Putin’s UN ambassador says if Russia really wanted to kill civilians in Ukraine, more people would be dead

Business Insider

Putin’s UN ambassador says if Russia really wanted to kill civilians in Ukraine, more people would be dead

Rebecca Cohen – April 6, 2022

Vasily Alekseevich Nebenzya, Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations, speaks during a meeting of the UN Security Council, Tuesday, April 5, 2022, at United Nations headquarters.AP Photo/John Minchillo
Putin’s UN ambassador says if Russia really wanted to kill civilians in Ukraine, more people would be dead
  • Putin’s UN ambassador said if Russia were targeting Ukrainian civilians, more would be dead.
  • He also claimed that Russia is acting in “strict compliance” with international humanitarian law.
  • Russia has repeatedly denied evidence of mass civilian killings, including that in Bucha over the weekend.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Nations ambassador, Vasily Nebenzya, said at a press conference Tuesday that if Russia really wanted to kill Ukrainian civilians, more would be dead.

“I would like to reiterate that the Russian military forces act in strict compliance with international humanitarian law and do not target civilians and civilian objects,” Nebenzya said.

He said that if the Russians were pursuing attacks on civilians, “the scale of losses and devastation would be worse by digits.”

Nebenzya also alleged that the US had killed more civilians in its occupation of Iraq than Russia is accused of killing in Ukraine since their invasion on February 24.

The United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Sunday that it had recorded 1,417 civilian deaths and 2,038 civilian injuries in Ukraine since Russia invaded the eastern European country in February.

The agency said, however, that it “believes that the actual figures are considerably higher.”

Russia has strongly denied evidence of civilian massacres in Ukraine, including recent evidence of mass graves holding nearly 300 bodies in the town of Bucha.

“The truth of what happened in Bucha will reveal itself,” Nebenzya said at the press conference.

A tweet from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sunday, meanwhile, said “All the photos and videos published by the Kiev regime in Bucha are just another provocation.”

Top US general says the only way the US could have stopped Putin was to send troops into Ukraine, which Biden warned would start World War III

Business Insider

Top US general says the only way the US could have stopped Putin was to send troops into Ukraine, which Biden warned would start World War III

Bill Bostock – April 6, 2022

Gen. Mark Milley at a House Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, on Tuesday.REUTERS/Tom Brenner
Top US general says the only way the US could have stopped Putin was to send troops into Ukraine, which Biden warned would start World War III

Mark Milley said sending US troops into Ukraine was likely the only way to stop Putin from invading.

But the general said he was against doing so, as it would “risk armed conflict with Russia.”

NATO forces have refused to engage militarily with Russia on Ukrainian soil, distressing Zelenskyy.

The top US general said the only way to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin would be to send US troops into Ukraine — an action he and President Joe Biden have both opposed, saying it would spark a new conflict with Russia.

“Short of the commitment of US military forces into Ukraine proper, I’m not sure he was deterrable,” Gen. Mark Milley told the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

“The idea of deterring Putin from invading Ukraine, deterring him by the US, would have required the commitment of US military forces, and I think that would have risked armed conflict with Russia.”

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly asked the US and NATO to send troops and enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine, moves that would likely bring Western forces in direct combat with Russian forces.

NATO has stayed away from direct intervention, choosing to supply military and humanitarian aid.

Biden tweeted on March 11 that a direct US or NATO military incursion into Ukraine would be unfeasible and would start a world war.

“I want to be clear: We will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full might of a united and galvanized NATO,” he said.

“But we will not fight a war against Russia in Ukraine. A direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War III. And something we must strive to prevent.”

On Tuesday, Milley said he “certainly wouldn’t have advised” sending US troops into Ukraine to deter Putin.

As the West announced sanctions on Russia following the invasion, Putin put Russia’s nuclear-weapons program on high alert, brandishing the threat of nuclear war to ward off military intervention. However, Western officials believe that nothing has actually changed with the readiness of Russia’s nuclear program.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has slowed in recent weeks. Ukrainian and Western officials have said they believe Putin is repositioning troops for an all-out attack on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

The region is home to the pro-Russian separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Russia recognized the Ukrainian territories as independent states days before the invasion.

As the fighting has continued across Ukraine, Russian and Ukrainian officials have held negotiations about a cease-fire.

Zelenskyy told the BBC on Monday that talks would continue despite evidence of Russian war crimes. Ukraine has accused Russia of killing at least 300 civilians, many in a gruesome fashion, in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv.

Micro-plastics Found in Lungs of Living People for First Time, and Deeper Than Expected

EcoWatch – Health – Wellness

Micro-plastics Found in Lungs of Living People for First Time, and Deeper Than Expected

Olivia Rosane –  April 06, 2022

Microplastics found in the Canary Islands.

Micro-plastics found in the Canary Islands. DESIREE MARTIN / AFP via Getty Images

It is possible to breathe in micro-plastics

A study accepted for publication in Science of the Total Environment last month detected micro-plastics in the lung tissue of living people for the first time, and much deeper than the researchers expected. 

“We did not expect to find the highest number of particles in the lower regions of the lungs, or particles of the sizes we found,” senior author Laura Sadofsky at Hull York medical school told The Guardian. “It is surprising as the airways are smaller in the lower parts of the lungs and we would have expected particles of these sizes to be filtered out or trapped before getting this deep.”

The research comes as more and more evidence shows that micro-plastics are penetrating the human body. Another study published days earlier found micro-plastics in human blood for the first time, and in almost 80 percent of the people sampled. 

The new study also found the plastic in the majority of lung tissue samples – 11 out of 13, the study authors wrote. A total of 39 microplastics were found in all regions of the lung. 

Previous studies had found plastics in lung samples taken from autopsies. One 2021 study in Brazil found microplastics in the lungs of 13 out of 20 people studied, The Guardian reported. A 1998 study of U.S. lung cancer patients found plastic and plant fibers in more than 100 samples. However, the lung tissue in the most recent study came from live patients at Castle Hill Hospital in East Yorkshire, the Press Association reported. It was removed in surgeries as part of the patients’ routine medical care. 

“Microplastics have previously been found in human cadaver autopsy samples; this is the first robust study to show microplastics in lungs from live people,” Sadofsky said, as the Press Association reported. 

The scientists used spectrometry to identify the plastics, The Guardian explained. The most common two types of plastic were polypropylene, which is used for packaging and pipes, and PET, which is commonly used for beverage bottles. 

In total, 11 microplastics were found in the upper parts of the lung, seven in the middle and 21 in the lower parts, a result that was particularly surprising, according to the Press Association.

“Lung airways are very narrow so no-one thought they could possibly get there, but they clearly have,” Sadofsky said, as the Press Association reported. 

The findings build on reports that people exposed to microplastics in industrial settings have developed respiratory symptoms and diseases, the study authors wrote. 

“This data provides an important advance in the field of air pollution, micro-plastics and human health,” Sadofsky said, as the Press Association reported. “The characterization of types and levels of micro-plastics we have found can now inform realistic conditions for laboratory exposure experiments with the aim of determining health impacts.”

WHO: 99% of the world is breathing polluted air

Yahoo! News

WHO: 99% of the world is breathing polluted air

Ben Adler, Senior Editor – April 6, 2022

Virtually everyone on Earth is breathing polluted air, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO). In a report released Monday, the U.N. agency stated that 99% of the global population “breathes air that exceeds WHO air quality limits, and threatens their health.”

That startling fact can be attributed in part to improved monitoring of air quality. An all-time high of more than 6,000 cities in 117 countries now monitor air pollution. That’s 2,000 more cities than the last update to the WHO’s air quality database, and six times as many as when it launched in 2011. The WHO is also now able for the first time to measure ground-level average annual concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, and it can track smaller sizes of particulate matter than ever before. (Exposure to nitrogen dioxide can cause respiratory disease such as asthma, symptoms such as coughing, and emergency room visits.)

An aerial view of vehicles driving near downtown Los Angeles.
An aerial view of vehicles driving near downtown Los Angeles. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The high percentage of areas that exceed the threshold for harmful pollution is also driven by the fact that last year the WHO tightened its standards for air quality for the first time in 15 years. The organization lowered exposure levels of pollutants including sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, ground-level ozone and particulate matter. The WHO calculates that air pollution causes more than 7 million premature deaths each year.

“It has been recognized that air pollution has an impact at a much lower level than previously thought,” Dr. Sophie Gumy, technical officer at WHO’s Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health, told UN News. “So, with all the new evidence that has come up over the last 15 years since the last WHO air quality guideline update, most of the values of the guidelines levels have been reduced.”

Most air pollution is caused by the combustion of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal, which are also responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. Climate change is also itself a cause of increasing air pollution, due to the fact that ground-level ozone, also known as smog, forms more readily in warmer temperatures, and wildfires are increasingly frequent and severe.

The WHO called for nations to accelerate their transition to electric vehicles and clean sources of energy.

“Current energy concerns highlight the importance of speeding up the transition to cleaner, healthier energy systems,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in the report. “High fossil fuel prices, energy security, and the urgency of addressing the twin health challenges of air pollution and climate change, underscore the pressing need to move faster towards a world that is much less dependent on fossil fuels.”

Birds and Bees Make Better Coffee, Study Finds

EcoWatch

Birds and Bees Make Better Coffee, Study Finds

Cristen Hemingway Jaynes – April 06, 2022

Birds and bees work together as pollinators

Birds and bees work together as pollinators. DansPhotoArt on flickr / Moment / Getty Images

For many people, one rich, pleasant smell signals the start of a new day more than any other: coffee. Different techniques have been used to get the best cup of the caffeine-rich liquid, from a French press to the pour-over method.

A unique new study has found that the secret to better coffee is really in control of the birds and the bees.

In the study, researchers found that when birds and bees joined forces to protect and pollinate coffee plants, the result was coffee beans that were bigger, more abundant and of better quality, reported the University of Vermont. Some of the flying assistants come from thousands of miles away, and without them the $26 billion coffee industry would see a 25 percent decrease in crop yields, or about $1,066 per hectare —  a hectare equals almost two and a half acres — in coffee losses.

“Until now, researchers have typically calculated the benefits of nature separately, and then simply added them up,” said Alejandra Martínez-Salinas of the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE), who was the study’s lead author, the University of Vermont (UVM) reported. “But nature is an interacting system, full of important synergies and trade-offs. We show the ecological and economic importance of these interactions, in one of the first experiments at realistic scales in actual farms.”

For the study, the researchers from Latin America and the U.S. used the world’s most popular type of coffee, Coffea arabica, a self-pollinating crop. They used small lace bags and large nets to test four scenarios on 30 coffee farms in Costa Rica. These included bee pollination alone; pest control by birds alone; zero bee and bird activity; and “a natural environment” in which the bees and birds were free to work together, going about their pollinating activities and munching on insects like the damaging coffee berry borer, which affects worldwide coffee production.

“These results suggest that past assessments of individual ecological services… may actually underestimate the benefits biodiversity provides to agriculture and human wellbeing,” said Taylor Ricketts of the University of Vermont’s Gund Institute for Environment. “These positive interactions mean ecosystem services are more valuable together than separately.”

The study, “Interacting pest control and pollination services in coffee systems,” was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the study, it was found that the birds and bees had combined positive effects on the overall weight, weight uniformity and set of the coffee fruit — which all affect the quality and price — that were more significant than each of their effects alone, the University of Vermont reported.

“One important reason we measure these contributions is to help protect and conserve the many species that we depend on, and sometimes take for granted,” Ph.D. candidate at UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment and Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Natalia Aristizábal said. “Birds, bees, and millions of other species support our lives and livelihoods, but face threats like habitat destruction and climate change.”

Russia to pay bonds in rubles, which may cause default

Russia to pay bonds in rubles, which may cause default

Ken Sweet – April 6, 2022

FILE – People walk in front of a huge TV screen showing banknotes of Russian ruble in Tokyo, Tuesday, March 1, 2022. Russia said Wednesday, April 6, that it made a debt payment in rubles this week, a move that may not be accepted by Russia’s foreign debtholders and could put the country on a path to a possible historic default. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

NEW YORK (AP) — Russia said Wednesday that it made a debt payment in rubles this week, a move that may not be accepted by Russia’s foreign debtholders and could put the country on a path to an historic default.

The Ministry of Finance said in a statement that it tried to make a $649 million payment toward two bonds to an unnamed U.S. bank — previously reported as JPMorgan Chase — but that payment was not accepted because new U.S. sanctions prohibit Russia from using U.S. banks to pay its debts.

Russia said it has instead transferred the funds in rubles into a special bank account with Russia’s National Settlement Depository, the country’s securities regulator. The ministry added that once the country is allowed to access foreign exchange markets — not something that will happen for the foreseeable future due to sanctions — it will decide whether to allow bondholders to convert the ruble payment back into dollars or euros.

While Russia has 30 days of leeway to catch up with its payments, investors have been betting on a default. The contracts governing Russia’s bonds require in most cases payment in euros or dollars with few and narrow exceptions known as an alternative payments clause. Russia contends that it has met those exceptions but sovereign debt experts have argued otherwise.

“It is not clear to me, even if the clause is there, that Russia would be entitled to use it,” said G. Mitu Gulati, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and an expert on sovereign debt restructurings and contracts, in an email. “That’s a debatable question. I’d argue that they are not. But this would be a question for a court.”

Ratings agencies have downgraded Russia’s debt to “junk” status and said a default is highly likely.

While Russia has signaled it remains willing to pay its debts, the Kremlin warned that if sanctions stayed in place, it would continue to pay debtholders in rubles instead of dollars or euros.

“Russia has all the resources needed to service its debts,” said Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman. “If this blocking continues and transfers for debt repayments are also blocked from these frozen funds, they can be paid out in rubles.”

The U.S. has been attempting to force Russia to use its foreign currency reserves — or any revenue from oil and gas sales — in order to deplete the country’s financial resources. The sanctions placed on Russia this week barred the country from using any of its foreign reserves held in U.S. banks for debt payments.

Previously the Treasury Department had been allowing Russia to make debt payments, which stopped Russia from defaulting last month when it transferred a payment on March 17.

Russia has not defaulted on its foreign debts since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, when the collapse of the Russian Empire led to the creation of the Soviet Union. Even in the late 1990s during Russia’s sovereign debt crisis the country was able to continue to pay foreign debts with the help of international aid, although it did default on its domestic debt.

U.S. training small number of Ukrainians on Switchblade drones -defense official

Reuters

U.S. training small number of Ukrainians on Switchblade drones -defense official

Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali – April 6, 2022

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A small number of Ukrainians have been trained in the United States on how to operate killer “Switchblade” drones, single-use weapons that fly into their targets and detonate on impact, a senior U.S. defense official disclosed on Wednesday.

The Ukrainians undergoing training on the Switchblades and other weaponry number less than a dozen. They had arrived in the United States for regular military education programs prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.

“We took advantage of the opportunity to pull them aside for a couple of days and provide them some training, particularly on the Switchblades UAV,” the senior U.S. defense official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity. “UAV” refers to an unmanned aerial vehicle.

The United States withdrew its military advisers from Ukraine ahead of Russia’s invasion, seeking to avoid a direct military confrontation between U.S. and Russian forces that could escalate into a broader war.

As a result of the withdrawal, the United States and NATO have largely constrained their provision of weaponry to Ukraine to systems that Ukrainian forces knew how to operate prior to Russia’s invasion.

That includes U.S. weapons that have given Ukraine an edge against Russian forces, like Javelin anti-tank missiles and portable Stinger surface-to-air missiles that can target Russian aircraft. It also includes Soviet-era systems that are still in the inventories of some NATO nations.

But Switchblades, which are relatively easy-to-use and could be highly effective in attacking Russian ground forces, had not been part of training packages prior to Russia’s invasion. The drones are made by AeroVironment Inc https://www.avinc.com/tms/switchblade-600.

The drones, which have a range of 40 km (25 miles), can be used against vehicles including trucks, tanks and armored personnel carriers.

In recent testimony, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, Celeste Wallander, said the United States had committed to sending Ukraine 100 Switchblade systems.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday that the Pentagon is sending Ukraine two variants of the Switchblade, including one with an anti-armor warhead.

“The Switchblade 600 and 300 will move as quickly as they possibly can,” Austin told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.

Ukrainians are expected to quickly use the first 100 systems sent.

“I’m convinced that when we get the first set of Switchblades in, there will be an immediate request from the Ukrainians for more,” the top U.S.commander in Europe, Air Force General Tod Wolters, told Congress on March 30.

The senior U.S. official declined to say on Wednesday where in the United States the training of Ukrainians was taking place or offer more information on other weapons systems they’re being trained on.

“Our expectation is that these individuals will be heading back into Ukraine relatively soon as they were originally anyway,” the official told reporters.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by Mark Porter, Leslie Adler and Jonathan Oatis)

War in Ukraine is testing some American evangelicals’ support for Putin as a leader of conservative values

The Conversation

War in Ukraine is testing some American evangelicals’ support for Putin as a leader of conservative values

Melani McAlister – April 6, 2022

Melani McAlister, Professor of American Studies and International Affairs, George Washington University had received funding from Princeton’s Davis Center for Historical Studies.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin lighting a candle in an Orthodox Church.
Vladimir Putin lights a candle as he attends an Orthodox Church service in 2011. AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko

In February 2022, evangelical leader Franklin Graham called on his followers to pray for Vladimir Putin. His tweet acknowledged that it might seem a “strange request” given that Russia was clearly about to invade Ukraine. But Graham asked that believers “pray that God would work in his heart so that war could be avoided at all cost.”

The backlash was fast and direct. Graham had not solicited prayers for Ukraine, some observers commented. And he had rarely called on believers to pray for U.S. President Joe Biden.

A significant subset of the U.S. evangelical community, particularly white conservatives, has been developing a political and emotional alliance with Russia for almost 20 years. Those American believers, including prominent figures such as Graham and Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice see Russia, Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church as protectors of the faith, standing against attacks on “traditional” and “family” values. At the center is Russia’s spate of anti-LGBTQ laws, which have become a model for some anti-trans and anti-gay legislation in the U.S.

Now, with Russia bombing churches and destroying cities in Ukraine, the most Protestant of the former Soviet Republics, American evangelical communities are divided. Most oppose Russia’s actions, especially because there is a strong evangelical church in Ukraine that is receiving attention and prayers from a range of evangelical leaders.

Nonetheless, a small group of the most conservative American evangelicals cannot quite break up with their long-term ally. The enthusiasm for Russia is embodied by Graham, who in 2015 famously visited Moscow, where he had a warm meeting with Putin.

On that trip, Putin reportedly explained that his mother had kept her Christian faith even under Communist rule. Graham in turn praised Putin for his support of Orthodox Christianity, contrasting Russia’s “positive changes” with the rise of “atheistic secularism” in the U.S.

But it was not always so. Once upon a time, American evangelicals saw the Soviet Union and other communist countries as the world’s greatest threat to their faith.

They carried out dramatic and illegal activities, smuggling Bibles and other Christian literature across borders. And yet, today, Russia, still a country with low church attendance and little government tolerance for Protestant evangelism, has become a symbol of the conservative values that some American evangelicals proclaim.

Bible smuggling

Starting in the 1950s, but intensifying in the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. and European evangelicals presented themselves as intimately linked to the Christians who were suffering at the hands of communist governments.

One evangelical group that emerged at this time was “Open Doors,” whose main aim was to work for “persecuted Christians” around the world. It was founded by “Brother Andrew” Van der Bijl, a Dutch pastor who smuggled Bibles into the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Brother Andrew and other evangelicals argued that what Christians in communist countries really needed were Bibles – reflecting how important personal Bible reading is in evangelical faith.

Brother Andrew turned the smuggling into anti-communist political theater. As he headed toward the border in a specially outfitted vehicle with a hidden compartment that might hold as many as 3,000 Bibles, he prayed. According to one ad that ran in Christian magazines, he said:

“Lord, in my luggage I have forbidden Scriptures that I want to take to your children across the border. When you were on earth, you made blind eyes see. Now I pray, make seeing eyes blind. Do not let the guards see these things you do not want them to see.”

Van der Bijl’s memoir, “God’s Smuggler,” became a bestseller when it was published in 1967.

Taking Jesus to the communist world

By the early 1970s, there were more than 30 Protestant organizations engaged in some sort of literature smuggling, and there was an intense, sometimes quite nasty, competition between groups.

Their work depended on their charismatic leaders, who often used sensationalist approaches for fundraising.

For example, in 1966, a Romanian pastor named Richard Wurmbrand appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Internal Security subcommittee, stripped to the waist and turned to display his deeply scarred back.

A man, stripped to the waist, showing scar marks on his back to a committee seated in front of him
Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, a refugee Lutheran pastor, stands stripped to the waist to show scars of torture in a prison in Romania, as he testifies to the Senate Internal Security subcommittee in Washington, May 6, 1966. AP Photo/Henry Griffin

A Jewish convert and Lutheran minister, Wurmbrand had been imprisoned twice by the Romanian government for his activities as an “underground” minister before he finally escaped to the West in 1964.

Standing shirtless before U.S. senators and the national news media, Wurmbrand testified, “My body represents Romania, my country, which has been tortured to a point that it can no longer weep. These marks on my body are my credentials.”

The next year, Wurmbrand published his book, “Tortured for Christ,” which became a bestseller in the U.S. He founded his own activist organization, “Jesus to the Communist World,” which went on to engage in a good bit of attention-grabbing behavior.

In May 1979, for example, two 32-year-old men associated with the group flew their small plane over the Cuban coast, dropping 6,000 copies of a pamphlet written by Wurmbrand. After the “Bible bombing,” they lost their way in a storm and were forced to land in Cuba, where they were arrested and served 17 months in jail before being released.

As I describe in my book “The Kingdom of God Has No Borders,” critics hammered these groups for such provocative approaches and hardball fundraising. One leading figure in the Southern Baptist Convention complained that the practice of smuggling Bibles was “creating problems for the whole Christian witness” in communist areas.

Another Christian activist, however, admitted that the activist groups’ mix of faith and politics was hard to beat and had the ability to draw “big bucks.”

After communism: Islam and homosexuality

These days, there is little in the way of swashbuckling adventure to be had in confronting communists. But that does not mean an end to the evangelical focus on persecuted Christians.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, advocates turned their attention to the situation of Christians in Muslim-majority countries. Evangelicals in Europe and the U.S. increasingly focused on Islam  as both a competitor and a threat. Putin’s war against Chechen militants in the 1990s, and his more recent intervention on behalf of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, made him popular with Christian conservatives. Putin claimed to be protecting Christians while waging war against Islamic terrorism.

Meanwhile, Putin’s policies of cracking down on evangelism do not seem to overly bother some of his conservative evangelical allies. When Putin signed a Russian law in June 2016 that outlawed any sharing of one’s faith in homes, online or anywhere else but recognized church buildings, some evangelicals were outraged, but others looked away.

This is in part because American evangelicals in the 2010s continued to see Putin as being willing to openly support Christians in what they saw as a global war on their faith. But the more immediately salient issue was Putin’s opposition to LGBTQ+ rights and nontraditional views of the family.

Graham was among those who waxed enthusiastically about Russia’s so-called gay propaganda law, which limits public material about “nontraditional” relationships. Others, such as the World Congress of Families and the Alliance Defending Freedom, have long been cultivating ties with Russian politicians as well as the Russian Orthodox Church.

Putin allies on defensive

In the 21st century, then, the most conservative wing of evangelicals was not promoting its agenda by touting the number of Bibles transported across state lines, but rather on another kind of border crossing: the power of Putin’s reputation as a leader in the resurgent global right.

Now, the invasion of Ukraine has put Putin’s allies on the defensive. There are still those, including the QAnon-supporting 2020 Republican candidate for Congress Laura Witzke, who explained in March 2022 that she identifies “more with Putin’s Christian values that I do with Joe Biden.” But Graham himself emphasized to the Religion News Service that he does not support the war, and his humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse sent several teams to Ukraine to operate clinics and distribute relief.

For the moment, Putin’s status as the global right’s moral vanguard is being severely tested, and the border-crossing advocates of traditional marriage may find themselves on the brink of divorce.

This article includes material from a piece pub. on September 4, 2018. 

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In a first, wind power is second-leading U.S. source of electricity in one day

Yahoo! News

In a first, wind power is second-leading U.S. source of electricity in one day

David Knowles, Senior Editor – April 6, 2022

Power generated by wind turbines in the United States hit a milestone last week, becoming the second-highest source of electricity in the country for a 24-hour period, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Wind turbines generated more than 2,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity in the U.S. on Tuesday, March 29, more than was provided by nuclear and coal power plants that day. Wind power, which is renewable and does not release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, still trailed the electricity produced by natural gas, but it was the first time in U.S. history that wind turbines outperformed nuclear and coal power.

On its website, the EIA notes, “The amount of wind electricity generation has grown significantly in the past 30 years. Advances in wind energy technology have decreased the cost of producing electricity from wind. Government requirements and financial incentives for renewable energy in the United States and in other countries have contributed to growth in wind power.”

In total, electricity generated from wind power has gone from roughly 6 billion kilowatt-hours in 2000 to 380 billion in 2021, EIA says. Wind turbines now account for roughly 9.2% of the U.S.’s total “utility-scale electricity generation,” according to the agency.

Power-generating Siemens 2.37-megawatt wind turbines are seen at the Ocotillo Wind Energy Facility in California.
Power-generating Siemens 2.37-megawatt wind turbines are seen at the Ocotillo Wind Energy Facility in California. (Bing Guan/Reuters)

The rush toward wind energy has picked up steam as the country looks for ways to ween itself from oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. In 2020, 42% of new electricity generation capacity came from land-based wind energy, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Energy. Spurred on by federal tax incentives, wind turbines have been going up in states such as Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Colorado, Kansas, Texas and Minnesota.

The U.S. Geological Survey has mapped the location wind turbines nationwide as an analytical tool for “government agencies, scientists, private companies, and citizens.”

In an effort to help the U.S. reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, President Biden announced leases in January for nearly 500,000 acres off the coast of New York and New Jersey for the construction of offshore wind farms.

In February, the Department of the Interior auctioned offshore leases off the coast of New York totaling $4.37 billion.

“This week’s offshore wind sale makes one thing clear: The enthusiasm for the clean energy economy is undeniable and it’s here to stay,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a written statement at the time. “The investments we are seeing today will play an important role in delivering on the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to tackle the climate crisis and create thousands of good-paying, union jobs across the nation.”

In a report issued this week, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that in order to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, global greenhouse gas emissions have to start dropping in 2025 and go down 43% from current levels by 2030 — and 84% by 2050. To do so, experts say, wind power will need to ramp up significantly in the coming years.

Ukraine says Russia is using ‘mobile crematoriums’ to burn the bodies of civilians in Mariupol and hide evidence of war crimes

Business Insider

Ukraine says Russia is using ‘mobile crematoriums’ to burn the bodies of civilians in Mariupol and hide evidence of war crimes

Jake Epstein – April 6, 2022

A view of devastation in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol under the control of Russian military and pro-Russian separatists, on April 4, 2022.
Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesUkraine says Russia is using ‘mobile crematoriums’ to burn the bodies of civilians in Mariupol and hide evidence of war crimes
  • Mariupol City Council said Russia is using mobile crematoriums to “cover their tracks.”
  • “They collect and burn the bodies of Mariupol residents murdered and killed,” it alleged on Telegram.
  • The council said Russia ordered the cover-up after international outrage over mass civilian killings in Bucha.

The city council of besieged Ukrainian port city Mariupol accused Russian forces of using mobile crematoriums to burn the bodies of civilians killed in the brutal assault and hide evidence of war crimes.

“Killers cover their tracks. Russian mobile crematoriums have started operating in Mariupol,” Mariupol city council alleged Wednesday on Telegram.

“They collect and burn the bodies of Mariupol residents murdered and killed as a result of the Russian invasion,” the city council added.

It said Russian leadership “ordered the destruction of any evidence of crimes committed by its army in Mariupol” in the wake of international outrage over the death of hundreds of civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha at the hands of President Vladimir Putin’s forces.

Russian forces have continuously shelled Mariupol in a weeks-long campaign, targeting schools, hospitals, and even a theater marked as a shelter with children inside.

The US State Department has suggested that Russian forces have “brutalized” the city because President Vladimir Putin is angry at Ukraine’s fierce resistance.

Attempts to evacuate civilians or create humanitarian corridors from Mariupol have been difficult, and it’s not immediately clear how many civilians have died there.

In a conservative estimate, the city council said around 5,000 civilians have been killed as a result of Russia’s siege.

But, the city council warned, “given the size of the city, catastrophic destruction, the duration of the blockade, and fierce resistance, tens of thousands of civilians from Mariupol could fall victim to the invaders.”

The city council also said that all potential witnesses to Russian forces’ “atrocities” are being hunted through filtration camps — which Ukrainians have said are relocation camps for abducted civilians along the Russia-Ukraine border.

“The world has not seen the scale of the tragedy in Mariupol since the Nazi concentration camps. The Russian fascists turned our whole city into a death camp,” Mariupol’s Mayor Vadym Boichenko said in the Telegram post.

He added: “Unfortunately, the eerie analogy is gaining more and more confirmation. This is no longer Chechnya or Aleppo. This is the new Auschwitz and Majdanek. The world should help punish Putin’s villains.”

Translations by Oleksandr Vynogradov.