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Post by Admin on Feb 26, 2023 19:55:41 GMT
One year after Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine, Richard Engel is on the ground, speaking with ordinary civilians who bravely joined an underground resistance to help liberate the city of Kherson from Russian occupation.
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Post by Admin on Feb 28, 2023 4:18:01 GMT
Two sisters are stuck in the middle of the Ukrainian war and regularly say goodbye at Warsaw train station in Poland.
According to the UN, when the war began 9.6 million Ukrainians fled across the border to Poland. Roughly 2 million are still there.
That means one in seventeen people living in Poland is a Ukrainian refugee. Many are naturally reluctant to put down roots, but Poland has granted them the right to work, to attend school and to receive social benefits.
The schools are straining, with some children being remote schooled from Ukraine by choice. Speaking to refugees, most are keen to work if they can and have filled gaps in the workforce, but they long for home.
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Post by Admin on Mar 31, 2023 19:02:02 GMT
Russia's Wagner mercenary group is "suffering an enormous amount of casualties in the Bakhmut area," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told US lawmakers, describing the battle for the eastern city as a “slaughter-fest" for the Russians. CNN’s Salma Abdelaziz and David McKenzie report. #CNN #News
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2023 6:16:06 GMT
On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor in northern Ukraine—then part of the Soviet Union—exploded, sending a massive plume of radiation into the sky. Nearly four decades later, the Chernobyl Power Plant and many parts of the surrounding area remain uninhabited—by humans, at least. Animals of all kinds have thrived in humanity’s absence. Living among radiation-resistant fauna are thousands of feral dogs, many of whom are descendants of pets left behind in the speedy evacuation of the area so many years ago. As the world’s greatest nuclear disaster approaches its 40th anniversary, biologists are now taking a closer look at the animals located inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), which is about the size of Yosemite National Park, and investigating how decades of radiation exposure may have altered animals’ genomes—and even, possibly, sped up evolution. Scientists from the University of South Carolina and the National Human Genome Research Institute have begun examining the DNA of 302 feral dogs found in or around the CEZ to better understand how radiation may have altered their genomes. Their results were published in the journal Science Advances earlier this month. “Do they have mutations that they’ve acquired that allow them to live and breed successfully in this region?” co-author Elaine Ostrander, a dog genomics expert at the National Human Genome Research Institute, told The New York Times. “What challenges do they face and how have they coped genetically?” The idea of radiation speeding up natural evolution isn’t a new one. The practice of purposefully irradiating seeds in outer space to induce advantageous mutations, for example, is now a well-worn method for developing crops well-suited for a warming world. Scientists have been analyzing certain animals living within the CEZ for years, including bacteria, rodents, and even birds. One study back in 2016 found that Eastern tree frogs (Hyla orientalis), which are usually a green color, were more commonly black within the CEZ. The biologists theorize that the frogs experienced a beneficial mutation in melanin—pigments responsible for skin color—that helped ionize the surrounding radiation. This made scientists ponder: could something similar be happening to Chernobyl’s wild dogs? This new study uncovered that the feral dogs living near the Chernobyl Power Plant showed distinct genetic differences from dogs living only some 10 miles away in nearby Chernobyl City. While this may seem to heavily imply that these dogs have undergone some type of rapid mutation or evolution due to radiation exposure, this study is only a first step in proving that hypothesis. One environmental scientist, speaking with Science News, says that these studies can be tricky business, largely due to the fact that sussing out radiation-induced mutations from other effects, like inbreeding, is incredibly difficult. However, this study provides a template for further investigation into the effects of radiation on larger mammals, as the DNA of dogs roaming the Chernobyl Power Plant and nearby Chernobyl City can be compared to dogs living in non-irradiated areas. Despite a current lack of firm conclusions, the study has shown once again that an area that—by all rights—should be a wasteland has become an unparalleled scientific opportunity to understand radiation and its impact on natural evolution. www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.ade2537
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Post by Admin on May 25, 2023 3:47:38 GMT
CNN — US officials have picked up chatter amongst Ukrainian officials blaming each other for a drone attack on the Kremlin earlier this month, contributing to a US assessment that a Ukrainian group may have been responsible, sources familiar with the intelligence told CNN.
The intercepts include some members of Ukraine’s military and intelligence bureaucracy speculating that Ukrainian special operations forces conducted the operation.
The chatter, combined with other intercepted communications of Russian officials blaming Ukraine for the attack and wondering how it happened, has led US officials to consider the possibility that a Ukrainian group was behind the incident on May 3. On that morning, two drones flew up toward the Kremlin’s Senate Palace and struck the top of the building.
However, the US has not been able to reach a definitive conclusion on who was responsible and only assesses with low confidence that a Ukrainian group may have been behind the incident, officials said. US officials also still believe it is unlikely that senior Ukrainian government officials, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, ordered the attack or knew about it beforehand.
Recent US intelligence reports have assessed that Russian officials have speculated privately, as they have publicly, that Ukraine was behind the attack, leading officials to believe that the incident was likely not a state-sponsored false-flag operation intended to give Russia a pretext to further escalate its war on Ukraine.
The Kremlin has also made some internal security changes in response to the attack, one source familiar with the intelligence said, declining to go into detail. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said publicly following the episode that the city’s air defenses would be tightened.
The drones that hit the Kremlin appeared small, with a relatively light payload, which is probably why they didn’t trigger Russian air defenses, sources told CNN. It is unclear whether they would have had sufficient range to be flown from Ukraine to Moscow.
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