China may be looking to draw a new ‘Nine Dash Line' in the Arctic
Xue Long 2, China's first domestically constructed polar vessel, left from Shanghai for its summer 2025 research expedition and crossed into Arctic territory around July 22. Designed to be able to break through ice up to 1.5 metres thick, the ship has been conducting operations in sensitive areas, with indications that two more Chinese icebreakers are en route to join the effort.
There's a pattern here. China stakes out a presence – ostensibly scientific, often co-operative. Then comes more equipment. Then military protection. Then grey-zone harassment. Eventually, the region becomes 'disputed', often indefinitely. The Arctic, long considered neutral ground, could well be the next frontier in this silent creeping strategy.
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Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
Britain planning attack on shadow fleet, Kremlin claims
The Kremlin has accused Britain of preparing 'mass raids' to sink ships in the Russian 'shadow fleet'. The SVR, Moscow's foreign intelligence service, claimed that London was plotting attacks on the fleet of old tankers used to avoid sanctions on oil exports. The attacks would be designed to look like accidents, the SVR said, so that Britain and the West could claim that the ships were a danger, and move to restrict their movement. 'British intelligence services are planning to use Nato allies to launch a mass raid on the 'shadow fleet'; for this purpose, an ecological catastrophe in international waters is being prepared,' the SVR report claimed. The report suggested that Britain planned to commission Ukrainian special forces to sink a vessel in 'one of the bottlenecks of sea communication'. However, the report is likely to raise concerns that Russia is preparing its own ' false flag ' – an operation designed to look like an attack on them – to justify an act of war. Western governments have previously been accused of planning attacks on Russia's liquefied natural gas ports or ageing fleet of tankers, in what could be considered an attempt to widen its war with Ukraine to Nato nations. Britain is often on the receiving end of such allegations as Moscow seeks to deter its support for Kyiv. It is also understood that the Kremlin uses this narrative to potentially shift the blame of any oil leaks that may be caused by any one of its ill-maintained vessels. The US and EU sanctions regime against Russia's shadow fleet has started to seriously affect its operations. According to the Brookings Institute, a Washington-based think tank, the volume of oil carried on its vessels has fallen from more than 50 million barrels a month to less than 20 million a month since the start of the year. Moscow has previously signalled its anger at the growing restrictions on the vessels by escorting them with military jets, the first time it explicitly acknowledged the shadow fleet as linked to its national security. The SVR report says: 'The impetus for such a campaign, according to London's plan, should be given by a resonant incident with one or several tankers. The plan provides for the organisation of a major sabotage, the damage from which will make it possible to declare the transportation of Russian oil a threat to all international shipping. This will untie the West's hands in choosing methods of counteraction.' The report cites two possible plans that the Russian intelligence agency claims could result in shadow fleet vessels being targeted. One would involve attacking an 'unwanted' tanker while making it appear to look like an accident. In a second scenario, British operatives would set fire to a vessel while it was docked in a port of Russian soil. Each time the British, according to the SVR, would 'entrust the execution of both terrorist attacks to Ukrainian security forces'. The claimed attack plans could be a desperate attempt to deter Donald Trump from following through on his threat to enact 100 per cent tariffs on Russia and countries that buy fossil fuel from Moscow. According to the SVR report, Britain's goal was to force the United States to apply secondary sanctions on nations that buy Russian oil. 'The goal is to force Washington, contrary to national interests, to adopt the most severe secondary sanctions against buyers of Russian energy resources, who will appear to be the 'indirect culprits of the tragedy',' the statement says.
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Scientists say they have solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars
Scientists say they have at last solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars off the Pacific coast of North America in a decade-long epidemic. Sea stars – often known as starfish – typically have five arms and some species sport up to 24 arms. They range in color from solid orange to tapestries of orange, purple, brown and green. Starting in 2013, a mysterious sea star wasting disease sparked a mass die-off from Mexico to Alaska. The epidemic has devastated more than 20 species and continues today. Worst hit was a species called the sunflower sea star, which lost around 90% of its population in the outbreak's first five years. 'It's really quite gruesome,' said marine disease ecologist Alyssa Gehman at the Hakai Institute in British Columbia, Canada, who helped pinpoint the cause. Healthy sea stars have 'puffy arms sticking straight out,' she said. But the wasting disease causes them to grow lesions and 'then their arms actually fall off.' The culprit? Bacteria that has also infected shellfish, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. The findings 'solve a long-standing question about a very serious disease in the ocean," said Rebecca Vega Thurber, a marine microbiologist at University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the study. It took more than a decade for researchers to identify the cause of the disease, with many false leads and twists and turns along the way. Early research hinted the cause might be a virus, but it turned out the densovirus that scientists initially focused on was actually a normal resident inside healthy sea stars and not associated with disease, said Melanie Prentice of the Hakai Institute, co-author of the new study. Other efforts missed the real killer because researchers studied tissue samples of dead sea stars that no longer contained the bodily fluid that surrounds the organs. But the latest study includes detailed analysis of this fluid, called coelomic fluid, where the bacteria Vibrio pectenicida were found. 'It's incredibly difficult to trace the source of so many environmental diseases, especially underwater,' said microbiologist Blake Ushijima of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, who was not involved in the research. He said the detective work by this team was 'really smart and significant.' Now that scientists know the cause, they have a better shot at intervening to help sea stars. Prentice said that scientists could potentially now test which of the remaining sea stars are still healthy — and consider whether to relocate them, or breed them in captivity to later transplant them to areas that have lost almost all their sunflower sea stars. Scientists may also test if some populations have natural immunity, and if treatments like probiotics may help boost immunity to the disease. Such recovery work is not only important for sea stars, but for entire Pacific ecosystems because healthy starfish gobble up excess sea urchins, researchers say. Sunflower sea stars 'look sort of innocent when you see them, but they eat almost everything that lives on the bottom of the ocean,' said Gehman. 'They're voracious eaters.' With many fewer sea stars, the sea urchins that they usually munch on exploded in population – and in turn gobbled up around 95% of the kelp forest s in Northern California within a decade. These kelp forests provide food and habitat for a wide variety of animals including fish, sea otters and seals. Researchers hope the new findings will allow them to restore sea star populations -- and regrow the kelp forests that Thurber compares to 'the rainforests of the ocean.' ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Medical News Today
2 hours ago
- Medical News Today
Poor sleep linked to 172 diseases, including dementia, Parkinson's, diabetes
Getting enough quality sleep every night is important for good health, but the extent it affects overall health is still being researched. A new study has linked 172 different diseases, including dementia, diabetes, and Parkinson's disease to poor sleep patterns. Of those diseases, 92 of them had over 20% of their risk correlated with poor sleep enough quality sleep every night is important for good health. However, some people may still be unclear about what 'quality sleep' entails and what impact sleep really has on their health. '[Until] now we have not completely understood how sleep builds our health,' Qing Chen, PhD, associate professor at the Institute of Toxicology in the College of Preventive Medicine at the Third Military Medical University (Army Medical University) in China, told Medical News Today.'Maybe we only know that sleep deprivation is harmful. No scientist has 100% confidence to tell us when we should sleep or when we should not sleep, [or] whether there are additional sleep tips that are important for health,' said Chen. 'This is not enough to make a really healthy sleep schedule.'Chen is the co-lead author of a study recently published in the journal Health Data Science that has linked 172 different diseases to poor sleep patterns. Of those diseases, 92 had over 20% of the risk correlated with poor sleep behavior. More than 20% of risk for 92 diseases linked to poor sleepFor this study, researchers analyzed medical data from more than 88,000 adults in the UK Biobank database to measure both their sleep traits and disease diagnoses. After an average 7-year follow-up, researchers associated 172 diseases with poor sleep patterns, including irregular bedtimes and off-circadian these, the risk for 42 diseases was at least doubled, including age-related physical debility, gangrene, fibrosis, and cirrhosis of the liver. Chen and his team also discovered that 92 of the 172 diseases had more than 20% of their risk traceable to poor sleep, including dementia, primary hypertension, Parkinson's disease, type 2 diabetes, and acute kidney failure. 'Sleep regularity (rhythm) should be taken into consideration, or a number of diseases may be induced, even if sleep duration is adequate,' Chen said. 'This is because sleep rhythm and sleep duration may be in charge of different aspects of our health.' 'We want to understand why disruption of sleep rhythm induces diseases, and how can we prevent or cure the diseases induced by sleep rhythm disruption,' he commented, when asked about the next steps for this research. Does lack of sleep cause these diseases?MNT spoke with Matthew Scharf, MD, PhD, regional sleep medicine director at Hackensack Meridian Health, and associate professor at Hackensack Meridian Medical School in New Jersey, about this study. Scharf, who was not involved in the research, commented that this study builds on mounting evidence showing that insufficient or poor sleep can negatively impact health. 'Strengths of the study include use of objective data and a very large sample size,' he explained. 'However, it shows many associations but does not necessarily show causation.''Sleep has emerged as an important modifiable behavior to improve health and longevity,' Scharf continued. 'The goal is to find out how sleep is linked with various diseases in order to have targeted interventions. For example, some groups may benefit from having a longer sleep duration. Others may benefit from having a more regular sleep schedule.' For next steps in this research, Scharf said the key piece would be to see if targeted interventions improve outcomes in each patient population. 'For example, in patients with Parkinson's disease, would a program that promoted a regular bedtime routine improve Parkinson's disease-related symptoms or quality of life metrics?' he asked. Sleep regularity matters more than sleep durationDaniel Truong, MD, a neurologist and medical director of the Truong Neuroscience Institute at MemorialCare Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA and editor in chief of the Journal of Clinical Parkinsonism and Related Disorders, who was not involved in the recent study, told MNT that his reaction to this study's findings was one of surprising clarity: Sleep regularity matters more than sleep duration in explaining disease does 'good sleep' mean?'I was struck by how decisive rhythm, and regularity came across in this analysis — almost redefining what 'good sleep' means. It suggests that behavioral interventions focused on consistency and timing may offer health benefits beyond just aiming for a fixed number of hours.' — Daniel Truong, MD'It is crucial for researchers to continue investigating how sleep affects overall health because sleep is a foundational biological process that influences nearly every organ system — and yet it remains one of the most underappreciated and misunderstood contributors to disease risk and health maintenance,' Truong continued.'This recent study underscores why this research must continue. Unlike genetic predispositions or aging, sleep habits can be changed. Sleep affects multiple biological systems such as [the] immune system, endocrine, cardiovascular, [and] neurological problems,' he said. Inadequate sleep is rarely an isolated issueKatie S. McCullar, PhD, a fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, told MNT that this research reinforces the idea that sleep is not just a passive state but a vital process that supports nearly every aspect of health, and adds to a growing body of research that demonstrates that healthy sleep is one of the foundational determinants of health. McCullar, who was likewise not involved in the study, explained that:'Furthermore, this work highlights what is often observed in a clinical setting: That inadequate sleep is rarely an isolated issue, but rather an indicator or exacerbating factor in a wide range of chronic conditions.' 'It is encouraging to see more scientific evidence linking sleep quality and duration to physical, mental, and emotional well-being. The data provide empirical support for the need to integrate sleep health more thoroughly into preventive and therapeutic care models,' she added. 'Sleep has historically been underemphasized in both clinical training and public health initiatives,' she continued. 'Continued research helps us understand the mechanisms behind these connections, allowing us to develop more effective and targeted interventions to prevent and treat diseases. Further, the integration of sleep health into broader frameworks of lifestyle medicine and health equity research is especially timely and warranted.' Tips for improving sleep for better overall healthIf you are one of the many adults experiencing sleep issues, you're not alone. Previous research shows that about 10% of people around the world live with insomnia, and about 20% experience occasional insomnia those looking to improve their nightly sleep, Jimmy Johannes, MD, a pulmonologist and critical care medicine specialist at MemorialCare Long Beach Medical Center in Long Beach, CA, suggested setting a regular bedtime and keeping the sleep environment cool, dark, and quiet. 'Synchronizing with the day-night cycle by exposing yourself to some sunlight in the daytime and keeping lighting dim near bedtime can help prepare the brain for sleep at night,' Johannes continued.'Talk to your doctor about persistent difficulty falling asleep, frequent nighttime awakenings, loud snoring or gasping during sleep, waking up tired in the morning, and/or excessive daytime fatigue or sleepiness. These issues may reflect a condition affecting sleep, such as sleep apnea or a mood disorder,' he advised.
