The April 2025 flooding disaster in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, wasn’t just about intense rainfall. It was a symptom of recent land use change which has occurred rapidly in the city, turning it into a sprawling urban settlement without the necessary drainage infrastructure.
Local rains combined with runoff from torrential rains coming from neighbouring Congo Central Province quickly overwhelmed the city’s small urban tributaries. The Ndjili River and its tributary (Lukaya), which run through the city, overflowed and flooded homes on either side.
This led to the deaths of at least 70 people, 150 injured and the temporary displacement of more than 21,000 people. Floods affected the running of 73 healthcare facilities. Access to water and transport services were disrupted in large parts of the city. People could only move around by dugout canoe or by swimming in flooded avenues.
Floods have become recurrent in the DRC. The last quarter of 2023 and the beginning of 2024 saw the most devastating floods there and in neighbouring countries since the 1960s.
According to UN World Urbanisation Prospects (2025), the reason the floods have become this devastating is the growth of Kinshasa. The city is the most densely populated city in the DRC, the most populous city and third-largest metropolitan area in Africa.
Kinshasa’s 2025 population is estimated at 17,778,500. Back in 1950, it was 201,905. In the past year alone, the city’s population has grown by 746,200, a 4.38% annual change. At least 2% of the population live in areas prone to flooding. Urban infrastructure, especially flood-related, is non-existent or inadequate. Where it exists, drainage systems are blocked by solid waste, itself another sign of the city whose public services such as waste collection have become dysfunctional.
We have been studying the characteristics of flooding and the prediction of risk linked to it in the Congo Basin for five years as part of our work at the Congo Basin Water Resources Research Center in Kinshasa. We study the movement of water in natural and modified environments and its interactions with infrastructure over a range of geographical scales. We argue in this article that understanding why Kinshasa floods means recognising two very different water systems at play – and how urban growth has made the city more vulnerable to both.
Kinshasa faces two distinct flood hazards: first, flooding from the Congo River, which typically peaks around December and January; and, second, urban flood events driven by local rainfall and runoff from the hills south of the city around April and December.
Most of Kinshasa’s flood disasters have come from the second type. And as Kinshasa has urbanised, expanding into the floodplains, but without the necessary urban infrastructure, the impact of urban flood events has become worse.
With more sealed surfaces – because of more urban settlements – and less natural water absorption, more rainwater runs off, and faster. This overwhelms the city’s small urban tributaries and the Ndjili river.
Growth of Kinshasa and flood
As the city has expanded, so has its flood exposure. The city’s tributaries drain steep, densely populated urban slopes and are highly responsive to rainfall.
Of Kinshasa’s two flood risks, the impact of Congo River flooding can be observed in large cities located along major rivers, and typically peaks around January. These are seasonal floods driven by rainfall across the whole Congo Basin.
Research at Congo Basin Water Resources Research Center shows that while Congo River high water levels can cause “backwater effects” – the upstream rise in water level caused by reduced flow downstream – most damaging floods result from intense local rainfall overwhelming the city’s small river catchments. The flood risk analysis indicates that 38 territories are the hotspot of flooding in the Congo basin. Kinshasa is a hotspot due to its double risk sources and extensive urbanisation.
The urban flood events are more challenging. They can happen with less rainfall and cause major destruction. They are driven by local rainfall and rapid growth of informal settlements.
Other cities face similar risks. In 2024, Nairobi suffered deadly floods after prolonged rain overwhelmed informal neighbourhoods and infrastructure.
Across Africa, cities are growing faster than their infrastructure can keep up with. Kinshasa has unique exposure, but also strong local research capacity.
The Congo River’s seasonal peaks are relatively well understood and monitored. But urban tributaries are harder to predict.
DRC’s meteorological agency Mettelsat and its partners are building capacity for real-time monitoring. But the April 2025 floods showed that community-level warning systems did not work.
Climate change is expected to intensify extreme rainfall in central Africa. While annual totals may not increase, short, intense storms could become more frequent.
This increases pressure on cities already struggling with today’s rains. In Kinshasa, the case for climate-resilient planning and infrastructure is urgent.
Forecasting rainfall is not enough. Government agencies in collaboration with universities must also forecast flood impact – and ensure people can act on the warnings. There is a need to put in place systems to achieve this under a catchment integrated flood management plan.
The main elements of such a plan include:
Improved early warning systems: Use advanced technologies (such as satellites) to gather real-time data on environmental conditions.
Upgraded drainage infrastructure: Identify weaknesses and areas prone to flooding, to manage storm water better.
Enforcement of land use planning: Establish clear regulations that define flood-prone areas; outline permissible land uses.
Define safety perimeters around areas at risk of flooding: Use historical data, flood maps, and hydrological studies to pinpoint areas that are at risk. Regulate development and activities there.
Local engagement in flood preparedness: Educate residents about flood risks, preparedness measures, and emergency response.
Institutions such as the Congo Basin Water Resources Research Center play a critical role, not just in research but in turning knowledge into action. Rainfall may trigger the flood, but urban systems decide whether it becomes a disaster. And those systems can change.
Gode Bola receives funding support from the Congo River User Hydraulics and Morphology (CRuHM) project (2016-2021), which was entirely funded by The Royal Society-DFID Africa Capacity Building (RS-DFID) under grant number “AQ150005.” He is affiliated with the Regional School of Water (ERE) and the Congo Basin Water Research Center (CRREBaC) of the University of Kinshasa, as well as the Regional Center for Nuclear Studies of Kinshasa.
Mark Trigg received funding support from the Congo River user Hydraulics and Morphology (CRuHM) project (2016-2021), which was wholly funded by The Royal Society-DFID Africa Capacity Building (RS-DFID) under the grant number “AQ150005”. Mark Trigg is affiliated with water@leeds at the University of Leeds and the Global Flood Partnership.
Raphaël Tshimanga receives funding from he Congo River user Hydraulics and Morphology (CRuHM) project (2016-2021), which was wholly funded by The Royal Society-DFID Africa Capacity Building (RS-DFID) under the grant number “AQ150005”. He is affiliated with the Congo Basin Water Resources Research Center and the Regional School of Water of the University of Kinshasa.
For the second week in a row, senior officials from the United States and Iran will get together to take part in talks about the Iranian nuclear programme. It’s the second round in the latest negotiations – the first having taken place in Oman on April 12.
But recent statements from both the White House and senior Iranian officials, including a difference of opinion on where the talks should be held, suggest that rapid diplomatic successes may not be forthcoming.
Donald Trump’s stance on Iran has been unsurprisingly belligerent. It was the first Trump administration that withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal and imposed the policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran. Since returning to the Oval Office, Trump has reimposed this policy of maximum pressure.
Posting on X, the US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, declared that “Iran must stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program”. He also called for verification of any missiles stockpiled in the Islamic republic.
Iranian officials vociferously rejected these US demands, with the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, asserting that the missile programme is not for discussion.
Tehran needs a deal
There is little doubt that Iran wants a deal, perhaps even needs a deal. It has been hit hard by sanctions over the past decade, which have hollowed out the country’s middle class.
Israel’s military strikes on Iran and its allies over the past year have eroded the ideological and military clout of the Islamic Republic and wider “axis of resistance”. With the weakening of many of its allies, Iran’s missiles possess even greater importance as a deterrence.
The strong line taken by the Trump administration leaves little room for manoeuvre. It risks further emboldening hardline elements in Iran, who are perhaps less willing to engage diplomatically. But any belligerent rhetoric from voices in Iran risks pouring fuel on an already incendiary situation.
At the same time, the Islamic Republic faces a range of serious pressures domestically, such as that seen in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, as well as increasingly vocal opposition from abroad – notably from the self-proclaimed Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah who was ousted in 1979.
Though Iran may want a deal, it cannot capitulate – particularly after the events of the last year. And nor should it.
US weighs its strategy
Hawks in the US, Israel and elsewhere have, of course, heralded the Trump administration’s stance. Fears of an Iranian nuclear programme continue to drive the actions of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and others – although reports have just emerged that proposed Israeli strikes on targets in Iran were vetoed by Trump in favour of more negotiation.
While the Gulf states would once have celebrated a tough stance on Iran, the situation is different now. Iran’s long-time rival, Saudi Arabia, has put aside decades of animosity in the hope of a more prosperous shared future.
In a 2023 agreement mediated by China, Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to normalise relations, reopening embassies and embarking on a series of coordinated military exercises. For Saudi Arabia, and in particular its crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, regional stability is essential in realising the ambitious Vision2030 programme – which leans heavily into global investor confidence and trust.
As a result, the kingdom undertook a pragmatic shift in its regional affairs, embarking on a process of diplomatic rapprochement that surprised many observers. Riyadh has also taken steps towards normalisation with Israel, though the ongoing destruction of Gaza has paused such moves, at least for now.
At the same time as the nuclear negotiations take place, Israeli strikes on targets in Syria continue. The fall of the Assad regime at the end of 2024 – and the back seat taken by its long-time supporter, Russia – has dramatically altered the political landscape of Syria.
Though its former president, Bashar al-Assad, has found refuge in Russia, Moscow has taken a watching brief, eager not to antagonise Syria’s new regime and jeopardise its strategically important military bases on the Mediterranean coast. Members of groups previously favoured by the Assad regime, notably the Alawi communities, have fled to the Russian naval base at Latakia in search of protection.
But thousands of others have been killed amid increasing violence as the forces of the new regime, led by Ahmad al-Shara, seek to extinguish all remnants of the Assad regime – a series of events that looks eerily similar to what occurred in Iraq 20 years ago, when the process of “de-Ba’athification” attempted to remove all traces of Saddam Hussein’s regime from public life.
Fragile regional order
The situation across the region is precarious, with the actions of global powers continuing to reverberate. While Washington puts pressure on Tehran and Moscow waits, the scope for Chinese influence in the region increases.
Ironically, Trump’s tariffs on China may push Beijing further into the Middle East, seeking to capitalise on available opportunities. Its Belt and Road Initiative positions the Middle East firmly within China’s strategic interests. This is likely to open up a new front in the rivalry between Washington and Beijing.
All the while, it is the people of the Middle East who continue to pay the heaviest price. Ongoing wars and insecurity, fears of a regional conflict, and precarious political conditions – as well as rising food prices and healthcare pressures – are creating a perfect storm that heightens the pressures and challenges of daily life.
Simon Mabon receives funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) State Crime Alerts (b)
BOSTON – A self-admitted gang member from Brockton, who was previously convicted of killing a 17-year-old outside a Roxbury high school, pleaded guilty today to drug trafficking and illegal possession of firearms and ammunition.
Andre McNeil, 35, pleaded guilty to one count of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute and two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition. U.S. District Court Judge Patti B. Saris scheduled sentencing for July 30, 2025. McNeil was indicted by a federal grand jury in June 2024.
On Feb. 2, 2024, a series of searches were executed on McNeil’ vehicle and several associated residences. As a result, approximately 31 grams of cocaine, three handguns, two high-capacity magazines, five other magazines, approximately 101 rounds of 9mm ammunition and approximately $17,406 dollars, along with numerous cellular devices were seized. Numerous items used in drug trafficking, including scales, a money counter, baggies and a drug ledger were also observed at the search locations.
McNeil is prohibited from possessing firearms due to a 2014 manslaughter conviction in Suffolk Superior Court for shooting and killing a 17-year-old boy outside a Roxbury high school, for which he was sentenced to more than 12 years in state prison.
The charge of possession of cocaine with intent to distribute provides for sentence of up to 20 years in prison, at least three years and up to a lifetime of supervised release and a fine of up to $1 million. The charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition provides for a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, up to three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000.
United States Attorney Leah B. Foley and Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division made the announcement today. Valuable assistance was provided by the Massachusetts State Police and the Brockton, Foxboro and Taunton Police Departments. Assistant U.S. Attorney John Dawley of the Organized Crime and Gang Unit is prosecuting the case.
This case is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a program bringing together all levels of law enforcement and the communities they serve to reduce gun violence and other violent crime, and to make our neighborhoods safer for everyone. On May 26, 2021, the Department launched a violent crime reduction strategy strengthening PSN based on these core principles: fostering trust and legitimacy in our communities, supporting community-based organizations that help prevent violence from occurring in the first place, setting focused and strategic enforcement priorities, and measuring the results. For more information about Project Safe Neighborhoods, please visit Justice.gov/PSN.
RAPID CITY – United States Attorney Alison J. Ramsdell announced today that U.S. District Judge Camela C. Theeler has sentenced a Kyle, South Dakota, convicted of Involuntary Manslaughter and Possession of a Firearm by a Prohibited Person. The sentencing took place on April 10, 2025.
Jeremy Red Owl, 29, was sentenced to two years and nine months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release on each count. The sentences were ordered to run concurrently. Red Owl was also ordered to pay a $200 special assessment to the Federal Crime Victims Fund and restitution to the family of the victim.
Red Owl was indicted for Involuntary Manslaughter and Possession of a Firearm by a Prohibited Person by a federal grand jury in November of 2024. He pleaded guilty on January 29, 2025.
Along with other passengers, Red Owl was riding in the backseat of a moving vehicle while he was under the influence of cocaine. He was in possession of a loaded firearm as well. Red Owl told law enforcement that he leaned over causing the firearm in his possession to inadvertently discharge, striking and killing the driver.
This matter was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office because the Major Crimes Act, a federal statute, mandates that certain violent crimes alleged to have occurred in Indian Country be prosecuted in Federal court as opposed to State court.
This case was investigated by the FBI and the Oglala Sioux Tribe Department of Public Safety Criminal Investigations Division. Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Schroeder prosecuted the case.
Red Owl was immediately remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service.
Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Randy Feenstra (IA-04)
HULL, IOWA – Today, U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Hull) introduced the Preserving Rights Of Tenants by Ensuring Compliance To (PROTECT) the Second Amendment Act. This legislation would secure the Second Amendment rights of Americans who live in rental properties whose landlords receive financial assistance from the federal government.
More specifically, this proposal ensures that landlords and rental property managers cannot unlawfully restrict firearm ownership of tenants.
“The right of Iowans to keep and bear arms is enshrined in our Constitution and shall not be infringed. These constitutional protections must be strongly defended and certainly do not cease to exist for gun owners living in rental properties,” said Rep. Feenstra. “My PROTECT the Second Amendment Act ensures that landlords or rental property managers who receive federal financial assistance at taxpayer expense cannot unlawfully restrict Americans from exercising their constitutional rights. As a strong advocate of the Second amendment, I will always defend the right of Iowans to keep and bear arms and support law-abiding gun owners.”
“The right of law-abiding Americans to keep firearms in their homes for self-defense has been a fundamental freedom since our nation’s founding and has been reaffirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court,” said John Commerford, Executive Director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA). “No one should be forced to give up this right, especially when a landlord or property manager is receiving federal tax dollars. The NRA applauds Representative Feenstra for introducing this important legislation that protects the right to keep and bear arms.”
The PROTECT the Second Amendment Act has three main objectives, which include:
Protecting tenants’ rights to lawfully own a firearm within federally assisted rental housing;
Allowing the lawful transport of firearms through common areas when entering and exiting the property; and
Preventing property managers and landlords who accept federal assistance from prohibiting or discriminating against tenants’ constitutional right to own a firearm.
Suppliers are being invited to take part in shaping the legacy of the Ousewem programme through a new project.
City of York Council is inviting suppliers to take part in a unique opportunity to help deliver a flagship legacy project for the Ousewem programme – a York River Walk that will connect people with the rivers that shape the city, and the nature-based solutions that are helping to protect it.
This request for quotations (RFQ) seeks experienced partners to lead on a public-facing engagement project that captures and communicates Ousewem’s impact in York and its upstream catchments. The result will be a lasting feature that brings to life the role of natural flood management (NFM), land use, and community collaboration in building a more climate-resilient future.
The focus of the RFQ is community engagement, with the option for suppliers to also propose creative elements. This could include interpretation, signage, trails or installations to help residents, schoolchildren, visitors and policy audiences explore the links between rivers, land and resilience. The work may be delivered by a single supplier or by a partnership team.
The York River Walk builds on Ousewem’s innovative flood resilience project, identifying and delivering NbS, including NFM, to reduce flood risk in vulnerable North Yorkshire communities, spanning Yorkshire’s Swale, Ure, Nidd and Ouse (SUNO) catchments. It is designed to leave a legacy for the city – raising awareness, inspiring future action and anchoring Ousewem’s long-term impact.
This project is part of a wider effort to engage the York community in river learning and flood resilience. For example, we were inspired when Miss Clinton from Park Grove Primary Academy reached out to share her class’s journey into river learning, where Year 3/4 students created posters showcasing their understanding of rivers, the water cycle and flood protection. We were delighted by their enthusiasm, and know they are one of many schools engaging with river walks and flood resilience learning.
Rachel Flood, Ousewem’s project manager, said:
This is a chance to create something meaningful for York – a legacy that not only reflects the city’s leadership in climate resilience but invites people to connect with the rivers and landscapes that sustain us.
“We’re looking for creative and community-focused partners who can help tell that story in a way that lasts.”
Cllr Jenny Kent, Executive Member for Environment and Climate Emergency at City of York Council, added:
This project reflects our commitment to working with communities to tackle the climate and nature crises in ways that are visible, inclusive and lasting, and showcase and help explain the fantastic work that is being done planting trees, hedgerows and natural flood defences upstream from York, to help reduce flooding here in the City.
“We were really inspired by Miss Clinton’s class work – just one example of the many schools and communities already looking at and celebrating our waterways. By creating a walk that tells the story of our rivers and the actions being taken to protect them, and protect York, we’re helping people see the value of nature-based solutions. It will bring that energy to a wider audience, involving residents, students and visitors in shaping a more resilient future for our city.”
As a potential platform for future sponsorship and green finance, the York River Walk also offers opportunities to explore longer-term investment in climate resilience, community engagement and nature-based solutions.
The RFQ was launched on 17 April 2025, with responses expected by 15 May 2025.
To express interest or find out more, visit the YORtender Portal, using reference: 98650 York River Walk Engagement. If you are not already registered on YORtender you must register for an account to view all the details.
RAPID CITY – United States Attorney Alison J. Ramsdell announced today that U.S. District Judge Karen E. Schreier has sentenced a Rapid City, South Dakota, man convicted of Possession of a Firearm by a Prohibited Person. The sentencing took place on April 11, 2025.
Dakota Jolley, age 28, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay a $100 special assessment to the Federal Crime Victims Fund.
Jolley was indicted on the possession charge in February 2024, and he pleaded guilty on January 8, 2025.
In November 2023, the defendant got into an argument with his spouse, who was holding the couple’s small child. During the argument, the defendant initially threatened to hit his spouse and small child with a belt. The defendant then obtained a loaded Springfield Armory, model 1911, .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol, threatened to kill his spouse, and held the loaded firearm to her head on several occasions while she worked to protect their child. Jolley is prohibited from possessing firearms due to several prior felony conviction.
This case is part of Operation Take Back America, a nationwide initiative that marshals the full resources of the Department of Justice to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), and protect our communities from the perpetrators of violent crime. Operation Take Back America streamlines efforts and resources from the Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETFs) and Project Safe Neighborhood (PSN).
This case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and the Rapid City Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Patterson prosecuted the case.
Jolley was immediately remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service.
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., April 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — via IBN — The 37th Annual ROTH Conference welcomed thousands of participants from around the globe to Dana Point, California, where the event has been proudly hosted for the past 25 years. This year marked more than just another successful gathering of institutional investors, company executives, and industry visionaries. It was also a milestone in Roth Capital Partners, LLC’s (ROTH) enduring commitment to the local community that has helped shape the event’s identity over the last quarter-century.
One of the most meaningful moments of the conference took place on March 17, when the City of Dana Point formally recognized Bryon Roth, Ted Roth, and Gordon Roth for their 25-year contribution to the city’s cultural, economic, and philanthropic landscape. The recognition ceremony, coordinated by the Eco Yacht Group in collaboration with Dana Point officials, brought together mayors, community leaders, nonprofit founders, and ROTH team members to celebrate the positive local impact made possible by this long-standing partnership. Mayor Matthew Pagano and Mayor Pro Tem John Gabbard presented official certificates of recognition, applauding the Roth family’s dedication to fostering opportunity, economic development, and charitable contributions since the conference began its residency in Dana Point.
The honorees received custom gift baskets curated with premium items from local and sponsor partners including El Septimo cigars and cognac, Kindred Wines, Hook Hand Rum, Perduret Champagne, Once Upon A Coconut premium beverages, and several other thoughtful tokens of appreciation that reflect both the spirit of Dana Point and the caliber of the “ROTH Experience”.
Throughout the weekend, the conference’s connection to the Dana Point community was woven into a number of thoughtfully planned experiences. In partnership with the City of Dana Point, Visit Dana Point, the Dana Point Chamber of Commerce, and local businesses such as the Dana Cliffs Marriott, attendees were welcomed not just as guests, but as contributors to a shared community story. ROTH worked with a local artist to create a custom welcome card that was placed in each hotel room, offering a heartfelt introduction to Dana Point’s coastal heritage and creative spirit. A Dana Point Heritage Walk, held in conjunction with the Challenged Athletes Foundation charity event, gave guests the chance to explore the town’s cultural and historical landmarks while engaging directly with local partners.
The spirit of giving was further highlighted through support of the California Love Drop initiative, which provides meals and supplies to first responders and communities affected by California wildfires. ROTH’s support of this initiative was represented by longtime partner Wing Lam, founder of Wahoo’s Fish Tacos, and exemplifies the company’s ongoing dedication to social impact initiatives that extend far beyond the financial sector.
Two signature gatherings helped deepen the sense of connection between conference attendees and community leaders. The Eco Yacht Group’s VIP “Tide to Table” Dinner at Glasspar Seafood & Steakhouse and the Tide to Table Yacht Luncheon in Dana Point Harbor brought together a diverse group of innovators, creatives, ocean conservationists, and executives. These experiences were supported by local sponsors including Once Upon A Coconut, Luxicon, and Stillwater Spirits & Sounds. Guests enjoyed meaningful conversations around sustainability, entrepreneurship, and shared responsibility in a setting that was both elegant and grounded in community values.
Among the many distinguished guests in attendance were ROTH CEO Sagar Sheth, CMO Isabel Mattson-Pain, ROTH Sustainability Banking Senior Advisor John Cavalier, Meta World Peace, Roma Stibravy, President of NGO Sustainability and UN Advisor to ROTH, Herbert (Beto) Bedolfe III, Founder of OCEANA, Executive Director of the Marisla Foundation, and Board Member of SIMA, Scott Kitcher, CEO of Sustain SoCal, Grammy-winning producer Jimmy Thomas, and leadership from organizations including Hollo.ai, Cox Communications, the Plastic Pollution Coalition, and the Surf Industry Manufacturers Association. Their presence spoke volumes about the type of environment ROTH continues to foster—one that blends innovation and investment with purpose and connection.
“The Dana Point community has been an incredible partner to us over the last 25 years,” said ROTH CFO Gordon Roth. “We are honored and deeply grateful for the recognition from the city. But more importantly, we are proud of the meaningful relationships we’ve built and the positive impact we’ve been able to make together. From local nonprofits and small businesses to civic leaders and artists, this conference is a success because of the people who come together to make it so.”
The ROTH Conference continues to be one of the premier investor events in the country, yet its strength lies in the relationships it cultivates—both in boardrooms and in the heart of Dana Point. As ROTH looks ahead to the next chapter, it remains committed to growing those relationships and deepening its impact as a partner, neighbor, and responsible corporate citizen.
About ROTH ROTH is a relationship-driven investment bank focused on serving growth companies and their investors. Our full-service platform provides capital raising, high-impact equity research, macroeconomics, sales and trading, technical insights, derivatives strategies, M&A advisory, and corporate access. Headquartered in Newport Beach, California, ROTH is a privately held, employee-owned organization and maintains offices throughout the U.S. For more information on ROTH, please visit www.roth.com.
Investor Contact: Roth Capital Partners Isabel Mattson-Pain Managing Director, Chief Marketing Officer 949.720.7117, imattson-pain@roth.com ROTH – Member FINRA/SIPC – www.roth.com
The first government-set energy efficiency standards for appliances were issued by California in 1974. They were initially for refrigerators, the household appliance that used the most energy. Subsequently, several other household appliances were added. During the next decade, more states issued standards, as saving energy would help avoid the costs of constructing new power plants.
The proliferation of state standards led the federal government to prohibit states from issuing appliance efficiency standards once the federal government had done so. The first federal standards, in 1987, applied to 13 household products, including refrigerators.
Electric meters like these at a Mississippi apartment complex keep track of how much – or how little – electricity residents use. AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
Broad application
Federal data indicates that 40% of total U.S. energy consumption – and 28% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions – is attributable to household and industrial appliances, such as heating and cooling systems, refrigerators, lighting and various kinds of equipment, such as computers, printers and electric motors.
Appliance energy efficiency standards now in place are cumulatively expected by the Department of Energy to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 2 billion metric tons over 30 years. That’s as much carbon dioxide as 15 million gas-powered cars would emit in that same period.
Many federal standards, including on light bulbs, electric motors and commercial heating and cooling equipment, have been based on those previously adopted by one or more states. Federal law permits states to issue standards for products that the federal government has not yet regulated: As of 2024, 18 states had set efficiency rules for a total of 22 types of appliances, including computers and televisions.
Additional benefits
These appliance standards have reduced American energy use, including electricity. The existing national standards are projected to reduce overall national energy consumption by 10% between 2025 and 2035.
Those standards also improve public health, because there is less need to build new fossil-fuel power plants or operate existing ones. As a result, power generators have been able to reduce their emissions of dangerous pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and mercury.
Making appliances more energy efficient has proved popular. A national survey released by the Consumer Federation of America in 2018 found that 71% of Americans “support the idea that the government should set and update energy efficiency standards for appliances.” Significantly, 72% of those surveyed named lowering electrical bills and 57% stated that avoiding construction of new power plants to keep electricity rates from rising were important reasons to increase appliance efficiency.
From 1987 through 2007, more than three-quarters of national appliance energy efficiency standards were passed into law by Congress, with the rest created by administrative processes under existing laws. These legal standards received bipartisan support and were signed into law by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
But more recently, partisanship has affected the setting of standards. Since 2008, whether standards improve or remain unchanged has depended on whether Democrats or Republicans occupied the White House.
And in early April 2025, Republicans in Congress used their legislative authority to overturn the regulations for natural gas water heaters. But most of the federal standards – and all of the state ones – remain in effect, at least for now.
David J. Vogel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In the drawing, two little children hold hands, the taller figure with shoulder-length hair.
The shorter figure has hair cropped short, and holds a teddy bear in their other hand, one of the toy’s eyes missing and portrayed as an X.
Between the two is an umbrella, seemingly their only protection from what’s falling from the sky above them – a cluster of ominous black bombs.
‘With faith in victory,’ an original drawing by Anastasiia B., a 14-year-old from Ukraine, from the ‘Children Draw War, Not Flowers’ exhibit, on display at the Babbidge Library until August 1, 2025. (Contributed image)
The umbrella is striped – yellow, blue, yellow – in the colors of the flag of the artist’s home country: Ukraine.
It’s a simple drawing, but poignant, and made ever more so by the fact that the artist who created the work, entitled “With faith in victory,” was only 14 years old when they drew it in September 2022, seven months after Russia launched a military invasion of Ukraine.
This drawing, and many others like it – created by Ukrainian children during the ongoing Russo-Ukraine War – are on display at the UConn Library’s Homer Babbidge Library as part of the “Children Draw War, Not Flowers” exhibit, which opened on April 8.
In the fall of 2022, the Cherkasy Regional Universal Scientific Library, funded by the School of Information at San Jose State University in California, held a drawing competition in 40 public regional libraries in communities where over 220,000 displaced Ukrainians resided.
Children from the ages of 6 to 18 created more than 450 drawings documenting their experiences of war, trauma, and hope. Those drawings are now part of “Children Draw War, Not Flowers,” which has traveled to a number of institutions but will reside at UConn Storrs until later this summer.
Its stop at UConn was made possible by a collaboration with Ulia Gosart from San Jose State University, an assistant professor, scholar, writer, and human rights activist who received her bachelor’s degree from Kiev University of Arts in Ukraine and her master’s in library and information science from Southern Connecticut State University, according to Jean Cardinale ’04 MS, head of communication and marketing for the UConn Library.
“Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Gosart has been supporting Ukrainian libraries by raising awareness and fundraising through programming, including curating this traveling exhibit,” says Cardinale. “She supports her community engaged in war through the power of libraries, and the UConn Library was honored to be asked to take part in her important work.”
The “Children Draw War, Not Flowers” exhibit includes 70 drawings depicting weapons, loss, soldiers, and destroyed buildings and artifacts. But the drawings also show symbols of hope and pride. The blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag are abundant. Angels hover over Ukrainian soldiers. Sunflowers and storks, images of national solidarity, hang over depictions of war.
The exhibit’s goal, explains Cardinale, is to help visitors gain greater understanding of the realities Ukrainian people – and especially Ukrainian children – face in the midst of war.
“Thankfully, living through war is something most of us have not had to experience, and we are geographically so far away that it’s easy to disassociate from what is happening,” Cardinale says. “When you see these pieces where children have drawn themselves amid bombings, fires, and saying goodbye to their homes and their families, you see the trauma that effects children of war.”
The exhibit at the Babbidge Library also includes drawings from the Mia Farrow Collection, donated to the UConn Library’s Archives & Special Collections in 2009, that were made by refugee children escaping war and ethnic cleansing at the Djabal Refugee Camp in Eastern Chad in 2002.
“Our Archives & Special Collections has many collections that focus on documenting human rights violations and struggles for social justice in the United States and internationally,” says Cardinale. “Their guiding principles are to enable us to understand the past to inspire our future. Displaying these two collections of drawings together shows parallels in how children have used art to express their feelings during war.”
For children who may not yet know who to talk with about their feelings, art encourages them to explore their emotions and perceptions through their creativity, Cardinale notes. The images these children have created during two different conflicts, occurring decades apart, show the similarities of their struggles in a powerful and visual way.
‘Ukraine will win!’ an original drawing by Yana Kh., an 8-year-old from Ukraine, from the ‘Children Draw War, Not Flowers’ exhibit, on display at the Babbidge Library until August 1, 2025. (Contributed image)
The exhibit also serves as a reminder that Ukrainian and Ukrainian American students at UConn continue to feel the ongoing impact of the war that may not always be clearly visible to the community at large.
“We have had the opportunity to connect with the Ukrainian Students Association here at UConn, and at the exhibit’s opening reception, they brought their personal experiences of family members directly affected by the war,” she says. “So, it also serves as a reminder that our students may be experiencing many different challenges that we don’t see and deserve some grace during this stressful time of the semester.”
“Children Draw War, Not Flowers” will be on display at the Gallery on the Plaza at the Homer Babbidge Library in Storrs through August 1, 2025.
To view drawings from the “Children Draw War, Not Flowers” collection online, please visit Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online atgallery.sucho.org/collections.
For more information about this and other exhibits at the UConn Library, as well as collections maintained by the library’s Archives & Special Collections, visitlib.uconn.edu.
Earth Day and sustainability initiatives at UConn Storrs were celebrated by students during the Earth Day Spring Fling and Zero Waste Barbecue on Wednesday, April 16.
Vendors and clubs set up shop along Fairfield Way to sell sustainable goods and involve members of the UConn community with green initiatives around campus.
“It’s a good way of getting people excited about sustainability,” said Ross Elliott ’26 (CLAS). “People are naturally drawn to free food and music and fun stuff, but at the same time, it actually gets them thinking about what this is all about.”
UConn students participate in goat yoga on the Founders Green during Earth Day Spring Fling on Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (Sydney Herdle/UConn Photo)
One of the featured events was a Party Peddler Bike Tour, where an Office of Sustainability intern shared facts about buildings around campus and how the architecture at UConn incorporates sustainability to help UConn in its strategic plan.
“Herbst Hall, for example, is a LEED-certified building. Every single new UConn building is LEED-certified,” said Amogh Chaubey ’25 (ENG), an intern at the Office of Sustainability. “That means leadership and environmental design.”
There is a bioretention basin beneath the building that helps with stormwater management, Chaubey told passengers. “A lot of the things you don’t really think about, like how come Fairfield Way doesn’t get flooded when it rains, are built into the architecture of our buildings.”
“The bike ride was my favorite part of today,” says Elliott. “It was a great way to learn more about how UConn has committed to sustainability. Everyone was talking, laughing, pedaling and pushing as hard as they can; it was silly, but it was really fun.”
UConn students ride on a party bike on Mansfield Way during Earth Day Spring Fling on Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (Sydney Herdle/UConn Photo)
Elsewhere, the Spring Valley Student Farm gave out free marigolds in recycled newspaper pots; UConn Horticulture Club sold plants; the library had a display of sustainability books; and local vendors sold soaps, dog treats, pins, and more.
The annual class tree-planting ceremony took place as well. Members of the first-year student community planted a tree for the class of 2028. This year’s tree was planted near the Hawley Armory, facing Fairfield Way.
Another event that students participated in was goat yoga on Founders Lawn. “The goats are so friendly, they’ll jump on your back,” said Chaubey. “It gets filled up right away. Getting a seat for that is like getting a Taylor Swift concert ticket, it’s hard.”
The goal of the event is to provoke more conversations about sustainability at a high level, said Chaubey. “Right now, we’re working with Dining to bring the zero-waste barbecue and cupcakes to the celebration. Building that partnership could, down the road, help us work with them to bring zero-waste to our dining halls,” Chaubey says. “Our big goal here is to make sustainability centralized.”
The zero-waste barbecue was the main attraction of the celebrations. Students had a chance to enjoy locally sourced foods, many of which were vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free. The food waste is run through food cyclers that the Office of Sustainability runs.
The view from the party pedal bike during the Spring Fling (George Velky / UConn Photo)
“It’s almost like a dishwasher,” said Chaubey. “It cycles overnight and gives you this composable dust.”
Students can purchase these composters personally or for their residence halls, Chaubey added. “Our pilot program put them in a bunch of off-campus apartments, and the idea is that students can deal with waste super easily wherever you want.”
And stretch: goat yoga on the Founders Green during Earth Day Spring Fling on Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (Sydney Herdle/UConn Photo)
One way Chaubey encourages students to get involved is by filling out a sustainability literacy survey. This gives the Office of Sustainability a gauge of how students are contributing to sustainability in Storrs and what it can do to improve environmental literacy and green programs around campus.
“I learned about zero-waste vegan food and how that can lead to a more sustainable society,” said Elliott. “I’m not a vegetarian, but I’ve always been interested in how we could shift towards a vegetarian society. It was cool to see how many people were enjoying the vegetarian and vegan barbecue. It surprised me.”
The student response to the festivities was overwhelmingly positive. “It’s windy, it’s cold, but look around, it’s packed,” said Chaubey. “Student engagement is a huge part of our mission, and sustainability can be a ton of fun.”
First Driver to Win NASCAR Cup Race, IndyCar Race, USAC Triple Crown Championship and NHRA Pro Event
American Rebel Light Beer Sponsorship of Tony Stewart Racing Drivers Tony Stewart and Matt Hagan Celebrate Stewart Win and Head to Charlotte for American Rebel Light NHRA 4-Wide Nationals April 25 – 27 at zMAX Dragway at Charlotte Motor Speedway
Nashville, TN, April 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — American Rebel Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: AREB) (“American Rebel” or the “Company”), creator of American Rebel Beer (americanrebelbeer.com) and a designer, manufacturer, and marketer of branded safes, personal security and self-defense products and apparel (americanrebel.com), would like to congratulate Tony Stewart on his history-making victory in the NHRA Top Fuel Dragster (nhra.com) this past weekend at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Tony is the first driver to win a NASCAR Cup Series race, an IndyCar race, a USAC Triple Crown Championship and an NHRA Pro Event. The American Rebel Light Beer sponsorship of Tony Stewart Racing (tsrnitro.com) drivers Tony Stewart and Matt Hagan proudly celebrate the Stewart win as this history-making victory draws tremendous attention to the American Rebel Light sponsorship. The Stewart victory is also very emotional for the American Rebel team as we know how much this victory means to Tony and Leah personally.
“I haven’t been around the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series very long, but I realized it takes a lot to win one of these Top Fuel races,” said Tony Stewart. “In my career, I’ve never had to wait over a year to win a race. We always figured it out pretty quickly and we won. We needed this win. It’s been so stressful for everyone since Leah (Pruett – Stewart’s wife) nearly won the World Top Fuel Championship in 2023 when it came down to the final round of the whole season.”
Tony Stewart replaced Leah Pruett as the driver of the Tony Stewart Racing NHRA Top Fuel Dragster at the beginning of the 2024 season. Tony and Leah were married in 2021 and Leah asked Tony to drive her car in the Top Fuel series as the couple set out to start a family. Tony drove in the Top Alcohol series, a tier below Top Fuel, in 2023.
“When your wife wants to try to start a family and wants you to driver her car, what are you going to say?” continued Stewart. “We had a lot of changes for the team because my body weight is different. Car tubing is different, and it just takes time. It was frustrating as we just couldn’t get on a path to make consistent gains last year. Two years ago, I won my first NHRA national event in the Top Alcohol Dragster here at Las Vegas with McPhillips Racing, and now I win my first Top Fuel national event at the Strip. It’s pretty damn cool. I’ve been a motorsports fan my whole life, and I think we made racing history with the Top Fuel win. I’m not sure if there has ever been a driver to win a NASCAR Cup race, an IndyCar race, the USAC Triple Crown championship and an NHRA Pro event (Top Fuel). To do it with our team and our family was very emotional. When Leah brought Dom (their newborn son) up on stage in victory lane, my heart stopped. I got so emotional there. That is a feeling I have never had in my life before. The Four Wide setup is the equalizer for me. I’m used to racing with many cars around me. It’s tough for the guys who are not used to four cars racing at once. We can’t get to Charlotte fast enough with the next four-wide setup. I love the format.”
The next event on the NHRA Misson Foods Drag Racing Series schedule is the American Rebel Light NHRA 4-Wide Nationals April 25 – 27 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.
“I couldn’t be happier for Tony and Leah as I know how much the victory in Las Vegas means to them both,” said American Rebel CEO Andy Ross. “Our relationship started out as a sponsorship, turned into a friendship and now it’s family. Tony, Matt and Leah have been a big part of our incredible success opening up distributors for American Rebel Light Beer across the country. Various consultants told me opening up distributors was next to impossible, but American Rebel has proven them wrong because we have a real 12-year organic story of how we got here, and Tony, Matt and Leah’s support have poured patriotic fuel all over the fire we had already started. I can’t thank them enough for everything they’ve done.”
American Rebel is an associate sponsor on the Tony Stewart driven Top Fuel Dragster and the Matt Hagan driven Funny Car for all 20 races of the NHRA Mission Foods 2025 season as well as the primary sponsor of the Matt Hagan Funny Car for five races, including the American Rebel Light NHRA 4-Wide Nationals at Charlotte Motor Speedway, and the primary sponsor of the Tony Stewart Top Fuel Dragster for one race during the 2025 season. Being a sponsor provides opportunities for vast exposure during the race broadcasts on Fox Sports, Fox Sports 1 (FS1) and Fox Sports 2 (FS2). Ratings for NHRA telecasts are very strong and visibility continues to expand through additional streaming options through NHRA.tv.
In addition to the strong television viewership of NHRA racing, NHRA has unveiled exciting opportunities for digital media and content creators for the 2025 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season. Aiming to change the way influencers, content creators and digital media members experience drag racing, NHRA is working to expand its reach across social media platforms with its Cornwell Tools Burnout Box Content Creator Zone. This expansion and emphasis in the digital media space will significantly benefit American Rebel.
American Rebel has also benefitted from the relationship with Tony Stewart Racing through the social media reach of Tony Stewart, Matt Hagan and Leah Pruett. Tony Stewart has nearly 750,000 followers on X (@TonyStewart) and over 250,000 followers on Instagram (@tsrsmoke). Matt Hagan has nearly 150,000 followers on Instagram (@matthagan_fc) and Leah Pruett has nearly 400,000 followers on Instagram (@leah.pruett).
“Tony, Matt and Leah are such an important part of our story,” said Andy Ross. “Tony is a legendary NASCAR driver who may be the most versatile race car driver in history, having also driven in NASCAR, IndyCar, USAC, NHRA and just about anything with wheels. And Matt has 52 NHRA national event wins and is one of only four legendary Funny Car drivers to win four championships (John Force, Don Prudhomme and Kenny Bernstein are the others) and Leah has kicked in doors as a Top Fuel driver and she continues to provide unparalleled support for American Rebel at the track and on social media. Our distributors love our connection with Tony Stewart Racing as American Rebel Light Beer connects with our customers through this sponsorship.”
It’s been said that Andy Ross wrote the most on-brand drag racing song ever with his “Nitro Lightning” that he wrote for Matt Hagan. The song gets played at the track nearly every race weekend and even has been referenced on the Fox broadcasts. Andy has performed concerts at the Texas Motorplex and the Bradenton Motorsports Park after race events and is scheduled to perform this year at the American Rebel Light NHRA 4-Wide Nationals in Concord, NC.
“What’s more American Rebel than rock ‘n’ roll and drag racing? I love victory lane and bringing the party,” said Andy Ross. “Drag racing fans are the perfect demo for American Rebel Beer and we’re looking forward to continuing this relationship a long time.”
Primary sponsorship dates for American Rebel Beer on the Matt Hagan Funny Car are April 25 – 27 at the American Rebel Light NHRA 4-Wide Nationals in Concord, NC; June 20 – 22 at the Virginia NHRA Nationals at North Dinwiddle, VA; August 14 – 17 at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals in Brainerd, MN; September 26 – 28 at the NHRA Midwest Nationals near St. Louis, MO; and October 30 – November 2 at the NHRA Nevada Nationals in Las Vegas, NV. American Rebel Beer will also be a primary sponsor for the Tony Stewart Top Fuel Dragster on September 26 – 28 at the NHRA Midwest Nationals near St. Louis, MO.
About American Rebel Light Beer
Produced in partnership with AlcSource, American Rebel Light Beer (americanrebelbeer.com) is a domestic premium light lager celebrated for its exceptional quality and patriotic values. It stands out as America’s Patriotic, God-Fearing, Constitution-Loving, National Anthem-Singing, Stand Your Ground Beer.
American Rebel Light is a Premium Domestic Light Lager Beer – All Natural, Crisp, Clean and Bold Taste with a Lighter Feel. With approximately 100 calories, 3.2 carbohydrates, and 4.3% alcoholic content per 12 oz serving, American Rebel Light Beer delivers a lighter option for those who love great beer but prefer a more balanced lifestyle. It’s all natural with no added supplements and importantly does not use corn, rice, or other sweeteners typically found in mass produced beers.
About Tony Stewart Racing
Headquartered in Brownsburg, Indiana, Tony Stewart Racing (TSR) Nitro fields two entries in the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series. After more than four decades of racing around in circles, Tony Stewart embarked on a straight and narrow path, albeit more than 300 mph. The championship-winning racecar driver who has successfully transitioned to being a championship-winner team owner, formed the TSR nitro team in 2021, with 2022 marking the team’s first season in competition. Matt Hagan pilots the Funny Car and Tony Stewart took over driving duties in 2024 for wife Leah Pruett in the Top Fuel dragster as they started a family. Hagan is a four-time Funny Car champion (2011, 2014, 2020 and 2023) from Christiansburg, Virginia. Stewart hails from Columbus, Indiana and earned his first Top Fuel victory at the 2025 NHRA Four-Wide Nationals in Las Vegas. He also won the 2024 NHRA Rookie of the Year title. Stewart finished second in the 2023 Top Alcohol Dragster championship standings.
About American Rebel Holdings, Inc.
American Rebel Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: AREB) has operated primarily as a designer, manufacturer and marketer of branded safes and personal security and self-defense products and has recently transitioned into the beverage industry through the introduction of American Rebel Beer. The Company also designs and produces branded apparel and accessories. To learn more, visit americanrebelbeer.com or americanrebel.com. For investor information, visit americanrebelbeer.com/investor-relations.
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. American Rebel Holdings, Inc., (NASDAQ: AREB; AREBW) (the “Company,” “American Rebel,” “we,” “our” or “us”) desires to take advantage of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and is including this cautionary statement in connection with this safe harbor legislation. The words “forecasts” “believe,” “may,” “estimate,” “continue,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “should,” “plan,” “could,” “target,” “potential,” “is likely,” “expect” and similar expressions, as they relate to us, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. We have based these forward-looking statements primarily on our current expectations and projections about future events and financial trends that we believe may affect our financial condition, results of operations, business strategy, and financial needs. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from those in the forward-looking statements include benefits of a launch party, actual launch timing and availability of American Rebel Beer, success and availability of the promotional activities, our ability to effectively execute our business plan, and the Risk Factors contained within our filings with the SEC, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024. Any forward-looking statement made by us herein speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Factors or events that could cause our actual results to differ may emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all of them. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as may be required by law.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jennifer Mathers, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, Aberystwyth University
Ending Russia’s war in Ukraine was one of Donald Trump’s campaign promises, and one that he famously boasted could be achieved in 24 hours. But three months after taking office, the Trump administration has only managed to negotiate a partial ceasefire that has done nothing to stop the fighting.
On April 13, for example, Russia fired ballistic missiles into the city of Sumy in north-eastern Ukraine, killing at least 35 civilians gathered to celebrate Palm Sunday and injuring over 100 more.
Military attacks have continued despite numerous meetings between senior Russian and US officials, and phone conversations where Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have spoken directly.
So, why are Trump’s efforts to end the war struggling to get off the starting blocks? The most important reason is that Russia is blocking progress. Moscow has created obstacles, deployed delaying tactics and has generally muddied the waters.
Fighting in Ukraine has continued as Washington and Moscow discuss the future of Ukraine. Institute for the Study of War
Trump’s major initiative is his proposal for a 30-day general ceasefire to prepare the way for broader peace negotiations. While Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, agreed to this immediately when it was proposed in March, Putin did not. He instead offered a counter proposal: a partial ceasefire banning attacks on energy infrastructure.
Russia relies heavily on the export of energy, especially oil, to fund the war. But Ukraine has been systematically targeting Russia’s oil refineries and storage facilities, mainly using domestically produced drones. Ukraine is estimated to have destroyed 10% of Russia’s refining capacity since the beginning of 2025.
By narrowing the scope of the ceasefire, Putin was able to shield Russia’s energy production while continuing to attack Ukraine. Moscow needs the fighting to continue to achieve its openly stated goal of controlling all of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the four regions of Ukraine it claimed to annex in 2022.
Another Russian tactic has been to take every opportunity to present a list of demands for Ukrainian concessions. These include Kyiv giving up its claims to Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia, abandoning its goal of joining Nato, and reducing its armed forces significantly. Russia also wants Ukraine to agree to a change of political leadership.
This tactic is important for two reasons. First, Russia’s demands make it clear that Moscow envisages the war as the first stage in a longer-term plan to exercise control over all of Ukraine, not only the annexed territories. And second, repeatedly stating Russia’s demands gets them into the public discourse.
When journalists – or, especially, US officials – repeat them, as Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff did recently, they gain an air of legitimacy. This creates the expectation that a peace agreement will comply with Moscow’s agenda.
Russia is also good at deflecting attention away from ending the war. Sometimes Putin does this with flattery and by appealing to Trump’s sense of self-importance.
In an interview about his March trip to Moscow, Witkoff glided over his failure to secure a pledge from the Russians to agree to a general ceasefire and instead conveyed a touching story demonstrating Putin’s regard for Trump.
Putin apparently told Witkoff that he went to church and prayed for Trump’s recovery after he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt during the election campaign. Putin also sent Witkoff back to the US with a portrait of Trump, painted by an artist who is known for producing flattering portraits of Putin himself.
Another effective tactic of deflection involves money. Russian officials dangle the prospect of lucrative deals involving trade and investment in front of Trump administration officials. This was evidently the focus of much of the first meeting between US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia in February, although it was convened to discuss plans for peace.
It is also probably the reason for Kirill Dmitriev’s visit to Washington at the beginning of April. Dmitriev, a figure close to Putin and head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, confirmed to journalists that his discussions encompassed possible deals with the US involving rare-earth metals, exploiting resources in the Arctic, and resuming direct flights between the US and Russia.
Trump’s role
While Russia places obstacles in the path of peace, Trump and his officials do nothing to remove them. This allows Moscow to continue waging war without constraints.
Despite Trump’s occasional tough talk about running out of patience with Moscow, as well as his threats of secondary tariffs on countries that buy oil from Russia, no measures that would put pressure on Russia have been implemented.
Trump has instead made excuses for Moscow. He described the attack on Sumy as a “mistake”, and has expressed admiration for Putin for dragging his feet to get a better deal with Washington.
This contrasts sharply with Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. Zelensky was publicly humiliated during his meeting with Trump and US vice-president, J.D. Vance, in the Oval Office in February. Trump has even accused Zelensky of starting the war, which was launched by a mass invasion of Russian forces.
Trump and his team have shown far less interest in Ukraine’s security needs than in striking a lucrative deal to extract the country’s natural resources. The prospect of the Trump administration negotiating a peace agreement that the Ukrainians would accept seems remote.
So, where does this leave the peace process? When the partial ceasefire arrangement comes to an end later in April, Washington will have to decide whether to resume its efforts to secure a general ceasefire or chart a new course.
Based on his track record so far, Trump might just blame the Ukrainians for refusing to surrender to Russia’s terms, abandon attempts to reach a negotiated settlement to the war, and go straight to reestablishing normal relations with Russia.
Jennifer Mathers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: Northern Territory Police and Fire Services
The Northern Territory Police Force is investigating a structure fire that occurred in Alice Springs yesterday afternoon.
Around 5:10pm, police received reports of a fire at a residence on Woods Terrace in Braitling.
Police and Northern Territory Fire and Rescue Service members attended, and the fire was extinguished. It was confirmed the premises was unoccupied at the time of the fire and no injuries were reported.
A crime scene was declared, and a fire investigator has attended the site.
While inspecting the building for safety reasons, police identified what was believed to be cannabis inside.
A search warrant was executed, and the Dog Operations Unit, including Drug Detection Dogs Yeva and Callen, were called to the scene, resulting in 1.8kg of cannabis being seized.
No arrests have been made at this stage and investigations remain ongoing.
Anyone with information is urged to contact police on 131 444. Please quote reference NTP2500039709. Anonymous reports can also be made through Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or via https://crimestoppersnt.com.au/.
Headline: Allen Parish, Louisiana Flood Maps Become Final
Allen Parish, Louisiana Flood Maps Become Final
DENTON, Texas – New flood maps have been finalized and will become effective on Oct
16, 2025, for Allen Parish, Louisiana
During the next six months, a FEMA compliance specialist will work with the community to update each floodplain ordinance and adopt these new flood maps
Residents are encouraged to examine the maps to determine if they are in a low-to-moderate or high-risk flood zone
The current and future Flood Insurance Rate Map can be viewed on FEMA’s Flood Map Changes Viewer at https://msc
fema
gov/fmcv
By understanding flood risks, individuals can decide which insurance option is best for their situation
Community leaders can use these maps to make informed decisions about building standards and development to help lessen the impacts of a flooding event
Anyone without flood insurance risks uninsured losses to their home, personal property and business
Flood insurance is available either through a private policy or through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) for those in communities who participate in the NFIP
Residents with federally backed mortgages must have flood insurance if their structures are in the Special Flood Hazard Area
Contact your local floodplain administrator (FPA) to review the new flood maps and learn more about your risk of flooding
A FEMA Map Specialist can help identify your community FPA and answer questions about the maps as well
Contact them by phone or online chat
Use a live chat service about flood maps at floodmaps
fema
gov/fhm/fmx_main
html (just click on the “Live Chat Open” icon)
Contact a FEMA Map Specialist by telephone at 877-FEMA-MAP (877-336-2627) or by email at FEMA-FMIX@fema
dhs
gov
There are cost-saving options available for those newly mapped into a high-risk flood zone
Learn more about your flood insurance options by talking with your insurance agent or visiting floodsmart
Headline: How to Document Damages After Severe Weather Events
How to Document Damages After Severe Weather Events
FRANKFORT, Ky
– FEMA understands that clean up and rebuilding after a flood can take time and be overwhelming
Guidance is available and it’s always important to put safety first
Follow instructions from your local officials to ensure it is safe to reenter your home
You can begin the recovery process by documenting damage and taking steps to stop the spread of mold
First, confirm the electricity and gas are shut off to avoid fire or injury
Have an electrician check the house before turning the power back on
Document Your Flood DamageTake photos and videos of the damage, including structural and personal property on the inside and outside of your home, before discarding items
Remember to take photos of the insides of closets and cabinets
Record serial numbers of large appliances, such as washers, dryers, and refrigerators
Keep receipts of any purchases made to replace damaged property or repair property
Retain material samples of damaged items such as carpeting, wallpaper, furniture upholstery, and window treatments
The type and quality of material may impact insurance claims
Contact repair services as necessary to address damage to the building’s electrical, water, or HVAC systems
Consult your insurance adjuster or insurance company before you sign any cleaning, remediation, or maintenance agreement
After taking photos, you should immediately throw away flooded items that pose a health risk, such as perishable food items, clothing, cushions, and pillows
Mold and CleanupIt is important to understand that National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) flood insurance policies will not cover damage from mold
Avoiding damage from mold is an important responsibility of a resident
Building owners are strongly encouraged to begin cleanup and documentation immediately after a flood to prevent the growth and spread of mold
Remember these guidelines while undergoing mold cleanup:Wear personal protective equipment
Wear an N-95 respirator at a minimum, goggles, and protective gloves
Use portable generators carefully, outside and away from the home, to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning and fires
Ensure the mold cleanup is complete before reoccupying your home
For more information, please see the Homeowner’s and Renter’s Guide to Mold Cleanup after Disasters (pdf)
Source: Moscow Government – Government of Moscow –
The new owner has put in order a non-residential premises with an area of almost 44 square meters, located in a cultural heritage site of regional significance on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street (building 22/2). This was reported by the Minister of the Moscow Government, head of the capital’s Department of City Property Maxim Gaman.
“The investor purchased a 43.7 square meter space in a historic building (at 22/2 Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street) from the city at a competition, recognized as a cultural heritage site of regional significance. In 1905, the editorial office of the Bolshevik newspaper Vpered was located here. The space restored by the entrepreneur is the third one that was purchased from the capital in this building at a competition. In total, more than 270 square meters of space in the building have been put in order thanks to the new owners,” said Maxim Gaman.
The building on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street was built in 1902–1904 by Major General Vladimir Semenkovich according to the design of architect Karl Treiman as a tenement house. The ground floor housed shops, the second floor housed offices, and the upper floors housed inexpensive housing. During the year of the first Russian revolution, the building housed the editorial office of the Bolshevik newspaper Vperyod, where articles by Vladimir Lenin, Anatoly Lunacharsky, and Vaclav Vorovsky were published. After 1917, it housed communal apartments, and the lower floors were used for trade.
Currently, it is a residential apartment building, although part of the space, as before, is used for commercial purposes. For example, there are several cafes, shops, a beauty salon. The building is located in the city center with developed infrastructure, from here you can walk to the Okhotny Ryad metro station, so the house has high investment potential.
According to investor Dmitry Kletsky, in accordance with the terms of the agreement, a project was first prepared to adapt the premises for modern use, and then work was carried out in agreement with the capital’s Department of Cultural Heritage: redevelopment, replacement of flooring, waterproofing, equipping a kitchenette, equipping it with plumbing and an electric stove.
The entrepreneur may use the premises at his own discretion, but on condition that the chosen type of activity does not pose a threat to the historical building. The investor is obliged to maintain the cultural heritage site in proper technical, sanitary and fire safety condition.
Representatives of the capital Department of City Property And Department of Cultural Heritage are part of a specialized commission for monitoring compliance with the terms of competitions for the sale of cultural heritage sites. It evaluates how buyers fulfill their obligations. If they are not fulfilled properly, the city has the right to fine the violator or terminate the contract with him.
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Please Note; This Information is Raw Content Directly from the Information Source. It is access to What the Source Is Stating and Does Not Reflect
Company and director fined for burning waste on rural land
A company and its director have been fined for ignoring Environment Agency warnings to stop burning waste on rural land in West Yorkshire.
Image shows smouldering waste on the land near Weatherby.
Bardsey Tree Services Ltd, of Main Road in Wighill, Tadcaster, and company director Andrew Richard Ward, 56, of the same address, appeared at York Magistrates’ Court on Thursday 10 April.
They both pleaded guilty to two offences of burning waste on land near Wetherby on separate occasions between August 2023 and August 2024.
The company was fined £2,500, ordered to pay costs of £3,000 and a victim surcharge of £1,000, while Ward was fined £960, ordered to pay £1,274.50 in costs and a £384 victim surcharge.
Ian Foster, Area Environment Manager for the Environment Agency in Yorkshire, said:
Burning waste on land can have a significant impact on the environment and local communities.
Our officers made it clear to the defendants multiple times that the activity on site was illegal, but this was ignored.
I hope this sends out a message to others about just how important it is to follow regulations to protect the environment and ensure business aren’t in breach of the law.
Image shows smouldering waste on the land near Wetherby.
Officers saw fires burning
The company, which offers tree services including operating as a tree surgeon, leases land off Compton Lane, a few miles away from Wetherby.
On 10 August 2023 Environment Agency officers attended the site and saw a fire burning, consisting of mixed waste.
Separate and away from the fire was a pile of tree trunks, a large pile of wood chippings and an even larger pile of mixed soil, rubble, wood and metal. No one was present.
The defendants had no registered environmental permit or waste exemption – which allows for low level waste activity.
The Environment Agency wrote to the defendants with instructions to stop bringing in waste and burning, and to clear the site of waste within three months. It was made clear that the activity on site was illegal.
Two months later the company registered a waste exemption for the site, which authorised the burning of certain categories of ‘green’ waste such as tree and plant cuttings, provided that both the waste was produced on the land and any fire does not cause a nuisance.
Activity was in breach of exemption
In July 2024 Environment Agency officers attended and saw a fire burning, producing thick grey smoke. The fire was predominantly green waste but also included plastics, treated wood, metal and aerosol cannisters. No one was present.
Officers wrote a further letter to the defendants making it clear this activity was in breach of the exemption and that offences were being committed.
Later that month officers passing the area saw thick grey smoke coming from the site. This time, in addition was roof felt, which is likely to have been hazardous. The fire service attended and put the blaze out and advised it should not have been left unattended.
Even after flagging this issue with Andrew Ward, another fire was also seen on site on 5 August, 2024.
In interviews, Ward admitted taking waste away from customers to the site, and that wood chippings were provided to biomass power stations. He said the fires were used as a means of dealing with residual waste, but added that the site had becomes known as a dumping ground for other operators’ waste.
Illegal waste activity can be reported to the Environment Agency on 0800 807060.
Background
Full charges:
Andrew Ward
On 10 August 2023 on land off Compton Lane, Rigton, Bardsey Tree Services Ltd submitted controlled waste to a listed operation, namely incineration on land, otherwise than in accordance with an environmental permit, and as a director of that company the offence was attributable to your consent, connivance or neglect.
Contrary to s.33(1)(b), (6) & 157(1) Environmental Protection Act 1990
Between 16 July 2024 and 6 August 2024 on land off Compton Lane, Rigton, Bardsey Tree Services Ltd submitted controlled waste, or knowingly caused or knowingly permitted controlled waste to be submitted, to a listed operation namely incineration on land, otherwise than in accordance with an environmental permit, and as a director of that company the offence was attributable to your consent, connivance or neglect.
Bardsey Tree Services Ltd
On 10 August 2023 on land off Compton Lane, Rigton, Bardsey Tree Services Ltd submitted controlled waste to a listed operation, namely incineration on land, otherwise than in accordance with an environmental permit.
Contrary to s.33(1)(b) & (6) Environmental Protection Act 1990
Between 16 July 2024 and 6 August 2024 on land off Compton Lane, Rigton, Bardsey Tree Services Ltd submitted controlled waste, or knowingly caused or knowingly permitted controlled waste to be submitted, to a listed operation namely incineration on land, otherwise than in accordance with an environmental permit.
Contrary to s.33(1)(b) & (6) Environmental Protection Act 1990
Source: Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Meeting at the regional executive committee
On April 14, a meeting of fourth-year students and teachers of the Faculty of Architecture of SPbGASU Daria Boytsova and Oleg Fedorov with the chief architect of the region Nikolai Vlasyuk took place in the Executive Committee of the Brest Region (Republic of Belarus). The meeting was also attended by teachers and students of the Department of Architecture of the Brest State Technical University (BrSTU). The event became the next stage of cooperation between the two universities, including in project activities. During the meeting, projects for a multifunctional concert complex in Brest, developed by students of the Departments of Architectural Design and Design of the Architectural Environment of SPbGASU, were presented.
Arina Aleksanova presented a project where the Belarusian national pattern “fire” is used in the volumetric-spatial solution of the complex and the architecture of the facades, giving expressiveness and cultural identity. In addition, the use of light accents is envisaged, imitating the flickering of flame, which enhances the emotional perception of the object in the evening.
Elza Sharipova’s concept refers to the image of medieval Brest in the engraving by E. Dahlberg. The author of the project noted the vertical tripartite structure of the city fabric, which was reflected in the appearance of the concert hall.
Maria Kondakova proposes to include a number of multi-level public spaces in the structure of the complex, from where a view of one of Brest’s waterways will open up.
Valeria Ganeeva used a technique typical for fortification structures: the formation of embankments and inclined walls. This approach is intended to preserve the memory of the place and remind us of the heroic history of the city.
Margarita Kotikova reflected the synergy of nature, art and history in her concept: her building should consist of three integral volumes, united by a common structure, which personifies the flow of water, music and time.
The project of the multifunctional complex, developed by Sofia Krivdina, reflects the key features of the Belarusian cultural and natural heritage: Belovezhskaya Pushcha, national ornament and the tradition of lighting lanterns before sunset. The central volume of the hall is associated with a powerful source of light and is covered with a translucent membrane. The design of the ramp and the restaurant supports were inspired by the Belovezhskaya Pushcha motifs. The visual identity of the project is given by the perforated pattern in the decoration of the facades, based on the traditional Belarusian ornament.
The historical fact about the development of Brest at the intersection of two rivers and trade routes became the basis of Irina Zaplatkina’s concept. The permeability of the ground floor space and the central atrium with a system of viewing arches reflect the “path” and “hope”. The movement along the street is accompanied by an exposition dedicated to the traditions and culture of Brest residents. An active system of dominants emphasizes the dynamism of society. All this should have a strong emotional impact on visitors.
The Chief Architect of the Brest Region and BrSTU teachers highly appreciated the projects of SPbGASU students. Our students will continue working on the concert hall project and the concept for the development of the embankment in Brest.
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Operation Gomorrah may have been the most cynical event of World War Two (WW2). Not only did the name fully convey the intent of the war crimes about to be committed, it, also represented the single biggest 24-hour murder toll for the European war that I have come across.
Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
On the night of 27 July 1943, the RAF murdered 35,000, mostly working-class civilian residents living in the most densely populated part of Hamburg; a planned firebombing which started a sequence of events – a holocaust if not The Holocaust – that ended in Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. (Note The bombing of Hamburg foreshadowed the horrors of Hiroshima, National Geographic, 23 July 2021.) A holocaust is a “destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war” (Oxford Dictionary). [In The Holocaust, 31,000 Jews were shot dead in Kyiv in a single day in 1941; the worst single day of The Holocaust, I understand.]
Hamburg was, literally, a dry run for what came later; the aim was to maximise the number of barbecued civilians by, among other things, choosing perfect weather conditions for an experiment in incendiary murder. (Yes, I am literally using inflammatory language.) While the total death toll of the week-long operation has been estimated to be over 40,000, the toll arising from the night of 27/28 July 1943 represents about 85% of the total.
The Gomorrah chapter of Peter Hitchens’ The Phoney Victory, 2018, gives a documented account of the moral duplicity surrounding Churchill’s bombing campaign. For a full story of the Allies’ firestorm holocaust, see Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb, 2022, by James M Scott. (John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, is a survivor of the Tokyo episode, the raid that killed more people – over 100,000 – than any other in a single arsonous assault.)
Sodom and Gomorrah
These twin ‘cities of the plain’, which, if they ever existed, are now either under the Dead Sea or east of there, in modern Jordan. The key chapter in the bible (Genesis, ch.19) mainly emphasises Sodom, though Gomorrah was reputedly as ‘sinful’. The biblical story is ghastly, in its misogyny as well as its extollation of extermination of ‘others’.
Genesis (ch.19) tells us, when Lot (Abraham’s nephew) found himself, in Sodom, hosting two Angels/men, ‘the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house; and they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.”‘ The secret to understanding this is the biblical meaning of the word ‘know’; in this case the events took place in Sodom, and the guests had the appearance of ‘men’.
Lot replies: ‘”I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men …”.’ While the men of Sodom did not take up the offer – they favoured Lot himself – the angel-men saved Lot and his family. Then ‘When morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Get up, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or else you will be consumed in the punishment of the city.”‘ …
‘When they had brought [the four of] them outside, [the angel-men] said, “Flee for your life; do not look back or stop anywhere in the Plain; flee to the hills, or else you will be consumed.” … Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.’ …
After the three survivors settled in a cave: ‘the firstborn [daughter] said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the world. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, so that we may preserve offspring through our father.” … ‘Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father.’ (Thus, the East Bank [of the River Jordan] was repopulated!!)
Hamburg came to be equated with biblical Sodom, as deserving victims for a particularly barbaric form of mass murder. Neither Churchill, nor his bomber commander Arthur Harris, could know that only 35,000 Hamburgers would die as a result of that night’s operation. There is reason to believe that Churchill and his savants were looking for many more than hundreds of thousands of Germans to be ‘de-housed’ over the incendiary bombing campaign. (Dehousing was the euphemism used by Churchill’s men; compare with ‘resettlement’ for the trip that the residents of the Warsaw Ghetto made to Treblinka.)
Hamburg and the Gomorrah holocaust
Why Hamburg? Basically, because it was there. Though it was/is a large industrial and mercantile port city, the terror target was workers, not the works which employed them. The National Geographic article notes, with gallows-humour irony: “After noticing that Brits whose homes were struck by bombs were less likely to show up to work, analysts determined that destroying Germany’s largest cities and towns would likely cripple Germany’s war efforts.” Hamburg was close to England, and could be reached without flying over occupied land. And Hamburg was defended by a radar system of sorts, though not as sophisticated as British radar. The first British bombing raid on Hamburg was very much a technology test-run; refer The Woman Whose Invention Helped Win a War – and Still Baffles Weathermen, Irena Fischer-Hwang, 28 November 2018, Smithsonian Magazine. The second British raid on Hamburg was the real thing, a particularly dry run to really get the Gomorrah holocaust underway.
Hitchens (p.178) says: “Winston Churchill speculated in a letter of 8 July I940 to his friend and Minister of Aircraft Production, the press magnate Lord (Max) Beaverbrook, that an ‘absolutely devastating exterminating [my emphasis] attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland would help to bring Hitler down’. Arthur Harris, later the chief of RAF Bomber Command, realised the significance of these extraordinary words … he kept a copy of this letter.”
Hitchens (p.181) citing Bishop Bell speaking in February 1944 in the House of Lords: “Hamburg has a population of between one and two million people. It contains targets of immense military and industrial importance. It also happens to be the most democratic town in Germany where the Anti-Nazi opposition was strongest. … Practically all the buildings, cultural, military, residential, industrial, religious – including the famous University Library with its 800,000 volumes, of which three-quarters have perished – were razed to the ground.” While dead and dazed people may have low morale, and therefore have an arguable incentive to wage a civil war against their own government, they – especially the dead – are uniquely unable to overthrow a ruthlessly militarised government.
We might note Hamburg’s anthropological links to England. At a time of high racial – indeed racist – sensibilities, Anglo-Saxon supremacy was a very real thing. The area of Germany around Hamburg is the ‘Hawaiki’ of the Anglo-Saxon people; Lower Saxony is the ancestral motherland of the English. The class-consciousness and revengeful bloodlust of the English political class outweighed their ethnic consciousness. This was not true for the German Nazis, for whom the English were racial equals; Hitler and his crew really did not want to kill English people. Nazi Germany wanted the United Kingdom to become a neutral country, as Ireland was, and as the United States was before December 1941. Nazi Germany’s policy was to enslave, resettle, and murder Slavs and Jews and Gypsies; not to kill or dehouse Englishmen and their families.
The ‘elephant in the room’ was Josef Stalin.
Hitchens (p.191): “There is little doubt that much of the bombing of Germany was done to please and appease Josef Stalin. Stalin jeered at Churchill for his failure to open a Second Front and to fight Hitler’s armies in Europe, and ceaselessly pressed him to open such a front – something Churchill was politically and militarily reluctant to do. Bombing Germany, though it did not satisfy Stalin’s demands for an invasion, at least reassured him that we were doing something, and so lessened his pressure to open a second front.”
Hitchens (p.198): “Overy [in The Bombing War 2014] recounts how on 28 March 1945 Winston Churchill, clearly growing sick of the violence he had unleashed as victory approached and the excuses for it grew thinner, referred (in a memorandum) to Harris’s bombing tactics using these exact words. He urged, none too soon, that attacks turn instead to oil and transport. Harris paid no attention, and right up until 24th April 1945, his bombers continued to drop incendiaries and high explosives on German cities, turning many thousands of civilians into corpses.” [Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945, and VE Day was 8 May.]
Point of Interest: Churchill contested three elections, all after VE Day, all using Great Britain’s ‘first-past-the-post’ plurality system. He won just one of those three, though even then – in 1951 – his party got fewer votes than a Labour Party seeking re-election at a time of great difficulty for left-wing parties worldwide. Churchill’s Conservative Party got way-fewer votes than Labour in 1945 and 1950. The pressure on Prime Minister Clement Attlee to call the UK snap election of 1951 (one-third of the way through the term of his elected Labour government) can be understood as a successful example of political cunning on the part of the British establishment; literally a King’s coup.
A Scale of ‘Evil’?
While I generally hesitate to use the word ‘evil’, it may still be useful to grade very powerful people on a zero-to-ten scale of malevolence. On zero we might have the pacifist version of Jesus. On ten would be some very powerful person who actively sought nuclear ‘Armageddon’ (which would destroy life, not just humanity). After recently reading some quite difficult literature about World War Two, this is where I would place five powerful leaders:
9: Josef Stalin
8: Adolf Hitler
7: Benito Mussolini, Winston Churchill
6: Harry Truman
I need to read more about Truman; though, his legacy seems to have been airbrushed much as Churchill’s has been, and I might decide to upgrade him to a 7.
I would also note that these leaders had their close and powerful henchmen, whose ‘evilness’ can also be rated on such a scale, for example:
9.5: Lavrenty Beria
9: Josef Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler
Overall regimes can be better or worse than their leaders. I would rate both Stalin’s ‘Communists’ and Hitler’s ‘Nazis’ as both 8.5. Thus, Stalin’s regime was not quite as bad as its two most notorious figures. And Hitler’s regime was even worse than Hitler; that’s certainly not being kind to Hitler! (Stalin’s atrocities, the equal of Hitlers, were mostly committed in peacetime; the vast majority of Hitler’s were committed in wartime.)
‘Favourites’ as intimate (though not necessarily sexual) friends of powerful leaders
Churchill’s regime was not as bad as Churchill. Though Churchill had two favourites, both active members of his regime – especially his ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ – who were worse than him (possibly worse in one case, and definitely worse in the other). The ‘possibly worse’ one was Brendan Bracken, Minister for Information. Bracken, the prototype for ‘Big Brother’ in George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four, was Churchill’s Goebbels. Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ was a conflation of the Ministry of Information and Orwell’s wartime employer, the BBC. (Born in Ireland, Bracken was sometimes rumoured to have been Churchill’s ‘love child’, though that supposition is most likely untrue.) Surprisingly little has been written about BB.
The ‘definitely worse’ favourite was German born (Baden Baden) and educated (Darmstadt and Berlin) scientist, Frederick A Lindemann; who was granted the title Lord Cherwell in 1941. He built his career in Britain at Oxford University, becoming Professor of Physics there in 1919. He also became a bit of a wartime ‘test pilot’, managing to establish his loyalty to the United Kingdom. His close friendship with Churchill lasted decades, beginning in 1921.
Frederick Lindemann, aka Lord Cherwell
In my assessment, Lindemann is the closest individual yet to a ten-out-of-ten on the above-suggested scale of malevolence. Let’s say that, if World War Three comes and someone like Lindemann has as much access to the levers of power as Lindemann actually had, then the world would be a goner. (In Lindemann’s defence, it has been noted that he was fond of children and animals. Likewise, another man; one with a famous moustache.)
Frederick Lindemann exerted a beguiling influence over Churchill. When Churchill was not in power, in the 1930s, Lindemann ran a private think-tank for Churchill. In the 1930s he allegedly undermined the scientific development of radar, which proved critical to the defence of Britain from Luftwaffe attacks; indeed, Lindemann seems to have shown a lack of interest in military defence; his thing was the elimination or dehumanisation of ‘others’. Lindemann “was one of the first to urge the importance of atom bomb research” (Where to Read about Professor Lindemann, The Churchill Project, 6 May 2015); indeed “Following his 1945 return to the Clarendon Laboratory, Lindemann created the [United Kingdom] Atomic Energy Authority”, Wikipedia.)
I will illustrate the Lindemann problem with quotes from these three sources; some may argue that I have made a biased selection, but so be it:
Mukerjee: “Known as the Prof to admirers (because of his academic credentials and his brilliance) and as Baron Berlin to detractors (thanks to his German accent and aristocratic tastes), Lindeman was responsible for the government’s scientific decisions.”
Mukerjee: “Lindemann attended meetings of the War Cabinet, accompanied the prime minister on conferences abroad, and sent him an average of one missive a day. He saw Churchill almost daily for the duration of the war and wielded more influence than any other civilian adviser.”
Gladwell: “I think that’s the crucial fact about Lindemann. One time he’s asked for his definition of morality and he answers, ‘I define a moral action as one that brings advantage to my friends.’ … The man who defined a moral action as ‘One that brings advantage to my friends,’ was best friends with Winston Churchill.”
Gladwell: “Lindemann becomes a kind of gatekeeper to Churchill’s mind.”
Mukerjee: “On most matters Lindemann’s and Churchill’s opinions converged; and when they did not, the scientist worked ceaselessly to change his friend’s mind.”
Mukerjee: “The mission of the S branch [Churchill’s nearest equivalent to DOGE] was to provide rationales for whichever course the prime minister, as interpreted by the Prof, wished to follow.”
Mukerjee: “Department heads ‘began to realize that, like it or not, the Prof was the man whom Churchill trusted most, and that all their refutations, aspersions, innuendos or attempts at exposure would not shift Churchill from his undeviating loyalty to the Prof by one hair’s breadth,’ wrote [economist] Harrod. So it was that the Prof would pronounce judgment on the best use of shipping space, the profligacy of the army, the inadequacy of British supplies, the optimal size of the mustard gas stockpile, the necessity of bombing German houses – and, when the time came, the pointlessness of sending famine relief to Bengal.”
Gladwell: “An argument took place at the highest reaches of British government. The question was what was the best use of the royal air force against the Germans? … One school of thought says, ‘Let’s use our bombers to support military activities, protecting ships against German U-boats, destroying German factories.’ The other school of thought argues that bombing ought to serve a bigger, strategic purpose. In other words, ‘Let’s use bombing to break the will of the German people, let’s make their lives so miserable that they give up.’”
Wikipedia: On dehousing, Lindemann says “bombing must be directed to working class houses. Middle class houses have too much space round them, so are bound to waste bombs”.
Gladwell on Lindemann’s dishonesty: “Lindemann’s memo to Churchill. It’s very matter of fact; it’s all about what the data says except for one thing. That’s not what the data says. The Birmingham-Hull study reached the exact opposite conclusion [about working-class morale] that Lindemann did.”
Gladwell: “Other experts [eg Henry Tizard] in the government, critics of strategic bombing, point out immediately that Lindemann’s numbers are ridiculous, five or six times too high, based on obvious errors.” [Hitchens (p.205) claims that the numbers of civilian casualties were only ten percent of what Lindemann had promised. If you multiply by ten the number of civilians – mostly workers, their families, slaves, and refugees – killed in the totality of the Gomorrah holocaust, you get a number bigger than deaths in The Holocaust; this would be a measure of Lindemann’s intent.]
Gladwell: “One of Lindemann’s friends said, ‘He would not shrink from using an argument which he knew to be wrong if, by so doing, he could tie up one of his professional opponents.’ Lindemann wanted strategic bombing, so Churchill went ahead and ordered the bombing of German cities.”
Gladwell: “Most historians agree that strategic bombing was a disaster. 160,000 US and English airmen and hundreds of thousands of German civilians were killed in those bombing campaigns. Many of Europe’s most beautiful cities were destroyed and German morale didn’t crack; the Germans fought to the bitter end. After the war, the Nobel Prize winning physicist Patrick Blackett wrote a devastating essay where he said that the war could have been won six months or even a year earlier, if only the British had used their bombers more intelligently.” [Note that the whole Gomorrah holocaust killed more Japanese civilians than German civilians; as noted in Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb, the Hamburg dry run led more-or-less directly to the fire-bombings of almost every urban centre in Japan.]
Mukerjee: “‘Love me, love my dog, and if you don’t love my dog you damn well can’t love me,’ muttered a furious Churchill in 1941, after a member of the House of Commons had raised questions about the Prof’s influence.” [Gladwell: that “row occurred in 1942 and it occurred over strategic bombing”.]
Mukerjee: “Cherwell believed that a small circle of the intelligent and the aristocratic should run the world. ‘Those who succeed in getting what everyone wants must be the ablest,’ he asserted. The Prof regarded the masses as ‘very stupid,’ considered Australians to be inferior to Britons, advocated ‘harshness’ toward homosexuals, and thought criminals should be treated cruelly because ‘the amount of pleasure derived by other people from the knowledge that a malefactor is being punished far exceeds in sum total the amount of pain inflicted on a malefactor by his punishment.’” [Enjoyment arising from the punishment of the wretched outweighs the suffering of those wretched!]
Mukerjee: “Eugenic ideas also feature in a lecture that Lord Cherwell (then known as Professor Lindemann) had delivered more than once, probably in the early 1930s. He had detailed a science-based solution to a challenge that occupied many an intellect of the time: preserving for eternity the hegemony of the superior classes.”
Mukerjee: “New technologies such as surgery, mind control, and drug and hormone manipulations would one day allow humans to be fine-tuned for specific tasks. … ‘Somebody must perform dull, dreary tasks, tend machines, count units in repetition work; is it not incumbent on us, if we have the means, to produce individuals without a distaste for such work, types that are as happy in their monotonous occupation as a cow chewing the cud?’ Lindemann asked. Science could yield a race of humans blessed with ‘the mental make-up of the worker bee.’ This subclass would do all the unpleasant work and not once think of revolution or of voting rights: ‘Placid content rules in the bee-hive or ant-heap.’ The outcome would be a perfectly peaceable and stable society, ‘led by supermen and served by helots.’”
Mukerjee: “At least no one would demand votes on behalf of an ape. … To consolidate the rule of supermen – to perpetuate the British Empire – one need only remove the ability of slaves to see themselves as slaves.”
Gladwell: “How can you have a real debate against Churchill’s best friend? Friendship comes first.”
Gladwell: “The US starts sending over so many ships that, by late 1943 when the famine in Bengal is at its height, there’s actually a surplus of boats on the allied side. In fact, in 1943, the British actually start shipping wheat from Australia up through the Indian Ocean, just not to India. … British ships full of grain are sailing right past India on the way to the Middle East to be stored for some future, hypothetical need. They might even stop and refuel in Mumbai, but nothing leaves the ship. … Why is Lindemann [as Paymaster General] refusing to help? It doesn’t even make illogical sense. Indian soldiers, hundreds of thousands of them, are fighting the Germans in the Middle East and Africa. When other countries like Canada and the United States offered to send food to India, the British say, ‘We don’t want it.’ They turn down help. Lindemann seems completely unmoved by India’s plight.”
Gladwell: “Black people, according to a friend, filled him with a physical revulsion which he was unable to control. But I’m not sure that we’re seeing Lindemann here; I think we’re seeing Churchill. Churchill is the one with an issue about India. He’s obsessed with India. In the years leading up to the war, Gandhi is building his independence movement within India and Churchill hates Gandhi. Churchill is furious about the fact that Britain has to buy raw materials from India, meaning that the master is running up a debt with its supposed subject. … Why was Lindemann so adamant that England could not help India? Because Churchill was adamant that England could not help India and Lindemann was a loyal friend.”
CP Snow (1960), cited by Gladwell: “The Lindemann-Churchill relation is the most fascinating example of court politics that we’re likely to see.” [hmmm!]
Gladwell: “The best guess of how many died in the Bengal famine of 1943 is three million people. Three million. After the war, the British government held a formal inquiry into what happened, but the investigation was forbidden to consider, and I’m quoting, ‘Her Majesty’s government’s decision in regard to shipping of imports.’ In other words, they were asked to investigate the cause of the famine without investigating the cause of the famine.”
Hitchens (p.197): “Gas attacks were contemplated by Winston Churchill. … Overy writes ‘The RAF staff thought that incendiary and high-explosive raids were more strategically efficient [than gas or germ warfare], in that they destroyed property and equipment and not just people, but in any of these cases – blown apart, burnt alive or asphyxiated – deliberate damage to civilian populations was now taken for granted. This paved the way for the possibility of using atomic weapons on German targets in 1945’.”
It also paved the way for the potentially devastating anthrax attacks on Germany which would have taken place in 1944 had the American-led D-day offensive been unsuccessful; contamination from such attacks would have rendered parts of Germany uninhabitable for a human lifetime. (See my Invoking Munich, ‘Appeasement’, and the ‘Lessons of History’ 13 March 2025, which mentions both the Bengal famine and the anthrax program as well as the Hamburg holocaust.) The anthrax program bears the hallmark of Lindemann; the abandoned anthrax operation was dubbed Operation Vegetarian, in part a likely reference to Lindemann’s famed dietary obsessions.
Hitchens (pp.200-201): “It is surprising that Sir Max Hasting’s Bomber Command (first published in 1979) has not begun to change opinions. … Sir Max deserves much credit for the chapter in which he describes the indefensible destruction of the city of Darmstadt [south of Frankfurt] on 11 September 1944 (it was not, in any significant way, a military target). Hastings: ‘The first terrible discoveries were made: cellars crammed with suffocated bodies – worse still, with amorphous heaps of melted and charred humanity’.” (Lindemann went to school in Darmstadt. Victims most likely included his former classmates, teachers and their families.)
Hitchens (p.206), on the battle between Frederick Lindemann and Henry Tizard (the scientist who stood up to Lindeman, and paid a price): “Why is the only considerable account of this battle trapped inside [a] small, obscure volume that the reader must retrieve from deep in a few impenetrable scholarly libraries? Why is it not taught in schools? Why has nobody written a play about it? I suspect it is because this story, if well known, would undermine the shallow, nonsensical cult of Winston Churchill as the infallible Great Leader, a cult to which, surely, an adult country no longer needs to cling.”
Hitchens (p.205): “Tizard said that Lindemann’s estimate of the possible destruction was five times too high. He was supported by Patrick Blackett, a former naval officer who had become a noted physicist high in the scientific councils of the day. He would later win the Nobel Prize in Physics, and be ennobled as Lord Blackett. Blackett independently advised that Lindemann’s estimate was six times too high. ‘Both were slightly out. But they were nothing like as wrong as Lindemann was. Lindemann’s estimate of destruction was in fact ten times too high, as the postwar bombing survey revealed.” [The actual destruction of German cities was only one-tenth of what Lindemann had hoped and argued would be the case. Given the actual hundreds of thousands of barbecued German civilians, Lindemann had been arguing for millions.]
CP Snow (1960), cited by Hitchens (p.205): “It is possible, I suppose, that some time in the future people living in a more benevolent age than ours may turn over the official records and notice that men like us, well-educated by the standards of the day, men fairly kindly by the standards of the day, and often possessed of strong human feelings, made the kind of calculation I have just been describing. … Will they think that we resigned our humanity? They will have the right.” [Strikingly, although the post-war years have generally been regarded as ‘more benevolent’, the Gomorrah holocaust continues to ‘fly under the radar’. Indeed, so much so that Churchill’s speeches have been nominated as part of New Zealand’s schools’ draft English curriculum! (And that matter of Churchill was not raised by the New Zealand media; they were more interested in the ‘controversial’ possibility that Shakespeare might be compulsory.)]
Winston Churchill was not a nice man. His ‘favourite’ – Frederick Lindemann – was rather less nice.
Lessons
War itself is the problem, and the first casualty of war is truth. Drumbeating for war is cheap, and sabres are easily rattled. We stumble into wars without having any realistic idea how they might end; casual war becomes forever war. Wars involve multiple nasty people from the outset, and other similarly nasty people come to the fore during war, sometimes completely behind the scenes.
War changes much but solves little. World War Two was the first war in which civilians were targeted on an industrial scale. It ended, in Europe at least, in a Pyrrhic manner, with Josef Stalin’s USSR as the annihilist of Nazi Germany.
War in the modern age of globalisation means this and more. In a twenty-first century World War, while targeted civilians will be high on the murder list, the biggest death-counts are likely to be of untargeted civilians – residents of semi-belligerent and non-belligerent countries – and of completely guiltless non-human life forms.
If the Americans hadn’t successfully prosecuted D-Day (Operation Overlord) in 1944, I believe that Winston Churchill would have used the RAF to unleash his anthrax bombs. The Scottish island of Gruinard is only now becoming habitable, after eighty years of anthrax contamination. Imagine parts of Germany becoming uninhabitable – for nearly a century – had Operation Vegetarian been executed.
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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Source: United States Senator for New York Charles E Schumer
Ward Apparatus Manufactures Emergency Response & Rescue Vehicles For Fire Departments; Due To Tariffs On Aluminum From Canada And Materials From Other Countries They Along With Dozens Of Other Local Businesses Are Seeing Costs SKY-ROCKET – This Means Higher Prices For Customers And Firefighters Due To Tariffs
Over 17,000 New Yorkers Across The Southern Tier – Including 5,100 In Chemung, Steuben & Schuyler Counties – Work In Industries Directly Impacted By Tariffs, With Thousands More In Adjacent Fields Like Tourism That Are Seeing Huge Drops As Canadians Cancel Trips To Upstate NY
Schumer: We Need To Save Our Small Businesses From The Administration’s Tariff War That Is Raising Prices On Everyone And Killing Jobs
With Trump’s tariff war hitting Main Street businesses across Upstate NY, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer today stood with Southern Tier business leaders like Ward Apparatus, a company that builds emergency rescue and response vehicles for fire departments and is feeling the pain with major hits to their bottom line due to tariffs on Canada and other countries. The senator said this destructive and un-strategic tariff war that Trump has started has Upstate NY businesses, seniors and working- and middle-class families footing the bill with increased costs.
Schumer said every day this chaos continues, it risks 17,000 jobs in the Southern Tier in industries impacted by the tariffs and even more jobs in Upstate NY’s vital tourism sector, and revealed he will push for the Senate to vote on a resolution to end this destructive trade war.
“Chemung County and the Southern Tier are on the frontlines of the destructive Trump tariff war. Let’s be clear: these tariffs are a tax increase on Upstate NY. This trade war is raising costs up for families, small businesses, and in the case of Chemung County’s Ward Apparatus, which manufactures emergency vehicles, it is raising costs for first responders, fire departments, and municipalities that need this lifesaving machinery,” said Senator Schumer. “If this tariff war continues, it could devastate Upstate NY’s economy in ways we haven’t seen since the height of the pandemic. Small businesses are struggling to figure out how to make ends meet and being forced into difficult decisions, including if the increase in costs means they will need to lay off staff or even close their business altogether, and that is unacceptable. That’s why when the Senate returns, I will force a vote to end this reckless trade war that is hurting families and small businesses throughout the Southern Tier and across Upstate New York.”
Schumer explained that Ward Apparatus operations in Chemung County, along with dozens of other businesses in the area, and thousands across Upstate NY, have been rattled by the trade war. Aluminum is a key component in the emergency response vehicles they build for firefighters, and it currently faces a 25% tariff, as the majority of aluminum comes from Canada. With more tariffs on the way, and through no fault of their own, prices for Ward Apparatus’s trucks could go up 10% for customers – as much as $30,000 or $40,000 – a cost which gets footed by the firefighters and municipalities that need to purchase them.
Schumer added, “We don’t want to see departments and agencies compromising on the safety of the fleets their first responders operate, or the ability they have to adequately meet and respond to the needs of the public they are tasked to protect, because Trump’s tariffs have made it too cost-prohibitive. Our first responders deserve the best, and the public should not be worried about impacts to their safety.”
Scott Beecher, CEO/Owner of Ward Apparatus/Ward Diesel stated, “We try to source domestic parts, materials, and components as local as possible, but there are many not available or cannot be 100% sourced domestically. Having tariff uncertainty makes it very difficult to plan out production over an extended period of time. I agree with efforts to bolster manufacturing in the US, but unintended negative consequences hurt business’s and add to already long lead-times. These costs will have to be passed on to the end users and in our case that’s local fire departments, municipalities, and communities. The more predictability and stability we can have, the better we can supply our incredible firefighters with our trucks and equipment we manufacture.”
Ward Apparatus is one of many Southern Tier-based businesses struggling to prepare for the impacts of tariffs to their bottom line. Schumer was also joined by Rimco Plastic and Swift Glass, local businesses that are feeling the impacts.
Rimco Plastics Corporation, also located in Chemung County, manufactures and supplies thermoformed plastic trays and lids for businesses’ shipping, handling, and production needs. The uncertainty of market conditions as a result of tariffs has created challenges for the business in obtaining the raw material, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), needed to produce their products. Suppliers of PVC have halted their orders due to the uncertainty of pricing. As a result, Rimco has had to decline orders, even from long-standing customers, because this material is unavailable.
For almost 100 years, Swift Glass has been a fabricator of quality and custom glass, providing a variety of custom glass parts for biomedical, appliance, industrial and commercial, optical, and aerospace applications. Given the custom nature of their products, a large segment of the glass and materials they purchase are sourced around the globe to accommodate the unique needs of their product’s applications, items that will be subjected to tariff increases in the coming months.
“For Swift Glass, the brunt of the tariff issue will be felt with our far material purchases. About 50% of glass we buy comes from Europe and we were notified that starting in June, there would be an 8% increase added to what we have been paying,” said Charlie Burke, Vice President of Sales at Swift Glass. “This material is specifically used for defense applications, medical diagnostics, and the semiconductor industry. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent made in the United States so this tariff increase, if it does occur, will be passed on to these customers.”
According to the Main Street Alliance, a network of small businesses, 81.5% of small business respondents to a recent survey indicated they would raise prices for consumers due to tariffs and 31.5% indicated they would lay off employees as a result of the increased costs from tariffs. Tariffs are also creating uncertainty for families and jobs. If implemented again, tariffs are expected to increase costs for the average American family by as much as $5,000 a year, and families are struggling to plan for the future without assurances about their jobs. According to a New York Times analysis, over 17,000 New Yorkers across the Southern Tier including 2,500 in Chemung County work in industries targeted by the administration’s tariffs, which does not even account for all the related jobs, such as jobs in the tourism industry, that are also being impacted by the damage of this trade war.
Schumer explained that planned tariffs hurt small businesses across the country, especially because they can’t stockpile raw materials for future orders before tariffs take effect and often have very slim margins to adapt to increased costs. The whiplash and uncertainty over tariffs have also sent the economy into a tailspin. Trump previously delayed the start of his tariffs twice and canceled across-the-board tariffs six days after implementing them. Uncertainty is causing the stock market to fall, causing chaos for small businesses to operate, and shaking the job market.
Schumer said the Senate has a plan to end this dangerous trade war and protect Upstate NY businesses. Earlier this month, the Senate passed a bipartisan resolution to end tariffs on Canada and urged the House to pass it as well. Schumer also said when the Senate returns it will vote on a resolution to reverse these new taxes of 10% on all imported goods and end the looming threat of additional tariffs of up to 49% on products Americans buy from other countries. Schumer said ending this costly trade war is key to protecting New York from price increases and job losses as a result of tariffs on Canada.
“I am all for addressing trade imbalances, I have always been a China hawk and have long fought against unfair trade practices, but these sweeping, ill-conceived tariffs are creating chaos and undermining those goals. Rather than uniting the world against China, Trump has united them against us! No matter which way you slice it, costs are going to skyrocket for consumers. If you’re in Upstate New York, you’ll feel it first, and worse than just about anywhere in the country. We need everyone, especially NY Republicans, to stand up against Trump’s senseless, job-killing, cost-increasing tax on Upstate New Yorkers,” concluded Schumer.
DUBAI, UAE, April 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — FXiBot, the latest innovation in forex automation, introduces a precision-focused strategy designed to master GBP/USD trading with a disciplined, single-position approach. Where overtrading fuels risk and erratic outcomes, this system does the opposite, taking a measured, calculated approach with strategic intent.
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Source: Moscow Government – Government of Moscow –
Over the past four years, Muscovites have held over 50,000 events using the service “Together with culture”. It features about 1,500 urban spaces available for rent. These are halls for concerts and film screenings, venues for exhibitions and master classes, auditoriums for business meetings and presentations, reported Natalia Sergunina, Deputy Mayor of Moscow.
“The service unites dozens of libraries, museums and other cultural institutions in more than 120 districts of the capital. We see that the project is popular: since the beginning of the year alone, premises in it have been booked more than 8.5 thousand times,” said Natalia Sergunina.
Especially in demand theatrical living room in the N.V. Gogol HouseThe room, designed for 80 people, has a grand piano and a decorative fireplace, a projector with a screen, an acoustic system and professional spotlights. Here you can hold a concert, lecture, seminar or conference.
The Turgenev drawing room is also often rentedlibrary-reading room named after I.S. TurgenevThe space can be easily transformed to suit the required format: a creative meeting, a charity evening, or literary readings.
As specified by the capital Department of Information Technology, on the page of each site you can see information about technical equipment, availability of Internet, parking, places for loading and unloading and other possibilities. To rent, just submit an online application. It will be reviewed within four days.
Provision of socially significant services in electronic form and development of e-government infrastructure correspond to the objectives of the national project “Data Economy and Digital Transformation of the State” and the Moscow regional project “Digital Public Administration”.
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Please Note; This Information is Raw Content Directly from the Information Source. It is access to What the Source Is Stating and Does Not Reflect
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday instructed Israeli negotiators to “continue the steps” for the release of hostages still held in Gaza, his office said, as efforts to revive the ceasefire appeared to be stalled.
“The prime minister issued an instruction for the continuation of the steps to advance the release of our hostages,” the office said in a statement.
The statement followed an assessment meeting on the 59 hostages who are still being held in Gaza with the negotiating team and the heads of the security establishment.
On Monday, Israel’s state-owned Kan TV reported that Egyptian and Qatari negotiators have presented to Hamas a new deal proposal that includes the release of about 10 hostages and a temporary truce. Hamas said in a statement that it was studying the proposal.
Palestinians are seen among the rubble of destroyed buildings after an Israeli airstrike in Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip, on April 13, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that Israel has adopted a policy of blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza to undermine Hamas’ control over the population.
In a statement a day after a field visit to Gaza with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior military commanders, Katz outlined Israel’s broader war strategy, which he said aims to secure the release of hostages and ultimately defeat Hamas.
“Israel’s policy is clear — no humanitarian aid is about to enter Gaza,” Katz said. “No one is currently preparing or intending to bring any humanitarian aid into Gaza under the current circumstances,” he added.
Israel resumed its blockade on the entry of food, water, medicine, fuel, and other supplies on March 2. Netanyahu said the move was intended to pressure Hamas into accepting a deal to extend the first phase of the ceasefire and hostage-release agreement, without requiring Israel to end the war.
According to Katz, aid has been withheld in order to “undermine Hamas’s control over the population and prepare the ground for future (aid) distribution via private companies” without Hamas’ involvement.
Israeli forces are striking Hamas militants and infrastructure “relentlessly,” Katz said, while preparing for the next phases of the operation.
According to the minister, the army would not withdraw from areas it has seized, and would maintain a presence in designated “security zones” across Gaza.
He warned that if Hamas continues to reject Israel’s terms for a hostage deal, “the operation will expand and move to the next phases.”
According to Gaza-based health authorities, Israeli attacks have killed more than 51,000 people in the enclave since the war began.
A further 48 Camperdown residents have had their homes further safeguarded from fire as we head toward winter, thanks to the collaborative efforts of community volunteers.
On Saturday, 5 April, 18 dedicated volunteers from the Camperdown Fire Brigade, Camperdown Lions Club and CFA’s South West Region Community Safety team came together to install and test smoke alarms for those in need.
Five teams set out to inspect, test and replace every outdated 9V battery smoke alarm with a 10-year battery targeting vulnerable community members who were unable to obtain, install or maintain smoke alarms themselves.
Together, they successfully visited 48 properties, checking 97 smoke alarms and installing 37 new ones to ensure community members stay protected.
Camperdown’s Brigade Community Safety Coordinator, Sarah Blair said that only working smoke alarms save lives, but for some people, checking and maintaining them is not possible.
“Climbing a ladder can be a real hazard for the ageing population or those with mobility issues. This initiative takes away that worry and ensures their alarms will work when it matters most,” Sarah said.
“Some of the alarms we saw had gone yellow and were well past their expiry date. It’s reassuring knowing they have now been upgraded.
“It might seem like a small upgrade, but it has the power to save lives and offers them peace of mind knowing they are protected for the next decade.”
While Camperdown has been doing the program for a number of years, the brigade’s efforts have been boosted by CFA’s partnership with RACV and their support through the Smoke Alarm Installation Program which kicked off in April 2024.
Since April last year, the program has reached 990 properties statewide, with CFA members engaging with over 1,200 residents to discuss home fire safety and install 1863 smoke alarms at 755 properties.
The initiative highlights the power of community collaboration and strong volunteer spirit, while aiming to increase the understanding and awareness of home fire hazards and reduce the number of preventable fire fatalities.
Smoke alarms play a critical role in early fire detection and evacuation, yet statistics indicate many homes do not have enough smoke alarms or have them installed in the wrong areas, with some residents also unaware if they are in working order.
Camperdown Fire Brigade are proud to work alongside the Lion’s Club and CFA’s South West Region Community Safety team to keep the community safe, one smoke alarm at a time.
Source: United States Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.)
Padilla, Levin Host Roundtable with Veterans and Service Providers in San Diego to Highlight Impact of VA Cuts
WATCH: Padilla discusses importance of protecting essential VA benefits
SAN DIEGO, CA — Today, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and U.S. Representative Mike Levin (D-Calif.-49) hosted a roundtable in San Diego alongside veterans, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) service providers, and regional stakeholders to highlight the importance of protecting veterans’ benefits and discuss concerns regarding the Trump Administration’s plan for mass cuts to the VA workforce. The Administration is planning to cut more than 80,000 VA jobs, threatening access to the health care, housing services, educational opportunities, and other essential benefits veterans deserve.
The demand for VA services is high. The VA delivered a record number of health care appointments and benefits in 2024, including over 127 million appointments. Nearly 800,000 veterans have enrolled in VA health care since the Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act was signed into law in 2022, expanding VA benefits to those exposed to toxic substances. Padilla promised to continue fighting to defend these essential PACT Act benefits for the hundreds of thousands of now VA-eligible veterans.
Padilla also highlighted his bipartisan legislation introduced last week, the Housing Unhoused Disabled Veterans Act, to ensure veterans experiencing homelessness and receiving disability payments maintain access to crucial housing support. California has the most veterans in the nation and was home to 28 percent of all veterans experiencing homelessness in the United States last year, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s January 2024 point-in-time count. There are 9,300 homeless veterans across the state, including 865 homeless veterans in San Diego, according to the same count.
“Veterans who have dedicated their lives to support our nation deserve our complete, enduring support, but they are facing serious threats as the Trump Administration proposes sweeping cuts to the VA workforce,” said Senator Padilla. “Our veterans earned their benefits through their service in uniform — and it’s offensive that they could now be on the chopping block. We should be doing more for our veterans, not less, and I’m going to keep speaking out against these indiscriminate, massive cuts and make sure our veterans can continue to access essential health care, housing, and education services.”
“When Americans enlist, they swear an oath to defend our nation. And in return, we owe it to them to thank them for their sacrifice and take care of them after their service. Is this Elon’s way of saying thank you? With every day that goes by, more and more veterans are at risk of being fired,” said Representative Levin. “I won’t stand for it, and I will fight to ensure it won’t happen anymore. This constant chaos is eroding the public trust and is testing the limits of the American public’s patience. I want to be clear: I support efficiency as much as anyone and I don’t support bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake. But what Trump and Musk are doing is not making government work better, and on top of that it is unconstitutional. While the Trump Administration is hell-bent on cutting critical programs for our veterans, Senator Padilla and I are committed to serving them.”
Padilla also joined registered nurses and veterans at the VA Medical Center-San Diego today to deliver remarks at a rally organized by National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU) demanding an end to the devastating VA staffing cuts.
WATCH: Padilla criticizes VA cuts during rally with nurses and veterans
Senator Padilla has strongly opposed the Trump Administration’s mass cuts and hiring freeze at the VA. Padilla is a cosponsor of the Putting Veterans First Act — comprehensive legislation to protect veterans, military spouses, and VA employees indiscriminately targeted by the Trump Administration and the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) cuts at the VA and across the federal government. He has also co-signed multiple letters to the Administration and joined a resolution condemning these VA cuts. Padilla and his Senate colleagues also called on the Trump Administration to reverse its cancellation of 585 contracts with the VA, including those that help veterans exposed to burn pits and other toxins access lifesaving health care as guaranteed under the PACT Act. In January, Padilla joined Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and 23 other Senators in demanding President Trump put veterans first and immediately exempt all VA employees from the Administration’s federal hiring freeze.
Additionally, last year, Padilla passed a bipartisan amendment into law to increase and streamline veterans’ access to HUD-VASH housing vouchers through the FY24 appropriations package. Padilla and Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) also led the Isakson-Roe Education Oversight Expansion Act, which was signed into law last year and will improve VA oversight to ensure veterans receive access to quality higher education from reputable institutions.
Video of Senator Padilla’s remarks from today’s roundtable is available here and can be downloaded here.
Additional photos from the roundtable and rally are available here.
Source: United States Senator for New York Charles E Schumer
Thousands Of Vets & VA Workers Were Already Fired, Including In The Rochester-Finger Lakes; Canandaigua VA Workers Say Cuts Creating Chaos, With Local Vet Suicide Crisis Line Workers Even Being Mistakenly Fired & Rehired, Elsewhere NY Addiction Services Staff & Other VA Programs Staff Have Been Slashed
Now With ‘DOGE’ Plan To Slash 80,000+ VA Jobs– NEARLY ONE-FIFTH OF ALL VA WORKERS – Schumer Says Places Like Canandaigua VA, Which He Saved From Being Closed, Could Face Devastating Damage
Schumer: We Can’t Let ‘DOGE’ Attack Health Care For Over 33,000 Vets In Finger Lakes
With ‘DOGE’ and the Trump administration’s plans to fire over 80,000 workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) looming, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer today stood outside the Canandaigua VA to sound the alarm on the devastating impacts for the over 33,000 veterans in the Rochester-Finger Lakes region. The senator said across Upstate NY, VA workers, many of whom are veterans, have already been fired, creating chaos in the workforce and new massive cuts would spell disaster for both the Canandaigua VA and the care for vets across NY. Schumer called on the Trump administration to restore fired veterans and VA workers and stop any plans to further decimate the VA workforce.
“This is not how you treat our veterans – it’s not just unacceptable, it’s un-American. Firing over 80,000 VA workers, many of whom are veterans themselves, will undoubtedly hurt the healthcare and benefits for the 33,000 veterans here in the Rochester-Finger Lakes. We have already seen the chaos firsthand, VA workers fired without warning across Upstate NY, chaos across the VA workforce. Here in Canandaigua they even fired workers on the veterans suicide crisis hotline before reversing themselves after public outcry. It is gut wrenching to think this is how we are treating the services of those who defended our freedoms,” said Senator Schumer. “Make no mistake, these cuts are a direct assault on our veterans here in Upstate NY. These cuts don’t just mean fewer VA workers, they mean longer wait times for our veterans to get the help they need. It means they won’t get the most advanced treatment, and ultimately it means many will likely be denied healthcare they deserve. Our nation told our veterans that if they put their lives and health on the line to protect our freedoms, we would take care of them, and the Trump administration is breaking that promise by cutting the VA to the bone. We need to make sure these cuts never happen. Not in Canandaigua or at any VA across America, and that they rehire all the veterans and VA workers who only were trying to serve those who served our country.”
“Canandaigua VA workers, including our Veteran Crisis Line professionals are literally on the front lines every day saving veterans lives minute by minute, all while now dealing with the additional stress of their own jobs needlessly being as risk of termination. They are fielding an increasing number of calls from stressed veterans worried that the VA cuts will affect their care or worse,” said Ronnie Orlowski, Canandaigua VA employee and President of AFGE Local 3306 that represents Canandaigua VA workers including Veteran Crisis Line workers. “A significant number of our VA workers are veterans themselves, and they bring a personal commitment and empathy to their jobs which is why it was unconscionable that dozens of Canandaigua VA workers on the Veteran Crisis Line and Homeless Veterans Hotline -several veterans themselves – were terminated earlier this year. This includes workers who alert first responders to dispatch ambulances and police in real time to the location of a veteran in crisis calling on the line who needs immediate emergency intervention. We fought back and while they were eventually reinstated, many do not feel their jobs are safe with the looming threat of 83,000 additional layoffs. These proposed layoffs strike at the very heart of services that are essential to our veteran’s wellbeing, including those who have shared how the VA has been crucial in their post-service lives, from critical medical procedures and PTSD therapy to ongoing support. I thank Senator Schumer for his steadfast opposition to the proposed staffing cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs, and urge others to stand firm with him in ensuring our nation’s continued commitment to its veterans.”
Schumer said ‘DOGE’ has already fired thousands of veterans across the country, many of whom have service-connected disabilities. 2,400 VA employees, many of whom are veterans themselves, have already been terminated. The VA, however, has refused to even explain where all these cuts have been in New York, leading to chaos, and with 80,000 more looming, the senator said it could turn into a real crisis.
Schumer said these broader ‘DOGE’ firings are especially cruel as veterans make up 30% of the federal workforce, with approximately 640,000 veterans working in federal agencies. The federal government has long made it a priority to hire veterans and military spouses, encouraging them to do so as a continuation of public service, making these cuts by the Trump Administration uniquely hurtful. Schumer has repeatedly highlighted this, including bringing a Western NY disabled Army veteran who served in Afghanistan who was fired from the Buffalo VA, as his personal guest to attend President Trump’s Joint Session of Congress
Dozens of workers in the VA Finger Lakes Healthcare System have already been caught in the crossfire of Trump’s firing chaos:
Last February according to the AFGE, 9 Veterans Crisis Line (VCL) workers at the Canandaigua VA were fired, only to be reinstated days later after public outcry across the country. These included workers whose job is to call local first responders to dispatch intervention rescues when a veteran on the line is in crisis.
10 workers in the Finger Lakes VA system were fired.
Additionally, VA union officials report that VA Homeless Hotline workers hired through Canandaigua VA as remote workers are under a pending return-to-work order which has already led the call center to lose 30 percent of its workforce which will reduce the line’s effectiveness.
An office manager at the Veteran’s Mental Health Center in Rochester was fired, and though the manager was rehired, a supervisor has been fired since then.
Spectrum News reported layoffs at the Bath VA’s Detox and Substance Use Rehab Center, risking its shutdown due to staffing shortages. Every Veteran Court in Monroe County sends their defendants to Bath for rehab, and the Bath facility is one of the only facilities that can provide in-patient detox care in the greater Rochester-Finger Lakes region.
‘DOGE’ has also directed the VA to cancel over 800 contracts that support chemotherapy treatment, screenings for veterans suffering from toxic exposure, detecting and preventing waste, fraud, and abuse, digitizing veterans’ disability claim records, and more. Schumer said these cuts have already hurt health care services that the VA can offer veterans and are just a small example of what’s to come. While Secretary Collins claimed the contract cancellations will have no negative impact on veterans’ health care, VA employees claim the contracts being cancelled are “central to patient safety.”
Schumer added, “I am all for cutting out inefficiency, but you use a scalpel, not a chainsaw. Jobs and care for our veterans in Upstate NY is not government waste – full stop. This will hurt our veterans and their families.”
These cuts also come at potentially the worst time, as more veterans had just started receiving healthcare than ever before thanks to Schumer leading the PACT Act to passage through Congress, which after years of denying vets treatment extended health coverage for exposure to burn pit smoke and other environmental hazards that caused cancers and other illnesses during their service In 2023 alone, the VA hired more than 60,000 new employees to serve thousands of new patients seeking care after the passage of the PACT Act. Trump’s plan to gut the VA workforce will reverse progress made in recent years to provide quality and continuous care to veterans suffering from diseases brought on by exposure to toxic burn pits. Schumer said if proposed firings go through, health care services for 33,000 veterans in the Finger Lakes and millions more across the country will be at risk.
These drastic workforce cuts to the VA will cripple the agency’s ability to serve the 400,000 veterans enrolled in benefits between March 2023 and March 2024. VA employees and advocates indicate when these cuts take place, wait times, as well as delays or denial in care, will worsen as the longstanding staffing shortage problem at the VA will be significantly exacerbated. Cuts to the VA research workforce will prevent VA from delivering enhanced, tailored care to the veterans they are still able to serve, undoubtedly resulting in worse health outcomes for veterans suffering from service-connected illnesses.
Ontario County U.S. Marine Corps and Vietnam Era Veteran Wayne Thompson said, “As a veteran, I know firsthand how important the role VA services and programs play in supporting those of us who have served. The proposed staffing cuts would be detrimental, not only to veterans in need of assistance but also to the remaining employees who provide these vital services. Reductions like these are likely to overburden the already dedicated staff and risk leaving many veterans without the support they desperately need. The current White House’s chaotic administration of multiple aspects of citizens lives is raising havoc with Veterans and the general public’s mental and physical wellbeing. It needs to stop before it’s too late! I join Senator Schumer to oppose these proposed cuts and to protect our access to essential VA services.”
Nick Stefanovic, Director of the Monroe County Veterans Service Agency said, “The Department of Veterans Affairs is crucial in providing life-saving rehabilitation and mental health services to our veterans, and any cuts to this vital resource could have devastating consequences. With positions at critical medical facilities already being lost, I am very concerned about the direct impact on the care our veterans receive. I am thankful for Senator Schumer’s strong stance against these reductions. His commitment is vital in our fight to ensure that our veterans continue to have access to the care they need.”
Senator Schumer has a long history both fighting to keep the Canandaigua VA Medical Campus open, and delivering robust federal funding to modernize the campus to boost the quality of care for Finger Lakes veterans. In 2003, the VA released its Capital Asset Realignment for Enhancement Services (CARES) Draft National Plan which recommended closing the Canandaigua Veteran’s Medical Campus, which would have forced local veterans to travel much farther to VA hospitals in other cities to receive the care they needed, and removing one of the region’s major employers. Schumer launched an all-out campaign to keep the Canandaigua Medical Campus open, even convincing the former VA secretary to visit in person. Since then, Schumer has secured hundreds of millions of federal dollars to modernize and expand the facility to provide Rochester-area veterans with the new state-of-art medical facilities and housing they have long deserved.
Chinese Vice Premier Liu Guozhong, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, inspects the construction site of a comprehensive improvement project of the Yongding River in Shijingshan District of Beijing, capital of China, April 9, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua] Chinese Vice Premier Liu Guozhong has emphasized the need to improve the flood control and disaster reduction capacities of the Haihe River Basin, and the importance of strengthening spring agricultural production. Liu, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks during a research trip to Beijing and Hebei. He stressed the importance of implementing the central authorities’ decisions and plans on accelerating the improvement of the flood control system in the Haihe River Basin, and the need to ensure the safety of major cities and infrastructure. Liu also called for improving the rain monitoring and forecast system, with strict control over the quality of the entire process, and supervision over the construction progress and use of funds. It is necessary to strengthen flood control management and eliminate various kinds of risks and hidden dangers in a timely manner, he said. During the tour, he stressed that solid work should be done in spring ploughing and related preparations, and in promoting high-quality summer grain production. He also required efforts to ensure there is no large-scale return to poverty.
Workers perform production tasks at Harbin Turbine Company Limited of Harbin Electric Corporation in Harbin, capital of northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, April 10, 2023. [Photo/Xinhua] Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing has called for the deepened reform of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the accelerated establishment of regional emergency rescue centers. Zhang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks during an inspection tour in northeast China’s Heilongjiang province which began on Monday and ended on Wednesday. He stressed the resolute need to make SOEs stronger and better, as well as the importance of reinforcing the principal role of enterprises in scientific and technological innovation, making breakthroughs in key technologies and forging new advantages. Work must be done to efficiently allocate resources to principal businesses and important industries and sectors, strengthen core competitiveness, and make steady progress on the path of high-quality development, Zhang said. It is necessary to advance the establishment of regional emergency rescue centers to cope with flood and forest fire, he said, stressing the importance of coordinating with local governments, of quick reactions, and of cross-regional support. When inspecting local dairy firms, Zhang called for strengthened source management and full-chain oversight to improve food safety.
