Category: environment

Speaking to journalists via conference call, Peskov was asked to comment on the arrest of the American citizen and whether Russia will cooperate with US security services on the issue. The spokesperson stated that he was not aware of the details of the case and that the matter remains in the hands of the FSB.   However, Peskov claimed that as far as he was aware, Gershkovich had been caught in the act of trying to collect intelligence about a defense facility, in violation of Russian laws on state secrets, as announced by the FSB. The correspondent, who covers news from Russia, Ukraine, and the former USSR, could face between 10 and 20 years in prison if charged with espionage.  Although Gershkovich had obtained the necessary journalistic credentials from the Foreign Ministry to work in Russia, the FSB alleges that he “acted in the interest of the US government” when he was caught during “an attempt to receive” classified intelligence. 

Asked if the incident could provoke a response from US authorities regarding Russian journalists working in America, Peskov said that Moscow hopes no such retaliation will follow because “we are not talking about allegations here. He was caught in the act.”  The WSJ has reacted to the incident by stating that it is “deeply concerned for the safety of Mr Gershkovich.”  Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said that the issue of potentially exchanging the WSJ journalist in a swap deal has not been raised.   Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has claimed that whatever Gershkovich was doing when he was detained by the FSB, it had “nothing to do with journalism.” She argued that the status of correspondent had previously been used as cover by other Western nationals attempting to obtain classified Russian intelligence.

The BNSF train derailed in the town of Raymond, roughly 100 miles (161 kilometers) west of Minneapolis, around 1 a.m., according to a statement from Kandiyohi County Sheriff Eric Tollefson.

This latest derailment happened as the nation has been increasingly focused on railroad safety after last month’s fiery Norfolk Southern derailment that prompted evacuations in East Palestine, Ohio, near the Pennsylvania border.

Residents in that town of about 5,000 remain concerned about lingering health impacts after officials decided to release and burn toxic chemicals to prevent a tank car explosion. State and federal officials maintain that no harmful levels of toxic chemicals have been found in the air or water there, but residents remain uneasy.

Billionaire businessman Elon Musk and a range of tech leaders called on Wednesday for a pause in the development of powerful artificial intelligence (AI) systems to allow time to make sure they are safe.

An open letter, signed by more than 1,000 people so far including Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, was in response to San Francisco startup OpenAI’s recent release of GPT-4, a more advanced successor to its widely-used AI chatbot ChatGPT that helped spark a race among tech giants Microsoft and Google to unveil similar applications.

The company says its latest model is much more powerful than the previous version, which was used to power ChatGPT, a bot capable of generating tracts of text from the briefest of prompts.

“AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity,” said the open letter titled “Pause Giant AI Experiments”.

Israel launch a new spy satellite on Wednesday, the first the country has sent to space in nearly three years as it seeks to enhance its defense capabilities and prepare for a possible escalation with Iran.

An Israeli Shavit rocket delivered the Ofek-13 satellite to space, blasting off from the Palmachim Airbase on the Mediterranean coast at 7:10 p.m. ET, according to the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The ministry confirmed that the satellite entered its designated orbit and began transmitting data after completing an initial series of inspections. Ofek-13 still has to undergo a few more inspections before beginning its full operations “in the near future,” the defense ministry wrote.

Israel’s Ofek-13 satellite is the latest to join a series of reconnaissance satellites, the first of which launched in 1988. Its latest predecessor was the Ofek-16, which launched in July 2020. Israel’s defense ministry is claiming that Ofek-13 has the most advanced capabilities of the entire series with “unique radar observation capabilities, and will enable intelligence collection in any weather and conditions of visibility thus enhancing strategic intelligence,” Boaz Levy, CEO of state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, said in the ministry statement.

In a series of tweets shared on Tuesday night, Netanyahu noted that he has known his US counterpart for “over 40 years” and commended Biden for his “longstanding commitment to Israel.” However, he urged Washington not to meddle in his country’s internal affairs, after Biden said he was “very concerned” about the upcoming legal changes.

“My administration is committed to strengthening democracy by restoring the proper balance between the three branches of government, which we are striving to achieve via a broad consensus,” Netanyahu said, adding “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”

Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.

ABF Freight System Inc. (ABF), a freight carrier that operates more than 200 transportation facilities in 47 states and Puerto Rico, has resolved allegations that it violated requirements of the Clean Water Act (CWA) relating to industrial stormwater at locations across the country. Under the proposed settlement, ABF will enhance and implement its comprehensive, corporate-wide stormwater compliance program at all its transportation facilities except those located in the state of Washington, and will pay a civil penalty of $535,000, a portion of which will be directed to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, the State of Maryland, and the State of Nevada who all joined this settlement.

Today, the Department of Justice, on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), filed a motion for preliminary injunction under the Clean Air Act (CAA) requesting that the court order Denka Performance Elastomer LLC (Denka) to require significant pollution controls to reduce chloroprene emissions, a pollutant that EPA has determined to be a likely carcinogen. The request for immediate relief by EPA and the Justice Department follows the United States’ complaint filed on Feb. 28, alleging an imminent and substantial endangerment to the communities surrounding the facility as a result of Denka’s manufacturing operations.

The Clean Air Act section 303 imminent and substantial endangerment lawsuit is currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

Ohio filed a lawsuit against railroad Norfolk Southern to make sure it pays for the cleanup and environmental damage caused by a fiery train derailment on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border last month, the state’s attorney general said Tuesday.

The federal lawsuit also seeks to force the company to pay for groundwater and soil monitoring in the years to come and economic losses in the village of East Palestine and surrounding areas, said Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.

“The fallout from this highly preventable accident is going to reverberate throughout Ohio for many years to come,” Yost said.

The U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have entered into a consent decree with the City of Gloucester, Massachusetts, to resolve violations of the Clean Water Act regarding the city’s water pollution control facility that discharges undertreated effluent into Massachusetts Bay.

Undertreated sewage from the city’s existing water treatment facility results in a variety of harmful discharges into Massachusetts Bay, including disease causing organisms and toxic pollutants.

A US jury has ordered Bayer subsidiary Monsanto to pay $857 million (£676 million) to seven people – including former students and parent volunteers at a school in Washington state – who said they were sickened by exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that the company sold. The PBCs were apparently used in fire safety fluid in the school that leaked from its light fixtures, and the plaintiffs reported neurological, endocrine and other health problems. Monsanto explains that the claims in…