Sunday, April 03, 2022
April 3, 2022
By Gabriel Greschler
Temperatures in parts of the Bay Area (click here) could reach the low 90s toward the end of the coming week, according to the National Weather Service.
The high pressure system that is currently heading east over the Pacific Ocean will reach the region on Wednesday, with the highest temperatures expected Thursday and then tapering off into the weekend. Parts of the East Bay, including Livermore and Concord, as well as the Santa Clara Valley, will experience the highest temperatures that could reach 94 degrees, NWS meteorologist Brooke Bingaman said.
Areas along the coast and the Bay will get slightly less hot, with downtown San Francisco and Oakland expecting temperatures in the mid to low 80s on Thursday.
While the heat may not break any records, Bingaman called the event an “anomaly,” with temperatures in the region reaching 15 to 25 degrees higher than what is considered normal for this time of year.....
April 1, 2022
By Paul Rogers
Stressed by high temperatures (click here) and a record run of dry weather over the last three months, the Sierra Nevada snowpack, the source of 30% of the state’s water supply, has hit one of its lowest levels for the end of winter in generations.
With state water officials scheduled to conduct a snow survey Friday near Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort, automatic sensors spread across the vast mountain range showed snow levels were just 39% of normal on Wednesday. The measurements were the latest evidence that California’s three-year drought is growing more severe.
From a water-supply standpoint, the April 1 Sierra snow reading is traditionally considered the most important of the year. Very little snow falls after April 1, so water planners at cities, farms and wildlife agencies are able to assess how much is available for the summer ahead.
By comparison, on April 1 last year, the snowpack was 62% of normal. Going back to 1950, only five times has there been less snow on April 1 than this year, all of them during major droughts — in 2015 (5% of normal), 2014 (25%), 1988 (29%), 1977 (25%) and 1976 (37%)....
By Gabriel Greschler
Temperatures in parts of the Bay Area (click here) could reach the low 90s toward the end of the coming week, according to the National Weather Service.
The high pressure system that is currently heading east over the Pacific Ocean will reach the region on Wednesday, with the highest temperatures expected Thursday and then tapering off into the weekend. Parts of the East Bay, including Livermore and Concord, as well as the Santa Clara Valley, will experience the highest temperatures that could reach 94 degrees, NWS meteorologist Brooke Bingaman said.
Areas along the coast and the Bay will get slightly less hot, with downtown San Francisco and Oakland expecting temperatures in the mid to low 80s on Thursday.
While the heat may not break any records, Bingaman called the event an “anomaly,” with temperatures in the region reaching 15 to 25 degrees higher than what is considered normal for this time of year.....
By Paul Rogers
Stressed by high temperatures (click here) and a record run of dry weather over the last three months, the Sierra Nevada snowpack, the source of 30% of the state’s water supply, has hit one of its lowest levels for the end of winter in generations.
With state water officials scheduled to conduct a snow survey Friday near Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort, automatic sensors spread across the vast mountain range showed snow levels were just 39% of normal on Wednesday. The measurements were the latest evidence that California’s three-year drought is growing more severe.
From a water-supply standpoint, the April 1 Sierra snow reading is traditionally considered the most important of the year. Very little snow falls after April 1, so water planners at cities, farms and wildlife agencies are able to assess how much is available for the summer ahead.
By comparison, on April 1 last year, the snowpack was 62% of normal. Going back to 1950, only five times has there been less snow on April 1 than this year, all of them during major droughts — in 2015 (5% of normal), 2014 (25%), 1988 (29%), 1977 (25%) and 1976 (37%)....
More genocide discovered. Russians dug mass graves. One believed to have up to 300 people in it.
They just killed them. They killed at will. The elderly, children, men and women that were Ukrainian civilans. They slaughtered them and buried them together. The scene leading to those mass graves had to the worst horror the world has ever witnessed.
Regardless of the resistence, the decision by the World Court, Putin's military is carrying out genocide. The pentagon and NATO command needs to find a solution. Please. Soon.
Trump was hoping to make a spectical of Hunter Biden to cause the election to go his way.
I suppose the US Justine Department has to look into it, but, the government was nearly over thrown by the very man bugging US Justice Department to continue to the investigation to Hunter Biden rather than Donald John Trump. Maybe, US Justice can realize there are judges in the real world upholding the charges against Trump that he was a really lousy American once he got into the power of the White House.
If this baloney about Hunter Biden goes on much longer without a reasonable conclusion, then it is harassment and perhaps President Biden needs to write a pardon for Hunter for the pure idea of clearing the investigations of the US Justice Department about that and get on with what occurred on January 6th.
As far as Mrs. Clarence Thomas goes.
Who knew?
The right extremism under Trump's mentoring is full of suprises and Mrs. Clarence Thomas is the latest.
I don't know how she justifies all of her involvement in the chaos in the White House and her willingness to be involved in January 6th, but, is money worth the USA Constitution?
Basically, that is how I see the Trump years. Everything possible was being done to allow million - billionaires to keep their money and never pay another dime of taxes. Not only that but to deregulate everything and damn the citizens, they have to fight their own fight against big business and profit taking with the poorest caught in the middle.
Mrs. Clarence Thomas was a John Birch Society graduate (click here).
She had a real thing about abortion. But, what completes boggles me is how does a woman that opposes abortion justify over throwing the USA Consitution? She wasn't even up against another political party, she was WILLING to entertain the dissolving of the results of a free and fair election as perscribed by the USA Consittuion. So, she can't even say she rather Republicans to Democracts, it was way beyond that.
So, to Mrs. Clarence Thoms I say, "Hey, Virginia, it is time to get real and realize your bread is buttered with freedom and democracy, not, Donald Trump tax cuts."
So, let's cut to the chase.
Basically, Russia is a third world country really bummed out about not being the Soviet Union. It has some capacity to be a little westernized in the methods of capitalism. That capitalism started with earlier administrations that attempted to bring countries like China and Russia to the world stage so they could have better quality of life for their people. That was always the hopes of the USA and NATO. None of the free world is interested in war, they are mostlyinterested in a peaceful and prosperous life as defined by freedom and democracy.
Trying to get Russia and China to address human rights abuses is futile, ie: Navalny. Everytime Vladimir Putin appears to be threatened by westernized ideas such as free and fair elections the opponents are ostracized and made to serve Putin's paradyme of jail and/or death of his opponents.
There is no way Russia is going to break out of this cycle of inhumane treatment of it's citizens as the Russian people want free and fair elections. It isn't going to happen, although with all those young Russian men in graves now or left behind on the battlefields in Ukriane, there might be something that gets shaken up. This time the Russian people, having been deceived and their young men dead, there might be something they can do about Putin.
The oligarchs, like the one that Moscow Mitch enjoys so much, are not independent of Russia. They all answer to Putin. They are "in place" to give The West the idea that the elite of Russia is wildly successful and wealthy. Basically, the oligarchs are state assets serving at the pleasure of Putin. So much for Wall Street successes.
Ukraine is a magnificent country with a young leader that was elected to protect democracy and clean up corruption. As President Zelensky was successfully ending corruption, which also means Russian influence, Putin decides that is not in the best interset of the motherland and invades without any clear understanding by the peopel of Russia. He expected the invasion into Ukraine a cakewalk, however, the Chernobyl thing puzzles me. If he believed this would an easy defeat of the Ukrainian government and miltiary, what is with Chernobyl on the first day of the invasion. This was not a month into the invasion, but, the first day.
I think the world needs to take a realistic look at Russia and it's satellite Belarus and decide they are not the countries we thought they were, but, more countries hanging on to the past with little interest in human rights.
So, what does the future hold. I think there will be a lot of surprises from this invasion that the world did not expect as if it isn't bad enough already. I still believe after President Biden successfully took the presidency and Trump was no longer a Putin puppet, that caused Putin to move more quickly into Ukraine. I still believe Russia and China believe they have the international warring upper hand because of all the cooperation from Trump. Basically, it is now or never and they would love to end The West's democracies.
All is not happy in Belarus, either.
By Max Bearak
Fighters of the Belarusian “Kastus Kalinouski Battalion,” from left: Konstantin Suschik, Pavel Kulazhanka and Siarhei Bespalau in Kyiv on March 30.
Kyiv - For more than a decade, (click here) Pavel Kulazhanka has sought to overthrow the authoritarian regime of Alexander Lukashenko in his native Belarus.
First, it was simple street protests. Then, sabotaging train lines and bombing military outposts. Eventually, he had to flee — and landed in New York City, where he became a mixed martial arts fighter.
But he thinks the best shot yet at toppling Lukashenko — and Russian President Vladimir Putin, without whose support many in Belarus think Lukashenko would quickly fall — has come with the war in Ukraine.
He is one of hundreds of Belarusians who have joined the fight here, inspired by their neighbor’s battlefield successes and determined to carry that momentum back into Belarus to end Lukashenko’s 28-year rule.
Many of them have joined the “Kastus Kalinouski Battalion,” named after the leader of Belarus’s insurrection against Russia in the 1860s. It is made up of Belarusians taking advantage of Ukraine’s wartime decision to allow foreigners to serve in the ranks of its armed forces, though not as officers. A dozen recruits interviewed by The Washington Post described their sense of common cause between Ukraine and Belarus’s pro-democracy movements....
First, it was simple street protests. Then, sabotaging train lines and bombing military outposts. Eventually, he had to flee — and landed in New York City, where he became a mixed martial arts fighter.
But he thinks the best shot yet at toppling Lukashenko — and Russian President Vladimir Putin, without whose support many in Belarus think Lukashenko would quickly fall — has come with the war in Ukraine.
He is one of hundreds of Belarusians who have joined the fight here, inspired by their neighbor’s battlefield successes and determined to carry that momentum back into Belarus to end Lukashenko’s 28-year rule.
Many of them have joined the “Kastus Kalinouski Battalion,” named after the leader of Belarus’s insurrection against Russia in the 1860s. It is made up of Belarusians taking advantage of Ukraine’s wartime decision to allow foreigners to serve in the ranks of its armed forces, though not as officers. A dozen recruits interviewed by The Washington Post described their sense of common cause between Ukraine and Belarus’s pro-democracy movements....
The evidence is conclusive.
Now the Russians are bombing Odessa. This is happening in real time in the year 2022. This is a horror.
By Jeanine Santucci, Katie Wadington, David Jackson and Jorge L. Ortiz
Ukrainians returning to Kyiv (click here) as Russian forces pulled out over the weekend found a shocking trail of destruction and death, including slain civilians lying on the streets with their hands bound.
Iryna Venediktova, Ukraine’s prosecutor-general, said on Facebook that the bodies of 410 civilians were removed from Kyiv-area towns that were recently retaken from Russian forces.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said scores of the dead were found on the streets of Bucha – about 35 miles northwest of Kyiv – and the Kyiv suburbs of Irpin and Hostomel in what looked like a “scene from a horror movie.”
Arestovych said some people were shot in the head and had their hands bound, and some bodies showed signs of torture, rape and burning. Bucha Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk told Agence France-Presse that 280 people had been buried in mass graves in the city, and reporters from the news organization counted at least 20 bodies on one street....
What is this Belarus thing?
Basically, Belarus is a Russian possession. Legally it has it's own borders, etc. But, Putin runs the place. Like the good 'ole days of the Soviet Union.
June 4, 2020
By Andrei Makhofsky
Alexander Lukashenko standing with Vladimir Putin and Leonid Kuchma at the Slavic Bazaar in Vitebsk in 2001
Minsk - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko (click here) named a former diplomat omat who had been overseeing the defence industry as prime minister on Thursday, two months before a presidential election which poses his biggest political challenge in years.
Roman Golovchenko, who was previously head of the state military-industrial committee, replaces Sergei Rumas, who was dismissed with his entire government on Wednesday after less than two years in office.
The appointment of a man with experience in the defence sector is intended to consolidate power and signals Lukashanko’s readiness to get tough if necessary to hold on to power, political analysts said.
“Today is not the time for breaking things. It’s not even time to build,” said Lukashenko, who portrays himself as a guarantor of stability. “Today it is necessary to save what has already been built.”...
Roman Golovchenko, who was previously head of the state military-industrial committee, replaces Sergei Rumas, who was dismissed with his entire government on Wednesday after less than two years in office.
The appointment of a man with experience in the defence sector is intended to consolidate power and signals Lukashanko’s readiness to get tough if necessary to hold on to power, political analysts said.
“Today is not the time for breaking things. It’s not even time to build,” said Lukashenko, who portrays himself as a guarantor of stability. “Today it is necessary to save what has already been built.”...
"A hole in the water you dump money into."
That is the statement of a friend about his boat. Boats, yachts and ships are very expensive to maintain and in the case of yachts and ships they have a crew.
Some folks are completely fascinated with the confiscation of the Superyachts. Correctly, they worry the yachts could become an expense to the countries of NATO. I will say this Abramovich is the peace negotiator for Russia. There must be a reason, such as, the Russians really want their yachts back.
For that reason, NATO should consider selling the yachts at auction with the proceeds going into a trust for the people of Ukraine. It will help defray some of the costs. Seriously. NATO can do as it please with the behemoths and secure some monies for Urkaine in the process. The Putin oligarchs may want to buy them back in rubles. Fine. We can confiscate them the second time, too.
April 3, 2022By Sam Tabahriti and Grace Kay
Russian billionaires (click here) have been the target of Western countries' sanctions amid Russia's war in Ukraine but their yacht crews could also inadvertently suffer.
One of the earliest sanctions imposed on Russia was expulsion from the SWIFT payments system. The action was taken by the US, EU, UK, Canada, and other Western allies.
Mitch Thomas, head of product development at a New York-based fintech company, FinLync, told Insider that Russia has got "a number of different routes" they can use to try and navigate around the ban....
Dirty bomb ingredients go missing from Chornobyl monitoring lab
I told you so. The lab was broken into the first day. It was a target the Russians regarded as important. The question is why? And who? Where are the people that were taking care of the lab in the absense of most of the other scientists? There is no way of knowing exactly who has custody of the contents of the lab or any other aspect of Chernobyl. The world has a real problem.
At one point in history, yellowcake became an issue, although it was proven that all inventories were intact (click here) and never was it in Iraq. This is something different now. This is actual theft.
The Russians evacuated Chernobyl and the city of Chornobyl. They went into Belarus. Where did they go after crossing the border? Who did they take the nuclear supplies to and are the two scientists from the lab in Belarus? All these facts need to be presented to the IAEA and the international nuclear regulatory reporting agencies. Is Victor Orban now in possession of all these elements of the theft?
By Richard Stone
Russian invaders (click here) looted and destroyed the modern Central Analytical Laboratory, located in the exclusion zone around the Chornobyl nuclear power plant (NPP). The total cost of the laboratory is EUR 6 million.
When the lights went out at Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant on 9 March, (click here) the Russian soldiers holding Ukrainian workers at gunpoint became the least of Anatolii Nosovskyi’s worries. More urgent was the possibility of a radiation accident at the decommissioned plant. If the plant’s emergency generators ran out of fuel, the ventilators that keep explosive hydrogen gas from building up inside a spent nuclear fuel repository would quit working, says Nosovskyi, director of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv. So would sensors and automated systems to suppress radioactive dust inside a concrete “sarcophagus” that holds the unsettled remains of Chornobyl’s Unit Four reactor, which melted down in the infamous 1986 accident.
Although power was restored to Chornobyl on 14 March, Nosovskyi’s worries have multiplied. In the chaos of the Russian advance, he told Science, looters raided a radiation monitoring lab in Chornobyl village—apparently making off with radioactive isotopes used to calibrate instruments and pieces of radioactive waste that could be mixed with conventional explosives to form a “dirty bomb” that would spread contamination over a wide area. ISPNPP has a separate lab in Chornobyl with even more dangerous materials: “powerful sources of gamma and neutron radiation” used to test devices, Nosovskyi says, as well as intensely radioactive samples of material leftover from the Unit Four meltdown. Nosovskyi has lost contact with the lab, he says, so “the fate of these sources is unknown to us.”
The drama at Chornobyl began on 24 February, the very first day of the invasion. At 5 a.m., as Russian troops poured across Ukraine’s border with Belarus—just 15 kilometers from Chornobyl—ISPNPP managers were ordered to evacuate most staff, who monitor the safety of the plant, provide technical support for decommissioning, and develop protocols for managing radioactive waste in the off-limits “exclusion zone” surrounding Chornobyl. Within 2 hours, 67 had cleared out; two who live in Chornobyl village stayed behind to keep an eye on the institute’s lab. “We’ve lost contact with these brave people,” says ISPNPP senior scientist Maxim Saveliev....
When the lights went out at Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant on 9 March, (click here) the Russian soldiers holding Ukrainian workers at gunpoint became the least of Anatolii Nosovskyi’s worries. More urgent was the possibility of a radiation accident at the decommissioned plant. If the plant’s emergency generators ran out of fuel, the ventilators that keep explosive hydrogen gas from building up inside a spent nuclear fuel repository would quit working, says Nosovskyi, director of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv. So would sensors and automated systems to suppress radioactive dust inside a concrete “sarcophagus” that holds the unsettled remains of Chornobyl’s Unit Four reactor, which melted down in the infamous 1986 accident.
Although power was restored to Chornobyl on 14 March, Nosovskyi’s worries have multiplied. In the chaos of the Russian advance, he told Science, looters raided a radiation monitoring lab in Chornobyl village—apparently making off with radioactive isotopes used to calibrate instruments and pieces of radioactive waste that could be mixed with conventional explosives to form a “dirty bomb” that would spread contamination over a wide area. ISPNPP has a separate lab in Chornobyl with even more dangerous materials: “powerful sources of gamma and neutron radiation” used to test devices, Nosovskyi says, as well as intensely radioactive samples of material leftover from the Unit Four meltdown. Nosovskyi has lost contact with the lab, he says, so “the fate of these sources is unknown to us.”
The drama at Chornobyl began on 24 February, the very first day of the invasion. At 5 a.m., as Russian troops poured across Ukraine’s border with Belarus—just 15 kilometers from Chornobyl—ISPNPP managers were ordered to evacuate most staff, who monitor the safety of the plant, provide technical support for decommissioning, and develop protocols for managing radioactive waste in the off-limits “exclusion zone” surrounding Chornobyl. Within 2 hours, 67 had cleared out; two who live in Chornobyl village stayed behind to keep an eye on the institute’s lab. “We’ve lost contact with these brave people,” says ISPNPP senior scientist Maxim Saveliev....
Exactly. Whoever raided the lab in Chornobyl village does not want to be known. I sincerely doubt those two brave people are still alive. If they are, then they are kidnapped to monitor and care for the items stolen.
Continued from previous entry.
For some reason, Russia allowed someone the right to steal nuclear capacity from the Chernobyl site. This is the way the Russian are. They don't care about nuclear accidents or radiation. To the Putin Russians, such problems are not problems so much facts of life. These reactors were built long before Putin was ever conidered for any significant leadership in Russia. He knows nothing about nuclear reactors.
By Marianne Guenot
A radiation monitoring lab (click here) near the Chernobyl nuclear site was looted during the Russian invasion, Ukrainian scientists from the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) told news outlets over the past week.
The consequences of the Russian invasion of the exclusion zone around the decommissioned nuclear power plant are still emerging after its forces withdrew and allowed Ukraine to recapture the area.
Chernobyl was the site of the world's worst-ever nuclear disaster in 1986. It is also not far from Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and was an early target in the Russian invasion.
Anatolii Nosovskyi, director of the ISPNPP in Kyiv, told Science that looters apparently took off with radioactive isotopes used to calibrate instruments, as well as nuclear waste left over from the 1986 nuclear accident....
This MIT.
By Jessica Hamzelou
Maxar satellite (click here) imagery closeup of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine on March 10, 2022, while Russia was occupying the area
The silver dome is the sarcophagus.
Russian troops (click here) have been bringing death and destruction to Ukraine since they invaded on February 24. But there’s a risk they could cause a nuclear accident too, according to Vadim Chumak, head of the external exposure dosimetry lab at Ukraine’s National Research Center for Radiation Medicine in the country’s capital, Kyiv.
Russia has taken control of two nuclear power plants inside Ukraine. Some reactors inside those plants have been cut off from their power sources, and radiation-monitoring devices have been disconnected, leading to concerns of a potential nuclear disaster.
“The need to prevent a nuclear accident becomes more pressing with each day that passes,” said Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in a March 23 video statement....
Russian troops (click here) have been bringing death and destruction to Ukraine since they invaded on February 24. But there’s a risk they could cause a nuclear accident too, according to Vadim Chumak, head of the external exposure dosimetry lab at Ukraine’s National Research Center for Radiation Medicine in the country’s capital, Kyiv.
Russia has taken control of two nuclear power plants inside Ukraine. Some reactors inside those plants have been cut off from their power sources, and radiation-monitoring devices have been disconnected, leading to concerns of a potential nuclear disaster.
“The need to prevent a nuclear accident becomes more pressing with each day that passes,” said Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in a March 23 video statement....
These are not words of bitternes, these are words of bravery.
I sincerely have concern for every person opposing Vladmir Putin. Every one. We have witnessed the poisoning in Europe. There is nothing to say anyone who opposes Putin is a worry.
I also believe these are true words and a very accurate assessment of Putin and Biden. As a former oligarch, he is also correct in stating no Russian oligarch is a sincere oligarch so much as an agent of Putin.
When President Biden stated Vladimir Putin must leave the presidency of Russia, it was an ethical assessment, not one of regime change. That is very accurate assessment.
Where do presidents ever get the idea that a war is going to bring citizens to the streets with flowers? A war is a war. Anything else is self delusion.
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