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27 August 22
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“See the reactor buildings there,” he said, pointing across the wide expanse of the Dnipro River at the eerie shapes of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant reactors jutting out from the opposite bank.
“Sometimes Russians launch (shells) from behind them, from Enerhodar, and sometimes they come out from the side (of the reactor to fire) and hide away again straight after.”
The nearly 10-kilometer-wide Dnipro River separates the Ukrainian-held Nikopol, home to over 100,000 before the war, and the city of Enerhodar, built around Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant, and since March 4, occupied by Russian forces.
The plant in occupied Enerhodar has been at the epicenter of Russian nuclear blackmail.
Repeated Russian shelling from within the plant’s territory, causing one of the reactors to shut down, has put the entire region at risk.
The six monolithic reactors of the Zaporizhzhia plant have loomed large over Nikopol for decades. Now, with the plant occupied by Russian forces and fears of a nuclear catastrophe mounting quickly, the city is bracing itself for the worst.
Face-off with catastrophe
When the nuclear plant was initially seized in early March, the danger of nuclear disaster was immediately apparent to residents of Nikopol.
“When they first took the station, everyone was panicking; many of us feared this could happen for a long time,” 20-year-old local journalist Mykyta Sayenko told the Kyiv Independent.
When city authorities began handing out iodide pills, people were standing in line for hours to get them, Sayenko said.
The power plant’s capture was followed by months of relative calm on both sides of the river. However, in mid-July, Russian forces renewed the shelling of Nikopol in earnest, including from the territory of the plant.
Reports of deteriorating conditions at the plant have attracted worldwide attention in recent weeks.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly called for Russian military equipment to be withdrawn from the territory of the plant, while on Aug. 19, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin blamed Ukrainian shelling for risking “nuclear catastrophe” during a telephone call with Emmanuel Macron.
Amid the global media noise, attempts have also been made to stir up panic in Nikopol.
On Aug. 10, Yevhen Yevtushenko, head of the Nikopol District Military, posted a photo of a leaflet distributed in residential areas of the city.
The flyer was written in Ukrainian but littered with grammatical errors. “The shelling of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is ongoing,” it read.
“In the event of a reactor explosion, you will hear a loud boom, accompanied by a bright blue-white light.” Residents were advised to cover their windows with wet towels and quickly leave the city.
In an interview with the Kyiv Independent, Yevtushenko, 44, commented on the mysterious leaflets.
“It’s clearly a Russian fake,” Yevtushenko said, “which they created in order, firstly, to drive people into panic on the territory, and secondly, to support and develop this myth about shelling from our side of the nuclear power plant.”
In early August, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported damage from shelling to the external power supply and communication infrastructure of the plant. Both sides accused the other of shelling the territory of the plant.
On Aug. 25, Ukraine’s state-run nuclear agency Energoatom reported that, amid shelling, the nuclear plant was disconnected from the grid.
Whether a potential nuclear disaster would be triggered deliberately or not, Sayenko is blunt about the threats to both Nikopol and the rest of Europe.
The 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster is in living memory, and residents remain on edge about the threat of a repeat.
“I really can't make sense of the idea that they (Russians) could willingly put their own people in such grave danger,” said Sayenko. “But you just can’t put anything past them at the moment.”
Exchanging fire
While Kling, 72, watches the Russian rocket from his balcony, his wife Lyubov Harmash, 68, has less dangerous ways of understanding who is shooting where.
Harmash’s mother and sister live on the other side of the Dnipro River occupied by Russia, in the village of Vodyane. Occasionally she gets a call from their side.
“The Russians drive through the village with artillery and Grads, my sister tells me,” said Harmash. “They set them up behind the village and shoot over the top of their heads into Nikopol.”
“Once, when I was calling my sister she walked outside to see them shooting over her house,” Harmash retold.
“‘How are you Lyuba? The rockets were just launched,’ she said, and I answered from the corridor ‘I’m fine, yes, they just arrived.’”
Yevtushenko confirmed that rockets are launched at Nikopol from three locations: the territory of the power plant, as well as the nearby villages of Kamyanka and Vodyane.
The international community has condemned the use of the plant as a shield for shelling, to which no return fire can be given.
This is not to say that there aren’t any shells traveling in the opposite direction.
The dull, empty boom of outgoing fire from outside Nikopol is often heard in the afternoons and evenings, while Telegram feeds assure residents that “the farmers are working”— code for friendly artillery.
Addressing this, Yevtushenko was more reserved.
“Anything on the road, or placed outside residential areas, we can fire upon,” he said. “It is impossible not to answer at all.”
Taking the blows
Across the road from Nikopol’s dusty Soviet war memorial, emergency workers mill around a five-story residential building. A Grad rocket strike from the previous night has left a huge gash in the top floor, annihilating half an apartment.
Its resident, a middle-aged man, escaped serious injury. Minor cuts bandaged up, he sat in his car quietly while a friend salvaged possessions from the ruins of the flat.
“We are in a deep rage and want those responsible to be punished,” the building’s manager, Anna Sidlieva, told the Kyiv Independent at the scene.
“This building was inhabited mostly by retirees,” Sidlieva, 42, said. “When they go to sleep, should retirees in their seventies have the right to know they’ll wake up in the morning?”
One strike often cuts off the supply of utilities, making much of the building unfit for habitation as winter approaches.
Klavdia, an 84-year-old retiree who declined to give her last name, lived in the flat underneath that was destroyed by the rocket strike, and now awaits the decision of local authorities.
“They're telling me I'm not allowed to stay here, but I will, by any means possible,” she said. “I've lived here for 54 years, so excuse me for not wanting to leave my home.”
Damage that Russian shelling has caused the people, their homes, and the local economy could be felt for decades to come.
Before the war, Alla Alevtina, 49, employed over 500 people at a furniture factory she ran with her husband, who has since joined the Armed Forces.
On June 30, the facility was struck by three Grad rockets, destroying vehicles, machine halls, and office space.
Almost all of her employees have left the city, and so long as the shelling continues there is no prospect of getting back up and running.
“We can only restart the factory when the war is over,” Alevtina said. “First people need to rebuild their homes, and only then will they think about buying furniture.”
According to city council official Natalia Horbolis, 51, almost half of the city’s population of 100,000 has left.
“These are peaceful people, they just want to live and work,” she said. “For me, there is only one explanation for what Russia is doing – simple psychological harassment.”
In the grip of terror
There are two types of air raid alerts in Nikopol. One is for the entire Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and is mostly ignored by residents.
The other is for the shelling of the town by Russian rockets and artillery, which is taken much more seriously by most.
Often though, with Grad rockets only taking fifteen seconds to reach Nikopol from Enerhodar, the sirens begin only after the first hits. Locals instead rely on Telegram channels to inform them of confirmed rocket launches.
Hidden under a nondescript apartment block in central Nikopol, a Soviet-era bomb shelter converted into a gym now reassumes its original function by night.
Exercise bikes and bench press machines make their way for mattresses and sleeping bags as dozens of people, young and old, spend every night there.
The owner of the gym, who asked not to publish his identity for security reasons, said that in a month of nightly shelling, eighteen lives “had been saved” by the shelter, of those people who emerged the next morning to find their homes had been hit.
From inside the shelter, the sound of shelling is muffled, often quite enough not to wake up those already asleep.
That changed on Aug. 19, when a howitzer shell landed in the adjacent yard in the middle of the night.
“Everyone woke up, children were crying,” said the gym owner, who himself relocated from Donetsk eight years ago. “I’ll admit it was truly frightening, we all thought the next one was coming for us.”
Enduring spirit
On a warm sunny morning in late August, in the yard outside the church bearing the name of the cossack saint Peter Kalnyshevsky, pastor Merkurii, 37, delivers his sermon.
“May God protect you all from the enemy’s bullets, from their Grads, from the evil that lies across the river,” he chants.
Merkurii is a witness to the passing of time in the city as the war rages. “Since the war began,” he told the Kyiv Independent, “we buried 55 of our soldiers, Nikopol residents, we married 15 soldiers and baptized almost 100 children.”
Working both as a pastor and as a chaplain in the military, Merkurii travels to the front line often, bringing spiritual support along with much-needed supplies.
In the circumstances, Merkurii’s faith does not present any moral dilemmas.
“We, as Christians, of course, cannot wish death to our enemies,” he noted. “But as religious people, we can wish for them to meet with God as soon as possible.”
"Nikopol’s name comes from the Greek for victory, and the victory will most certainly be ours."
Donald Trump. (photo: Erin Schaff/NYT/Redux)
The affidavit, written on Aug. 5 and released by a judge on Friday, reported that 15 boxes of documents, which had already been retrieved from the Florida estate early in 2022, contained 184 documents, including 25 marked Top Secret—and that some of those were marked HCS, SI, FISA, ORCON, NOFORN.
In these acronyms lies a scandalous, perhaps literally incriminating story.
HCS means HUMINT Control System, and HUMINT means Human Intelligence—in other words, intelligence gathered from spies. Documents marked HUMINT may contain the identities of spies, as well as information obtained from them.
SI means Special intelligence and concerns intercepts of foreign communications, including information about the technology and operations used by foreign governments to transmit or collect information.
FISA means information, also concerning communications intercepts, processed through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.
ORCON stands for Originator-Controlled, meaning that dissemination—even within the government, even to officials who hold Top Secret clearances—must first be approved by the originator (for instance, the CIA, if the document originated with the CIA).
NOFORN means that the document cannot be released to foreign governments or citizens.
In other words, at least some of the documents in Mar-a-Lago were among the most sensitive in any president’s files. The FBI special agent who filed the affidavit wrote that he had “probable cause” to believe there were more boxes, containing more highly classified documents, still hidden away at Mar-a-Lago, many of them in unsecured locations. The judge who approved the request agreed.
With the court-ordered search of the estate on Aug. 8, the Justice Department has now reportedly retrieved more than 300 classified documents.
The precise contents of these documents are not publicly known—they are probably hidden beneath the black lines of redaction—and may never be. But earlier this week, when release of the affidavit was still pending, an official familiar with the search told the Washington Post that the documents contained “among the most sensitive secrets we hold.” Judging from the security markings alone, this may very well be true.
Of the 184 classified documents in the first 15 boxes, which Trump’s lawyers turned over months ago, 67 were marked Confidential and 92 marked Secret. In my experience, back when I was a congressional aide with a Top Secret clearance, most documents marked Confidential and Secret are not very sensitive. As Barack Obama once quipped, “There’s classified, and there’s classified.” With Top Secret documents, one begins to enter the realm of classified. Once you get into HUMINT, SI, FISA, and OCORN, you get into really, really classified.
It is still a mystery why Trump packed away these documents and had them shipped to Mar-a-Lago—a bigger mystery still why he resisted giving them back for so long.
Trump filed a legal motion this week, arguing that, as president, he had the right to declassify any classified documents and that his continued possession of the material was based on “executive privilege.” A judge should have no problem dismissing both arguments. First, while a president can declassify documents, there is a process for doing so; at the conclusion of the process, the special classified tabs and markings would be removed. Yet the tabs and markings are still on the documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago. Second, mere possession, much less declassification, of some documents, such as those marked OCORN, must first be approved by the originating agency. That doesn’t seem to have been done either. Third, a president—certainly an ex-president—has no executive privilege to hold documents that properly belong to the National Archives.
Finally, mere possession of these documents is a crime under some of the statutes cited in the affidavit, whether or not they are classified.
There is much that we still don’t know. But one thing is, or at least should be, clear: Trump is in a heap of legal trouble.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-AZ. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Sinema quietly killed Biden’s nomination of Ganesh Sitaraman for an important regulatory office.
The office was created to help speed — or, more accurately, make somewhat less torturous — the process of writing regulations, which requires input from the public, legal reviews, and coordination among a variety of agencies. The office will be crucial for implementing the Inflation Reduction Act, particularly its climate provisions, and with the House and Senate not guaranteed a Democratic majority come January, it could play an outsize role in carrying out Biden’s agenda.
The Biden administration began vetting Ganesh Sitaraman, a law professor at Vanderbilt University, in 2021. On August 24, in a piece criticizing the Biden administration for dragging its feet, Politico reported that Sitaraman’s potential nomination ran into trouble amid concern that “he couldn’t win support from the moderate Democratic lawmakers needed to secure confirmation.” In fact, two sources close to the situation told The Intercept, Sitaraman was on the cusp of being publicly nominated in early spring when Sinema informed the White House of last-minute hesitations, wanting to slow down the process. The sources were not authorized to speak publicly.
Months later, in late spring, Sinema informed the White House that she would oppose Sitaraman. The search for a new head has since shifted to a more centrist candidate, NYU law professor Richard Revesz, according to E&E News, though the White House could also bring on Sitaraman in an acting role or a related position. The Biden administration did this with Neera Tanden, and the Obama administration did so with Antonio Weiss when each failed to be confirmed.
With no single agency driving the regulatory process forward, rules can sit in limbo for years. The Obama administration moved excruciatingly slowly with its regulatory process, leaving key regulations vulnerable to repeal by the Congressional Review Act, or CRA, once President Donald Trump took office. President Barack Obama’s rule regarding overtime for nonsupervisory employees — one of the most significant achievements for the working class during his administration — took until near the end of his term to complete. Because it was finalized so close to the next congressional session, Republicans would have had the option to quickly wipe it off the books using the CRA, though they didn’t need to, because a federal judge blocked enforcement. Avoiding the CRA threat for his own regulatory strategy is a critical priority of Biden’s.
As is standard when Sinema is involved, it’s not clear what constituted her objection to Sitaraman; a spokesperson for Sinema did not respond to a request for comment. The White House declined to comment.
Sitaraman is a former aide to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and the author of the book “The Public Option: How to Expand Freedom, Increase Opportunity, and Promote Equality.” He’s also a close friend of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Sitaraman has also proposed major changes to the Supreme Court.
Sinema faces reelection in the 2024 cycle, and Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego has already signaled a likelihood of challenging her in a Democratic primary.
A march in Mexico City on the anniversary of the disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa, Guerrero. (photo: Keith Dannemiller)
Interior Undersecretary Alejandro Encinas made the shocking revelation directly tying the military to one of Mexico's worst human rights scandals, and it came with little fanfare as he made a lengthy defense of the commission’s report released a week earlier.
Last week, despite declaring the abductions and disappearances a “state crime” and saying that the army watched it happen without intervening, Encinas made no mention of six students being turned over to Col. José Rodríguez Pérez.
On Friday, Encinas said authorities were closely monitoring the students from the radical teachers’ college at Ayotzinapa from the time they left their campus through their abduction by local police in the town of Iguala that night. A soldier who had infiltrated the school was among the abducted students, and Encinas asserted the army did not follow its own protocols and try to rescue him.
“There is also information corroborated with emergency 089 telephone calls where allegedly six of the 43 disappeared students were held during several days and alive in what they call the old warehouse and from there were turned over to the colonel,” Encinas said. “Allegedly the six students were alive for as many as four days after the events and were killed and disappeared on orders of the colonel, allegedly the then Col. José Rodríguez Pérez.”
The defense department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the allegations Friday.
The role of the army in the students’ disappearance has long been a source of tension between the families and the government. From the beginning, there were questions about the military’s knowledge of what happened and its possible involvement. The students’ parents demanded for years that they be allowed to search the army base in Iguala. It was not until 2019 that they were given access along with Encinas and the Truth Commission.
The commission report says the army registered an anonymous emergency call on Sept. 30, 2014, four days after the students’ abduction. The caller reportedly said the students were being held in a large concrete warehouse in a location described as “Pueblo Viejo.” The caller proceeded to describe the location.
That entry was followed by several pages of redacted material, but that section of the report concluded with the following: “As can be seen, obvious collusion existed between agents of the Mexican state with the criminal group Guerreros Unidos that tolerated, allowed and participated in events of violence and disappearance of the students, as well as the government’s attempt to hide the truth about the events.”
Later, in a summary of how the commission's report differed from the original investigation's conclusions, there is mention of a colonel.
“On Sept. 30 ‘the colonel’ mentions that they will take care of cleaning everything up and that they had already taken charge of the six students who had remained alive," the report said.
In a witness statement provided to federal investigators in December 2014, Capt. José Martínez Crespo, who was stationed at the base in Iguala, said the base commander for the 27th Infantry Battalion at the time was Col. José Rodriguez Pérez.
Through a driving rain later Friday, the families of the 43 missing students marched in Mexico City with a couple hundred other people as they have on the 26th of every month for years.
Parents carried posters of their children's faces and rows of current students from the teachers’ college marched, shouted calls for justice and counted off to 43. Their signs proclaimed that the fight for justice continued and asserted: “It was the State.”
Clemente Rodríguez marched for his son Christian Alfonso Rodríguez Telumbre, who was a second student identified by a tiny burned bone fragment.
Rodríguez said the families had been told last week before the report was released about the coronel and the six students.
“It’s not by omission anymore. It’s that they participated,” he said of the military. “It was the state, the three levels of government participated.”
He said the families had not been told that any of the arrest orders announced last week for members of armed forces had been carried out yet.
On Sept. 26, 2014, local police took the students off buses they had commandeered in Iguala. The motive for the police action remains unclear eight years later. Their bodies have never been found, though fragments of burned bone have been matched to three of the students.
Last week, federal agents arrested former Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam, who oversaw the original investigation. On Wednesday, a judge ordered that he stand trial for forced disappearance, not reporting torture and official misconduct. Prosecutors allege Murillo Karam created a false narrative about what happened to the students to quickly appear to resolve the case.
Authorities also said last week that arrest warrants were issued for 20 soldiers and officers, five local officials, 33 local police officers and 11 state police officers as well as 14 gang members. Neither the army nor prosecutors have said how many of those suspects are in custody.
It was also not immediately clear if Rodríguez Pérez was among those sought.
Rodríguez, the student's father, said Murillo Karam's arrest was a positive step.
Murillo Karam “was the one who told us the soldiers couldn’t be touched,” Rodríguez said. “And now it's being discovered that it was the state that participated.”
In a joint statement, the families said the Truth Commission’s confirmation that it was a “state crime” was significant after elements suggesting that over the years.
However, they said the report still did not satisfactorily answer their most important question.
“Mothers and fathers need indubitable scientific evidence as to the fate of our children,” the statement said. “We can’t go home with preliminary signs that don’t fully clear up where they are and what happened to them.”
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has given Mexico's military enormous responsibility. The armed forces are not only at the center of his security strategy, but they have taken over administration of the seaports and been given responsibility for building a new airport for the capital and a tourist train on the Yucatan Peninsula.
The president has said often that the army and navy are the least corrupt institutions and have his confidence.
Robb Elementary School on June 9, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. (photo: Eric Gay/AP)
With schools across Texas having already welcomed students back into the classroom, gun safety advocates are calling for the governor to hold a special session so state lawmakers can vote on whether to raise the minimum age for purchasing AR-15-style rifles from 18 to 21.
The youth-led gun safety advocacy group March for Our Lives is heading the rally, backed by the families of the students and teachers slain at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. They believe Abbott has done little to nothing since the gunman used a legally purchased AR-15-style rifle to kill 19 children and two teachers.
"We're here to drive home the message that we are living on borrowed time, and more kids will die if we don't take action like raising the age to purchase an AR-15 to 21," March for Our Lives spokesperson Noah Lumbantobing told NPR.
Abbot announced this month that the Texas Department of Public Safety would dispatch more than 30 law enforcement officers — at the request of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District — to Uvalde for the new school year. However, when March for Our Lives and the parents asked the governor about enacting stricter gun laws, he said it wouldn't happen, Lumbantobing said.
Ana Rodriguez, 35, is one of those parents. She will speak to the crowd on Saturday about her daughter, Maite Rodriguez, who was one of the students shot and killed on May 24.
"I want to be able to speak about her but also talk about how her life was so meaninglessly taken by this 18-year-old kid who was able to purchase these weapons of war and ammunition, and how I am demanding that the age go up in a special session," Rodriguez told NPR. "I'm not going to ask — I'm going to demand."
She says raising the minimum age for buying an AR-15-style rifle just makes sense. An 18-year-old is still a child, she said. Though 18-year-olds are considered adults in the eyes of the law, their brains aren't fully developed. She believes 21 is still too young, but it's better than 18.
"The fact that an 18-year-old mentally unstable child was able to purchase what he purchased legally and do what he did to our children is mind-boggling," Rodriguez said. "If I could have it my way, I would have [AR-15-style rifles] banned, but I don't think that'll happen. So I think 21 or 25 is the minimum they could do."
Lumbantobing said he has found that Texans support responsible gun ownership, including some restrictions. He thinks multiple mass shootings in the state have changed the minds of many gun owners who were previously against stricter gun laws.
"It's hit close to home for a lot of Texans, as it has in the past. And for Texans, these are children's lives we are talking about," Lumbantobing said. "It's hard to imagine that being your child shot in first or second period. It's moved people emotionally to want this sort of change."
The school district voted on Wednesday to fire Pete Arredondo, the police chief in charge of the response to the shooting. The families of the slain children and teachers had been calling since late May for his termination, one of many steps taken since the shooting.
This summer, the governor ordered state school safety officials to take precautionary measures to ensure student safety. Abbott laid out his directions in a letter, which mentioned steps such as safety trainings for school staff and access-point assessments of school buildings.
But Lumbantobing said hardening schools won't keep students safe, citing law enforcement officers on-site at schools previously targeted by shooters. He believes that increasing the minimum age for purchasing AR-15-style weapons will ultimately save lives and that the power to bring the proposal to the people lies with Abbott and Abbott alone.
Rodriguez bought bulletproof backpacks for her surviving children, 11 and 15, for this school year. And the school has implemented a handful of other security measures to try to keep students safe. But she's worried that attempts to make schools safer will make them seem more like prisons.
Abbott has argued that mental health is at the core of America's gun violence epidemic, not firearms themselves. Rodriguez says mental health is part of the problem but that refusing to acknowledge that guns play a part as well is ridiculous.
She hopes people will attend the rally on Saturday. More so, she hopes people will listen, including the governor, who she is demanding put the issue to a vote of the people.
"Three months ago, it was my child," Rodriguez said. "Tomorrow it could be yours."
A Texas House report found there were 376 law enforcement officers on the scene, including 150 U.S. Border Patrol Agents, 91 Texas Department of Public Safety troopers, 25 Uvalde police officers, 16 sheriff's deputies, and five Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District officers.
People attend a rally for Gustavo Petro in Cali, Colombia. (photo: Ernesto Guzmán Jr./EPA)
Defence minister says shift in strategy aims to protect civilians, including children forced to join rebel groups.
Defence Minister Ivan Velasquez told reporters on Thursday that the move was a symbol of the government’s willingness to engage in possible talks with armed groups.
It marks a shift in Colombia’s strategy against leftist rebels and drug-trafficking gangs amid a recent uptick in violence, especially in remote parts of the country.
“The bombings must be suspended. We’re going to evaluate the specific moment in which an absolute guideline can be established, but that is the direction we want to take,” Velasquez said.
“Children forcibly recruited by illegal groups are victims of this violence,” he added. “Therefore no military action with respect to illegal armed organisations can endanger the lives of these victims.
“We have to privilege life over death and cannot carry out operations … that put at risk the lives of the civilian population.”
The bombing of rebel camps has been a contentious topic in Colombia, where a brutal civil conflict raged for nearly six decades and left more than 450,000 people dead.
In 2019, then-Defence Minister Guillermo Botero resigned after eight forcibly-recruited children aged 12 to 17 were killed in a military raid against dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group.
Two years later, a left-wing legislator claimed four children were killed in a bombing operation to take out a leader of the National Liberation Army (ELN).
Since President Gustavo Petro — an ex-rebel fighter himself — was elected in June, the new government has focused on changing the tactics used by the military, demanding that they show more respect for human rights and act in defence of peace.
Rebel groups have long recruited children to boost their ranks, particularly in areas with little state presence.
The Colombian government signed a peace deal with the FARC in 2016, but dissident members of the group rejected that agreement and refused to lay down their weapons.
Meanwhile, the ELN — the country’s largest remaining armed group — insisted on Twitter that its central command has enough authority over fractured fighting units to negotiate a genuine peace with the government.
Petro has said he intends to negotiate with rebels in a bid to bring an end to the conflict.
“Petro is motivated to implement his vision for ‘total peace,'” the Colombia Risk Analysis consulting firm wrote on Twitter on Thursday evening. “His demobilization experience along with strong pressures from his base will likely be a strong influence on his desire to achieve success in the peace process during his term.”
Dolphins. (photo: iStock)
The finding highlights how scientists are discovering the enduring consequences linked to the unprecedented April 2010 disaster.
The discovery highlights how scientists are discovering the enduring consequences linked to the unprecedented April 2010 disaster, which released an estimated 210 million gallons of crude oil off the Louisiana coast and killed 11 people. It is also estimated to have killed more than 80,000 birds and almost 26,000 marine mammals.
The study focused on dolphins in the heavily polluted Barataria Bay near New Orleans, and used blood tests to compare these dolphins to those living in the less contaminated waters of Sarasota Bay, Florida.
The researchers subsequently discovered gene expression changes in the Barataria Bay dolphin population, including genes involved in immunity, inflammation, reproductive failure, lung issues and cardiac dysfunction. The results were published in the journal PLoS ONE.
These changes align with previously documented health effects, said co-author Sylvain De Guise, a professor in the pathobiology department at the University of Connecticut. He also co-authored another study that found the Barataria Bay dolphin population has declined by 45 percent since the disaster. In an assessment of dolphins that lived through the oil spill, De Guise and his colleagues found nearly 80 percent still experience some form of ill health, with lung disease the most common issue.
This new study leveraged data collected from dolphin health evaluations conducted between 2013 and 2018. The team analyzed blood drawn from 60 dolphins from Barataria Bay and 16 from Sarasota Bay and looked for molecular differences through a process called gene expression profiling. This method is a novel way of understanding an organism’s health because it has the potential to enable early detection of illness and is easier to perform than traditional catch-and-release veterinary assessments.
The dual purpose of this study was to test and refine this method while attempting to understand the underlying causes of the health consequences suffered by Barataria Bay dolphins. In the future, the study team is hopeful this method can help pinpoint which marine mammals are at risk of disease.
“We can say dolphin populations are experiencing effects, but we don’t really know what underlies the disease and dysfunction we’re seeing,” said first author Jeanine Morey, a research biologist who worked with the National Marine Mammal Foundation at the time of the study. “Through this molecular work, we’re starting to understand the root of the problem.”
Various triggers can cause changes in gene expression, she said. Gene expression changes, in turn, prompt the body’s response. Because factors like water temperature can also cause a change in gene expression, comparing the Barataria Bay dolphins to the Sarasota Bay dolphins helped the team pinpoint exposure to oil contamination as a defining difference between the two groups.
Further, because of the earlier studies evaluating the health of Barataria Bay dolphins since the spill, the team could identify which dolphins in their cohort were exposed to oil and which were born after the event. They found that the significant differences they observed primarily stemmed from the dolphins that lived through the disaster.
However, younger dolphins aren’t necessarily in the clear. Some of the most pronounced differences observed in the Barataria Bay group link to genes related to the immune system. An earlier study found these dolphins experienced issues with their immune system as recently as in 2018, and subsequent laboratory tests on dolphin cells and mice suggested these immune differences could be passed down to future generations. Changes to the immune system increase the susceptibility to infectious diseases, which can also affect the dolphin’s reproductive success.
“The Barataria Bay bottlenose dolphin population is not doing very well,” De Guise said. “If recovery is underway, it would be at its very beginning and would be contingent on no additional stressors.”
A stoppage of stressors is unlikely. A study released in August found traces of the Deepwater Horizon spill are still detectable, and new drilling and flood protection plans are expected to result in the deaths of Barataria Bay dolphins if they move forward as planned. Even smaller human-made problems continue to interrupt dolphin life.
“When we went out on these health assessments, we would find dolphins entangled in fishing lines and nets,” Morey said. “It is very tough to see these animals suffering.”
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