- Russian propagandist who called for drowning of Ukrainian children is poisoned Yahoo News
- Former RT Host Says Hospitalized as Ukrainian Media Report Poisoning Attack The Moscow Times
- Putin propagandist who called for Ukrainian children to be drowned is ‘seriously ill’ in hospital ‘after being Daily Mail
- Former RT presenter hospitalised with symptoms of poisoning Новая газета. Европа
- Top Putin crony who called for Ukrainian children to be killed ‘seriously ill after Moscow poison a… The Sun
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Pearl Harbor water poisoned after multiple errors at fuel storage facility, Navy report says
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The U.S. Navy is planning to defuel Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, a massive World War II-era military-run tank farm in the hills above Pearl Harbor, after an investigation revealed multiple mistakes and mismanagement caused fuel to leak into Pearl Harbor’s tap water last year.
The Hawaiʻi Department of Health released the Navy’s investigation on Thursday that found poor management and human error caused fuel to leak from the facility into a well that supplied water to housing and officers in and around Pearl Harbor. Thousands of people were poisoned and military families were forced to evacuate their homes.
FILE – In this Dec. 23, 2021, photo provided by the U.S. Navy, Rear Adm. John Korka, Commander, Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC), and Chief of Civil Engineers, leads Navy and civilian water quality recovery experts through the tunnels of the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, near Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. A Navy investigation released Thursday, June 30, 2022 revealed that shoddy management and human error caused fuel to leak into Pearl Harbor’s tap water last year, poisoning thousands of people and forcing military families to evacuate their homes for hotels. The investigation is the first detailed account of how jet fuel from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, a massive World War II-era military-fun tank farm in the hills above Pearl Harbor, leaked into a well that supplied water to housing and offices in and around Pearl Harbor.
(Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Luke McCall/U.S. Navy via AP, File)
“Red Hill needs to be shut down as quickly as possible and we fully expect that the Navy will marshal all possible available resources to defuel and decommission the facility,” Deputy Director of Environmental Health Kathleen Ho said in a statement. “However, with the extensive repairs needed and the Navy’s history of spills from unsafe pipelines, our first priority continues to be ensuring that all defueling activities are performed safely for the sake of the people and environment of Hawai‘i.”
The report listed a series of mistakes from May 2021, when operator error caused a pipe to rupture and 21,000 gallons of fuel to spill when it was being transferred between tanks. The fuel spilled into a fire suppression line, sat there for six months and then spilled again when a cart rammed into it in November.
US WORLD WAR II SHIP SUNK IN FAMOUS BATTLE FOUND BY EXPLORERS, DEEPEST SHIPWRECK EVER DISCOVERED
FILE – Overhead lights illuminate a tunnel inside the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Jan. 26, 2018. A Navy investigation released Thursday, June 30, 2022 revealed that shoddy management and human error caused fuel to leak into Pearl Harbor’s tap water last year, poisoning thousands of people and forcing military families to evacuate their homes for hotels. The investigation is the first detailed account of how jet fuel from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, a massive World War II-era military-fun tank farm in the hills above Pearl Harbor, leaked into a well that supplied water to housing and offices in and around Pearl Harbor.
(U.S. Navy via AP, File)
Some 6,000 people were treated for nausea, headaches, rashes and other illnesses, according to the report. The military moved about 4,000 mostly military families into hotels for months while they waited for their water to be safe again.
The report said the military failed to recognize the severity of the situation.
US DEFENDS SENDING AIRCRAFT THROUGH TAIWAN STRAIT AS CHINA GROWS INCREASINGLY AGGRESSIVE
In this photo provided by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, this 1942 Navy photo shows miners building one of the 20 fuel tanks of Defense Logistics Agency’s Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility at Joint Base Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, which are connected by a miles-long tunnel. A Navy investigation released Thursday, June 30, 2022 revealed that shoddy management and human error caused fuel to leak into Pearl Harbor’s tap water last year, poisoning thousands of people and forcing military families to evacuate their homes for hotels. The investigation is the first detailed account of how jet fuel from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, a massive World War II-era military-fun tank farm in the hills above Pearl Harbor, leaked into a well that supplied water to housing and offices in and around Pearl Harbor.
(U.S. Army Corps of Engineers via AP)
Adm. Sam Paparo, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, told reporters at a news conference that the Navy was trying to move away from that. He called it an ongoing process “to get real with ourselves” and “being honest about our deficiencies.”
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“The lack of critical thinking, intellectual rigor, and self-assessment by key leaders at decisive moments exemplified a culture of complacency and demonstrated a lack of professionalism that is demanded by the high consequence nature of fuel operations,” the report said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Russian soldiers killed by pastries poisoned by Ukrainians
Two Russian soldiers have died and dozens more became sick after they were apparently poisoned by stuffed buns given to them by Ukrainians near the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine intelligence officials said.
The soldiers from the 3rd Motor Rifle Division were served the delicacies by citizens in the city of Izium, the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine said Saturday.
“As a result, two invaders were killed at once, another 28 went to intensive care,” officials wrote in a Facebook post.
The conditions of the hospitalized soldiers were unclear.
The report came as another 500 soldiers fighting for Russian President Vladimir Putin were hospitalized because of alcohol poisoning, Ukraine asid. It’s unclear whether the Russian troops obtained the alcohol from Ukrainian citizens.
Russia has written off the incidents as “non-combat losses,” Ukrainian officials said.
Meanwhile, Russia on Sunday launched strikes on the Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Odesa.
Oleh Synyehubov, the regional governor in Kharkiv, said Russian forces launched more than 20 strikes on the city and its outskirts in the country’s northeast over the past day.
A missile strike on the city of Lozovo wounded four people, and Russian tanks bombarded a hospital in the town of Balakliia, Synyehubov said.
On Sunday morning, Russian forces also launched an airstrike on the Black Sea port of Odesa in southern Ukraine. The Russian military said the targets were an oil-processing plant and fuel depots around Odesa, which is the country’s largest port and home to its navy.
Ukrainian officials said they also have found brutalized bodies of women, children and local officials in the small city of Bucha near Kyiv, as Russian troops withdrew from the capital and its suburbs. Ukraine claimed some of the women had been raped and set on fire.
“There are murdered men whose bodies bear signs of torture,” added Oleksiy Arestovych, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “Their hands were tied, and they were killed by shots to the back of the head.”
Sergey Nikiforov, a spokesman for Zelensky, told the BBC that the gruesome discoveries look “exactly like war crimes.”
The Kremlin has previously denied committing war crimes in what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Russia had promised last week that it would “radically” reduce its attacks around Kyiv and Chernihiv, though Ukraine has warned that it does not mean the cities wouldn’t become targets again, and the US and its allies predicted the move could simply mean Putin is regrouping.
With Post wires
Schumer ‘poisoned well’ over debt limit, McConnell says in insult-laden letter | US Senate
Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, sought to fight his way out of a corner on Friday by releasing an angry letter in which he blamed Democrats for the impasse over the debt ceiling he broke by ending a refusal to co-operate he had said was absolute.
In the letter to Joe Biden, McConnell complained about a speech in which the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, attacked Republicans for their behaviour.
Lamenting Schumer’s lack of civility – which prompted angry scenes in the Senate – McConnell levelled a string of insults at his opposite number.
“Last night,” the minority leader wrote, late on Friday, “in a bizarre spectacle, Senator Schumer exploded in a rant that was so partisan, angry and corrosive that even Democratic senators were visibly embarrassed by him and for him.
“This tantrum encapsulated and escalated a pattern of angry incompetence from Senator Schumer … this childish behavior only further alienated the Republican members who helped facilitate this short-term patch. It has poisoned the well even further.”
Democrats argue it was McConnell who poisoned the well by refusing to co-operate with raising the debt limit, a step they took repeatedly with Donald Trump in power. Experts say a US default would be catastrophic for the global economy.
McConnell insisted: “In light of Senator Schumer’s hysterics and my grave concerns about the ways that another vast, reckless, partisan spending bill would hurt Americans and help China, I will not be a party to any future effort to mitigate the consequences of Democratic mismanagement.”
McConnell also spoke to Biden, media outlets reported.
The Kentuckian made his move a day after he and 10 other Republicans provided decisive support for a $480bn federal debt limit rise, enough to last two months. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen had said that without such a rise, the US would default on its debts by mid-October.
Some Republicans criticized McConnell for not holding out longer, which they said would have sharpened their contention that a multibillion-dollar package of Biden’s domestic spending priorities, currently making its way through Congress, is wasteful and damaging.
Trump, who remains influential in the party and will stage a rally in Iowa on Saturday, was among those to lambast McConnell for what Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, called his “complete capitulation”.
In his speech, Schumer lauded Democrats for overcoming a “Republican-manufactured crisis. Despite immense opposition from Leader McConnell and members of his conference, our caucus held together and we have pulled our country back from the cliff’s edge that Republicans tried to push us over”.
As Schumer spoke, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a key centrist Democrat, was seen to bury his head in his hands. Among Republicans angered by Schumer’s lack of comity and politesse was Mitt Romney of Utah – who had voted against helping raise the debt ceiling.
Romney told reporters: “There’s a time to be graceful and there’s a time to be combative, and that was a time for grace.”
John Thune of South Dakota, a member of Republican leadership who voted with McConnell, said Schumer was “totally out of line”. Of his own confrontation with the New Yorker, he said: “I let him have it.”
But Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, tweeted: “Some of my Republican colleagues didn’t like that Schumer called them out … just unreal that they thought they deserved applause for courting economic disaster and then, at the very last minute, delivering the absolute minimum number of votes to avoid it.”
One way for Democrats to raise the debt limit on their own would be to shield debt legislation from filibusters, delays that mean 60 votes are needed in the 50-50 Senate.
Two key Democrats, Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, oppose that, as they have opposed ending the filibuster to protect voting rights or Biden policy priorities. Republicans have said one factor in McConnell providing the two-month debt lifeline was fear that Manchin and Sinema might support ending filibusters on debt legislation.
Democrats accused McConnell of creating a crisis over a debt of around $28tn which covers spending already approved – including around $7tn under Trump.
Ivermectin misinformation has poisoned Amazon’s platform, with few fixes planned
Earlier this week, I started a search on Amazon and mistyped, entering just two letters in: “iv.” Amazon then helpfully compiled a list of suggested search results, almost all of which were for the horse de-worming version of the drug ivermectin. That drug is at the center of one of the more recent and more mind-boggling parts of the anti-vaccine misinformation story, a false cure touted by hucksters and others out to make a quick buck.
This evening, Amazon spokesperson Craig Andrews tells The Verge that “Amazon’s autocomplete responses are driven by customer activity. We are blocking certain autocomplete responses to address these concerns.”
Like Facebook, TikTok, and Reddit, Amazon has not gotten a lid on limiting the spread of COVID-19 misinformation. Unlike those platforms and others, Amazon has seemingly done very little to try to stop it.
Amazon is not unique in using an algorithm to drive its autocomplete results. But as companies like Google have learned, there are “data voids” for previously unpopular search terms that can suddenly skew the algorithm when those terms get swept up in a new misinformation campaign. Google has gone to some length to try to solve the data void problem, most recently by presenting warnings on search results it thinks might suffer from the issue. As of the publication of this article, Amazon’s search results still show entries for ivermectin.
When you click through to one of those suggested search terms, Amazon simply lists many options for purchasing the drug meant to treat animals — without any further context about its dangers when ingested by humans. Although there are legitimate uses for ivermectin in humans, treating COVID-19 isn’t one of them. And though it should go without saying that taking the veterinary version is a very bad idea, that’s exactly what’s happening.
In a bulletin issued by the Mississippi department of health, the agency says that “At least 70% of the recent calls [to poison control] have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of ivermectin.”
Ivermectin can cause side effects ranging from “skin rash, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, facial or limb swelling, neurologic adverse events (dizziness, seizures, confusion), sudden drop in blood pressure, severe skin rash potentially requiring hospitalization and liver injury (hepatitis),” according to the FDA.
Where other platforms have put effort into presenting information boxes leading to reliable and trustworthy information about COVID-19 and COVID-19 treatments, Amazon shows no such information in either its search results nor on product pages for ivermectin. An Amazon spokesperson tells me that if you search specifically for “ivermectin for covid,” it does display only a link to the FDA’s warning page about the drug.
It does appear that on at least some product listings, at least some moderation teams at Amazon are keeping an eye out for problems. Some of the top search results for ivermectin have very few written reviews. Scroll down a bit, however, and there are plenty that are clearly meant to discuss the use of the drug in humans. One reviewer, for example, wrote that it “Worked good on my 200lb horse” and that “long CV already going away.” Another rated a product 5 stars, writing that “I love the taste […] Ivermectin too hard to get, but so effective at preventing something I cannot mention here.”
Over on Reddit, more than a hundred subreddits went dark today in protest of that platform’s refusal to ban communities that spread COVID-19 misinformation. TikTok appears to be playing whack-a-mole with videos on its platform, and Facebook has struggled to enforce its policies against misinformation as communities resort to euphemisms like “moo juice.”
On Amazon, veterinary ivermectin remains easy to find without being shown any science-based information that could inform a consumer of the dangers of taking a drug that is meant for animals. It also remains easy to purchase on that platform, in some cases with free Amazon Prime delivery, fulfilled by an Amazon warehouse.
Hey Amazon this autocomplete result for just two letters is VERY BAD on so many levels. Not only does it reveal how easily your algorithm can be skewed by misinformation, it’s also possibly leading to genuine, human harm. pic.twitter.com/A2hfsKIcQr
— Dieter Bohn (@backlon) August 31, 2021
First Russia poisoned him. Now this is the prison camp for Alexey Navalny.
Life inside is hidden from view, behind high metal fences and barbed wire surrounding this dilapidated-looking facility, in the Vladimir region of Russia, two hours’ drive from the capital, Moscow.
“I had no idea that it was possible to arrange a real concentration camp 100km from Moscow,” Navalny said, adding his head had been shaven.
“Video cameras are everywhere, everyone is watched and at the slightest violation they make a report. I think someone upstairs read Orwell’s ‘1984,’” Navalny continued, in a reference to the classic dystopian novel.
Life inside the prison, in the town of Pokrov, could yet become more banal, stressful and possibly dangerous according to one former inmate.
Konstantin Kotov served what he said were two miserable sentences — the first for four months, the second for six months — in Penal Colony No. 2 for breaking Russian anti-protest laws.
He was last released in December and was anxious about returning, but agreed to travel with CNN to explain how the penal colony works on the inside.
“From the first minutes you are here you are experiencing mental and moral pressure,” he told CNN.
“You are forced to do things that you would never do in normal life. You are forbidden to talk with other convicts. They force you to learn the list of names of the employees. You are on your feet all day, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. You are not allowed to sit down. They do not allow you to read, they do not allow you to write a letter. It can last two weeks, it can last three weeks.”
Navalny was sent to prison after a Moscow court on February 2 replaced his suspended sentence with jail time due to violations of his probation.
He was arrested when he returned to Moscow from Germany where he had been recovering from poisoning with a nerve agent. Navalny blames the Russian security services for placing Novichok in his underpants and the US and European Union largely agree and have sanctioned Russian officials for their involvement.
Russian authorities were initially reluctant to say exactly where Navalny was, refusing to tell Navalny’s lawyers or even family members where he was being held until days after being moved.
Now that he is confirmed to be at Penal Colony 2, he is expected to serve out the rest of his sentence there.
‘Torture by TV’
Kotov, the former inmate, explained prisoners sleep in barrack rooms in iron bunk beds. About 50 to 60 men slept in his room, he said, each with only a small amount of living space.
“You get up at 6 in the morning, you go out to the courtyard nearby and listen to the national anthem of Russia — every day the anthem of the Russian Federation,” he said.
“You cannot write, you cannot read. For example, I watched TV almost all day, Russian federal channels. This is torture by TV.”
It’s what he calls the “daily meaningless activity” that Kotov says sets the tone, but then there are the constant corrections for any perceived wrongdoing.
“I was reprimanded for not saying hello to an employee, and for the fact that I had my top button undone,” Kotov said.
The slightest violation can see an inmate taken to solitary confinement, Kotov said, perhaps for months at a time.
Order is maintained both by prison guards and by prisoners known as “orderlies” who cooperate with the prison administration.
Though the orderly is also a convict, Kotov said, they are relied on report anyone who doesn’t toe the line.
“They are like spies who follow your every step and report them to the administration,” Kotov said.
Alexander Kalashnikov of Russia’s federal penitentiary service (FSIN) has said Navalny is being handled as any other prisoner.
“Everything is done within the framework of the law and the current legislation,” he told reporters in late February.
‘Empire of fear’
Violence can be common in Russian prisons. Disturbing video released by the Russian investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta shows prisoners being beaten by guards in a penal colony in Yaroslavl, the region next to where Navalny is being held. A Russian court has convicted several people of involvement in what’s become a national scandal but former inmates say it’s not an isolated case.
Kotov says he saw inmates being beaten by orderlies at Penal Colony No. 2. Most often, they would unscrew a chair leg and hit people on their heels — painful and inconspicuous — he told CNN.
Navalny in his Instagram post said he had yet to witness any violence but he “easily believes the numerous stories” of brutality in the colony due to the fear he has witnessed among his fellow inmates.
He said he was being woken every hour by a guard shining a camera and light in his face to check he was there as he has been designated a “flight risk.”
Kotov said he feared for Navalny’s mental state rather than his physical health, saying he believes Navalny’s high profile would mean that officials would not want him physically harmed.
“They want to deprive him of his voice,” Kotov told CNN. “That is their purpose.”
Prisoner’s rights expert Pyotr Kuryanov, of the Defending Prisoners’ Rights Foundation, said the situation was “very dangerous” in the prison camp, which he called an “empire of fear.”
“It’s tough to stay there and keep a cool head and not to react to provocations,” he told CNN. “It is extremely tough psychologically. The tiniest possible violation … might bring a convict to a heavy physical damage. “
Inside the rows of two-story barracks, inmates can be ordered to clean floors with toothbrushes and other demeaning and pointless tasks designed to humiliate, Kuryanov said.
“I do not rule out that Alexey might fall victim to a nervous breakdown,” he added.