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South Wales military complex to be used to house Afghan escapees

A military complex will be used to house people who worked with the UK government in Afghanistan, but fled after the Taliban seized power.

East Camp in St Athan, Vale of Glamorgan, will house 50 people by the end of March with more arriving in April, the Ministry of Defence said.

The site can host a maximum of 180 people.

Those arriving are eligible under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) programme.

The scheme is for those who worked for or with the UK government in Afghanistan in “exposed or meaningful” roles.

It is aimed at those who could face retribution by the Taliban, which re-took power in Afghanistan in August 2021, due to their association with international forces.

“We owe a debt of gratitude to those brave Afghans who risked their lives working alongside our forces in support of the UK mission,” the MoD said.

Those eligible will be housed at East Camp for six weeks “before moving to more settled accommodation”, a spokesman added.

The MoD said it was working with the Welsh government and Vale of Glamorgan council to ensure the project was managed “with everybody in mind”, especially those who live locally.

In 2023, plans to house Ukrainian refugees at nearby Llantwit Major drew demonstrations from a far-right group.

The Welsh government said the programme was the responsibility of the MoD, which it said it was “working constructively with” to ensure those relocated to Wales from Afghanistan were “able to integrate effectively”.

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Tank complex that leaked, polluting Pearl Harbor’s drinking water has been emptied, military says

The U.S. military said it’s finished draining million of gallons of fuel from an underground fuel tank complex in Hawaii that poisoned 6,000 people when it leaked jet fuel into Pearl Harbor’s drinking water in 2021.

Joint Task Force Red Hill began defueling the tanks in October after completing months of repairs to an aging network of pipes to prevent the World War II-era facility from springing more leaks while it drained 104 million gallons of fuel from the tanks.

The task force was scheduled to hand over responsibility for the tanks on Thursday to Navy Closure Task Force-Red Hill. This new command, led by Rear Adm. Stephen D. Barnett, is charged with permanently decommissioning the tanks, cleaning up the environment and restoring the aquifer underneath.

Vice Adm. John Wade, the commander of the task force that drained the tanks, said in a recorded video released Wednesday that Barnett understands “the enormity and importance” of the job.

Wade said the new task force’s mission was to “safely and expeditiously close the facility to ensure clean water and to conduct the necessary long-term environmental remediation.”

The military agreed to drain the tanks after the 2021 spill sparked an outcry in Hawaii and concerns about the threat the tanks posed to Honolulu’s water supply. The tanks sit above an aquifer supplying water to 400,000 people in urban Honolulu, including Waikiki and downtown.

The military built the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility in the side of a mountain ridge to shield the fuel tanks from aerial attack. Each of the 20 tanks is equivalent in height to a 25-story building and can hold 12.5 million gallons.

A Navy investigation said a series of errors caused thousands of gallons of fuel to seep into the Navy’s water system serving 93,000 people on and around the Pearl Harbor naval base in 2021. Water users reported nausea, vomiting and skin rashes.

The Navy reprimanded three now-retired military officers for their roles in the spill but didn’t fire or suspend anybody.

Shortly after learning of the spill, the Honolulu Board of Water Supply stopped pumping water from the aquifer that lies under the fuel tanks to prevent leaked fuel from getting into the municipal water system. The utility is searching for alternative water sources but the Pearl Harbor aquifer was its most productive as it provided about 20% of the water consumed in the city.

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Playing the complex West African instrument called the kora – 60 Minutes

This is an updated version of a story first published on Nov. 13, 2022.

Described as a cross between a harp, a lute, and a guitar, the kora is part of a musical tradition that dates back to the 13th-century Mali Empire, which stretched across much of West Africa. The tradition has been passed down from father to son — man to man — in a special set of families ever since.

Until now.

Musician Sona Jobarteh was born into one of those five families, called griots. The daughter of a Gambian father and British mother, she is the first griot woman to play the kora professionally. It is hard to believe, watching this musical pioneer’s mastery of the instrument, that according to the rules passed down for centuries, she was not supposed to play it.

Instead, Jobarteh is one of the foremost kora players in the world.

“She’s phenomenal,” said Banning Eyre, a musicologist and senior producer of the radio show Afropop Worldwide. “She’s fantastic. Her dexterity is second to none. The flow, the speed — there’s just nothing to compare with her. She’s right up there with the very best ones.”

Jobarteh’s mastery of the kora is a feat made even more remarkable when considering how complex the instrument is.

Constructed from a type of gourd called a calabash, koras typically have 21 strings. The strings can be difficult to keep in tune, particularly when the instrument, traditionally played in the steadily warm weather of Africa, experiences cold climates. To combat this temperature challenge and be able to bring her kora around the world, Jobarteh has innovated in how she builds the instrument’s neck. Rather than using traditional leather rings to hold her strings in place, Jobarteh uses metal tuning heads.

The strings themselves are played with just the thumb and forefinger, a technique that requires notable dexterity. The thumbs play the bass notes, acting something like a rhythm section, and the forefingers play the melody.

Although she has studied the instrument for years and now performs around the world, Jobarteh said she does not yet feel she has “mastered” the kora.

“I like to say what my grandfather said, which is that ‘I wish you will die a learner,’ that you never come to a point where you can say, ‘I know it,’ or, ‘I’ve mastered it,'” Jobarteh said. “But you’re always learning. And that’s how I like to think about it.”

The video above was originally published on November 13, 2022 and was produced by Shari Finkelstein, Brit McCandless Farmer, and Will Croxton. It was edited by Will Croxton.

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