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Baltimore bridge crash brings scrutiny to contaminated fuel, an ‘open secret’ in shipping

Shortly after midnight on Feb. 6, the Dali cargo ship spent five hours fueling up at the Port of Zhangzhou in China. It refueled in the Chinese city of Zhoushan three days later, and again in Busan, South Korea, on Feb. 20, according to transponder and satellite tracking data reviewed by NBC News.

Fuel is one of the areas of inquiry for investigators probing the cause of the power failure that preceded the Dali crashing into and toppling the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore this week, according to federal safety investigators.

Contaminated fuel is believed to cause scores of ships to lose power and propulsion every year, but the incidents rarely come to light, experts say. That’s because the ship malfunctions almost always occur in the open sea, where crews can deal with them without incident.

The data reviewed by NBC News provides a snapshot of the Dali’s fueling activity before it reached the East Coast. The data did not register any fuel stops on the boat’s journey through the Panama Canal, to New York, Virginia and Baltimore — though some experts who spoke to NBC News believed that it would have had to fuel in one of those places.

The Dali’s fuel stops in Asia were confirmed using data from the United Nations’ Long-Range Identification and Tracking system (LRIT), which tracks ships based on satellites and other reports. That data, restricted from release to the public, was provided by a source with access to the system who shared it on the condition that they not be identified. NBC News also confirmed the Dali’s route and fueling stops using Automatic Identification System data reported by the ship and provided by MarineTraffic, a maritime analytics company.

The LRIT and MarineTraffic data does not include details on the type of fuel the Dali received, its origins or its quality, but it does provide the first information on where the Dali picked up the fuel it may have been using as it left Baltimore, according to experts who reviewed the data on NBC News’ behalf. The fuel it received before February likely would have been gone by the time it reached Baltimore, the experts said.

To be sure, other factors could have caused the system failures ahead of the March 26 crash, and the National Transportation Safety Board has said it’s just beginning its investigation. But the incident has in general focused attention on a little-known problem that falls into a gray area where oversight is limited and the purveyors of faulty fuel rarely face accountability, legal and maritime experts say.

“It’s an open secret that fuel contamination issues plague the industry with most of the incidents going unreported or not resulting in any substantial damage to the vessel or property or life,” said James Power, a New York maritime lawyer and former merchant marine and engineering officer on American ships.

Power has represented several ship owners whose vessels were damaged by contaminated fuel. The vast majority of such incidents don’t result in catastrophic harm to property or the vessel itself, he noted.

“Those situations are rare, but are foreseeable results when an industry lacks self-regulating mechanisms to identify contaminated fuel before it is sold, put on board the vessel and consumed in the vessel’s engines,” Power said.

Fuel contamination not only puts ship crew members at risk, but also can cause pollution and damage the reputations of shipping companies, said Steve Bee, group commercial and business development director for VPS, a testing service that provides information to more than 12,000 vessels around the world and issues alerts on contaminated fuel. The Dali, he said, was not a client.

Contamination isn’t confined to any geographic region or supplier, Bee said: “It can happen anywhere, anytime.”

He said VPS hadn’t issued any recent fuel contamination alerts in China or South Korea.

A spokesman for the Danish shipping giant Maersk, which chartered the Dali, declined to comment on whether fuel may have been a factor in the accident.

“Regarding fueling, we are closely following the investigations conducted by authorities and the vessel operator as well as conducting our own investigation,” the spokesperson, Kevin Doell, said in an email.

Synergy Marine Group, which operates and manages the ship, and Grace Ocean Private, which owns it, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Jennifer Homendy, chair of the NTSB, said at a news conference Wednesday that investigators would take a sample of the fuel and test it for contaminants, as authorities work to determine the cause of the crash.

The U.S. Coast Guard referred questions to the group of agencies handling the response to the crash, which did not respond.

Port officials in Zhangzhou and Zhoushan did not immediately respond to questions.

Busan port authorities said they wouldn’t have information about issues with fuel. The Korea Coast Guard’s Southern Sea Division told NBC News it had received no reports of fueling-related incidents this year.

The LRIT system that showed the Dali’s movements tracks all commercial vessels over 3,000 gross tons. The details on fuel delivery come from a report that is signed by both the delivery ship and the receiving ship, which goes to the government of the country where the transfer took place, as well as the flag state of the ship that received the fuel, and is then automatically added to the LRIT system.

A spokeswoman for the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations agency that regulates international shipping and runs the LRIT, declined to comment on specifics of the Dali investigation.

She said fuel oil quality is regulated under the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, also known as MARPOL, which states that fuel should not include harmful added substances or chemical waste. It also covers fuel oil sampling, she added.

Member states are required to notify the International Maritime Organization of incidents, she said.

But the system has major gaps, experts say.

“What constitutes an incident is murky,” said Jonathan Arneault, the CEO of FuelTrust, a Houston-based company that uses artificial intelligence to trace the provenance of marine fuel.

“It’s usually defined as harm or risk to safety or environment,” he said. “If the ship doesn’t meet that threshold, it’s not reported. So the member state has nothing to report.”

Arneault said the supply chain for ship fuel, also known as bunker fuel, is maddeningly opaque and few countries have strong laws on fuel management.

While water is a common contaminant in fuel, it is rarely enough to cause a major system failure. Heavier, more corrosive particulates are a more likely culprit, experts say.

Fuel contamination is often unintentional, but there have been cases of unscrupulous fuel providers diluting their product with cheaper substances to increase supply and maximize profits.

“They can do a lot of weird things for money,” said Thomas Roth-Roffy, a former NTSB marine investigator who retired in 2016.

But he said the power failure on the Dali could very well have had nothing to do with the fuel or fuel system.

“As the diesel engine has hundreds of components subject to failure, there are many possible scenarios that could cause the engine to malfunction,” he said.

Arneault suspects that the Dali may have been running on fuel at the bottom of its tank — where a heavier contaminant would have settled — when the power went out. He believes the fuel is to blame because security video captured the lights on the Dali flicking off and on a couple of times, and black smoke billowing from its chimney, before the Singaporean vessel slammed into a bridge support.

“It’s likely not just an engine problem because the generators go out,” Arneault said, noting that the generators likely would have been using the same fuel. “That indicates it’s probably a fuel issue.”

What caused the ship to lose power isn’t the only open question. According to some experts, the Dali would have needed more fuel to make it to Sri Lanka, its planned destination when it hit the Key Bridge, but the available tracking data does not confirm any fuel deliveries in New York or Baltimore.

When fuel is delivered to a ship, a sample is sent for lab testing before it is supposed to be used to fire an engine. However, those tests don’t examine all of the possible contaminants. Arneault said he thinks the tests should be expanded, but they are already costly and there is little enthusiasm among ship operators for such a change.

Although most incidents involving bad fuel go unreported, they do occasionally spark industry warnings, investigations and legal battles.

In 2018, about 200 ships were affected by fuel contaminated with a chemical used to make epoxy. Some experienced power loss. Testing companies traced the fuel to Houston, Panama and Singapore. Researchers said at the time that the contamination was a symptom of an opaque supply chain that allowed a “witch’s brew” of additives — a sign of a looming crisis.

Four years later, in 2022, Singapore authorities reported an outbreak that affected nearly three dozen ships, 14 of which suffered loss of power and engine problems, according to researchers. An investigation later named two suppliers, one in Singapore and the other in China, as the source. One had its license suspended.

Last year, the U.S. Gulf Coast was stricken with contaminated fuel that disrupted the engines of 14 vessels, some of which lost power and propulsion while at sea. VPS traced the dirty fuel to Houston and Singapore.

Arneault said the contaminated fuel incidents that get media attention represent only a fraction of those that actually occur. He tallied more than 120 such cases last year and at least 460 in 2022 based on private incident databases and information he received from fleet managers.

“For more than 50 years, people in the ship fuel market have tolerated small losses,” Arneault said, “or even small-scale fraud, thinking these issues were too minor to worry about. But the last five years have taught us that even these ‘minor’ problems can lead to huge risks and big costs.”

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Beyoncé fans hope her new album brings more visibility to Black country artists

The Beyhive is busting out its cowboy hats and breaking out in line dances.

After the singer debuted two country singles, “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages,” on Sunday during the Super Bowl, some country enthusiasts hoped that Beyoncé’s star power would help bring more recognition for Black artists within the genre. Many people also pointed out country’s roots in the African diaspora and believed Beyoncé’s venture into country would be an act of reclaiming the music, which has often been perceived as a genre for white men.

“I hope this is going to open up some people’s eyes to country music,” said Reyna Roberts, a Nashville-based singer who has previously opened for Reba McEntire. “Just [with] Beyoncé releasing her music, in the past day I’ve probably gained like 12,000 fans just from people looking at Black Country music.”

Beyoncé’s’s new album, Cowboy Carter, dropped Friday.

Many of Beyoncé’s fans — collectively known as the Beyhive — have been anticipating a full country album from the Texas-born singer since she released the song “Daddy Lessons” in 2016. As fans patiently await Act II, which releases March 29, they have started looking for other Black country artists to listen to in the meantime.

As TikTok users have posted their love for Beyoncé’s new “country era,” the platform’s algorithm has served them content from smaller Black country artists.

Julie Williams, an independent artist based in Nashville, posted a TikTok calling for more recognition and attention to Black country artists as people began posting about Beyoncé’s singles.

Williams said in an interview that she is optimistic that more people will become interested in country music because Beyoncé is “the creator of culture.”

“Black music is country music,” she added. “My hope is that in this era of Beyoncé, those lines will be blurred and people will discover country and country artists and will begin to innovate and bring amazing changes to the genre that have been needed for so long.”

Williams said that some progress has been made in recent years as platforms such as TikTok and YouTube have allowed marginalized country artists to surpass the “gatekeepers” in mainstream country radio. In 2019, Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” became one of the first TikTok hits and exposed a wider audience to a new kind of country sound. However, it was controversial among country fans, leading Billboard to take it off the genre’s charts.

The industry has still been slow to adapt, Williams said, despite calls to elevate Black country artists in subsequent years. She pointed out that women make up a small percentage of airtime on country radio — 11% in the entirety of 2022. The figure shrinks almost to zero when it comes to Black female artists.

Francesca T. Royster, a professor of English at DePaul University and the author of “Black Country Music,” said that Black musicians’ contributions to the country genre have historically been made invisible by the industry. Modern country, she said, was born out of minstrel traditions that used blackface and turned Black music into a joke for white audiences.

As the music became mainstream, its origins in Black culture and creativity were erased, Royster said.

Beyoncé’s move into country music is an “important gesture of taking up space,” she said.

“Country can potentially be this bigger thing that lots of people are participating in, even though I do think that there’s still this older sense of nostalgia and defensiveness that can be connected to country.”

Black music is country music

-Julie Williams, an independent artist based in Nashville

Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” project saw her elevate Black pioneers in house, ballroom and disco, and some fans think that she will do the same with country artists.

Williams said that Beyoncé has already started to reference Black country trailblazers. She pointed out that “Texas Hold ‘Em” starts with banjo playing from Rhiannon Giddens, a Grammy-winning country and Americana artist.

Giddens is known for her educational work around banjos. She led a documentary series called “The Banjo: Music, History and Heritage” last year that focuses on the instrument’s origins among the African diaspora, its role in slavery and its popularization in American music.

“I used to say many times as soon as Beyoncé puts the banjo on a track my job is done,” Giddens wrote in a Facebook post. “Well, I didn’t expect the banjo to be mine, and I know darn well my job isn’t done, but today is a pretty good day.”

A representative for Giddens did not respond to a request for comment.

“I think that it’s a huge statement right there in the first few lines of the song that shows the banjo is a Black instrument,” Williams said. “It was created by slaves. And this is an incredible Black artist who has been a champion of educating so many folks on that history, through her music and through playing it.”

Beyonce’s new album will show that country music can appeal to Black audiences and people of color, Williams said. Country music has long been perceived as a patriotic genre and the domain of white men.

“There’s a space in this genre that so often has not felt safe, has not felt comfortable,” Williams said. “And so my hope is that as we bring in this new wave of folks and that we will change the country music industry at shows, making sure that it is a comfortable place for fans to be.”

While the response to Beyoncé’s singles has been positive among fans, there has been resistance. Oklahoma radio station KYKC received backlash after one person tried to request “Texas Hold ‘Em.” The radio station had said that it does not “play Beyoncé as we are a country music station.”

Roger Harris, general manager of South Central Oklahoma Radio Enterprises (S.C.O.R.E.) which owns KYKC, said the station was unaware that Beyoncé had released country songs when the request was made. Harris said KYKC is a “small station” that doesn’t “get serviced by the big labels like bigger stations do.”

“As we got more and more emails…and more and more phone calls, we made an effort to track down the song,” Harris said in an email. He said the song was added to the country station’s playlist and the libraries of two other S.C.O.R.E. stations.

Still, Roberts, the country singer, said it was indicative of the challenges facing Black artists who try to get airplay on country radio.

“If it’s hard for Beyoncé to get played on country radio, how hard do you think it is for artists like me trying to get played on country radio?” she said. “Hopefully it opens people’s eyes to seeing how difficult it is for Black women, and just people of color in general, to be played in country music and to get the recognition and the platforms and the stuff that other artists have.”

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Russian veto brings an end to the U.N. panel that monitors North Korea nuclear sanctions

UNITED NATIONS — A veto Thursday by Russia ended monitoring of U.N. sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear program, prompting Western accusations that Moscow is seeking to avoid scrutiny as it allegedly violates the sanctions to buy weapons from Pyongyang for its war in Ukraine.

Russia’s turnaround on the U.N. monitoring reflects how Moscow’s growing animosity with the United States and its Western allies since the start of the Ukraine war has made it difficult to reach consensus on even issues where there has been longstanding agreement.

The veto came during a vote on a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have extended the mandate of a panel of experts monitoring sanctions on North Korea for a year, but which will now halt its operation when its current mandate expires at the end of April.

The vote in the 15-member council, with 13 in favor, Russia against, and China abstaining, has no impact on the actual sanctions against North Korea, which remain in force.

Russia had never before tried to block the work of the panel of experts, which had been renewed annually by the U.N. Security Council for 14 years and reflected global opposition to North Korea’s expanding nuclear weapons program.

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council before the vote that Western nations are trying to “strangle” North Korea and that sanctions are losing their “relevance” and are “detached from reality” in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the country.

He accused the panel of experts of “increasingly being reduced to playing into the hands of Western approaches, reprinting biased information and analyzing newspaper headlines and poor quality photos.” Therefore, he said, it is “essentially conceding its inability to come up with sober assessments of the status of the sanctions regime.”

But U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood called the panel’s work essential and accused Russia of attempting to silence its “independent objective investigations” because it “began reporting in the last year on Russia’s blatant violations of the U.N. Security Council resolutions.”

He warned that Russia’s veto will embolden North Korea to continue jeopardizing global security through development “of long-range ballistic missiles and sanctions evasion efforts.”

White House national security spokesman John Kirby condemned Russia’s veto as a “reckless action” that undermines sanctions imposed on North Korea, while warning against the deepening cooperation between North Korea and Russia, particularly as North Korea continues to supply Russia with weapons as it wages its war in Ukraine.

“The international community should resolutely uphold the global nonproliferation regime and support the people of Ukraine as they defend their freedom and independence against Russia’s brutal aggression,” Kirby told reporters.

Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward said Russia’s veto follows arms deals between Russia and North Korea in violation of U.N. sanctions, including “the transfer of ballistic missiles, which Russia has then used in its illegal invasion of Ukraine since the early part of this year.”

“This veto does not demonstrate concern for the North Korean people or the efficacy of sanctions,” she said. “It is about Russia gaining the freedom to evade and breach sanctions in pursuit of weapons to be used against Ukraine.”

“This panel, through its work to expose sanctions non-compliance, was an inconvenience for Russia,” Woodward said.

France’s U.N. Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere added that “North Korea has been providing Russia with military material in support of its aggression against Ukraine, in violation of many resolutions which Russia voted in favor of.”

Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky responded, calling these “unfounded insinuations” that “only strengthened our conviction that we took the right decision to not support the extension of the panel of experts.”

The Security Council imposed sanctions after North Korea’s first nuclear test explosion in 2006 and tightened them over the years in a total of 10 resolutions seeking — so far unsuccessfully — to cut funds and curb its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

The last sanctions resolution was adopted by the council in December 2017. China and Russia vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution in May 2022 that would have imposed new sanctions over a spate of intercontinental ballistic missile launches.

The Security Council established a committee to monitor sanctions and the mandate for its panel of experts to investigate violations had been renewed for 14 years until Thursday.

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Russian Soyuz brings crew of 3 to the International Space Station

Two days after launch, a Russian Soyuz crew ferry ship caught up with the International Space Station Monday and moved in for a picture-perfect docking, bringing two short-duration crew members and a NASA astronaut starting a six-month stay in orbit.

With Soyuz MS-25/71S commander Oleg Novitskiy, Belarus guest flier Marina Vasilevskaya and NASA veteran Tracy Dyson monitoring the automated approach, the spacecraft glided in from below and docked at the Earth-facing Prichal module at 11:03 a.m. EDT

The Soyuz MS-25/71S spacecraft flies over Croatia Monday on final approach to the International Space Station. On board: veteran cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, Belarus guest flier Marina Vasilevskaya and NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson.

NASA TV

After leak checks to verify an airtight structural seal, hatches were opened and the Soyuz crew floated into the station, greeted by ISS commander Oleg Kononenko, cosmonauts Nikolai Chub and Alexander Grebenkin, along with NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara, Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps.

Vasilevskaya (blue flight suit at left) waves at a camera moments after floating into the International Space Station. Dyson floats next to her at upper left with Jeanette Epps at lower left.

NASA TV

“Marina, you opened the door to Belarus to be in space,” Russian mission control radioed from Moscow. “So have a great and safe mission. Enjoy your work, your time off. We are so proud of you. The whole people of Belarus (are) proud of you.”

Vasilevskaya, smiling broadly, said through an interpreter, “I’m so happy that Belarus has made it safely and soundly to the International Space Station.”

“It took us two days, but we are in great spirits, and I’m super happy that it went this way. I loved all of the aspects of it. … We are so happy that you are supporting us. It’s a great pleasure to us and brings strength to us.”

NASA’s mission control team congratulated Novitskiy for safely returning “to your second home. We are happy to see you on the station once again.”

“Tracy, it’s so great to see your smiling face back on ISS,” said Costa Mavrides, NASA’s spacecraft communicator. “Everyone here in Houston, including your family and friends in the viewing room, are beaming with pride watching the screen.”

The combined 10-member station crew gathered for a brief video call with the Russian mission control center near Moscow. Back row (left to right): Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin, Mike Barratt, Oleg Kononenko, Matthew Dominick, Loral O’Hara. Front row (left to right): Tracy Dyson, Oleg Novitskiy, Marina Vasilevskaya, Jeanette Epps.

NASA TV

Kononenko, Chub and O’Hara were launched last September aboard the Soyuz MS-24/70S ferry ship while Dominick, Barratt, Epps and Grebenkin arrived earlier this month aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon.

Dyson is replacing O’Hara, who will return to Earth April 6 with Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya aboard the older MS-24/70S spacecraft that carried her into orbit last year. Dyson will come home next September with Kononenko and Chub using the MS-25/71S spacecraft delivered by Novitskiy.

The Soyuz swap out was required because Kononenko and Chub are midway through a year-long stay aboard the station, and the Russian crew ships are not certified for flights lasting longer than six months.

After Novitskiy, Vasilevskaya and O’Hara depart, the station’s NASA fliers will press ahead with on-going research and make preparations for the arrival of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in early May, the first piloted flight of a NASA-sponsored alternative to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.

After two unpiloted test flights and extensive work to correct software problems and unexpected trouble with corroded propulsion system valves, NASA and Boeing officials say the spacecraft is finally ready to carry astronauts to and from the station.

An artist’s impression of Boeing’s Starliner on final approach to the International Space Station. The first piloted flight of a Starliner is planned for early May.

NASA

For the upcoming “crew flight test,” astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams will put the ship’s automated and manual control systems to the test during the trip to and from the station, spending about 10 days aboard the outpost.

If the flight goes well, the Starliner will be certified for use in future ISS crew rotation missions, alternating with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and providing NASA with redundancy when it comes to launching astronauts to and from the space station.

“Today, all of our Crew Dragons are launching on (SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets),” said space station Program Manager Dana Weigel. “If there was a problem with F9, for example, and we had to stand down for a while … if we had another vehicle we could continue flying.”

And that would help ensure a permanent U.S. presence aboard the space station.

“So that’s the reason, when we talk about having multiple providers, why it’s so important for us to have that continual capability,” Weigel said.

William Harwood

Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News.

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Powerful storm brings heavy rain and snow to Central Plains and Midwest, making travel ‘almost impossible’

A powerful storm brought heavy winds, snow and rain to the central United States on Monday, making travel hazardous and “nearly impossible” in some areas, with extreme weather on both coasts set to last into Tuesday.

The National Weather Service said early Monday that the Northern and Central Plains into the Upper Midwest would be affected, with sleet and freezing rain reaching as far as the Mississippi Valley.

Minnesota could see snowfall of 6 to 12 inches an hour, bringing travel chaos to the Twin Cities.

A 51-year-old woman died Sunday in Burnsville, 15 miles south of Minneapolis, after her vehicle ran off the road and struck a tree, police said.

Minnesota State Patrol named her as Elizabeth Evans of Lakeville and said she was driving north on Interstate 35E approaching County Road 42 at the time of the accident, NBC News affiliate station KARE 11 reported.

The state patrol said there had been at least 328 crashes reported as of 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, involving 13 injuries. More than 200 vehicles spun out or slid off roads, while 10 semi-trailers jack-knifed.

Some 20 million people across the continental United States, from the West Coast to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, were subject to weather warnings Sunday.

California was rocked by a spring storm on Sunday, with hailstones the size of quarters and winds as strong as 60 mph, the NWS said. Lake Tahoe received about a foot of snow, potentially a boost for ski resorts — although several were forced to close ski lifts on Saturday after recording wind gusts measuring more than 90 mph.

Dramatic video captured the moment the L.A. Fire Department rescued a 35-year-old woman from the Los Angeles River, fast-moving and swollen from the storm waters. She was picked out of the rapids by a firefighter lowered by a rescue helicopter. She was taken to a hospital with only minor injuries and hypothermia, the fire department said.

Hundreds of traffic accidents across the Northeast were reported to police overnight as icy conditions took hold.

Over the weekend a powerful weather system battered the tri-state area, with more than 2 feet of snow and downed power lines in some parts. Vermont saw as much as 30 inches of snow, the weather service said.

More than 100,000 customers were still without power in Maine, along with 22,000 in New Hampshire and 12,000 in New York, as of 6:30 a.m. ET Monday, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks energy connections.

Central Maine Power, the state’s largest utility, said in a statement early Monday that it had returned power to half the 200,000 customers affected by the storm, after responding to some 775 emergency calls.

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Record snow brings Great Salt Lake back from the brink of drought

Record snow brings Great Salt Lake back from the brink of drought – CBS News

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Last year, Utah’s Great Salt Lake reached its lowest level ever recorded, but massive snow amounts this summer have brought it back from the brink. Now, there are new signs of life at the lake. John Blackstone has more.

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Quran burned at 3rd small Sweden protest after warning that desecrating Islam’s holy book brings terror risk

Two protesters burned pages torn from a Quran outside Sweden’s parliament in Stockholm Monday, the third such demonstration in recent weeks and the first since the country’s prime minister warned that demonstrations involving the desecration of Islam’s holy book were making Sweden a bigger target for terrorism.

On Monday, two men — Salwan Momika and Salwan Najem — kicked and stomped on a Quran before setting some pages from the book alight, French news agency AFP reported. Momika, a Christian Iraqi refugee, and Najem previously burned a copy of the Quran in June while standing outside Stockholm’s Grand Mosque on the day of Eid-ul-Adha, the most important religious festival on the Muslim calendar.

Momika, who sought political asylum in Sweden a few years ago, also staged another protest in July at which he stomped on a Quran and used the Iraqi flag to wipe his shoes outside Iraq’s embassy in the Swedish capital.

The two previous protests sparked outrage in Muslim countries and drew protests often aimed at Swedish embassies.

Turkey NATO Explainer — A woman holds up a Quran during a protest outside the Swedish consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, Jan. 22, 2023.

Francisco Seco/AP

Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said last week that he was “deeply concerned” as more requests were being submitted to Sweden’s police for permission to hold anti-Muslim protests involving Quran desecration.

The prime minister told Sweden’s TT news agency that the Swedish Security Service had determined that, while the country had long been considered a “legitimate” target for terror attacks by militant groups and lone actors inspired by them, it was now being “prioritized” as a target.

Freedom of speech is protected under Sweden’s constitution and police can only refuse a protest permit if “there have been serious public disturbances or a considerable danger for participants at a previous gathering of a similar kind,” according to guidelines on the website for Swedish police authorities.

Anger over the protests boiled over in Iraq, where scores of angry demonstrators have twice stormed Sweden’s embassy. The government in Baghdad formally cut diplomatic ties with Sweden and several other Muslim majority countries around the globe have summoned Swedish ambassadors in their capitals to lodge formal complaints.

CORRECTION Iraq Sweden — Protesters angered by the burning of a copy of the Quran at a small protest in Stockholm, Sweden, scale a wall at the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, July 20, 2023.

Ali Jabar/AP

Iran’s response to the Quran burning protests has included thinly veiled threats from the Islamic republic’s highest authority.

In a social media post last week, Iran’s “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the “insult to the Holy Quran in Sweden is a bitter, conspiratorial, dangerous event. It is the opinion of all Islamic scholars that those who have insulted the Holy Quran deserve the severest punishment.”

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was convening an emergency virtual meeting Monday to address the desecration of the Quran in both Sweden and Denmark, where similar protests have also been staged in recent weeks.

On Sunday, Denmark’s top diplomat Lars Løkke Rasmussen said the Danish government would seek to make it illegal to desecrate the Quran or any other religious text in front of foreign embassies amid backlash from the Islamic community, The Associated Press reported.

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Strength training, now more popular, brings health benefits

It has become a familiar scene to gymgoers and gym owners: Many elliptical machines sit empty while the heavy dumbbells are in high demand.

Over the past several years, strength training has surged in popularity, according to fitness industry experts, due to a combination of pandemic-induced habit changes and growing awareness of the health benefits of muscle strengthening.

Bente Smart, director of education for Crunch Fitness, said the global gym chain has shuffled its spaces to better cater to its members’ interests.

“We’ve definitely been renovating and increasing our functional spaces,” Smart said, “so including things like more turf area for battle ropes, medicine balls, TRX, suspension trainers and less cardio equipment to adapt to the growing need for resistance training.”

On ClassPass, where members choose from a range of fitness classes, strength training was the most popular type of workout last year, with a 94% increase in reservations in those classes from the year prior. More than 60% of ClassPass users now include strength training in their routines, the company said.

Experts offered various hypotheses as to why people have shifted their exercise regimens. Brad Roy, editor in chief of the American College of Sports Medicine Health and Fitness Journal, said home workouts that people took up during the pandemic may have played a role, since functional and resistance band exercises are easy to do outside the gym. Many people also relied on online fitness videos during the pandemic, which might have made strength training more accessible.

Lauren McAlister, a ClassPass wellness specialist, suggested that misinformation around weight training has in the past led women to believe they will develop a bodybuilder-like physique.

But recently, she said, “we’re kind of coming into our own more and more and saying, ‘No, I want to be strong. I want to be capable. I want to be able to experience all the benefits of a strength training program.’”

“And I think social media has been a really cool way to see women doing that and giving other women permission to say, ‘Oh, I’m going to try that.’”

McAlister, who co-owns a fitness studio, said its classes have shifted to focus more on weight-bearing movements in response to customer requests. Strength training may appeal to some people as a way to slow down at the gym following the challenges of the pandemic, she said.

“We’ve all been really stressed for a long time,” McAlister said, “so taking things at a little bit of a slower pace and really focusing on form and focusing on sort of the fundamental movement patterns — that’s why I think people are leaning towards that.”

According to an annual survey in the American College of Sports Medicine’s journal, strength training with free weights ranked as the second-most popular fitness trend in 2023, after wearable fitness technology. Bodyweight training came in third, while two highly ranked forms from 2021 and 2022 — online training and home exercise gyms — fell to numbers 21 and 13, respectively.

Strength training is characterized by a contracting of the muscles, as opposed to aerobic or cardiovascular training that aims to raise the heart rate. Weightlifting, resistance band work and pilates and yoga are all forms of it.

A large body of research shows that strength training can bring particular health benefits.

“In terms of muscle-strengthening activities or weightlifting, there are so many different positive health outcomes,” said Duck-Chul Lee, a professor of kinesiology at Iowa State University. That list includes diabetes prevention, bone health and improved functional ability in older adults, he said.

A study of over 400,000 people published last year found that those who regularly practiced strength training along with aerobic exercise had a lower risk of death than those who did just aerobic training. And an analysis of 16 previous studies suggested that regular strength training was associated with a 10% to 17% lower risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, lung cancer and death overall.

Dr. Jacob Erickson, a sports medicine physician at the Mayo Clinic, said resistance training is a smart option for people working toward weight loss because it raises their metabolic rate, prompting the body to continue burning calories for up to three days afterward.

“Walking, jogging, the treadmill will make it easier to do day-to-day things like walking upstairs, taking your dog for a walk, chasing after kids, whereas resistance training will actually strengthen the muscles,” Erickson said. “As we age, in general, our lower body strength and muscle mass will kind of go away faster, so it becomes increasingly important to strength train.”

Maia Pandey

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