Kim Barker

3 weeks ago | omni.se | Kim Barker

Sarkofagen som innesluter kärnkraftverket i Chornobyl efter olyckan 1986 var tänkt att skydda området från den farliga strålningen i ett århundrade. Konstruktörerna tog höjd för mängder av katastrofscenarier som byggnaden behövde kunna klara av, allt från extrema snöfall till tromber. Men en tanke slog aldrig ingenjörerna. – Vi tog inte höjd för krig, säger den nu pensionerade ingenjören Eric Schmieman till The New York Times. I mitten av februari skadades sarkofagen i en drönarattack.

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Kim Barker |Brendan Hoffman

Eric Schmieman worked for 15 years on the modern engineering equivalent of the Great Pyramid - building a giant protective shield for a damaged reactor at Chernobyl that would protect the world from further fallout from the worst ever nuclear disaster. The steel shell, slid into place over Reactor No. 4 on railroad tracks in 2016, is the world's largest movable structure. It is as tall as a football field and weighs almost 40,000 tons.

1 month ago | pilotonline.com | Kim Barker |Dzvinka Pinchuk

KYIV, Ukraine — The teacher needed teenagers for her summer acting class in Kyiv, which would end with the performance of an original play. “This is a course for happy children, free in their thoughts and dreams,” the instructor, Olesia Korzhenevska, wrote on Facebook last spring. It was hard to find happy teenagers in Ukraine. The pandemic and the war with Russia had trapped some young people in their homes, solitary and fearful, for more than four years.

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Kim Barker

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was losing popularity at home for months, seen by many as a thin-skinned leader who had concentrated power around him. Political opponents saw an opening to win a future election against him. His former top general in the war against Russia had a higher approval rating. Enter President Trump.

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Kim Barker

Russian strikes killed 20 people in the war-torn eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk on Friday night, a sign that Moscow is stepping up bombardments of cities critical for Ukrainian logistics and support and taking advantage of Washington's decision to pause military aid and intelligence sharing with Kyiv.