linked to climate change in several ways, but especially to the warming temperatures that bring more extreme rainfall that washes silt and pollutants into waterways.
The authors of the coastal phytoplankton study, Lapointe and other researchers have found:
A correlation in some regions between changes in sea surface temperatures and ocean circulation.
Warmer temperatures coincided with blooms in high latitude regions such as Alaska and the Baltic Sea.
Climate change can affect ocean circulation and the movement of nutrients that feed phytoplankton blooms.
Global climate events, such as El Nino, also show connections to bloom frequency and movement.
Algal-bloom-favorable seasons in temperate seas have increased with warmer temperatures.
Where will the sargassum pile up this year?
“We can’t really say which particular beach at which particular time,” Barnes said. The university publishes a regular update on the status of the bloom.
“We can get an idea of when it will be fairly close,” he said. “In general, everything flows west. It will come across the Central Atlantic and into the Caribbean, and into the Gulf of Mexico through the straits of Florida.”
Winds, currents and even small storms can influence where the sargassum moves.
Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands could get hit hard, Barnes said. But the floating mats also wind up on beaches in Jamaica and all around the coast of Florida.
Russia is so cut off from the international financial system that the Kremlin thinks Western sanctions have ‘insured’ the country against the banking crisis
Huileng Tan – March 15, 2023
Russian President Vladimir Putin.Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images
The Kremlin said Russia will not be impacted by the US bank crisis.
Kremlin’s spokesperson said Russia is ‘insured’ against the fallout from Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse.
Sanctions over the Ukraine war have cut Russia off from the international financial system.
It’s been a rocky week for US banks. But the Kremlin’s looking at the bright side of things.
Russia is now so cut off from the global financial system that the Kremlin thinks it will face no impact from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
“Our banking system has certain connections with some segments of the international financial system, but it is mostly under illegal restrictions from the collective West,” the spokesperson for Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, said Tuesday, according to TASS state news agency. He was referring to sanctions against the country over its invasion of Ukraine one year ago.
“We are, to a certain extent, insured against the negative impact of the crisis that is now unfolding overseas,” Peskov said, per the media outlet.
In contrast, Russia — like much of the world — faced a credit crunch due to the fallout from the US subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, which ultimately led to the Global Financial Crisis.
International banks and accounting giants have pulled out of Russia or are working on their exits over the Ukraine war. Two days after the invasion, some Russian banks were also banned from SWIFT, the Belgium-based messaging service that lets banks around the world communicate about cross-border transactions. This ban has hampered cross-border transactions for Russia’s trade and financial systems, isolating the country economically and financially. The country is also facing restrictions on its key energy exports, including a $60 per barrel oil price cap.
Still, Russian President Vladimir Putin has touted the resilience of Russia’s economy and the country’s statistics service said its GDP contracted by just 2.1% in 2022 — although there are some questions over its numbers because it stopped publishing certain key economic statistics last year.
Russia wants to recover debris of US drone from Black Sea
Elena Becatoros and Darlene Superville – March 15, 2023
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, right, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, attend a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Wednesday, March 15, 2023, at the Pentagon in Washington. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Pool via AP)A view of the town of Bakhmut, the site of the heaviest battles with the Russian troops, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Roman Chop)Curtains blow in a flat in the building damaged by shelling at the scene of the heaviest battles with Russian troops in Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Roman Chop)In this handout photo taken from video and released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Wednesday, March 15, 2023, the Russian army’s 152-mm howitzer “Hyacinth-B” fires at Ukrainian troops at an undisclosed location. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia wants to recover the fragments of a U.S. surveillance drone that American forces brought down in the Black Sea after an encounter with a Russian fighter jet, a Russian security official said Wednesday.
Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, claimed in televised remarks that Tuesday’s incident was “another confirmation” of direct U.S. involvement in the conflict in Ukraine. He said Russia planned to search for the drone’s debris.
“I don’t know if we can recover them or not, but we will certainly have to do that, and we will deal with it,” Patrushev said. “I certainly hope for success.”
U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the drone was flying in international airspace and over international waters when a Russian fighter jet struck the propeller of the MQ-Reaper drone.
U.S. officials accused Russia of attempting to intercept the unmanned aerial vehicle, although its presence over the Black Sea was not an uncommon occurrence.
“It is also not uncommon for the Russians to try to intercept them,” Kirby said, adding that such an encounter “does increase the risk of miscalculations, misunderstandings.”
Kirby said the drone had not yet been recovered and it was unclear whether it would be, but the U.S. “took steps to protect the information and to protect, to minimize any effort by anybody else to exploit that drone for useful content.”
“It is also not uncommon for the Russians to try to intercept them,” Kirby said, adding that such an encounter “does increase the risk of miscalculations, misunderstandings.”
Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, said Russia has the technological capability to recover the drone’s fragments from deep in the Black Sea.
Earlier Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated the Russian Defense Ministry’s statement that Russian jets didn’t use their weapons or impact the U.S. drone.
Peskov described U.S.-Russia relations as being at their lowest point but added that “Russia has never rejected a constructive dialogue, and it’s not rejecting it now.”
At the Pentagon, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the intercept by the Russian jet was part of a “pattern of aggressive, risky and unsafe actions by Russian pilots in international airspace.” He said Russia must operate its aircraft in a safe manner.
“Make no mistake, the United States will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows,” Austin said in opening remarks before a virtual meeting of a U.S.-led effort to coordinate Western military support for Ukraine.
While encounters between Russian and NATO aircraft are not unusual — before the invasion of Ukraine, NATO planes were involved in an annual average of 400 intercepts with Russian planes — the war has heightened the significance and potential hazards of such incidents.
“The last thing that we want, certainly the last thing that anybody should want, is for this war in Ukraine to escalate to become something between the United States and Russia, to have this actually … expand beyond that,” Kirby said, speaking Wednesday on CNN.
The secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, tweeted Wednesday that the drone incident was “a signal from (Russian President Vladimir) Putin that he is ready to expand the conflict zone, with drawing other parties in.”
Separately, the U.K. defense ministry said British and German air force fighter jets were scrambled Tuesday to intercept a Russian aircraft flying close to Estonian airspace. The U.K. and Germany are conducting joint air policing missions in Estonia as part of NATO’s bolstering of its eastern flank.
The defense ministry said the Typhoon jets responded after a Russian air-to-air refueling aircraft failed to communicate with Estonian air traffic control. The Russian plane did not enter the airspace of Estonia, a NATO member.
On the ground in Ukraine, the fighting ground on. At least three civilians were killed and another 23 wounded in the country by Russian strikes over the previous 24 hours, Ukraine’s presidential office said Wednesday morning.
In eastern Ukraine’s partially occupied Donetsk province, where much of the heaviest fighting has been concentrated, Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said a total of 14 cities and villages were shelled. That included Kramatorsk, a city where some of Ukraine’s military forces are based.
In embattled Bakhmut, where Russian forces have pressed a months-long assault to capture the city, Ukrainian forces have successfully fought for northern parts of the city, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said.
“There are certain and significant successes of the armed forces of Ukraine who were able to achieve something in the north of the city,” Maliar told Ukrainian television. “Bakhmut is the epicenter (of fighting in the Donestk region), the Russian occupiers are tryng to encircle and seize the city.”
In the northeastern Kharkiv region, one person was killed and another was wounded in Vovchansk, a city near the border with Russia that is regularly shelled. Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said Russian forces also hit a civilian area of Kharkiv itself, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
“There is no military or infrastructure facility in the vicinity of the place of the strike,” Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. “Only residential buildings and urban infrastructure.”
Speaking on Ukrainian television, Terekhov said a boarding school, where only employees were present, had been damaged, as well as an apartment building. No casualties were immediately reported.
In the south, Russian forces shelled the city of Kherson seven times in the last 24 hours, hitting an infrastructure facility and residential buildings and wounding four people. In Dnipropetrovsk province, Russian forces shelled Nikopol and Marhanets, towns located across a river from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
