Author: Reporter

Cesium’s half-life: Foraged mushrooms could help research radioactive fallout from Chernobyl

Sweden’s strong foraging culture could help determine how much radioactive fallout remains in the Scandinavian country, 38 years after the Chernobyl nuclear explosion. The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority has asked mushroom-pickers to send samples of this season’s harvest for testing. The goal of the measurement project is to map the levels of Cesium-137 in mushrooms and see how much remains after the April 26, 1986 disaster at the Soviet nuclear power plant in what is now Ukraine. Cesium, the key radioactive material released in the fallout, has a half-life of some 30 years. It can build up in the...

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Cultivating grapes: Napa Valley teaches Ukrainian winemakers how to heal their war-ravaged vineyards

As the head of an association of winemakers in southern Ukraine, Georgiy Molchanov knows a lot about how to cultivate grapes but not so much how to grow them amid undetonated mines. But that was the situation he found himself in after a Russian rocket dropped the explosives on his vineyard near the port city of Mykolaiv in August 2022, six months after Russia invaded. The damage, and danger, the mines brought to his business marked one of the myriad catastrophic effects the more than 2-year-old war has had on the eastern European country. Now, thanks to the combined...

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Victoria Amelina: Posthumous book by Ukrainian author documents war crimes since Russian invasion

A posthumous book by Victoria Amelina, the Ukrainian author killed last year during a Russian missile strike, will be published in February upon the war’s third anniversary. Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary, which draws upon Amelina’s interviews with 11 women who had been documenting war crimes since the Russian invasion, was left unfinished. Her husband, Oleksandr Amelin, was among those who helped edit and complete the book, which will include a foreword by Margaret Atwood. “A powerful testament to the courage and determination of women at war, the book follows the paths of...

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Alexei Navalny’s memoir details his suffering in a Russian prison and how he never lost hope

In a memoir released eight months after he died in prison, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny never loses faith that his cause is worth suffering for while also acknowledging he wished he could have written a very different book. “There is a mishmash of bits and pieces, a traditional narrative followed by a prison diary,” Navalny writes in “Patriot,” which was published in October, and is a traditional narrative followed by a prison diary. “I so much do not want my book to be yet another prison diary. Personally I find them interesting to read, but as a genre...

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Olena Zelenska: Ukraine’s youth should see themselves as “a generation of winners” not victims of war

Ukraine’s First Lady wants her country’s children to view themselves not as a generation enduring a grinding war but rather as “a generation of winners.” On the sidelines of a day spent at a rehabilitation camp for Ukrainian children in the relatively safe western city of Uzhhorod, Olena Zelenska said in September that working with the next generation was a moral obligation and a “strategic priority” for Ukraine’s future. Many of the children will return to front-line cities after spending a few weeks at the camp created by Voices of the Children charity, barely enough time to overcome the...

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Hope and pragmatism compete on Ukraine’s frontlines when considering a future with Trump as U.S. president

Soldiers in a Ukrainian artillery battery on the front lines of the country’s east were only vaguely aware of American election results pointing to Donald Trump’s victory on November 6, but firm in their hopes for the next president of the United States. Their entrenched artillery battery fires on Russian forces daily — and takes fire nearly as often. Just the other day, one of their overhead nets snared a Russian drone. “I hope that the quantity of weapons, the quantity of guns for our victory will increase,” the unit’s 39-year-old commander, who goes by the name Mozart, said...

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