Documents uncovered during Moscow's special operation in Ukraine have revealed that the US was deploying an extensive biological research program there, spending more than $200 million on 46 biological laboratories researching highly dangerous pathogens. Russia, China, and some EU states are still waiting for Washington's answers on these biolabs.
The new Pentagon report claiming that America is facing “expanding biological threats” from its foreign adversaries is no more than an attempt "to seek license" for the US to continue developing offensive strategic bio-labs in countries that surround Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, Scott Bennett, a former State Department counterterrorism analyst, told Sputnik.
"These labs will be used to develop bio weapons that target specific DNA and genetic vulnerabilities of people of Slavic, Asian, and Persian-Hindu descent. Of course the external cover explanation for the purpose of these labs will be as 'defensive' or 'proactive' countermeasures against the bio weapon development of other nations the American government defines as 'uncooperative', or 'unyielding', or 'hostile' to being an American vassal or slave state," Bennett said.
The "Biodefense Posture Review" - released on Thursday, claimed that its military faces an acute threat from foreign adversaries engaged in developing advanced biological weapons programs. The report, ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin back in 2021 following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, urged the US to take measures to counteract such growing threats. It specifically singled out the “growing multi-domain threat posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC)", saying the National Defense Strategy (NDS) needed to prioritize the “PRC challenge in the Indo-Pacific region,” and the “Russia challenge in Europe.” According to the US Defense Department, it was currently working to address these concerns by bolstering biodefense capabilities through increased collaboration across the military and the Defense Department’s civilian structures.
The report released by the US Department of Defense is a reaction to the recent revelations made by Russia’s Defense Ministry in connection with the continuing “bio weapon violations of international law and indeed crimes against humanity the United States Government and Military under the Biden Administration is currently doing,” said Scott Bennett, who is also a veteran of the 11th Psychological Operations Battalion of the US Army.
Seeking to deflect attention from these revelations, substantiated by Russia with solid evidence, Washington, is grabbing at an excuse to further continue "these extraordinarily dangerous—if not life ending—experiments in disease, suffering, and death….which seems to be the chief export of the United States," he added.
About 30 biological laboratories funded by the US Defense Department have been discovered in Ukraine during Moscow’s ongoing special military operation in the country, the Russian Defense Ministry revealed last year. The Pentagon has been running these clandestine biolabs for years, researching highly dangerous pathogens and exporting biological samples in breach of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).
The United States is yet to offer any detailed explanations in connection with its military and biological activities in Ukraine.
The Pentagon report attempts to mislead the public by stating that any claims of American bio labs and their development of dangerous pathogens are “unproven”, but this is “patently false,” added the former US Army psychological warfare officer.
"The voluminous amount of materials obtained from the US bio labs in Ukraine were presented to the United Nations by Russia for full exposure and analysis to all the world, however France, the United Kingdom, and the United States objected and stopped this investigation. Why? Seems someone has something to hide," Bennett emphasized.
As for the timing of the "Biodefense Posture Review", it comes as, despite a vast amount of NATO-provided weaponry, Ukraine remains unable to turn the tide of its flagging counteroffensive. The Ukraine counteroffensive largely never got off the ground. In the weeks leading up to it, significant forces attacked Russian positions but were consistently repelled, with vast amounts of Western equipment destroyed. After more than two months of heavy losses and with very little to show for it, US media recently reported on a “classified forecast” from Washington that predicted Ukraine is unlikely to meet its goals in the much-hyped counteroffensive.
On the other hand, Washington is also clearly setting the stage for the next spiral of escalation with Beijing.
“The report and the US Department of Defense is clearly identifying China as its intended target, no doubt due to America and NATO losing fantastically in Ukraine," the former USState Department counterterrorism analyst suggested.
He continued that the report indicated to him, as a former psychological operations officer, that "the Joe Biden Administration and his 'handlers' will no doubt be unleashing within the United States some 'false flag event', in the form of a bio weapon... dirty bomb... to generate the required fear and chaos and tyrannical martial law authority of the United States Government, specifically the FBI, the ATF, the US Marshalls, Homeland Security, the CIA, and the U.S. Military, to use against and control the American people.”
Meanwhile, despite the costly but stuttering counteroffensive, and the heavy losses suffered by Ukraine, Washington continues to spearhead NATO’s proxy war against Moscow.
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"It is increasingly clear that the Biden Administration needs a war to distract the American public from the International collapse of the American petroleum-dollar empire fiat currency system, and its 700 plus military bases around the world. They need to generate an enemy, and nothing is better than an invisible bio weapon... This report is the next stage of that internally coordinated self-implosion of the United States, which the Biden Administration has done through open borders, weaponization of the dollar and economic sanctions, and military interventionism... The bio weapons report by the US Department of Defense is simply a preparation for the next chapter, which is the blaming of a foreign adversary, for the very Pandora’s Box the United States created," Scott Bennett concluded.
The Ukrainian crisis has resulted in the acceleration of global processes aimed at the creation of a new global economic, political and security architecture to challenge the unipolar hegemony of the United States and its allies. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has played a key role in helping to facilitate this global transformation.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has given a broad-ranging interview with Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn, Russia’s leading international affairs journal, discussing the rapidly changing global geopolitical situation, what he believes is the West’s main fear about the rise of a multipolar world order, the causes and consequences of the Ukrainian crisis, the risks of a nuclear war, and Russia’s cooperation with partners abroad.
Lavrov had a lot of important things to say. Sputnik brings you the most important highlights.
Biggest Problem Facing Humanity
The Russian top diplomat cited the West’s seemingly insatiable drive to dominate of other nations as one of the key factors standing in the way of harmonious global development.
Russia, he said, has to “deal with the constant desire of the Western minority for military-political and financial-economic expansion. The slogans change, from globalization and Westernization to Americanization, universalization, liberalization, etc. But the essence remains the same: to subjugate all independent actors to their will, to force them to play by rules that benefit the West,” Lavrov said.
According to Lavrov, Washington and its allies are seeking to slow down “or even reverse” the evolution of the international affairs to prevent the emergence of a multipolar order and a “more just architecture of international affairs,” which Russia sees as its “mission” to support.
“The West has people leading it today such as Josep Borrell [the European Union’s foreign policy chief, ed.] which divide the world into their ‘flowering garden’ and the ‘jungle,’ where, in their view, most of humanity resides. With such a racist worldview (and I’m not afraid to use this word), it is of course difficult to come to terms with the arrival of multipolarity. The political and economic establishment in Europe and the United States is right to fear that the transition to a multipolar system will be associated with serious geopolitical and economic losses for them, including the final breakdown of globalization in its current, Western-crafted form. First and foremost, they are afraid of the prospect of losing the opportunity to live parasitically off the rest of the world, ensuring faster economic growth for themselves at the expense of the rest of the world,” the Russian top diplomat said.
No One to Blame But Themselves
Pointing to what he characterized as the “professional degradation” of the current crop of Western leaders, and their inability to correctly analyze events and predict trends, Lavrov emphasized that the “ill-conceived” policy of the US and its allies turned the “full-scale European security crisis” presently playing out in Ukraine into an inevitability.
Russia, proceeding from the new Foreign Policy Concept released in March, strives to create the conditions necessary for the “peaceful and progressive development of humanity based on a unifying agenda,” Lavrov said, with one of the key goals being to “revive” the United Nations’ ability to return to a “central role” in harmonizing the interests of member states.
“We are far from alone in pursuing this goal. More and more countries of the Global South and East are starting to realize and formulate visions of their national interests, to pursue a policy focused on their implementation in the spirit of international cooperation. These nations are increasingly insisting on the creation of a more just world order – through reforming existing interaction formats, or creating new ones, to solve specific problems in the fields of security and development. Russia supports this trend based on the clear understanding that the future lies with it,” Lavrov said.
Nuclear Danger
Highlighting the growing threat of a global nuclear catastrophe stemming from the prospect of a direct Russia-NATO clash in Ukraine, Lavrov emphasized that at its core, the risks stem from the Western alliance’s “gross violation” of the principles of indivisible security, and a desire to see Russia’s “strategic defeat” in the proxy war in Ukraine.
The Russian top diplomat stressed that Russia’s nuclear doctrine was and remains “purely defensive in nature,” and “aimed at maintaining the minimum necessary nuclear force potential to guarantee the defense of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state, and prevent aggression against Russia and its allies.”
“In the context of deterrence, the possession of nuclear weapons is presently the only possible response to some of the major external threats to the security of our country. The situation around Ukraine has only served to confirm the validity of our concerns in this area,” Lavrov said, with a “great danger” posed by the US and NATO’s drive toward escalation resulting in “direct armed clashes between nuclear powers. We believe that such a development can and should be prevented. Therefore, we are forced to remind and send sobering signals to our opponents of the existence of these extreme military-political risks.”
In the meantime, he said, Moscow will continue to adhere to the view that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, and to urge other nuclear states to “maintain adherence to these understandings and to exercise maximum restraint.”
Crisis Has Unmasked the West
The crisis in relations between Russia and the West has created considerable risks, but also at least one benefit, Lavrov believes, with the majority of the world getting a unique “opportunity to see the true face of those who claimed almost a monopoly on the right to determine ‘universal values’.”
Lavrov stressed that the Ukrainian crisis didn’t start in 2022, with Western countries spending “many years” working to turn Russia’s neighbors into military footholds hostile to Moscow, “nurturing a whole generation of politicians preparing to declare war on our common history, culture, and in general everything Russian.”
“Western leaders have openly admitted that they did not plan to implement the Minsk Agreements aimed at resolving the conflict in Ukraine. In reality, they only stalled for time to prepare for a military scenario while pumping Kiev up with arms,” Lavrov said, referring to recent revelations by former leaders of Ukraine, France and Germany regarding the Minsk deal.
Hybrid War’s Main Goal
“I think it’s important to understand the main thing: that the West wants to eliminate our country as a serious geopolitical competitor,” Lavrov said.
This, he noted, explains the “hybrid war” being waged against Russia, through sanctions, threats of secondary restrictions against countries cooperating with Russia, acts of sabotage, such as last year’s terror attacks against the Nord Stream pipeline network, efforts to “disconnect” Russia from international cultural, educational, scientific and sporting events, etc.
Meanwhile, he added, the roughly 50 countries representing the so-called “Ramstein Coalition” supporting Ukraine militarily are “factually involved in the armed conflict” against Russia, delivering cluster bombs and long-range missiles, using NATO instructors to plan operations and providing Kiev with intelligence.
“It’s clear that these and other aggressive measures are aimed at weakening and exhausting Russia. They seek to exhaust our economic, technological and defense capabilities as much as possible, to limit our sovereignty and force us to abandon our independent course in foreign and domestic policy,” the diplomat said.
Lavrov pointed out that the West has now provided in excess of $160 billion in military and economic aid to the Zelensky regime, with one Washington-based think tank calculating that the $113 billion provided by the United States alone is equivalent to about $900 for every American household, plus $300 in interest on servicing the related debt obligations. “These are huge sums, especially given the difficult situation in the global economy.”
Western leaders continue to repeat the “mantra” that their countries will provide as much military and other assistance to Ukraine as required, and are prepared to “fight to the last Ukrainian,” according to Lavrov. However, the record US support to its client states abroad, from South Vietnam to Afghanistan, offers hints about Kiev’s “bleak” future, with Ukraine today “almost completely dependent on Western financial inflows and weapons deliveries.” The longer the crisis continues, the less attractive the country will become to Western investors taking part in “reconstruction,” and the heavier the burden of Ukraine’s state debt will become, the Russian diplomat stressed.
“The West should also realize one more thing: Russia will protect its people and its vital interests using all available means. And it would be better if our opponents realized as soon as possible the utter futility of the confrontation with Russia, and moved on to more civilized political-diplomatic methods to ensure the balance of interests,” Lavrov said.
West’s Schizophrenic Approach to Peace Talks
Pointing to Russia’s long-standing efforts to restore peace, from the 2015 Minsk deal to the comprehensive security agreements proposed to the US and NATO in late 2021, to peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in the first weeks of the special military operations, which were ultimately sabotaged by the West, Lavrov indicated that the problem is that Washington, as the main party fueling the proxy war, refuses to come to the negotiating table, while the Zelensky regime has signed a law prohibiting peace talks.
“Today, in different cities, first in Copenhagen and now in Jeddah, multilateral meetings are being held, without Russian representatives being invited, to support Zelensky’s ‘peace formula’. Meanwhile, Moscow is accused of ‘unwillingness to participate in negotiations’, and any arguments about the need to take into account the vital interests of our country are swept aside. It is clear that such an approach means the West has no intention to negotiate anything with Russia. Therefore, the prospects for negotiations between Russia and the West are, alas, not clear,” Lavrov said.
“We regard the hypocritical calls by the West for negotiations as a tactical ploy to once again gain time, provide exhausted Ukrainian forces a respite and the opportunity to regroup, and to pump them up again with weapons and ammunition. This is the path of war, not a peaceful settlement. This is absolutely obvious to us,” the Russian foreign minister added.
Asked for his views on the significance of last month’s Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg, Lavrov said that the summit’s importance could not be overstated in terms of African countries’ ability to resist the concentrated campaign by the West to pressure them over ties with Russia.
“Notwithstanding enormous pressure from the West, 48 official delegations and representatives of five leading regional integration associations arrived at the meeting. Moreover, 27 countries were represented by heads or deputy heads [of state and government, ed.]. These numbers clearly demonstrate that our nation’s independent foreign policy enjoys understanding from developing countries, and that the efforts of the United States and its allies to isolate Russia internationally have failed,” he said.
Russia’s goal in Africa, Lavrov said, includes “strengthening” the political, economic and technological sovereignty of its partners, with Moscow ready to share knowhow on improving public administration, ensuring food security, and implementing socio-economic development, and partnering up with regional nations to help preserve security and stability, settle regional conflicts, fight terrorism, drug crime and other cross-border threats and challenges
Russia’s Near Abroad: Cooperation Within Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization
According to Lavrov, Russia’s partners in the EEU and the CSTO have also faced “colossal” pressure from the West throughout the past year-and-a-half, with unfriendly countries using “threats and blackmail” to try to “force our allies to abandon their absolutely legal cooperation with Russia.”
Russia is “sympathetic” to its allies in the face of the external pressure being exerted on them, Lavrov said, and their need to “exercise caution” in cooperation. At the same time, “mutual trade and economic obligations that exist between our nations continue to be fulfilled…Naturally, countermeasures are being taken on our part aimed at curbing destructive influence from outside.”
For example, within the EEU, joint measures have been set up to help nullify the effects of sanctions imposed on Russia and Belarus. These measures have borne fruit, with inter-bloc trade growing, along with the use of currency swaps for trade, while food and energy security cooperation continue to be “fully insured,” according to the diplomat.
“In general, we of course expect that in developing ties with third countries or organizations, our allies in the EEU and the CSTO will not take steps which contradict their obligations within these organizations. At the same time, we don’t have the right to lecture other states or dictate to them how and with whom they build their relationships. Russia does not prohibit any of our neighbors and partners from establishing interaction with anyone, but always asks that our legitimate interests be taken into account. I think that they hear us,” Lavrov summed up.
As Hurricane Hilary heads north, Southern California and Mexico are bracing for a rare and powerful storm that could produce dangerous flash flooding and sustained winds that have not been seen for decades.
Residents are racing to fill sandbags and fuel up generators before extreme weather arrives, and emergency officials are warning that roads may be inundated and setting up evacuation centers.
The Category 4 hurricane is so unusual that it has prompted the National Hurricane Center to issue a tropical storm watch for California for the first time in its history. Hilary is currently projected to make landfall in Baja California on Sunday and move northward as a tropical storm near San Diego and across the deserts and mountains east of Los Angeles — though its path could still veer elsewhere.
In California, the desert and mountain communities are of particular concern. The National Weather Service warned of five to eight inches of rain for the Coachella Valley, about 120 miles east of Los Angeles. The tropical storm could force numerous evacuations and rescues, as well as deadly runoff that may “rage down valleys while increasing susceptibility to rockslides and mudslides,” the agency said.
“The risk in the southeastern deserts is genuinely alarming,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, referring to areas such as Joshua Tree National Park in the southeast part of the state. “We’re talking, in some cases, it will be multiple years’ worth of rainfall.”
As of Friday, Hilary was about 350 miles south of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, causing particular worry for the Baja California peninsula. Hilary poses a threat to all of the Mexican state of Baja California, home to 3.8 million residents, local authorities said on Friday during a meeting in Tijuana with reporters and other officials. Catalino Zavala, the state’s secretary general, said that 80 temporary shelters would be available to receive up to 9,000 people.
“It is a little bit more serious than we expected,” said Armando Ayala Robles, mayor of the city of Ensenada.
Employees installed wooden boards to protect a restaurant from the storm in Los Cabos, Mexico. Credit... Alfredo Estrella/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Of special concern are the rocky island of Cedros, off the west coast of the state and home to about 3,000 people, and San Quintín, an agricultural center for the region that has slowly emerged as a coastal tourist destination.
Hilary will dump up to 10 inches of rain on the state of Baja California from Saturday to Monday — an extremely unusual amount given that the state, known for its dry weather, typically receives around eight inches throughout the year, the authorities said.
Mexico’s national meteorological service predicted that given the rainfall and wind gusts of up to 62 miles per hour, flooding and landslides were expected to occur. Power outages and loss of communications are also likely to happen.
The Mexican Army has deployed nearly 14,000 soldiers to the city of Mexicali, just south of the U.S. border, and the states of Baja California Sur, Jalisco and Colima — which expect up to six inches of rain on Friday even without the hurricane making landfall there. More troops were deployed in other states in western and central Mexico, where intense rains were forecast.
In San Diego County, the southernmost part of California, plans were in place to keep lifeguards on duty throughout the weekend because of dangerous surf conditions, and extra emergency personnel had been tapped to address flooding.
“There are people who live in the canyons and low-lying areas, and we want to be prepared,” said David Gerboth, an assistant fire chief with the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.
In Orange County to the north, residents were trying to make sense of the fact that a tropical storm was heading their way — a phenomenon that few Californians alive today have ever encountered. The last time one reached landfall in Southern California was in 1939, flooding Los Angeles and killing nearly 100 people.
Under blue skies in downtown Laguna Beach on Friday morning, Suzanne Barber was stacking a dozen sandbags outside her art gallery on the Pacific Coast Highway, across the street from Main Beach. Fresh on her mind was Hurricane Dora, which never made landfall in Hawaii but amplified the winds that contributed to the wildfire disaster on Maui this month.
Sand barriers along the coast in Long Beach. Credit... Mark Abramson for The New York Times
“I can’t believe it is happening,” she said. “After seeing what happened in Lahaina — that tropical storm — it really frightened me. I just want to be prepared and not take it lightly.”
She added that she received a text from concerned relatives in Tennessee asking if she was going to evacuate. “I said, ‘What?’”
Major League Baseball announced on Friday that it had rescheduled three games that were supposed to be played on Sunday in Los Angeles, San Diego and Anaheim. Those games will be played on Saturday afternoon instead.
Experts say there is almost no risk that the storm will actually touch down in California as a hurricane, because the cool ocean temperatures in this part of the Pacific and the stable atmosphere are not conducive. Hilary is expected to weaken to a tropical storm by the time it reaches Southern California. Still, the effects of such a storm could be devastating.
With potential for significant rainfall, there is heightened concern about the canyons and fire-burn areas where rapid debris and mud flow could occur. Firefighters are also bracing for rain-related rescues and an increase in accidents.
The office of emergency management in Los Angeles County said residents should make a plan for their families, stock up on supplies and stay informed of the news.
“Los Angeles is no stranger to crazy events and phenomena, it’s the nature of where we’re at,” said Emily Montanez, the associate director of the agency.
Ms. Montanez said that over the last two days, her office had been coordinating with county departments as well as leaders in all 88 cities in Los Angeles County. Law enforcement and fire staff have been augmented, and emergency medical workers have been assigned to incident management teams. If needed, beaches, parks and hiking trails and other public spaces may be closed.
“Everybody’s on standby,” she said.
Vik Jolly, Maggie Miles and Candice Reed contributed reporting from Southern California. Elda Cantú contributed reporting from Ensenada, Mexico. Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting from Mexico City.
Corina Knoll is the Los Angeles bureau chief. She writes features about California and covers breaking news. Previously, she spent more than a decade with The Los Angeles Times, where she contributed to two Pulitzer Prizes.
Los Angeles Under Tropical Storm Warning as Hurricane Hilary Approaches
The National Hurricane Center on Friday evening issued its first-ever tropical storm warning for Southern California, including downtown Los Angeles, as a powerful Category 4 hurricane moved through the Pacific Ocean toward Mexico and the United States.
The storm, Hurricane Hilary, was about 260 miles west-southwest of the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula as of 2 a.m. Saturday in Los Angeles, the Hurricane Center said in an advisory. Meteorologists have said that the storm may cause “life-threatening and potentially catastrophic flooding” in Baja and the Southwestern United States, starting this weekend.
The warning in effect early Saturday indicated that tropical storm conditions were possible within the coverage area over the next 36 hours. The area stretched from the California-Mexico border to Point Mugu, around 40 miles west of Santa Monica by road, and includes Catalina Island.
Hilary had sustained winds near 130 miles per hour, the Hurricane Center said. Tropical cyclones that have sustained winds of 39 m.p.h. earn a name. Once winds reach 74 m.p.h., a storm becomes a hurricane, and, at 111 m.p.h., it becomes a major hurricane.
A number of events in the Los Angeles area this weekend, including a Major League Soccer match and several Major League Baseball games, have been rescheduled because of the approaching storm.
Hilary formed as a tropical storm off the coast of Manzanillo, Mexico, on Wednesday and began moving west-northwest toward Baja California as it strengthened.
Hilary is expected to weaken but remain a hurricane as it approaches the west coast of the Baja California Peninsula on Saturday. It will then most likely become a tropical storm before reaching Southern California by Sunday night.
Hilary’s exact landfall likely will not make much of a difference when it comes to the expected hazards in the region, meteorologists said.
Hilary will bring up to six inches of rain, with isolated amounts up to 10 inches, across portions of the Baja California Peninsula through Sunday night, with the possibility of flash flooding.
Portions of Southern California and Southern Nevada will record similar rainfall totals through Tuesday morning, which could lead to “dangerous and locally catastrophic flooding,” forecasters said.
A flood watch was issued for much of Southern California, including Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura Counties. Other areas across the West can expect a few inches of rain.
Forecasters said that strong winds would occur ahead of the storm’s center.
Residents in Southern California raced to prepare sandbags and fill generators ahead of Hilary’s arrival as emergency officials prepared evacuation centers. Some expressed particular concern about the impact on mountain and desert regions.
The National Weather Service said runoff could “rage down valleys while increasing susceptibility to rockslides and mudslides.”
Mexico’s government issued a hurricane warning for the Baja California peninsula from Punta Abreojos to Cabo San Quintin. A hurricane watch is also in effect for the Baja California Peninsula’s west coast north of Cabo San Quintin to Ensenada.
A tropical storm warning and watch were also issued for multiple regions of the peninsula and mainland Mexico.
The Mexican army mobilized thousands of troops in anticipation of severe damage to infrastructure.
The Eastern Pacific hurricane season has been active this summer, but most of these recent storms have tracked west toward Hawaii, including Hurricane Dora, which helped enhance extreme winds that led to the devastating wildfires on Maui.
It is “exceedingly rare” for a tropical storm to come off the ocean and make landfall in California, said Stefanie Sullivan, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in San Diego. The only tropical cyclone to truly make landfall in Southern California was an unnamed storm in 1939 that made landfall in Long Beach, she said.
However, storms have come close or weakened before coming ashore, still causing flooding and dangerous winds, like Kay, a post-tropical cyclone, last year. Sometimes storms even move across the state from Mexico; in 1997, Hurricane Nora made landfall in Baja California before moving inland and reaching Arizona as a tropical storm.
Hurricane season in the Eastern Pacific began on May 15, two weeks before the Atlantic season started. The seasons run until Nov. 30.
Complicating things in the Pacific this year is the development of El Niño, the intermittent, large-scale weather pattern that can have wide-ranging effects on weather around the world.
An average Eastern Pacific hurricane season has 15 named storms, eight hurricanes and four major hurricanes. The Central Pacific typically has four or five named storms that develop or move across the basin annually.
There is solid consensus among scientists that hurricanes are becoming more powerful because of climate change. Although there might not be more named storms overall, the likelihood of major hurricanes is increasing.
Climate change is also affecting the amount of rain that storms can produce. In a warming world, the air can hold more moisture, which means a named storm can hold and produce more rainfall, as Hurricane Harvey did in Texas in 2017, when some areas received more than 40 inches of rain in less than 48 hours.
Researchers have also found that storms have slowed down over the past few decades.
When a storm slows down over water, it increases the amount of moisture it can absorb. When the storm slows over land, it increases the amount of rain that falls over a single location, as with Hurricane Dorian in 2019, which slowed to a crawl over the northwestern Bahamas, resulting in 22.84 inches of rain at Hope Town over the storm’s duration.
These are just a few ways that climate change is most likely affecting these storms. Research shows there may be other effects as well, including storm surge, rapid intensification and a broader reach of tropical systems.
Edwin Wagensveld dari Belanda, kepala cabang Belanda dari gerakan anti-Islam sayap kanan Pegida (Patriotik Eropa Melawan Islamisasi Barat) mengangkat Al-Qur'an sebelum merobeknya, saat demonstrasi di depan kedutaan Turki di Den Haag, pada 18 Agustus 2023
Seorang aktivis sayap kanan Belanda menginjak-injak dan merobek salinan Alquran pada demonstrasi di luar kedutaan Turki di Den Haag pada hari Jumat, membuat marah puluhan pengunjuk rasa.
Pemerintah Belanda telah mengutuk diadakannya demonstrasi menjelang acara tersebut, tetapi mengatakan tidak memiliki kekuatan hukum untuk mencegahnya(?).
Edwin Wagensveld, yang memimpin kelompok sayap kanan sayap kanan Pegida cabang Belanda, merusak salinan Alquran, disaksikan koresponden AFP. Ia ditemani dua orang lainnya.
Polisi telah menutup akses ke jalan di mana kedutaan Turki berada dan ada sekitar lima puluh pengunjuk rasa juga hadir.
Beberapa dari mereka mulai melempari Wagensveld dengan batu ketika dia merobek halaman-halaman Alquran, kitab suci umat Islam.
Sekitar 20 polisi yang dilengkapi tameng dan pentungan turun tangan ketika beberapa massa mencoba mengejarnya saat dia pergi.
Pada Jumat pagi Dilan Yesilgoz, menteri kehakiman Belanda kelahiran Turki, menggambarkan rencana penghancuran kitab suci itu sebagai 'cukup primitif dan menyedihkan'.
Tetapi undang-undang negara mengizinkan demonstrasi semacam itu, tambahnya.
Namun Wagensveld menghadapi persidangan atas komentar yang dia buat selama demonstrasi serupa di bulan Januari, ketika dia merobek salinan Alquran di luar parlemen sambil menyamakan buku itu dengan 'Mein Kampf' karya Adolf Hitler.
T-shirt yang dia kenakan pada demonstrasi hari Jumat membuat klaim serupa.
Geert Wilders, pemimpin partai sayap kanan lainnya, PVV, memposting pesan online yang mendukung demonstrasi hari Jumat oleh Pegida.
Serangan serupa terhadap Al-Qur'an telah terjadi di negara-negara Eropa lainnya baru-baru ini.
Pada akhir Juli, dua pria membakar salinan Alquran di depan parlemen Swedia, dan insiden serupa terjadi di Denmark tahun ini.
Demonstrasi semacam itu telah memicu kemarahan dan terkadang keresahan di beberapa negara Muslim.
Pada hari Kamis, badan intelijen Swedia meningkatkan tingkat siaga terornya menjadi empat dari skala lima sebagai tanggapan atas reaksi kemarahan di dunia Muslim terhadap pembakaran Alquran.
Serangan serupa terhadap Al-Qur'an telah terjadi di negara-negara Eropa lainnya baru-baru ini.
Pada akhir Juli, dua pria membakar salinan Alquran di depan parlemen Swedia, dan insiden serupa terjadi di Denmark tahun ini.
Demonstrasi semacam itu telah memicu kemarahan dan terkadang keresahan di beberapa negara Muslim.
Pada hari Kamis, badan intelijen Swedia meningkatkan tingkat siaga terornya menjadi empat dari skala lima sebagai tanggapan atas reaksi kemarahan di dunia Muslim terhadap pembakaran Alquran.
