Month: August 2023

Polar bears have long symbolized the dangers posed by climate change, as rising temperatures melt away the Arctic sea ice which they depend upon for survival. 

But quantifying the impact of a single oil well or coal power plant on the tundra predators had eluded scientists, until now. 

A new report published in the journal Science on Thursday shows it is possible to calculate how much new greenhouse gas emissions will increase the number of ice-free days in the bears’ habitats, and how that in turn will affect the percentage of cubs that reach adulthood. 

By achieving this level of granularity, the two authors hope to close a loophole in U.S. law.  

Although the apex carnivores have had endangered species protections since 2008, a long-standing legal opinion prevents climate considerations from affecting decisions on whether to grant permits to new fossil fuel projects. 

“We have presented the information necessary to rescind the Bernhardt Memo,” first co-author Steven Amstrup, a zoologist with Polar Bears International and the University of Wyoming, told AFP, referring to the legal caveat which was named after an attorney in former president George W. Bush’s administration. 

The memo stated it was beyond the scope of existing science to distinguish the impacts of a specific source of carbon emissions from the impacts of all greenhouse gases since the beginning of the industrial age. 

Cub survival imperiled 

Polar bears rely heavily on the sea ice environment for hunting seals, traveling, mating and more. 

When sea ice melts in summer, the apex carnivores retreat onto land or unproductive ice far from the shore, where they endure long stretches of fasting. These periods are growing longer as global temperatures rise. 

A landmark paper published in Nature in 2020 was the first to calculate links between changes in the sea ice caused by climate and polar bear demographics. 

Building on this work, Amstrup and Bitz established the mathematical relationships between greenhouse emissions and fasting days as well as cub survival, in 15 out of 19 of the polar bears’ subpopulations, between 1979 and 2020. 

For example, the world currently emits 50 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide or equivalent gases into the atmosphere annually, and that is reducing the rate of cub survival by over three percentage points per year in the South Beaufort Sea subpopulation. 

In healthy populations, cub survival during the first year of life is around 65 percent. 

“You don’t have to knock that down very far before you don’t have enough cubs entering the next generation,” said Amstrup. 

In addition, the paper provides U.S. policymakers the tools they need to quantify the impact of new fossil fuel projects slated to occur on public lands in the coming decades. 

Implications for other species 

Joel Berger, university chair of wildlife conservation at Colorado State University, praised the paper. 

“Amstrup and Bitz render an incontrovertible quantitative link among (greenhouse gas) emissions, sea ice decline, fasting duration — a physiological response to lost hunting opportunities for seals — and subsequent polar bear demographics — declining recruitment of young,” said Berger, who was not involved in the research. 

Beyond providing a potential policy solution to the legal loophole, the new research could have implications that reach far beyond polar bears, second co-author Cecilia Bitz, a climatologist at the University of Washington, told AFP. 

Methods laid out in the paper can be adapted for other species and habitats, such as coral reefs, or Florida’s Key deer.  

“I really hope this stimulates a lot of research,” Bitz said, adding she was already reaching out to new collaborators. 

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Russia has been using sham websites to obtain the personal information of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and their family members, U.S. defense officials say, in what they believe is an attempt to detain the family members who are living in occupied Ukraine and deport them to Russia.

Two U.S. defense officials say a Russian information warfare unit has created at least two phishing websites, WarTears.org and ForeignCombatants.ru, that are posing as support websites for friends and family members of missing, captured or fallen Ukrainian soldiers.

Petro Yatsenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, confirmed to VOA that the two websites are scams. He said there are dozens of similar phishing websites that try to collect data from the families.

“They exploit the extremely vulnerable relatives and loved ones of missing or captured servicemen … [using] the fact that Russia does not provide Ukraine with information about those they hold in captivity,” Yatsenko told VOA. “Relatives hope that their loved one is not dead but is imprisoned, so they provide their personal data.”

One of the websites, WarTears.org, claims to have records of more than 170,000 Ukrainian soldiers in its database.

U.S. defense officials say they believe that Russia is using the names, phone numbers and addresses of Ukrainians obtained through these sites to determine whether any of the soldiers and their family members are living inside Russian-occupied territories.

Those living in occupied territories can be found, screened, detained and deported to Russia, according to the officials.

“That’s quite alarming,” said retired U.S. Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton, who spent more than two decades as an intelligence officer, “but it also shows the thoroughness of their [Russia’s] data collection capabilities and their willingness to exploit these vulnerabilities.”

Last September, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said estimates from a range of sources, including the Russian government, indicated that Russian authorities have interrogated and forcibly deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainians. Russia has denied the claim.

Watch related video by Lesia Bakalets:

Yatsenko said Russia’s FSB, the main successor of the Soviet Union’s KGB security agency, has used the personal information obtained from sites like these to extort information about Ukrainian POWs.

“By providing such information, people may unknowingly worsen the situation of their loved ones who are in captivity,” he said.

Applying personal pressure on people is a “very typical” Russian tactic used since Stalinist times, Leighton said.

“This is a refinement to that. This is definitely taking it to a new level,” he told VOA.

The sites were believed to have been created shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. U.S. defense officials say they became aware of the two sites this summer.

Not all of the phishing sites identified by the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine are from the Russian government, according to Yatsenko. Some of the fake websites are created by fraudsters trying to extort money from Ukrainians in a vulnerable position.

“They promise communication, delivery of parcels, and then engage in blackmail, saying the prisoner will be beaten if relatives don’t send money,” he said. “In 99% of cases, behind these channels are people who have no relation to the prisoners and have zero information about them.”

To find out more information on missing family members, Yatsenko said, Ukrainians should contact only official government sources. The Ukrainian government’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War can be reached at +38 (044) 390 43 90 or 0 800 300 529, Monday-Friday between the local hours of 0900-1700.

Ukrainian troops using Android mobile devices are coming under attack from Russian hackers, who are using a new kind of malware to try to steal information critical to the ongoing counteroffensive.

Cyber officials from the United States, along with counterparts from Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, issued a warning Thursday about the malware, named Infamous Chisel, which aims to scan files, monitor communications and “periodically steal sensitive information.”

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, describes the new malware as “a collection of components which enable persistent access to an infected Android device … which periodically collates and exfiltrates victim information.”

 

A CISA report published Thursday shared additional technical details about the Russian campaign, with officials warning the malware could be employed against other targets.

Thursday’s warning reflects “the need for all organizations to keep their Shields Up to detect and mitigate Russian cyber activity, and the importance of continued focus on maintaining operational resilience under all conditions,” said Eric Goldstein, CISA executive assistant director for cybersecurity, in a statement.

According to the report by the U.S. and its allies, the malware is designed to persist on a system by replacing legitimate coding with other coding from outside the system that is not directly attached to the malware itself.

It also said the malware’s components are of “low to medium sophistication and appear to have been developed with little regard to defense evasion or concealment of malicious activity.”

Ukraine’s SBU security agency first discovered the Russian malware earlier in August, saying it was being used to “gain access to the combat data exchange system of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

Ukrainian officials said at the time they were able to launch defensive cyber operations to expose and block the Russian efforts.

An SBU investigation determined that Russia was able to launch the malware attack after capturing Ukrainian computer tablets on the battlefield.

Ukraine attributed the attack to a cyber threat actor known as Sandworm, which U.S. and British officials have previously linked to the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service.

As Nigeria joined a growing number of nations criticizing Africa’s latest coup, this time in Gabon, experts said Thursday that democracy is endangered on the continent because elected leaders are failing to deliver.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who also is chair of the West African regional bloc ECOWAS, is monitoring the development in Gabon with deep concern, presidential spokesman Ajuri Ngelale said.

Tinubu is worried about the seeming “autocratic contagion” spreading in Africa and is working with world leaders and the African Union to resolve it, Ngelale said.

Senior military men on Wednesday ousted Gabonese leader Ali Bongo Ondimba shortly after he was declared the winner of last week’s controversial presidential election. He is now under house arrest. In a video on social media, Bongo asked his allies to “make some noise” about his removal.

The junta also annulled the elections, dissolved state institutions and closed the country’s borders.

“Power belongs in the hands of Africa’s great people and not in the barrels of a loaded gun,” Ngelale said. “The president affirms that the rule of law … must not at any time be allowed to perish from our great continent.”

Gabon’s coup d’etat is the eighth in Africa since August 2020 and comes one month after a military standoff in Niger that regional bloc ECOWAS is struggling to resolve.

The latest coup, which the African Union condemned, raises concerns about the fading of the rule of law in Africa.

Coups are becoming more rampant because African leaders have failed to deliver quality democratic leadership, said Rotimi Olawale, an Abuja-based political affairs analyst.

“While ECOWAS and the African Union have a standing reaction on the coup in the continent,” Olawale said, “what the bodies need to do beyond response to coups is also to sort of subject the democratic credentials of its member states to a peer review mechanism. If democracy is not working for the people, they will seek alternative means of governance that will deliver for them. And many are not delivering.”

Emmanuel Njoku, director of democracy and governance at Connected Development, a nonprofit civil society group based in Abuja, predicted more coups in the coming months.

“Democracy globally is being threatened,” he said. “But for Africa in particular, the kind of democracy we see in Africa, cases where you see dictatorial democrats in power, I’m not very surprised that these things are happening. I don’t think this is the end to it. We should be expecting more.”

In 2009, Ali Bongo took over the reins of power from his father, who had ruled the country for 42 years before his death. Bongo also amended the country’s constitution to allow himself a third term in office.

On Wednesday, hundreds of people marched in Gabon’s capital, Libreville, celebrating the coup and saying they have been liberated from Bongo’s dynasty.

“This is an oil-producing country, yet the people are so poor,” said Connected Development’s Njoku. “If you look at it realistically, it is actually liberation for the people of Gabon [after] having one family at the helm of affairs for so long. And we understand that this president was already preparing his son to take over from him when he gets old.”

Amid global condemnation, Gabon’s junta named General Brice Nguema as the country’s transitional leader. The French news agency reported he will be sworn in on Monday.

Ukrainian troops using Android mobile devices are coming under attack from Russian hackers, who are using a new kind of malware to try to steal information critical to the ongoing counteroffensive.

Cyber officials from the United States, along with counterparts from Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, issued a warning Thursday about the malware, named Infamous Chisel, which aims to scan files, monitor communications and “periodically steal sensitive information.”

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, describes the new malware as “a collection of components which enable persistent access to an infected Android device … which periodically collates and exfiltrates victim information.”

 

A CISA report published Thursday shared additional technical details about the Russian campaign, with officials warning the malware could be employed against other targets.

Thursday’s warning reflects “the need for all organizations to keep their Shields Up to detect and mitigate Russian cyber activity, and the importance of continued focus on maintaining operational resilience under all conditions,” said Eric Goldstein, CISA executive assistant director for cybersecurity, in a statement.

According to the report by the U.S. and its allies, the malware is designed to persist on a system by replacing legitimate coding with other coding from outside the system that is not directly attached to the malware itself.

It also said the malware’s components are of “low to medium sophistication and appear to have been developed with little regard to defense evasion or concealment of malicious activity.”

Ukraine’s SBU security agency first discovered the Russian malware earlier in August, saying it was being used to “gain access to the combat data exchange system of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

Ukrainian officials said at the time they were able to launch defensive cyber operations to expose and block the Russian efforts.

An SBU investigation determined that Russia was able to launch the malware attack after capturing Ukrainian computer tablets on the battlefield.

Ukraine attributed the attack to a cyber threat actor known as Sandworm, which U.S. and British officials have previously linked to the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service.

The United States is accusing North Korea and Russia of working towards a deal to supply Russia with more weapons. Mourners go to Prigozhin’s grave in St. Petersburg and Ukrainian refugees are going to a job fair in Denver. Plus, it looks like Ukraine will have a new Minister of Defense soon.

Give us 5 minutes, and we’ll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we’ll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Former U.S. president Donald Trump pleaded not guilty Thursday to allegations that he illegally tried to upend his 2020 election loss in the southern state of Georgia. He also waived his scheduled arraignment in the case that had been set for next week.

That means Trump, one of 19 defendants in the racketeering and election interference case, won’t have to show up before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee for an initial court appearance in Atlanta in the coming days. No trial date has been set in the case, but it is likely to be months from now.

Several of Trump’s co-defendants have also pleaded not guilty and waived their right to a formal arraignment.

Trump last week flew from his golf resort in New Jersey to Atlanta to surrender at the Fulton County Jail and be arrested and booked on 13 charges. While there, he was fingerprinted and became the first former president to have his mug shot taken.

Trump, the leading 2024 Republican presidential candidate, has since used the sullen, unsmiling photo of himself on T-shirts, coffee cups and other campaign paraphernalia to raise money. He has captioned the photo, “Never Surrender,” even though he now has surrendered in four criminal cases he is facing.

Trump critics are also selling campaign bric-a-brac with the mug shot, captioning theirs with his inmate number, P01135809.

The Georgia case centers on Trump’s taped January 2021 phone call to state election officials asking them to “find” him 11,780 votes, one more than Democrat Joe Biden’s margin of victory, so Trump could claim victory in the state. 

In addition, Trump is accused to scheming to create a slate of 16 electors from Georgia claiming he won the state rather than the legitimate ones favoring Biden.

In the U.S., the presidency is not decided by the national popular vote but rather in the Electoral College, with 50 state-by-state elections in which the largest states hold the most sway in the Electoral College vote count to determine the presidential outcome.