Today, a woman who plotted to kill Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is arrested. Carcinogens are found in US Nuclear bases. Google reveals their new offering to keep people at the office. The Central African Republic changes its constitution and China and the Philippines have a spat in the South China Sea.
From TLPR News, this is your daily briefing for Tuesday 8 August 2023. In shock news today, the Ukrainian Secret Service have arrested a woman over a plot to kill President Volodymyr Zelenskyy while he was visiting Mykolaiv in South Ukraine. This area has recently been hit with floods. It's been alleged that the woman had planned to help Russia prepare for a massive airstrike in the region that Zelenskyy was visiting and had tried to gather intelligence about the Ukrainian President's itinerary ahead of his trip.
The Ukrainian Secret Service, the sbu, said it had been monitoring her to try and get more information about her handlers and any assignment she may have been given. Ukraine claims that they caught the woman red handed as she tried to pass intelligence information to Russian secret services. They claim that she'd photographed locations in Mykolaiv and had attempted to get information from her personal contacts in the area. If convicted, she could serve 12 years in prison.
While this particular individual could spend more than a decade in prison, she actually isn't the only one. The Ukrainian security forces have also made a number of arrests of people that they believe were helping locate targets for Russian airstrikes. For his part, Zeletsky confirmed that he'd been told about the plot and the SBU had updated him on the fight against traitors. There's more on the way, but be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to make the daily briefing part of your daily routine or just search for it on your podcast app to listen along.
The U.S. air Force has today found unsafe levels of carcinogens at underground launch control centers at a Montana nuclear missile base. In a statement released on Monday, the Air Force Global Strike Command claimed that this is the first from an extensive sampling of packs of U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile bases to address specific counter concerns raised by missile community members.
In these samples, PCB levels were shown at higher levels than the thresholds recommended by the Environmental protection agency or EPA. PCBs have been identified as a likely carcinogen by the EPA. The commander of the Air Force Global Strike Command has directed an immediate cleanup process. Earlier in the year, nine military officers who worked at the missile site had been diagnosed with non Hodgkin Lymphoma a rare blood cancer.
As a result, the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine launched a new study to look at cancers across the entire missile community and to check the possibility of a cluster of the disease. The discovery of the high PCB levels were part of this wider investigation in which a health assessment team collected water, soil, air and surface samples from each of the missile launch facilities. So that's what's been happening in the US today. Let's move and discuss what's been going on at Google Companies around the world are struggling to get staff back into the office post Covid, but Google have announced a pretty weird strategy to help pull staff back from their mandated minimum of three days a week.
That's because Google announced that they'd be offering a summer discount at their on campus hotel. Yep, on Google's new Bayview campus, the company owns its own hotel now. This isn't Alphabet coming for Hilton because this hotel is only open to staff. But given the new reduced price of $99 a night, it's a shame we can't stay there too.
Unfortunately, as a staff only benefit, we weren't able to find any photos of the hotel, but as part of this new summer promotion, Google does boast that staff can benefit from an extra hour of sleep and less friction going on to say you could walk out of your room and quickly grab a delicious breakfast or get a workout in before work starts. Before concluding that after work you could enjoy a quiet evening on top of the rooftop deck or take in one of the fun local activities. Would you say a hotel owned by your employer? Or is that just a little odd?
Either way, if you want more business stories like this, our channel tltr Business relaunched this week with a new video about the marketing which propelled Barbie to become a billion dollar movie. Check it out by searching tltr Business Voters in the Central African Republic have, according to the country's electoral authority, overwhelmingly approved a change to the constitution that removes the two term presidential limit, meaning President Faustin Tuadera could run for a coup controversial third term in office in 2025. The elections authority said that more than 95% of voters approved the new constitution, which also extends the presidential term from five to seven years. But the vote, which took place on July 30, occurred without the participation of the main opposition parties and civil society groups, prompting opponents to call results a joke that doesn't reflect the will of the Central African people.
President Tuodera came to power in the 2016 election following a civil war. He was re elected in 2021, but faced a major armed rebellion that was eventually turned away thanks to assistance from Wagner Group mercenaries who maintain a presence in the country. As such, Tuodera is seen as an ally of Russia and continues to rely heavily on Wagner, who helps provide security for the referendum. The deal has reportedly seen the Wagner Group gain access to the Central African Republic's lucrative gold, diamond and timber businesses.
The Philippines has accused China of excessive and offensive actions after the Chinese Coast Guard used a water cannon against a smaller Philippine vessel in the South China Sea on Saturday. The Philippine boat was attempting to deliver supplies to a garrison of Marines stationed on Second Thomas Shoal, which China claimed sovereignty over. The shoal is home to a former World War II warship that the Philippines deliberately grounded there in 1999 to use as a makeshift military outpost in a bid to reinforce the country's sovereignty over the area. Unsurprisingly, China doesn't approve of this and regularly calls for the Philippines to tow the grounded ship away while also working to block the Philippines resupply missions.
Referring to the recent water cannon incident, China said it was a warning and added that its coast guard had demonstrated rational restraints at all times. No one was injured and the boat was not damaged, but Philippine officials said the boat did not complete its resupply. Ms. The country's national Security Council said it would do whatever is necessary to supply the outpost and urged China not to escalate matters by water cannons or military grade lasers, which places Philippines lives at risk.
We end with some uplifting news from the US where a group of scientists say they have repeated their landmark nuclear fusion reaction with this latest experiment producing a higher energy yield than their first achievement in December. The International Atomic Energy Agency says that the potential advantages of nuclear fusion energy are manifold as it represents a long term, sustainable, economic and safe energy source for electricity generation. Fuel is inexpensive and abundant in nature, while the amount of long lived radioactive waste and greenhouse gases produced through fusion are minimal. But while these latest breakthroughs are important moments, we're still a long way away from viable nuclear fusion power stations.
Finally, Jack and Rory sat down to discuss the ongoing tension in the Sahel region following the coup in Niger. That's in today's Daily Discussion, which is exclusively available on Nebula. The TLDR writing team hosts these daily discussions, most days diving deeper into a new story we write about and unpacking the hidden details that they found fascinating but that were either too long or too academic to make it into the final script. If you want to check this series out, you can find the episodes exclusively on Nebula.
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