Images released Thursday by the Swedish Coast Guard show a large mass of methane bubbles on the sea surface emanating from the leaks.
Cautioning that it was a preliminary estimate, Bjorn Lund, director of the Swedish National Seismic Network told The Washington Post’s Ellen Francis and Meg Kelly that the strength of the larger second blast was equivalent to 100-200 kilograms (220-440 pounds) of TNT. With the consensus among European leaders that sabotage was involved, suspicion is increasingly falling on Russia, which has denied all responsibility.
Amar Nadhir, Mary Ilyushina and Isabelle Khurshudyan contributed to this report.
LONDON, Sept 29 (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Liz Truss said she would stick to her controversial plan to reignite economic growth as she broke her silence on Thursday following nearly a week of chaos in financial markets triggered by her huge tax cuts.
A day after the Bank of England resumed its bond-buying in an emergency move to protect pension funds from partial collapse, Truss blamed the upheaval on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that has caused inflation to spike around the world.
“We had to take urgent action to get our economy growing, get Britain moving, and also deal with inflation, and of course, that means taking controversial and difficult decisions,” she told BBC radio.
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“But I’m prepared to do that as prime minister because what’s important to me is that we get our economy moving.”
Truss, Britain’s 47-year-old former foreign minister, took office on Sept. 6 after winning the governing Conservative Party’s leadership contest, becoming the fourth prime minister in six turbulent years in British politics.
She defeated former finance minister Rishi Sunak by vowing to put an end to “Treasury orthodoxy” with a new economic policy that would cut taxes and regulation, funded by vast government borrowing to snap the economy out of years of stagnant growth.
She dismissed Sunak’s warnings that her plans posed a threat to Britain’s economic standing in the world as “negative, declinist language”.
But her fiscal plan, set out by finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng on Friday, triggered a crisis of confidence in the government, hammering the value of the pound and government bond prices and jolting global markets.
Ken Griffin, the U.S. billionaire founder of Citadel Securities, one of the world’s biggest market-making firms, said he was worried the damage to Britain’s reputation. “It represents the first time we’ve seen a major developed market, in a very long time, lose confidence from investors,” he said.
UNFUNDED TAX CUTS
Truss said her government would not change course.
Having set out 45 billion pounds of unfunded tax cuts, she said it would in the coming weeks spell out reforms of everything from childcare costs to immigration, planning and financial regulation. A fuller fiscal statement on Nov. 23 will detail the cost of the borrowing and measures to cut debt.
Investors and economists have said they cannot wait another eight weeks for details with borrowing costs elevated and markets volatile. As well as the risk posed to pension funds, the surge in borrowing costs has led to the withdrawal of cheaper mortgage offers and a leap in corporate lending rates.
The BoE’s intervention had an immediate impact in driving down bond yields on Wednesday, but investors still see the central bank increasing rates by at least 1.25 percentage points to 3.5% by Nov. 3, the date of its next scheduled announcement.
Some are betting on an emergency increase before then, according to the prices of rate swaps.
Rates are seen rising further to 4.5% in December and 6% by June, levels that would likely hit house prices and offset any gains from a cut in property transaction taxes that was announced last week.
Economists mostly expect a less severe pace of rate increases.
“This is the right plan,” Truss told the BBC. Asked if it was time to reverse course, she said: “No, it isn’t.”
Yields on British government bonds rose moderately on Thursday, having plunged a day earlier on the BoE’s move to temporarily buy long-dated debt and halt a gilts sell-off that threatened the country’s pension funds.
Sterling pared some earlier losses to trade down 0.5% against the dollar at $1.0797, taking its fall in September to almost 7% and its fall year-to-date to almost 20%.
Simon Wolfson, the head of major British retailer Next (NXT.L), warned that the plunge would create a second cost-of-living crisis in Britain after the surge in energy costs. He cut the group’s forecasts after a slowdown in August.
CRITIQUED BY MARKETS
Investors, businesses and consumers are now waiting for the government to announce more details of how it plans to get the economy growing more quickly, which will be key to fixing Britain’s increasingly stretched public finances.
“Every day, every week, every month, the government will now be critiqued by markets and businesses on how serious they are about growth and about their fiscal responsibility to pay back debt,” Tony Danker, director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, said late on Wednesday.
Former BoE governor Mark Carney also criticized the plan, saying the release of only a “partial budget”, without the accompanying scrutiny from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, had unnerved investors.
“It’s important to have (the budget) subject to independent and, dare I say, expert scrutiny,” Carney said.
Kwarteng and Truss must now defend their strategy, and try to calm nerves in the Conservative Party which is due to start it annual conference on Sunday.
“There is no confidence in the Truss government right now,” Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, said. “The problem is not fiscal spending per se, the problem is that people just don’t trust what she is doing.
“We just avoided a bad sovereign debt crisis in the UK because the Bank of England changed dramatically its plans and jumped in.”
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Writing by William Schomberg and Kate Holton; Additional reporting by David Milliken, Kylie MacLellan, Paul Sandle, Elizabeth Piper and James Davey in London, and Bansari Mayur Kamdar in Bangalore; Editing by Catherine Evans and Alex Richardson
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Ian was downgraded to a tropical storm Thursday morning after leaving a path of destruction in southwest Florida, trapping people in flooded homes, damaging the roof of a hospital intensive care unit and knocking out power to 2 million people before aiming for the Atlantic Coast.
One of the strongest hurricanes to ever hit the United States barreled across the Florida peninsula overnight Wednesday as a Category 4 storm, threatening catastrophic flooding inland, the National Hurricane Center warned.
The center’s 5 a.m. Thursday advisory said Ian was expected to emerge over Atlantic waters later on Thursday, with flooding rains continuing across central and northern Florida.
As of the latest advisory, Ian was about 40 miles southeast of Orlando, and it was moving northeast at 8 mph with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph.
A turn toward the north-northeast is expected later Thursday, followed by a turn toward the north and north-northwest with an increase in forward speed Friday and Friday night.
WATCH LIVE: Tropical Storm Ian’s latest forecast
On the forecast track, the center of Ian is expected to move off the east-central coast of Florida later Thursday and then approach the coast of South Carolina on Friday. The center will move farther inland across the Carolinas Friday night and Saturday.
In Port Charlotte, along Florida’s Gulf Coast, the storm surge flooded a lower-level emergency room in a hospital even as fierce winds ripped away part of the roof from its intensive care unit, according to a doctor who works there.
Water gushed down onto the ICU, forcing staff to evacuate the hospital’s sickest patients — some of whom were on ventilators — to other floors, said Dr. Birgit Bodine of HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital. Staff members used towels and plastic bins to try to mop up the sodden mess.
SOUTH FLORIDA
The main threat for our area has been the heavy rainfall and localized flooding. Radar estimates 8 to 10 inches of rain has fallen across parts of Miami-Dade and Broward counties since Monday, with the highest totals so far from North Miami to Hollywood, Davie, Sunrise, and Coral Springs.
Tornadoes have been confirmed in Broward County and Delray Beach.
According to Broward officials, downed trees have also been reported throughout the county, which crews are working to remove.
A handful of traffic signals were also damaged and are being worked on. Drivers should remember that intersections with flashing red lights or no lights should be treated as a four-way stop.
As of Thursday morning, 7,610 FPL customers were out of power in Miami-Dade County and 4,950 in Broward.
Visit https://www.fplmaps.com/ for information on the latest power outages.
TRANSIT INFO:
On Monday, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that tolls have been suspended on Alligator Alley as the storm nears. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said all non-essential services in the county will remain suspended Thursday.
Miami-Dade County will resume countywide transit services, however, on Thursday, including the Metrobus, Metrorail, Metromover, and Special Transportation Services (STS).
Waste collection for Broward County will resume Thursday.
Broward County Transit is operating on a normal schedule Thursday.
SCHOOL CLOSURES:
Miami-Dade and Broward have canceled classes for Wednesday and Thursday.
Monroe County schools will resume on Thursday.
Florida Atlantic University will be closed Thursday.
AIRPORTS:
Miami International Airport and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport remain open but are experiencing numerous cancellations and delays. Check with your airline for the latest updates.
Airports in the Florida Keys are closed until further notice.
EMERGENCY RESPONSE:
On Sunday, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the deployment of the Florida National Guard.
President Joe Biden approved the emergency declaration for Florida on Saturday to make Federal Emergency Management Agency aid available to the state and the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes.
The Florida Disaster Fund to support Florida’s communities impacted by Hurricane Ian has been activated.
To contribute, please visit www.FloridaDisasterFund.org or text DISASTER to 20222.
CLICK HERE to download Local 10′s Hurricane Survival Guide.
Visit Local10.com’s hurricane page for the latest updates on this storm. To receive daily morning briefings on the tropics, sign up for the Talking Tropics newsletter.
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Sept 29 (Reuters) – A court in military-ruled Myanmar on Thursday jailed deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her former economic adviser, Australian Sean Turnell, for three years for violating a secrets law, a source familiar with the proceedings said.
Both had pleaded not guilty to charges of violating the official secrets act, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years.
“Three years each, no hard labour,” said the source, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue.
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Suu Kyi, Turnell, and several members of her economic team are among thousands arrested since the military overthrew her elected government in a coup early last year, including politicians, lawmakers, bureaucrats, students and journalists.
Turnell has also been charged with immigration violations, for which he faces up to five years in prison. The court is expected to rule on that case on Thursday, according to a second source and media reports.
Nobel laureate Suu Kyi has already been sentenced to at least 23 years in prison in separate cases, mostly related to corruption charges.
She denies all accusations against her.
Opponents of the military say the charges against Suu Kyi are aimed at blocking her from ever getting involved in politics again and challenging the military’s grip on power.
A junta spokesperson did not answer calls seeking comment on Thursday. The junta insists Myanmar’s courts are independent and those arrested are receiving due process.
Turnell, who is also a professor of economics at Macquarie University in Australia, has been in detention since a few days after the coup.
His wife, Ha Vu, who is based in Australia, said she and her family were “heartbroken” at the verdict and called for him to be deported.
“Sean has been one of Myanmar’s greatest supporters for over 20 years and has worked tirelessly to strengthen Myanmar’s economy. Please consider the contributions … and deport him now,” she said in a Facebook post.
Australia called for Turnell’s release.
“The Australian government has consistently rejected the charges against Professor Turnell. (It) rejects today’s court ruling … and calls for his immediate release,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in a statement.
Australian consular officials tasked with assisting Turnell were denied access to the court, Wong said.
Thursday’s sentencing took place in a closed court in the capital, Naypyitaw. The defendants’ exact offence under the official secrets act remains unclear, though a source previously said Turnell’s offence “relates to an allegation that he had government documents”.
An analyst for the International Crisis Group think tank, Richard Horsey, called the proceedings “a show trial”.
“For Sean the hope now must be that – having already been in detention for almost 20 months – he will be released soon from this terrible ordeal and reunited with his family,” he said.
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Reporting by Reuters Staff; Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Ed Davies, Robert Birsel
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Liz Truss’s first few weeks as British prime minister have been defined by crisis. She’d barely been in the job 48 hours when news broke that Queen Elizabeth II had died, placing the country in a state of official mourning and delaying the official launch of the Truss plan for Britain.
Once that official mourning period was over last Monday, her government unleashed a wave of radical policies, climaxing on Friday with the announcement of £45 billion ($48 billion) in tax cuts. The measures included scrapping the top rate paid by the highest earners, in adjustments that will benefit the rich far more than millions of people on lower incomes.
The logic, according to Truss’s government, is that cutting personal and corporate tax will trigger an investment boom and kick-start the British economy.
In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper last week, Truss defended her economic plans saying that her government was “incentivizing businesses to invest and we’re also helping ordinary people with their taxes.”
UK prime minister defends tax cuts as pound plummets
But Truss’s plans have seemingly backfired almost immediately. The pound fell to its lowest level in nearly four decades on Monday, at one point reaching near parity with the dollar. It seems very likely that the Bank of England will hike interest rates, which will make repayments harder for those fortunate enough to have mortgages, while those seeking to get mortgages are already seeing products removed by banks.
On Wednesday, the Bank of England announced it would buy UK government bonds in an attempt to “restore orderly market conditions” and to prevent “dysfunction” following the cuts, and subsequent plunge in the pound.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a rare rebuke for a developed country on Tuesday night, criticizing the UK’s tax-cutting plans, saying they will “likely increase inequality.”
The chaos couldn’t have come at a better time for the official opposition Labour Party, which held its annual conference in Liverpool this week.
Going into the conference, Labour was enjoying poll leads it hasn’t seen since the days of the last Labour prime minister to win a general election, Tony Blair.
The Labour Party has suffered badly since losing power in 2010. Its past two leaders have struggled with their personal credibility on a range of issues, from economics to security.
The party’s last leader, Jeremy Corbyn, came from the far left of the party. He had in the past associated with known extremists, opposed NATO, shared platforms with antisemites and generally existed on the fringes of politics for decades.
When his successor, Keir Starmer, took over in 2020, received wisdom was that his job was to remove Corbyn’s influence from the party and then hand it over to a new leader, probably closer to 2030 than the next scheduled general election in 2024.
This week in Liverpool, however, Starmer’s Labour looked legitimately like a government-in-waiting. It is nothing short of remarkable given that not even a year ago, Boris Johnson looked like the undisputed champion of British politics.
But after scandals sank his premiership and Conservatives’ approval ratings, the unassuming Starmer, a softly-spoken lawyer with a smart haircut and unremarkable suits, really does look as though he could be the next prime minister of the UK.
In the two years of his leadership, Starmer has managed to silence many of the elements of his party that Corbyn attracted. It has gone from being a home for far-left radicals to a party whose conference this week attracted corporate lobbyists who were only too happy to bankroll events and brush shoulders with the potential next government.
And after years of accusations while Corbyn was in charge that Labour was somehow anti-British, conference this year began with delegates singing the national anthem.
Those around Starmer are tempering their optimism. The Labour Party has smelled power before, only to be disappointed when the next general election came around. The UK, particularly England, is a traditionally Conservative-voting country. Previous Labour governments won power largely due to Scottish support.
That has all but drained away since the independence referendum of 2014, in which Scotland voted to stay in the UK by a margin of 55% to 45%. That left nearly half of Scots disgruntled and throwing their support behind the pro-independence Scottish National Party.
The Labour Party also has form for making unforced errors. While this year’s conference went largely without a hitch, one near-crisis had to be dealt with.
On Tuesday, a video emerged of a Labour MP calling the Conservative finance minister, Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, “superficially” Black. The MP, Rupa Huq, had her party whip removed almost immediately, meaning she is expelled from the party and now sits as an independent. Huq later tweeted that she had apologized to Kwarteng for comments she described as “ill judged.”
And Labour Party members know very well that the Conservative Party plays the game of politics better than most. The term “natural party of government” might seem odd, given the chaos taking place around Truss at the moment, but Conservatives like winning at almost any cost.
None of this is providing Conservative MPs with much comfort, however.
“Every single problem we have now is self-inflicted. We look like reckless gamblers who only care about the people who can afford to lose the gamble,” one former Conservative minister told CNN on Wednesday morning.
Taking aim at the team around Truss, which is largely comprised of libertarian Conservatives, the former minister said: “We’ve made the mistake of thinking that things which go down well in free-market think tanks go down well with the free market.”
For all that things don’t look great for Truss, there is a fear in Labour circles that the current polling is a reflection of disapproval of the Conservatives rather than enthusiasm for Labour. Many still question whether Starmer truly has the strength of personality to win over sufficient voters to comprehensively defeat the Conservatives at the next election.
That caution could be born of a reluctance to get ahead of themselves. And their doubts over Starmer could be the same reason that some Conservatives are quietly optimistic that Truss has more personal substance than her Labour rival and could simply overpower him in the future.
What’s undeniable is that the expectations in British politics have shifted this week. For the first time in years, the next election is undeniably Labour’s to lose.
OSLO, Sept 29 (Reuters) – Sweden’s coast guard discovered a fourth gas leak on the damaged Nord Stream pipelines earlier this week, a spokesperson told the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.
The European Union suspects sabotage was behind the gas leaks on the subsea Russian pipelines to Europe and has promised a “robust” response to any intentional disruption of its energy infrastructure.
“Two of these four are in Sweden’s exclusive economic zone,” coast guard spokesperson Jenny Larsson told the paper late on Wednesday. The other two breaches are in the Danish exclusive economic zone.
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The coast guard did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Thursday.
While neither pipeline was in use at the time of the suspected blasts, they were filled with gas that has been spewing out in the Baltic Sea since Monday’s ruptures.
The fourth leak was on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, in close proximity to a larger hole found on the nearby Nord Stream 1, the Swedish coast guard said.
This week, Danish authorities reported one hole in each of the two pipeline sections in their waters.
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Reporting by Terje Solsvik; Editing by Stine Jacobsen and Clarence Fernandez
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Russian parliament may consider annexation on Tuesday
Ukraine rejects referendums as illegal
West prepares new sanctions over referendums
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine, Sept 29 (Reuters) – Russia was poised to annex a swath of Ukraine within days, releasing what it called vote tallies showing overwhelming support in four provinces to join it, after what Ukraine and the West denounced as illegal sham referendums held at gunpoint.
On Moscow’s Red Square, a stage with giant video screens has been set up, with billboards proclaiming “Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson – Russia!”
The head of the upper house of the Russian parliament said it could consider the incorporation of the four partially occupied regions on Oct. 4, three days before President Vladimir Putin’s 70th birthday.
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The Russian-installed administrations of the four provinces have formally asked Putin to incorporate them into Russia, which Russian officials have suggested is a formality.
“This should happen within a week,” Rodion Miroshnik, the Russia-installed ambassador to Moscow of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, told the RIA state news agency
“The main thing has already happened – the referendum has taken place. Therefore, let’s say: the locomotive has already started and it’s unlikely to be stopped.”
To annex the territories, which represent about 15% of Ukraine, some sort of treaty will need to be struck and ratified by the Russian parliament, which is controlled by Putin allies. The areas will then be seen as part of Russia and its nuclear umbrella will extend to them.
Putin has warned he would use nuclear weapons to protect Russian territory from attack. read more
‘NOBODY VOTED’
Residents who escaped to Ukrainian-held areas in recent days have told of people being forced to mark ballots in the street by roving officials at gunpoint. Footage filmed during the exercise showed Russian-installed officials taking ballot boxes from house to house with armed men in tow.
“They can announce anything they want. Nobody voted in the referendum except a few people who switched sides. They went from house to house but nobody came out,” said Lyubomir Boyko, 43, from Golo Pristan, a village in Russian-occupied Kherson province.
Russia says voting was voluntary, in line with international law, and that turnout was high. The referendums and notion of annexations has been rejected globally, as was Russia’s 2014 takeover of Crimea from Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy sought to rally international support against annexation in a series of calls with foreign leaders, including those of Britain, Canada, Germany and Turkey.
“Thank you all for your clear and unequivocal support. Thank you all for understanding our position,” Zelenskiy said in a late-night video address.
The United States has unveiled a $1.1 billion weapons package for Ukraine that includes 18 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers, accompanying munitions, various types of counter drone systems and radar systems. The announcement brings the U.S. security aid to $16.2 billion.
The United States has also said it would also impose new sanctions on Russia for the referendums and the European Union’s executive proposed more sanctions, but the bloc’s 27 member countries will need to overcome their own differences to implement them.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would need to keep fighting until it had taken control of all of Donetsk. About 40% is still under Ukrainian control.
Russia has announced it will mobilise some 300,000 reservists to bolster its forces in Ukraine. The conscription drive has sent thousands of Russian men fleeing to other countries.
On the ground, Ukraine and Russian forces are engaged in heavy fighting, especially in the Donetsk region, where the governor said six civilians were killed in Russian attacks on Wednesday.
Over the past 24 hours, Russia launched three missile and eight air strikes, carried out more than 82 attacks from rocket salvo systems on military and civilian sites, Ukraine’s military said early on Thursday.
Ukraine’s air force carried out 16 strikes on Wednesday, damaging or destroying a number of Russian positions, while ground forces destroyed two command posts, it said.
Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said three people were killed in Russian shelling of Dnipro, the region’s capital, including a 12-year-old girl, and more than 60 buildings were damaged.
“The rescuers carried her out of the damaged house where was just sleeping when a Russian missile hit,” he said on his Telegram channel.
Reuters was not able to verify battlefield reports.
EUROPEAN ENERGY
Leaking gas bubbled up in the Baltic Sea for a third day after suspected explosions tore through undersea pipelines built by Russia and European partners to send natural gas to Europe.
The Nord Stream 1 pipeline, once the main route for Russian gas to Germany, was already shut but cannot now be easily reopened.
NATO and the European Union warned of the need to protect critical infrastructure from what they called “sabotage”, though officials stopped short of assigning blame.
Russia’s FSB security service is investigating the damage to the pipelines as “international terrorism”, the Interfax news agency cited the general prosecutor’s office as saying.
The Nord Stream pipelines have been flashpoints in an expanding energy war between Russia and European countries that has damaged Western economies and sent gas prices soaring.
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Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Michael Perry; Editing by Robert Birsel
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A Myanmar beauty queen who publicly criticized her country’s military junta, and later became stranded at the Bangkok airport, arrived Wednesday in Canada, where she is seeking asylum.
Thaw Nandar Aung, also known as Han Lay, landed in Toronto and said she was going to live on Prince Edward Island, a province off Canada’s Atlantic coast, Reuters reported. It was unclear what her status was, but Han Lay, 23, told Radio Free Asia she was granted permission to stay with the help of Canadian officials and the U.N. refugee agency.
“Everything happened so fast, and I only have a few pieces of clothing,” she told the broadcaster before departing for Canada. But, she said, “I have spoken out for Myanmar wherever I go. Since Canada is a safe place for me, I will have more opportunities to speak out on the issue.”
Han Lay first garnered worldwide attention last year when, at the Miss Grand International beauty pageant in Thailand, she used her time on the stage to speak out against Myanmar’s military rulers.
At the time, the junta, known as the Tatmadaw, had just seized power and anti-military protests were raging. The military and police confronted demonstrators with deadly force. On one particularly bloody day, March 27, security forces killed over 160 protesters.
How Myanmar’s military terrorized its people
That same day, Han Lay was on a stage in Bangkok wearing a traditional white gown as one of 20 finalists in the pageant.
“Today in my country, Myanmar, while I am going to be on this stage, there are so many people dying; more than 100 people died today,” she told the audience and cameras, wiping away tears. “I am deeply sorry for all the people who have lost their lives.”
“Every citizen of the world wants the prosperity of their country and the peaceful environment,” she added. “In doing so, the leaders involved should not use their power and selfishness.”
The speech put Han Lay in the spotlight and also drew condemnation and threats on social media, she said. After the pageant, she stayed in Thailand to avoid potential arrest in her home country, where thousands have been injured or killed since the military takeover. Thousands more are in prison, and in July the military junta executed four pro-democracy activists, including two of the resistance’s most prominent leaders.
But on Sept. 21, after a brief trip to Vietnam, Han Lay was denied entry at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport. Thai officials said her Myanmar-issued travel documents were invalid, Reuters reported. She wrote on Facebook the next day that Myanmar police officials were also at the airport and had attempted to reach out to her.
As the world moves on, Myanmar confronts a mounting, hidden toll
“I will refuse to meet with the Myanmar police by using my human right,” she wrote, adding that she had requested help from Thai authorities and the United Nations.
According to Human Rights Watch, the move was “a deliberate political act by the junta to make her stateless.”
“There is no doubt that what transpired was a trap to try to force Han Lay to return to Myanmar, where she would have faced immediate arrest, likely abuse in detention, and imprisonment,” the group’s deputy Asia director, Phil Robertson, said in a statement Wednesday.
He said that governments should be “on guard” against attempts by Myanmar’s military junta to use “similar tactics against overseas dissidents traveling on Myanmar passports in the future.”
“This is hardly the first time repressive Burmese military dictatorships have sought to use their control over Myanmar passports as a weapon against their own people’s rights to travel internationally,” Robertson said.
European security officials on Monday and Tuesday observed Russian Navy support ships in the vicinity of leaks in the Nord Stream pipelines likely caused by underwater explosions, according two Western intelligence officials and one other source familiar with the matter.
It’s unclear whether the ships had anything to do with those explosions, these sources and others said – but it’s one of the many factors that investigators will be looking into.
Russian submarines were also observed not far from those areas last week, one of the intelligence officials said.
Three US officials said that the US has no thorough explanation yet for what happened, days after the explosions appeared to cause three separate and simultaneous leaks in the two pipelines on Monday.
Russian ships routinely operate in the area, according to one Danish military official, who emphasized that the presence of the ships doesn’t necessarily indicate that Russia caused the damage.
“We see them every week,” this person said. “Russian activities in the Baltic Sea have increased in recent years. They’re quite often testing our awareness – both at sea and in the air.”
But the sightings still cast further suspicion on Russia, which has drawn the most attention from both European and US officials as the only actor in the region believed to have both the capability and motivation to deliberately damage the pipelines.
US officials declined to comment on the intelligence about the ships on Wednesday.
Both Denmark and Sweden are investigating, but a site inspection has yet to be done and details on exactly what caused the explosions remains sketchy. One European official said that there is a Danish government assessment underway and it could take up to two weeks for an investigation to properly begin because the pressure in the pipes makes it difficult to approach the site of the leaks — although another source familiar with the matter said the probe could begin as soon as Sunday.
The prime ministers for both Denmark and Sweden said publicly on Tuesday that the leaks were likely the result of deliberate actions, not accidents, and Sweden’s security service said in a statement Wednesday that it cannot be ruled out “that a foreign power is behind it.” US national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Tuesday evening also called the leaks “apparent sabotage” in a tweet.
But senior Western officials have so far stopped short of attributing the attack to Russia or any other nation.
The Kremlin has publicly denied striking the pipelines. A spokesman called the allegation “predictably stupid and absurd.”
CNN has reached out to the Russian Ministry of Defense for comment on the presence of the ships.
The Danish government is taking the lead on the investigation and has put in place an exclusion area of five nautical miles and a 1 kilometer no-fly-zone, according to European sources familiar with the matter.
Other than Sullivan, US officials have been far more circumspect than their European counterparts in drawing conclusions about the leaks.
“I think many of our partners have determined or believe it is sabotage. I’m not at the point where I can tell you one way or the other,” a senior military official said Wednesday. “The only thing I know there is that we think the water is between 80 and 100 meters [deep] at that location where the pipeline is. Other than that, I don’t know anything more.”
But one senior US official and a US military official both said Russia is still the leading suspect – assuming that the European assessment of deliberate sabotage is borne out – because there are no other plausible suspects with the ability and will to carry out the operation.
“It’s hard to imagine any other actor in the region with the capabilities and interest to carry out such an operation,” the Danish military official said.
Russia has requested a UN Security Council meeting on the damaged pipeline this week – something the senior US official said is also suspicious. Typically, the official said, Russia isn’t organized enough to move so quickly, suggesting that the maneuver was pre-planned.
If Russia did deliberately cause the explosions, it would be effectively sabotaging its own pipelines: Russian state company Gazprom is the majority shareholder in Nord Stream 1 and the sole owner of Nord Stream 2.
But officials familiar with the latest intelligence say that Moscow would likely view such a step as worth the price if it helped raise the costs of supporting Ukraine for Europe. US and western intelligence officials believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is gambling that as electricity costs rise and winter approaches, European publics could turn against the Western strategy of isolating Russia economically. Sabotaging the pipelines could “show what Russia is capable of,” one US official said.
Russia has already taken steps to manipulate energy flows in ways that caused itself economic pain, but also hurt Europe. Russia slashed gas supplies to Europe via Nord Stream 1 before suspending flows altogether in August, blaming Western sanctions for causing technical difficulties. European politicians say that was a pretext to stop supplying gas.
“They’ve already shown they’re perfectly happy to do that,” one of the sources said. “They weight their economic pain against Europe’s.”
The new Nord Stream 2 pipeline had yet to enter commercial operations. The plan to use it to supply gas was scrapped by Germany days before Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February.
US, European and Ukrainian officials have been warning for months, however, that critical infrastructure – not only in Ukraine but also in the US and Europe – could be targeted by Russia as part of its war on Ukraine.
The US warned several European allies over the summer, including Germany, that the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines could face threats and even be attacked, according to two people familiar with the intelligence and the warnings.
The warnings were based on US intelligence assessments, but they were vague, the people said – it was not clear from the warnings who might be responsible for any attacks on the pipelines or when they might occur.
The CIA declined to comment.
Der Spiegel was the first to report on the intelligence warnings.
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There’s now scientific evidence shedding more light on one of Barkley’s impressive skills in a long list of endearing traits: the ability to smell when you’re stressed.
Dogs can smell the difference between odors from humans when they’re stressed and when they’re calm, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.
Earlier research found that canines may be able to smell when a person is happy or fearful, but this latest study eliminated other competing scents and measured its human participants’ stress levels to increase the accuracy of the results.
Researchers first collected breath and sweat samples from study participants to use as a baseline. Afterward, these people performed a mental arithmetic task, counting backward from 9,000 in units of 17 in front of two researchers for three minutes.
“If the participant gave a correct answer, they were given no feedback and were expected to continue, and if they gave an incorrect answer the researcher would interrupt with ‘no’ and tell them their last correct answer,” said lead study author Clara Wilson, a doctoral candidate at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland.
The study team collected another round of breath and sweat samples after the task was completed.
Additionally, the researchers collected reported stress levels, heart rate and blood pressure before and after the assigned task. Thirty-six participants who reported feeling stressed and had increased heart rate and blood pressure had their samples shown to the dogs.
The researchers presented post-task breath and sweat samples from one person to 20dogs along with two other blank control samples. The canines needed to select the correct sample at least seven out of 10 times to move onto the next phase.
In the second and final phase, the study team showed the four dogs that passed phase one the same samples they sniffed in phase one along with a sample from the same individual collected before the task and a blank. Presented with these options 20 times, the dogs needed to successfully identify the original post-task “stress” scent at least 80% of the time for the results to be conclusive.
The dogs chose the right sample in 93.8% of the trials, which suggested that the stress odors were quite different from the baseline samples, Wilson said.
“It was fascinating to see how able the dogs were at discriminating between these odors when the only difference was that a psychological stress response had occurred,” she said.
Dogs have 220 million olfactory receptors compared with humans’ 50 million, which makes canines “extremely effective at differentiating and identifying odors,” said Dr. Mark Freeman, clinical assistant professor in the department of small animal clinical sciences at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. He was not involved in the study.
Olfactory receptors are small nerve endings located inside your nostrils that allow you to smell, he said.
“While we can’t know with certainty why dogs developed such keen olfactory senses, it is very probably related with the need to identify prey, potential threats, reproductive status, and familial relationships in a pack setting among others,” Freeman said.
Twenty pet dogs were recruited from around Belfast, Northern Ireland, and four completed the entire study.
Most of the dogs failed to finish because they either showed signs of anxiety when separated from their owner, or they were not able to stay focused the entire time.
If the canines in the study were raised from birth with the purpose of sniffing out stress, more dogs would have most likely finished the study, he said.
There was a male cocker spaniel, female cockapoo, male lurcher type, also known as a crossbred hound, and a female terrier type. Their ages ranged from 11 to 36 months.
All dogs have a strong sense of smell, but spaniels, terriers and lurchers would have likely used their olfactory receptors more regularly as hunting dogs, Freeman said. This could have been a factor in their success in the study, or it might be coincidental because others breeds like retrievers have excellent smelling skills as well.
Service dogs who assist people with mental health conditions like anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder may benefit from these findings, Wilson said.
“Knowing that there is a detectable odor component to stress may raise discussion into the value of scent-based training using samples from individuals in times of stress versus calm,” she said.
More experimentation needs to be done outside of a laboratory to see how applicable the results of this study are in the real world, Wilson said.
These findings also open the door to future research to investigate if dogs can discriminate between emotions, plus how long the odors are detectable, she said.