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- China Accuses US of Encouraging Provocations in South China Sea Bloomberg
- China Coordinator Mark B. Lambert’s Meeting with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director-General for Boundary and Ocean Affairs Hong Liang – United States Department of State Department of State
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American tourists stranded near Machu Picchu, might not be home by Christmas as protests grip Peru
Hundreds of tourists remain stranded in a town near the ruins of the mountain city of Machu Picchu as protests grip the country of Peru.
Americans, Europeans and South Americas cannot leave the town of Aguas Calientas, near the base of Machu Picchu, since the government has suspended train service indefinitely. Machu Picchu Mayor Darwin Baca said that he is trying to set up helicopter transport to get them out, according to Axios.
“We have asked the government to help us and establish helicopter flights in order to evacuate the tourists,” Baca said.
Among the tourists trapped on the mountain are two Chicago police officers, a pregnant couple from Acworth, Georgia, and a Miami-Dade Fire Rescue captain, who told Florida’s Local 10 news that around 200 American citizens remain in the town. Thousands more cannot travel across the country due to protests.
IRAN GOVERNMENT’S PROTEST CRACKDOWN KILLS DOZENS OF CHILDREN, PROMPTS CALLS FOR REMOVAL FROM UNITED NATIONS
“From what I understand, the rest of the country is not doing too well,” Fire Rescue Capt. Brian Vega said. “They’re rioting, burning things down.”
Demonstrators carry a sign reading, “Closure of the coup Congress,” amid violent protests following the ousting and arrest of former President Pedro Castillo, in Ayacucho, Peru December 15, 2022.
(Reuters/Miguel Gutierrez Chero)
Peruvian President Pedro Castillo dissolved the country’s Congress on Wednesday and called for new elections ahead of a renewed attempt to remove him from office. He established a new emergency government and said he would make changes to leadership in the judiciary, police and constitutional court.
The move to oust Castillo concerned corruption allegations, with six investigations opened against the president.
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Castillo’s actions, seen as an effort to preserve power, prompted the Congress to fully oust him and replace him with Dina Boluarte, his former vice-president. The appointment proved incredibly unpopular, with many voters seeing Castillo as “one of us,” while Boluarte remains distant and unknown to them.
Boluarte dispatched authorities to crackdown on protests, but that only caused the violence to spike, resulting in the death of at least seven people Thursday night, with over 50 other people injured. A judge ordered Castillo detained for up to 18 months while prosecutors prepare a case against him.
Demonstrators stand on an airport tarmac amid violent protests following the ousting and arrest of former President Pedro Castillo, in Ayacucho, Peru December 15, 2022. REUTERS/Miguel Gutierrez Chero.
(Reuters/Miguel Gutierrez Chero)
Protesters now demand Castillo’s freedom, Boluarte’s resignation and new elections to pick a president and congress. They have burned police stations, blocked highways and taken over airport runways.
Boluarte declared a state of emergency Friday to rein in the unrest and dispatched the military to disperse the protests, bringing the death toll to over 22 people, The New York Times reported.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY, DEC. 2, 1823, PRESIDENT MONROE TOUTS DOCTRINE DEFENDING WESTERN HEMISPHERE
Two ministers resigned over the deaths of Peruvian citizens, with the outgoing Education Minister Patricia Correa saying that death of the citizens at the hands of the government “has no justification.”
Vega said that the unrest has left the country – and the tourists – in a state of total chaos, with local authorities unable to tell him whether they can evacuate people by Christmas. He appealed to U.S. lawmakers to work out an airlift.
Soldiers stand in formation after arriving as reinforcements amid violent protests following the ousting and arrest of former President Pedro Castillo, in Ayacucho, Peru, December 15, 2022. REUTERS/Miguel Gutierrez Chero.
(Reuters/Miguel Gutierrez Chero)
“Hopefully, they could help us out somehow and get us back safe to the United States to see our friends and family,” he said.
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Around 5,000 tourists are stranded in the city of Cusco as they wait for flights to restart, Machu Picchu’s mayor told the AFP news agency.
“What they fear is getting to Cusco and then not being able to go to their country, because this could get worse,” the mayor said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Is Muscle Weakness the New Smoking? Grip Strength Tied to Accelerated Biological Age
Summary: Muscle weakness marked by grip strength was associated with accelerated biological aging, a new study reports.
Source: University of Michigan
Everyone ages at a different pace. That’s why two 50-year-olds, despite living the same number of years, may have different biological ages—meaning that a host of intrinsic and extrinsic factors have caused them to age at varying paces with different levels of risk for disease and early death.
Lifestyle choices, such as diet, and smoking, and illness all contribute to accelerating biological age beyond one’s chronological age. In other words, your body is aging faster than expected.
And for the first time, researchers have found that muscle weakness marked by grip strength, a proxy for overall strength capacity, is associated with accelerated biological age.
Specifically, the weaker your grip strength, the older your biological age, according to results published in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle.
Researchers at Michigan Medicine modeled the relationship between biological age and grip strength of 1,274 middle aged and older adults using three “age acceleration clocks” based on DNA methylation, a process that provides a molecular biomarker and estimator of the pace of aging. The clocks were originally modeled from various studies examining diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, physical disability, Alzheimer’s disease, inflammation and early mortality.
Results reveal that both older men and women showed an association between lower grip strength and biological age acceleration across the DNA methylation clocks.
“We’ve known that muscular strength is a predictor of longevity, and that weakness is a powerful indicator of disease and mortality, but for the first time, we have found strong evidence of a biological link between muscle weakness and actual acceleration in biological age,” said Mark Peterson, Ph.D., M.S., lead author of the study and associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at University of Michigan.
“This suggests that if you maintain your muscle strength across the lifespan, you may be able to protect against many common age-related diseases. We know that smoking, for example, can be a powerful predictor of disease and mortality, but now we know that muscle weakness could be the new smoking.”
The real strength of this study was in the 8 to 10 years of observation, in which lower grip strength predicted faster biological aging measured up to a decade later, said Jessica Faul, Ph.D., M.P.H., a co-author of the study and research associate professor at the U-M Institute for Social Research.
Past studies have shown that low grip strength is an extremely strong predictor of adverse health events. One study even found that it is a better predictor of cardiovascular events, such as myocardial infarction, than systolic blood pressure—the clinical hallmark for detecting heart disorders. Peterson and his team have previously shown a robust association between weakness and chronic disease and mortality across populations.
This evidence coupled with their study’s recent findings, Peterson says, shows potential for clinicians to adopt the use of grip strength as a way to screen individuals for future risk of functional decline, chronic disease and even early mortality.
“Screening for grip strength would allow for the opportunity to design interventions to delay or prevent the onset or progression of these adverse ‘age-related’ health events,” he said.
“We have been pushing for clinicians to start using grip strength in their clinics and only in geriatrics has this sort of been incorporated. However, not many people are using this, even though we’ve seen hundreds of publications showing that grip strength is a really good measure of health.”
Investigators say future research is needed to understand the connection between grip strength and age acceleration, including how inflammatory conditions contribute to age-related weakness and mortality.
Previous studies have shown that chronic inflammation in aging—known as “inflammaging”—is a significant risk factor for mortality among older adults. This inflammation is also associated with lower grip strength and may be a significant predictor on the pathway between lower grip strength and both disability and chronic disease multimorbidity.
Additionally, Peterson says, studies must focus on how lifestyle and behavioral factors, such as physical activity and diet, can affect grip strength and age acceleration.
“Healthy dietary habits are very important, but I think regular exercise is the most critical thing that somebody can do to preserve health across the lifespan,” he said. “We can show it with a biomarker like DNA methylation age, and we can also test it with a clinical feature like grip strength.”
See also
Additional authors include Stacey Collins, M.A., Helen C.S. Meier, Ph.D., M.P.H., Alexander Brahmsteadt, M.D., all of University of Michigan.
About this aging and muscle strength research news
Author: Noah Fromson
Source: University of Michigan
Contact: Noah Fromson – University of Michigan
Image: The image is credited to Justine Ross, Michigan Medicine
Original Research: Open access.
“Grip strength is inversely associated with DNA methylation age acceleration” by Mark D. Peterson et al. Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle
Abstract
Grip strength is inversely associated with DNA methylation age acceleration
Background
There is a large body of evidence linking muscular weakness, as determined by low grip strength, to a host of negative ageing-related health outcomes. Given these links, grip strength has been labelled a ‘biomarker of aging’; and yet, the pathways connecting grip strength to negative health consequences are unclear. The objective of this study was to determine whether grip strength was associated with measures of DNA methylation (DNAm) age acceleration.
Methods
Middle age and older adults from the 2006 to 2008 waves of the Health and Retirement Study with 8–10 years of follow-up were included. Cross-sectional and longitudinal regression modelling was performed to examine the association between normalized grip strength (NGS) and three measures of DNAm age acceleration, adjusting for cell composition, sociodemographic variables and smoking. Longitudinal modelling was also completed to examine the association between change in absolute grip strength and DNAm age acceleration. The three DNAm clocks used for estimating age acceleration include the established DunedinPoAm, PhenoAge and GrimAge clocks.
Results
There was a robust and independent cross-sectional association between NGS and DNAm age acceleration for men using the DunedinPoAm (β: −0.36; P < 0.001), PhenoAge (β: −8.27; P = 0.01) and GrimAge (β: −4.56; P = 0.01) clocks and for women using the DunedinPoAm (β: −0.36; P < 0.001) and GrimAge (β: −4.46; P = 0.01) clocks. There was also an independent longitudinal association between baseline NGS and DNAm age acceleration for men (β: −0.26; P < 0.001) and women (β: −0.36; P < 0.001) using the DunedinPoAm clock and for women only using the PhenoAge (β: −8.20; P < 0.001) and GrimAge (β: −5.91; P < 0.001) clocks. Longitudinal modelling revealed a robust association between change in grip strength from wave 1 to wave 3 was independently associated with PhenoAgeAA (β: −0.13; 95% CI: −0.23, −0.03) and GrimAgeAA (β: −0.07; 95% CI: −0.14, −0.01) in men only (both P < 0.05).
Conclusions
Our findings provide some initial evidence of age acceleration among men and women with lower NGS and loss of strength over time. Future research is needed to understand the extent to which DNAm age mediates the association between grip strength and chronic disease, disability and mortality.
Putin tightens grip on Ukraine and Russia with martial law
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin declared martial law Wednesday in the four regions of Ukraine that Moscow annexed and gave all regional governors in Russia emergency powers that open the door for sweeping new restrictions throughout the country.
Putin didn’t immediately spell out the steps that would be taken under martial law, but said his order was effective starting Thursday. His decree gave law enforcement agencies three days to submit specific proposals and orders the creation of territorial defense forces in the annexed regions.
The upper house of Russia’s parliament quickly endorsed Putin’s decision to impose martial law in the annexed Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions. The approved legislation indicated the declaration may involve restrictions on travel and public gatherings, tighter censorship and broader authority for law enforcement agencies.
“We are working to solve very difficult large-scale tasks to ensure Russia’s security and safe future, to protect our people,” Putin said in televised remarks at the start of a Security Council meeting. “Those who are on the frontlines or undergoing training at firing ranges and training centers should feel our support and know that they have our big, great country and unified people behind their back.”
On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry said two men fired at soldiers on a military firing range near Ukraine, killing 11 and wounding 15. The ministry said two men from an unnamed former Soviet republic fired on volunteer soldiers during target practice before they were killed by return fire.
Putin didn’t provide details of the extra powers the heads of Russian regions will have under his decree. However, the order states that measures envisaged by martial law could be introduced anywhere in Russia “when necessary.”
According to the Russian legislation, martial law could require banning public gatherings, introducing travel bans and curfews, and conducting censorship, among other restrictions.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin’s order doesn’t anticipate the closure of Russia’s borders, state news agency RIA-Novosti reported. In an apparent attempt to assuage a nervous public, regional authorities rushed to declare that no immediate curfews or restrictions on travel were planned.
Putin last month ordered a mobilization of army reservists, prompting hundreds of thousands of men to flee Russia.
The Russian leader on Wednesday also ordered the establishment of a Coordination Committee to increase interactions between government agencies in dealing with the fighting in Ukraine, which Putin continued to call a “special military operation.”
Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, who was named to lead the committee, said it would focus on boosting supplies of weapons and military equipment, conducting construction work and facilitating transportation.
In Russia’s regions bordering Ukraine, authorities plan to tighten security at key facilities and conduct checks of motorists, among other measures, according to Andrei Kartapolov, head of the defense committee of Russian lower house of parliament.
Protests grip Iran as rights group says 19 children killed
Protests ignited by the death of a young woman in police custody continued across Iran on Sunday in defiance of a crackdown by the authorities, as a human rights group said at least 185 people, including children, had been killed in demonstrations.
Anti-government protests that began on Sept. 17 at the funeral of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in her Kurdish town of Saqez, have turned into the biggest challenge to Iran’s clerical leaders in years, with protesters calling for the downfall of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“At least 185 people, including at least 19 children, have been killed in the nationwide protests across Iran. The highest number of killings occurred in Sistan and Baluchistan province with half the recorded number,” the Norway-based Iran Human Rights said on Saturday.
Authorities have described the protests as a plot by Iran’s foes, including the United States. They have accused armed dissidents amongst others of violence that has reportedly left at least 20 members of the security forces dead.
Videos shared on social media showed protests in dozens of cities across Iran early on Sunday with hundreds of high school girls and university students participating despite the use of tear gas, clubs, and in many cases live ammunition by the security forces, rights groups said.
The Iranian authorities have denied that live bullets have been used.
‘DON’T HIT MY WIFE, SHE IS PREGNANT’
A video posted on Twitter by the widely-followed activist 1500tasvir showed security forces armed with clubs attacking students at a high school in Tehran.
In another video, a man shouted “don’t hit my wife, she is pregnant,” while trying to protect her from riot police in the city of Rafsanjan on Saturday.
A video shared by Twitter account Mamlekate, which has more than 150,000 followers, showed security forces chasing dozens of school girls in the city of Bandar Abbas. Social media posts said shops were closed in several cities after activists called for a mass strike.
Reuters could not verify the videos and posts. Details of casualties have trickled out slowly, partly because of internet restrictions imposed by the authorities.
Meanwhile, the semi-official Tasnim news agency quoted deputy interior minister warning of harsh sentences for those it referred to as rioters.
Amini was arrested in Tehran on Sept. 13 for wearing “inappropriate attire”. She died three days later at a Tehran hospital.
A state coroner’s report on Saturday said Amini had died from pre-existing medical conditions. Her father has held the police responsible for her death with the family lawyer saying “respectable doctors” believe she was beaten while in custody.
While the United States and Canada have already placed sanctions on Iranian authorities, the European Union was considering imposing asset freezes and travel bans on Iranian officials.
“Those who beat up (Iranian) women and girls on the street, who abduct, arbitrarily imprison and condemn to death people who want nothing other than to live free – they stand on the wrong side of history,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.
Ukraine Fires on Bridges, Rail Lines in Bid to Loosen Russia’s Grip on Kherson
Ukrainian forces struck a railway bridge in the southern Kherson region on Thursday, the Ukrainian military said, as it seeks to cut Moscow’s supply lines in preparation for a looming counteroffensive.
Ukrainian forces have concentrated fire on crossings over the Dnipro River, last month destroying a large road bridge 3½ miles to the east as well as striking the railway bridge.
Damage to the two bridges—both called Antonivskiy—has forced Moscow to use military ferries to resupply its forces in the city of Kherson and other areas on the western side of the river.
Kherson is the only Ukrainian regional capital that Moscow has captured in the five months since Russian President
Vladimir Putin
ordered the invasion. The city and the surrounding terrain are Russia’s only foothold on the western bank of the Dnipro River, and present a route to the ports of Mykolaiv, Odessa and the rest of Ukraine’s remaining Black Sea shoreline. Retaking the region has become Ukraine’s critical priority in the next phase of the war, rendering the destruction of Russian supply lines from the east of critical strategic importance.
Two districts in Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv region, which is held by the Ukrainians but borders the Kherson front, came under fire early Thursday.
Photo:
Kostiantyn Liberov/Associated Press
Police secured an area near an unexploded Russian rocket in Mykolaiv.
Photo:
Manu Brabo for The Wall Street Journal
To protect the river crossings, Russian forces have “almost certainly” positioned radar reflectors in the water to thwart radar imaging and missile targeting, the U.K.’s Defense Ministry said.
“This highlights the threat Russia feels from the increased range and precision of Western-supplied systems,” it said on Thursday.
The threat of a Ukrainian counteroffensive has compelled Russia to redeploy new units to Kherson rather than committing them to its campaign in the eastern Donbas region, which it vowed to capture after pulling back from around the capital in March.
“What the Ukrainians seem to be doing is sucking more and more Russian combat power away [from the fight in Donbas],” said Jack Watling, a land warfare analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank. “The Ukrainians don’t have the combat power to storm the city [of Kherson]; what they’re doing instead is eating away at the Russian combat positions.”
In Donbas, parts of which have experienced fighting since Russia’s incursion in 2014, Russia’s Defense Ministry on Thursday said Ukrainian forces were abandoning their positions in the towns of Soledar, Bakhmut and Avdiivka. Russia is seeking to make further advances in the Donetsk region after capturing around two-thirds of the region’s territory. Russia last month claimed to have captured the entire Luhansk region, which together with the Donetsk region make up Donbas.
The Russian claim came hours after the Ukrainian general staff said Ukrainian forces had repelled Russian advances in some of the same towns and at other points along the Donbas front.
Local officials in the southern Mykolaiv region, which is held by the Ukrainians but borders the Kherson front, said it had come under fire early on Thursday. Two districts were hit, said Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych. The head of the regional administration, Vitaliy Kim, said the shelling struck residential buildings, smashing windows and roofs.
Ukraine’s security services said on Thursday they had detained a resident of the city who admitted to sharing coordinates of Ukrainian military positions with Russian forces, providing the enemy with information about the location of equipment and routes.
Eight people were killed on Thursday when Russian shells landed near a bus stop in the town of Toretsk in the eastern Donetsk region, according to Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of military administration.
Eight people were killed when shells hit the town of Toretsk in the eastern Donetsk region.
Photo:
David Goldman/Associated Press
The Donbas Palace Hotel in the Russian-held city of Donetsk was damaged in shelling, killing six people.
Photo:
Dmitry Marmyshev/Zuma Press
“Another terror attack carried out by the uniformed thugs of the Russian terror state,”
Andriy Yermak,
Ukraine’s presidential spokesman, wrote on Twitter. “How many more people should suffer and die for the world to designate [the Russian Federation] a state sponsor of terrorism?”
Russia’s Defense Ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the Russian-held city of Donetsk, Russian-installed officials said Thursday that Ukrainian forces had shelled the center of the city, killing six people and wounding seven. Videos shared by Russian state media showed a damaged hotel with blown-out windows.
Russian-installed officials said Ukraine had targeted a wake for Olga Kachura, a colonel with Russian-backed separatist forces in Donbas who was killed Wednesday in fighting in the Donetsk region. The wake was being held in a theater about 1,300 feet from the damaged Donbas Palace Hotel.
Col. Kachura had led separatist forces since 2014, when Moscow fomented a rebellion in the Donbas. Protracted fighting continued there before Mr. Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February. Earlier Thursday, Mr. Putin awarded Col. Kachura the posthumous title of “Hero of the Russian Federation,” according to a Kremlin statement.
Mykhailo Podolyak,
an adviser to Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky,
denied that Ukraine was behind the shelling in the Donetsk city center.
Also Thursday, human-rights group Amnesty International criticized Ukrainian forces for endangering civilians by launching attacks from populated areas, including setting up military bases at schools and hospitals, while condemning what it called indiscriminate attacks by Russian forces.
“We have documented a pattern of Ukrainian forces putting civilians at risk and violating the laws of war when they operate in populated areas,”
Agnès Callamard,
Amnesty International’s secretary-general, said. “Being in a defensive position does not exempt the Ukrainian military from respecting international humanitarian law.”
Ukraine’s forces early in the war pulled back to cities to avoid fighting a larger army in unprotected areas in Ukraine’s vast steppe and have avoided staying in barracks and bases because Russian forces have targeted them with cruise missiles.
Russia’s forces have repeatedly shelled apartment buildings in cities across Ukraine as they press their offensive into a sixth month. By the end of July, more than 5,000 Ukrainian civilians had been killed since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, according to the United Nations.
Russian officials seized on the Amnesty report.
“We talk about this all the time, describing the actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine as tactics of using the civilian population as a ‘human shield,’” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
Maria Zakharova
wrote on Telegram.
Ukrainian leaders criticized the Amnesty report, “which unfortunately tries to amnesty the terrorist state and shift the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim,” Mr. Zelensky said in his nightly address Thursday.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister
Dmytro Kuleba
said the Amnesty report created “a false balance between criminal and victim, between a country which is destroying thousands of civilians and whole cities, and a country which is desperately defending itself, saving its population and the whole continent from this onslaught.”
In the U.S., White House spokesman John Kirby said that Russia is planning to falsify evidence and blame Ukraine for the July 29 attack on the Olenivka Prison, where more than 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed.
Moscow and Kyiv accuse each other of targeting Ukrainian prisoners held in Russian-controlled territory.
“We anticipate that Russian officials will try to frame the Ukrainian Armed Forces in anticipation of journalists and potential investigators visiting the site of the attack,’’ Mr. Kirby said Thursday. He added, “In fact, we’ve already seen some spurious press reports to this effect where they have planted evidence.’’
In Russia on Thursday, U.S. women’s basketball star Brittney Griner was sentenced to nine years in prison after being convicted of bringing marijuana into the country with criminal intent. She pleaded guilty to drug charges last month but said she packed hashish oil by mistake and never intended to violate Russian law. Her sentence is expected to clear the way for negotiations between the U.S. and Russia over her release.
President Biden called on Russia to release Ms. Griner immediately, and said his administration would continue to work to bring Ms. Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan home safely as soon as possible.
The sentence is “one more reminder of what the world already knew: Russia is wrongfully detaining Brittney,” Mr. Biden said Thursday.
Write to Isabel Coles at isabel.coles@wsj.com and Evan Gershkovich at evan.gershkovich@wsj.com
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Scientists Are Turning Dead Spiders Into ‘Necrobots’ And We Are So Creeped Out
When mechanical engineering graduate student Faye Yap saw a dead spider curled up in the hallway, it got her thinking about whether it could be used as a robotics component.
Turning dead spiders into mechanical grippers may be some people’s idea of a nightmare scenario, but it could have tangible benefits. Spider legs can grip large, delicate, and irregularly shaped objects firmly and softly without breaking them.
So, in collaboration with mechanical engineer Daniel Preston, Yap and her colleagues at Rice University discovered a way to make a dead wolf spider’s legs unfurl and grip onto objects.
They called this new type of robotics ‘necrobotics’.
Weirdly, spider legs don’t have muscles for extension, but instead move their legs via hydraulic pressure – they have what’s called a prosoma chamber, or cephalothorax, which contracts, sending inner body fluid into their legs, making them extend.
So, the team inserted a needle into the spider’s prosoma chamber and created a seal around the tip of the needle with a glob of superglue. Squeezing a tiny puff of air through the syringe was enough to activate the spider’s legs, achieving a full range of motion in less than one second.
“We took the spider, we placed the needle in it not knowing what was going to happen,” says Yap in a video on the Rice University website.
“We had an estimate of where we wanted to place the needle. And when we did, it worked, the first time, right off the bat. I don’t even know how to describe it, that moment.”
The team were able to make the dead spider grip onto a small ball and used that experiment to determine a peak grip force of 0.35 millinewtons.
They then demonstrated the use of a dead spider to pick up delicate objects and electronics, including having this necrobotic gripper remove a jumper wire attached to an electric breadboard and then move a block of polyurethane foam.
They also showed that the spider could bear the weight of another spider of about the same size.
(Preston Innovation Laboratory/Rice University)
Since spiders extend their legs by exerting hydraulic pressure from their cephalothorax, when they die the hydraulic system doesn’t work anymore. The flexor muscles in the spider’s legs go into rigor mortis, but, as the muscles only work in one direction, the spider curls up.
While most man-made robotics components are quite complex to manufacture, spiders are complex already and (unfortunately for arachnophobes) are in plentiful supply.
“The concept of necrobotics proposed in this work takes advantage of unique designs created by nature that can be complicated or even impossible to replicate artificially,” the researchers say in their paper.
Spiders are also biodegradable, so using them as robot parts would cut the amount of waste in robotics.
“One of the applications we could see this being used for is micro-manipulation, and that could include things like micro-electronic devices,” says Preston in the video.
One drawback to the dead spider gripper is that it starts to experience some wear and tear after two days or after 1,000 open-and-close cycles.
“We think that’s related to issues with dehydration of the joints. We think we can overcome that by applying polymeric coatings,” explains Preston.
The researchers experimented with coating the wolf spiders in beeswax and found that its mass decrease was 17 times less than the uncoated spider over 10 days, which meant it was retaining more water and its hydraulic system might function longer.
This study was published in Advanced Science.
Russia tightens grip on Ukrainian city, raps U.S. for supplying rockets
KYIV, June 2 (Reuters) – Russian forces were attempting to extend and consolidate their hold on Ukraine’s industrial city of Sievierodonetsk on Thursday, edging closer to claiming a big prize in their offensive in the eastern Donbas region.
But in a boost for Ukraine, locked in a grinding struggle against Russia’s invading army, the United States announced a $700 million weapons package for Kyiv that will include advanced rocket systems with a range of up to 80 km (50 miles).
Russia accused the United States of adding “fuel to the fire”. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the supply of the rocket launchers raised the risk of a “third country” being dragged into the conflict.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Ukraine had promised it would not use the systems to hit targets inside Russia. President Joe Biden hopes extending Ukraine’s artillery reach will help push Russia to negotiate an end to the war, which on Friday marks its 100th day.
After days of heavy fighting around Sievierodonetsk, much of which has been laid to waste by Russian bombardment, Russian troops were inching forward through city streets. Ukraine says about 70% of the city is under Russian control, with Russian troops in the city centre.
“The enemy is conducting assault operations in the settlement of Sievierodonetsk,” Ukraine’s armed forces general staff said on Thursday, adding that Russian forces were also attacking in other parts of the east and northeast.
At least four civilians were killed and 10 wounded in the east and northeast, other officials said.
Russia denies targeting civilians.
If Russia fully captures Sievierodonetsk and its smaller twin Lysychansk on the west bank of the Siverskyi Donets river, it would hold all of Luhansk, one of two provinces in the Donbas that Moscow claims on behalf of separatists.
Britain’s defence ministry said in its daily intelligence update that Russia controlled most of the city, which before the war had a population of about 101,000, and that Ukrainian forces had destroyed bridges over the river to Lysychansk.
Capturing all of Luhansk would fulfil one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s main aims and solidify a shift in battlefield momentum after his forces were pushed back from the capital Kyiv and from northern Ukraine.
PINK CLOUD
Luhansk’s regional governor, Serhiy Gaidai, told Reuters that civilians were sheltering from Russian attacks under a Sievierodonetsk chemical plant that he said was hit by an air strike on Tuesday, releasing a large pink cloud. read more
“There are civilians there in bomb shelters, there are quite a few of them left,” Gaidai said. Reuters could not independently confirm the account.
About 15,000 people remained in the city, Gaidai said.
Gaidai has warned that Ukrainian troops in Sievierodonetsk could be forced to retreat to Lysychansk, which he said was easier to defend from its vantage on a hill.
Putin sent his troops over the border on what he called a special military operation on Feb. 24 to disarm and “denazify” Ukraine. Ukraine and its allies call this a baseless pretext for a war of aggression and the West has imposed stringent sanctions on Russia in a bid to strangle its economy.
Thousands of people have been killed in Ukraine and millions more displaced since the invasion began. read more
Amid worries about the global ramifications of the war, Ukraine’s grain traders’ union said this year’s wheat harvest was likely to drop to 19.2 million tonnes from a record 33 million in 2021.
Russia and Ukraine account for nearly a third of global wheat supplies, while Russia is also a key fertilizer exporter and Ukraine a major supplier of corn and sunflower oil.
Biden is due to meet NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday in Washington. Stoltenberg told reporters he would soon convene a meeting in Brussels with Swedish, Finnish and Turkish officials to discuss Turkey’s opposition to Sweden and Finland joining NATO.
WEAPONS PACKAGE
Besides the advanced rocket systems, called HIMARS, the new U.S. package includes ammunition, counter fire radars, air surveillance radars, additional Javelin anti-tank missiles and anti-armour weapons, officials said.
The decision to give Ukraine the rocket systems was made after Washington received assurances from Kyiv that it would not use them to hit targets inside Russian territory, which could broaden the war.
Ukraine has been seeking Multiple Rocket Launch Systems such as the M270 and M142 HIMARS to provide more firepower at longer range to hit Russian forces well behind the front line.
The Pentagon said Washington would initially provide Ukraine with four HIMARS systems.
The new supplies come on top of billions of dollars worth of equipment such as drones and anti-aircraft missiles. The Biden administration plans to sell Ukraine four MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones that can be armed with Hellfire missiles for battlefield use against Russia, three sources told Reuters. read more
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the supplies would not encourage Ukraine’s leadership to resume stalled peace talks.
Separately, U.S. Cyber Command Director Paul Nakasone confirmed that the United States had conducted “offensive, defensive and information” cyber operations to support Ukraine. He gave no specific details in comments to Sky News.
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Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Rami Ayyub, Robert Birsel and Gareth Jones; Editing by Grant McCool, Stephen Coates and Raju Gopalakrishnan
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Russia Tries to Tighten Grip on Occupied Areas of Ukraine
KYIV, Ukraine—Russia is moving to tighten its hold over occupied parts of Ukraine as its military campaign to take more territory in the eastern Donbas region stalls in the face of fierce resistance, with Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky
warning that fighting is set to intensify.
Three months into the war, Russia’s military advance is being held at bay by a Ukrainian army equipped with newly delivered Western arms amid mounting pressure on its economy. As a result, even Russian victories are coming at a high cost.
In Mariupol, the largest Ukrainian city taken over by Russian forces, Russia published footage of minesweepers preparing to clear the area around the Azovstal steel plant that had for weeks served as a refuge for hundreds of Ukrainian fighters until their surrender earlier this month. Petr Andriushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor Vadim Boychenko, said four of the Russian minesweepers had been wounded after a mine exploded on the plant’s territory, with one having sustained serious injuries. Russia didn’t immediately comment on the reports.
The Mariupol City Council, which functions partly from exile in the city of Zaporizhzhia, itself under threat from Russian forces, Tuesday published the names and photos of nine people it said were collaborating with the Russian occupying forces in Mariupol. “Those collaborators will be punished for the crimes they have committed against their city and country,” it wrote in a Telegram post.
Russian servicemen worked to clear mines at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Sunday.
Photo:
Russian Defense Ministry press service/Shutterstock
“The Russian occupiers are trying hard to show that they won’t give up parts of Kharkiv and Kherson region and occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia region and Donbas,” Mr. Zelensky said in a late-evening address on Monday. “The coming weeks of the war will be tough, and we should understand this. But we have no alternative but to fight.”
In Russia, opposition leader
Alexei Navalny,
one of the few vocal opponents to the invasion in Ukraine, again criticized Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s
campaign as a court rejected his appeal against a nine-year prison sentence.
“Putin can break a lot of lives, but sooner or later he will be defeated in both this and the stupid war he is waging,” Mr. Navalny said, according to his spokesperson.
From behind bars, Mr. Navalny has called on his supporters to protest the war. He is already serving a prison sentence that began in February last year in relation to a parole violation on an earlier conviction. His latest conviction stemmed from charges of fraud and contempt of court, which, like the other case against him, Mr. Navalny says are politically motivated.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny appeared via video link during a court hearing on Tuesday.
Photo:
EVGENIA NOVOZHENINA/REUTERS
“I am certainly ready to go to jail to tell everyone that people are dying,” said Mr. Navalny, who was speaking via video link and was repeatedly interrupted by the judge. “No one has killed more Russians than Putin.”
“Your time will pass and you will burn in hell,” Mr. Navalny said, though it is unclear how widely his comments will be heard in Russia.
Russia is facing what could be its sharpest slowdown in decades, partly due to rising defense expenditures and Western sanctions. The World Bank has forecast that Russia’s economic output will shrink by 11.2% this year, its worst contraction since the 1990s.
Efforts to bolster Russian control over seized Ukrainian cities and towns come amid a hardening of the front line in the eastern Donbas region. Moscow’s forces have slowed in their push to seize territory there and begun preparing for counter-offensives by Ukrainian forces armed with newly delivered Western arms, including M777 howitzer artillery pieces.
Ukraine says Russia is also getting ready to mount military offensives from occupied areas where it has had the time to regroup forces and strategize. The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Tuesday that Russia has improved its tactical position around the town of Vasylivka in south Ukraine and was readying an attack northward toward Zaporizhzhia, the regional capital under Ukrainian control.
A Ukrainian soldier on a reconnaissance mission at the front line in Izyum.
Photo:
Manu Brabo for The Wall Street Journal
Smoke rose over the city of Soledar in the Donbas area of eastern Ukraine on Tuesday.
Photo:
aris messinis/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday that its air-based missiles, aviation and artillery have hit command posts and ammunition depots in several settlements along the Donbas front line.
Mr. Zelensky said during a news conference this week that up to 100 Ukrainian soldiers could be dying each day on the front lines in the east of the country, where Russia has refocused its forces after failing to take Kyiv in the early days of the war. The Ukrainian leader said that as of April 16, between 2,500 and 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, with up to 10,000 injured.
Ukraine has confirmed 4,600 civilian deaths as a result of Russian attacks since the invasion began on Feb. 24, including 232 children, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, said on Monday in Davos. The figures don’t include information about Russian-occupied territories, she said.
In Kherson, a city of 290,000 that came under Russian control in the first weeks of the war, attempts to integrate more closely with Russia have advanced furthest. Andrei Turchak, the head of Russia’s ruling United Russia party, said on a recent visit to the city, north of the Crimean Peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014, that “Russia is here to stay forever.”
People evacuating Bakhmut, in the Donbas area, on Tuesday.
Photo:
aris messinis/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
A flower shop in a market in Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine.
Photo:
Bernat Armangue/Associated Press
The Russian-appointed deputy regional head in Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, on Tuesday called for a Russian military base to be established as “a guarantor of continued peace and security in our region.” Mr. Stremousov, who has previously said that Kherson region would start using the Russian ruble and would aspire to join Russia, told Russia’s state news wire RIA that the regional population backed closer integration with Russia.
Polls taken on a nationwide level appear to contradict that idea. In a survey published Tuesday by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 82% of the 2,000 respondents across Ukraine said the country shouldn’t make territorial concessions in exchange for peace. Only 10% backed the idea of ceding territory to Russia.
Mr. Stremousov is a wanted man in Ukraine, which is stepping up its campaign to prosecute collaborators and Russian soldiers accused of committing atrocities in areas they have occupied.
On Monday, a Russian soldier was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison in Ukraine’s first war-crimes trial since the Russian invasion began.
The European Union, meanwhile, is working to find new ways to get grain out of Ukraine, such as by shipping Ukrainian produce over land to European ports, said European Commission President
Ursula von der Leyen.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Poland is pushing the U.S. and EU to help rapidly expand the rail infrastructure needed to export Ukraine’s looming grain harvest, circumventing Russia’s naval chokehold in the Black Sea.
A damaged Ukrainian armored vehicle outside the city of Lysychansk in the Donbas area of eastern Ukraine.
Photo:
aris messinis/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Ms. von der Leyen accused Russia of weaponizing food partly by undermining Ukraine’s ability to export. She said 20 million tons of wheat are stuck in Ukraine and normal monthly exports of around five million tons are down to 200,000 or one million tons.
Denmark’s pledge to send a Harpoon launcher and antiship missiles to Ukraine, which was disclosed on Monday, would help Kyiv bolster its defense against the Russian navy, which is laying siege to its Black Sea ports. The U.S.-made missiles would extend Ukraine’s striking range against Russian ships that have attacked it from the Black Sea.
“This is more than just a European issue. It’s a global issue,’’ President Biden said of the war, in remarks during a meeting of the leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue made up of the U.S., Japan, Australia and India.
The remarks appeared to make a personal plea to Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi.
The U.S. has been trying to persuade India to come off the sidelines and take a more forceful stand against Russia.
A joint statement released by the Quad after the meeting referred to “a tragic conflict raging in Ukraine” but didn’t say who was to blame.
U.S. troop numbers deployed in Europe have increased by 30% as a result of the war, topping 100,000, according to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen.
Mark Milley.
—Georgi Kantchev contributed to this article.
Write to Matthew Luxmoore at Matthew.Luxmoore@wsj.com
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