China’s sailless submarine takes warfare to the seabed
China’s newly revealed sailless submarine may be designed not only to evade detection but also to threaten the undersea infrastructure underpinning Indo-Pacific military and economic power.
This month, Naval News reported that China has covertly launched a highly advanced, “sailless” submarine class from the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai, marking a major technological leap in its rapid naval expansion.
Discovered via satellite imagery, the approximately 120-meter-long vessel features a distinctive streamlined hull, X-form rudders, and a radically minimized superstructure designed to reduce underwater drag.
China may have launched two vessels at the Huludao shipyard in the Bohai Sea, a facility specializing in nuclear-powered submarine construction. The parallel rollouts underscore how China is outpacing Western navies, having produced roughly 15 to 20 submarines across eight distinct classes over the past five years.
While the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has maintained strict official silence, the submarine’s massive dimensions suggest traditional nuclear propulsion rather than standard air-independent power.
The sudden emergence of this class complicates intelligence assessments and disrupts initial assumptions about China’s next-generation Type-095 attack submarine program.
Noting the pros and cons of sailless submarine design, Joseph Trevithick, in an article this month for The War Zone (TWZ), mentions that omitting a large structure from the top of the hull enhances streamlining, boosting speed, maneuverability and quietness while submerged—making the submarine harder to detect, even at high speeds.
Trevithick says that a sailless design is especially advantageous when rapidly approaching distant threats, noting that while traditional sails house periscopes, sensors, antennas, and snorkels, removing them frees space for other equipment like countermeasure launchers and storage. He also notes that a sailless design may focus on seabed operations, where mast deployment is less critical, or on optimizing transit speed during blue-water missions.
Building on Trevithick’s perspectives, a sailless submarine may offer enhanced stealth for penetrating US and allied anti-submarine defenses in the First Island Chain. Such a capability would be particularly valuable against the US “Fish Hook” underwater sensor network stretching across Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Noting the stealth limitations of Chinese submarines, Ryan Martinson, in a June 2025 article for the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC), cites Chinese military journal articles stating that the PLAN cannot guarantee submarine stealth due to a pervasive US undersea surveillance network.
According to Chinese journals cited by Martinson, China’s Near Seas – the First Island Chain, has become highly transparent. He notes that the US military uses a comprehensive network of satellites, fixed seabed sonar arrays, and maritime patrol aircraft, creating an “extremely high” probability that Chinese submarines are detected immediately upon leaving port, thereby severely undermining their operational utility and compromising China’s sea-based nuclear deterrent.
While China could attempt a mass breakout using nuclear submarines – having 32 such vessels in January 2026 – such an attempt may create predictable “fatal funnels” that concentrate US and allied anti-submarine efforts at critical chokepoints such as the Miyako Strait and the Bashi Channel.
Regarding submarine fleet numbers, while the US has an all-nuclear fleet of 71 submarines in January 2026, James Eanell notes in a May 2026 Proceedings article that China may have up to 70 submarines by 2027 and 80 by 2035, with half of them nuclear-powered.
However, Roy Wood mentions in a February 2026 Proceedings article that the US submarine fleet will hit a low point of 46 units in 2030 as Los Angeles–class retirements outpace Virginia–class deliveries. Wood says the US fleet’s trajectory projects a recovery to the low-50s by 2040, but it will not achieve its long-term objective of 66 hulls until the mid-2050s.
Should China’s nuclear submarines penetrate US and allied anti-submarine defenses in the First Island Chain, they could be employed as a forward screen to provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) of US and allied vessels, escort China’s carrier strike groups headed toward the open Pacific or be directed to attack high-value US targets, such as carriers.
China’s new sailless submarine could be optimized for prolonged seabed operations, with its apparent nuclear propulsion and large size offering the endurance required for extended missions on the ocean floor.
Such characteristics align with a growing focus among major powers on undersea infrastructure competition, including the ability to monitor, tap or sever critical communications cables.
Highlighting the vulnerability of undersea internet cables, Niklas Swanstrom mentions in a January 2025 policy brief for the Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP) that they carry up to 99% of international internet traffic, making them critical yet highly vulnerable infrastructure. Swanstrom notes that these cables, mostly in international waters, face physical threats, including state-sponsored sabotage.
Notably, the US and Russia operate special mission nuclear-powered submarines, such as the USS Jimmy Carter and Losharik, both allegedly capable of tapping or severing undersea internet cables. If optimized for seabed warfare, the submarine would place China among a small group of powers fielding platforms capable of conducting undersea infrastructure operations.
If so, China’s new sailless submarine poses a threat to Taiwan’s undersea internet cable infrastructure. Jason Hsu mentions in a March 2026 testimony before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) that Taiwan’s heavy reliance on just 24 undersea fiber-optic cables that land at eight highly concentrated landing stations creates severe geographic chokepoints vulnerable to targeted Chinese gray-zone sabotage.
Hsu details how Chinese civilian vessels systematically sever these links using anchor-dragging techniques to evade military attribution. He also warns that Chinese repair ships could physically tap the cables to intercept allied military data. He points out that cutting three major cable clusters near the Bashi Channel could immediately eliminate 99% of Taiwan’s digital bandwidth.
He warns that such a digital blockade would paralyze global semiconductor supply chains, disrupt international financial markets, freeze government operations, and sever vital allied military coordination during the opening hours of a cross-strait conflict.
Beyond Taiwan, the undersea internet cable infrastructure connecting East Asia to the US may be similarly vulnerable. In a September 2025 policy paper for the Center for Irregular Warfare and Armed Groups (CIWAG), Jahara Matisek and other writers note that the vulnerability of trans-Pacific undersea infrastructure centers on highly exposed geographic chokepoints.
Matisek and others specifically point out that Hawaii, Guam, and the US West Coast serve as the critical landing nodes for all data and energy cables connecting the US to East Asia.
They stress that this extreme concentration poses severe strategic risks, warning that disruptions at these nodes during a crisis would directly paralyze commercial networks, degrade operational tempo, and sever critical military command-and-control capabilities — thereby specifically undermining the US Indo-Pacific Command’s (INDOPACOM) ability to maintain strategic communication lines.
By combining enhanced stealth with potential seabed warfare capabilities, China’s new sailless submarine may shift undersea competition from penetrating the First Island Chain to contesting the digital infrastructure that underpins US power in the Pacific.
Used Waymo robotaxi batteries become backup storage for power grids
Thousands of electric vehicles in Waymo’s autonomous robotaxi fleet may eventually give up their used batteries for a very different purpose—contributing up to hundreds of megawatt-hours of stationary energy storage to local power grids.
That prospect comes from a “strategic supply agreement” announced by Waymo and B2U Storage Solutions on June 4. B2U has been repurposing thousands of used batteries from various electric vehicles by installing them in large stationary energy storage projects. Such energy storage facilities can capture excess renewable energy during low demand periods and release such energy when local power grids are experiencing peak demand periods.
“Our business is getting the full residual value out of electric vehicle batteries after they’re no longer suitable for automotive use,” Freeman Hall, CEO of B2U Storage Solution, told Ars. “Waymo puts a lot of miles on EVs and their model is expanding rapidly, and so we’re just very pleased and honored to be able to work with them.”
The agreement would allow B2U to repurpose Waymo batteries that become available at the end of a vehicle’s lifespan, along with obtaining used batteries that are being swapped out from operational vehicles. Waymo’s “proactive maintenance” for its autonomous vehicles includes identifying opportunities to “refresh the battery to improve efficiency overall for our fleet,” Adam Lenz, head of sustainability and environment at Waymo, told Ars. “That’s when we look to these second-life applications, because there’s still a lot of life left in the battery,” he said.
Waymo did not specify the average mileage at which it swaps out batteries or retires vehicles from service. But Waymo robotaxis drive around much more each day than the typical EV, which means the Waymo fleet is likely to experience faster usage-related degradation of battery capacity over time. The company confirmed to Ars that “some of these vehicles have now been serving riders for years and have mileage beyond what a normal consumer drives.”
A 2025 analysis of over 22,700 electric vehicles across 21 models found that average battery capacity loss was about 2.3 percent per year, according to the telematics company Geotab. That translates to such batteries still having more than 81 percent of their original capacity after eight years.
Waymo’s current fleet of nearly 4,000 vehicles mainly consists of Jaguar I-Pace electric vehicles that have a 90 kWh lithium-ion battery. The company has also begun rolling out the Ojai robotaxi made by the Chinese automotive brand Zeekr with a 93 kWh battery.
“Put a little haircut on that in terms of degradation and the effective capacity that would be left in those batteries when they’re suitable for repurposing, and we’re still talking about pretty significant capacity per battery,” Hall said.
The growing Waymo robotaxi fleet could lead to “pretty large numbers in terms of megawatt hours of capacity that can be deployed pretty quickly” for stationary energy storage supporting power grids, he suggested.
The agreement gives Waymo discretion over when and how many used batteries will be turned over to B2U. But the companies confirmed that B2U has “already started receiving smaller initial quantities of batteries” from the Waymo fleet. Over time, the agreement could give B2U “hundreds of megawatt-hours” of additional storage capacity from Waymo’s thousands of electric vehicles, Lenz said.
Local grid synergy
The B2U grid storage solution could do more than simply extend the usefulness of lithium-ion batteries from Waymo’s fleet by several years. The new partnership is intended to support B2U projects in regions where Waymo’s autonomous robotaxis operate—meaning the used Waymo batteries could bolster the local power grids that Waymo vehicles rely upon for charging.
“What we think is really cool and unique about this opportunity is that these are the batteries that are helping serve our riders in these communities, and then they’re actually going to BTU to then be deployed in local grids that are near communities that we serve as well,” Lenz told Ars. “So there’s a nice circularity here for our commitment to clean technology and supporting renewable energy on the grids.”
Used Waymo batteries will be received at B2U’s Lancaster facility in Los Angeles County, which already houses more than 1,300 repurposed electric vehicle batteries. From there, the batteries will also be deployed to other B2U energy storage projects at sites across California and Texas, including a 24 megawatt-hour energy storage project in Bexar County, Texas, that could support Waymo’s growing deployment in San Antonio.
The all-electric fleet of Waymo robotaxis prevents 530 tons of CO2 emissions with every 500,000 weekly trips, according to company estimates. Waymo has typically sourced the electricity required for charging its vehicles from local wind and solar power generation projects, and by sometimes purchasing renewable energy certificates to cover any gaps.
One exception to that clean energy prioritization has been Waymo’s partnership with ride-hailing giant Uber in Austin, Texas. Uber installed a “temporary charging solution” for Waymo vehicles serving Austin riders that involved mobile L-Charge generators running on natural gas, which subsequently drew local attention and complaints because of the generator noises.
In any case, Waymo’s agreement with B2U fits with a more promising and broader trend of the United States installing record amounts of battery energy storage. A report by the Solar Energy Industries Association showed that US battery energy stationary storage installations reached 9.7 gigawatt hours in the first quarter of the 2026 fiscal year—the “largest Q1 in history” and a 32 percent year-over-year increase.
B2U is already managing more than 4,000 EV battery packs across its energy storage projects, including used Nissan Leaf batteries that were first installed in 2020 and are still going strong after approximately 2,500 cycles. The company currently has a “nice supply of batteries, but it’s great to add to this supply because the demand for storage is very high,” Hall said.
In This Church, Child Sexual Abuse Has Gone Unchecked for So Long That It Spans Generations
Reporting Highlights
A National Problem: Old Apostolic Lutheran Church congregations around the U.S. have been forced to deal with child sex abuse. In many cases, they haven’t reported allegations to police.
Across Generations: In some OALC families, the victims include mothers, daughters and granddaughters, showing just how persistent child sex abuse has been in the church.
Raising Awareness: With church elders from Sweden scheduled to visit U.S. congregations this summer, victims and advocates hope to bring attention to the issue and force reform.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
They were pillars of their church, congregants in a little-known denomination that sets itself apart from the world and teaches that even the most unconscionable acts can be wiped away — not just forgiven, but forgotten and never spoken of again.
So it went in a rural Wyoming church, where a man was accused of sexually abusing young girls hundreds of times in the pews during Sunday services. Though the preacher knew of the abuse, he never reported it to police, local prosecutors said. Instead, he told the man to seek therapy.
In Minnesota, a man from the same faith admitted that he began entering the bedrooms of his daughter and son at night around the time each of them turned 12. He and his siblings grew up in the church and were sexually abused themselves, and then he repeated the abuse with his own children.
And in Washington state, preachers knew a member of their congregation had sexually abused several young boys. Instead of reporting him to police, they allowed him to ask for forgiveness, according to a family member, and he continued to sexually abuse children. He was later found guilty of raping the 9-year-old son of a church member and sentenced to life in prison.
The abusers and victims all belonged to the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church, or the OALC, a Scandinavian-rooted revivalist church that teaches its followers that heaven is reserved just for them. To get there, according to current and former members, they must follow a strict doctrine, which emphasizes asking for forgiveness for their sins and says that being forgiven by a fellow church member washes away those sins.
What’s more, the church teaches that once a perpetrator is forgiven, anyone who speaks about the wrongdoing — including the victim — can be accused of harboring an unforgiving heart. Those who have left the church, as well as some who are still with it, say this means the burden of sin shifts from the person who committed the act to the person who refuses to let the matter rest.
Sexual abuse survivors say these rituals have created a culture where allegations of abuse are resolved outside of the criminal justice system and the victims must bear their pain alone or risk going to hell. In some families, sexual abuse stretches across generations, ensnaring a parent, child and grandchild.
“This is what I would call institutionalism of abuse of young women and children,” said DaNece Day, the prosecuting attorney for Crook County in Wyoming, whose office has charged two OALC members in the past two years.
In Wyoming, Crook County Attorney DaNece Day’s office has brought charges against members of the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church.
Day and other prosecutors said one of the biggest obstacles to breaking the cycle is the way church members move among congregations spread across the U.S. and Canada, often hundreds of miles apart but tightly bound by large, multigenerational family networks.
Last fall, ProPublica and the Minnesota Star Tribune reported that preachers in Minnesota had known for years about allegations that one of its members, a man named Clint Massie, had sexually abused young girls in the congregation. But instead of reporting it to police, church leaders urged some of the victims to take part in sessions where they were brought face-to-face with Massie and encouraged to forgive the abuse.
Now, new reporting by the two news organizations shows how the sexual abuse of children in the OALC, as well as the failure by church leaders to report it to authorities, is a persistent and national problem.
Some current and former OALC members are calling on elders from what the church regards as its mother congregation in Sweden — where the church originated — to intervene. In fact, those elders, who don’t have authority over the American church but wield considerable influence, are coming to the U.S. and Canada this summer to meet with congregations. What they’ll find are a growing number of criminal cases against church members and increasing legal scrutiny of leaders for failing to report allegations of sexual abuse to police.
In a statement, representatives from the Swedish church said the cases are isolated incidents and they didn’t “observe any pattern” among the tens of thousands of members in 34 OALC congregations in the U.S. and Canada. They said sexual abuse should be reported to authorities and that it was possible “some matters have been handled improperly or without sufficient knowledge.” And they acknowledged that church guidelines “are being reviewed with the American missionary pastors in order to ensure compliance.”
Representatives of the OALC in the U.S. and Canada said in an email that they also “do not perceive there to be a general pattern of behavior,” describing sexual abuse as a serious and persistent problem across society. They acknowledged that bringing a victim to face their abuser, as a pastor for the OALC church did with Massie, can be traumatic. But they defended the church’s doctrine of forgiveness, saying it was not a means to conceal wrongdoing or to shield offenders from legal consequences, and no one is coerced to forgive or to ask for forgiveness. If those teachings had been misapplied or misunderstood in some cases, they said, it “does not reflect an error in our doctrine.”
ProPublica and the Star Tribune interviewed 20 people who said they were sexually abused, almost all as children, in OALC communities, along with parents of victims as young as 3. Reporters also traveled to OALC churches around the country and reviewed court and police documents from at least eight cases, along with victims’ statements to local authorities.
Their abusers were family members, other children or men who were trusted to be alone with children because they are part of the same insular faith community. Some victims spoke anonymously for fear of retribution from the church or their own families. Others identified themselves as well as their abusers publicly, unafraid of the repercussions.
Many of those victims said church leaders pressured them to keep quiet. In Minnesota, police records describe a woman telling a young girl that her abuse, which began when she was around 5 or 6 years old, was not a big deal and she “needed to get over it.” In Washington state, a police report notes a woman told law enforcement that her preacher had, for “spiritual reasons,” discouraged her from contacting authorities after her daughter told her she’d been raped by three men from church.
“We’re always told that what the preachers tell us, that’s coming from God,” explained one woman, who said she, too, was told not to speak of her abuse. “Who’s going to argue with that?”
The Old Apostolic Lutheran Church in Moorcroft
Sexual abuse in the OALC has sometimes been a legacy passed from one generation to the next — hidden, quietly endured, repeated. Lorie Peldo was sexually abused for eight years by her older brother, starting when she was only 2, she said in an interview. A quarter century later, after the memories began to resurface during therapy, Peldo’s mother told her that she’d known about the abuse. But on the advice of her preacher in Battle Ground, Washington, her parents didn’t report the crimes to the police. Instead, they took her brother to a doctor, she said.
Peldo said she eventually confronted her brother, who said that it had haunted him his entire life. She tried to forgive him, she said, but the weight of what he’d done did not lift. She fell into such deep despair that she tried to commit suicide. She said she ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Her brother later died; her parents are also deceased.
It didn’t stop there. On a church road trip, Clint Massie — who was sentenced for child abuse in Duluth, Minnesota, last year — sexually abused Peldo’s daughter, Tonya, when she was 11 and he was a teenager, according to Tonya Peldo’s statements to law enforcement. Peldo’s case was included in the police file involving Massie, but it wasn’t charged criminally, according to a prosecutor, because the statute of limitations had run out. Massie has not responded to repeated requests for comment.
Tonya Peldo told investigators from the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office in Duluth that she didn’t see Massie again until some two decades later, after she moved to the city and recognized him passing out candy to kids at the church.
She said she told the pastors about what he’d done to her, yet one of the preachers told her to ask Massie for forgiveness, as if she had wronged him. “I was like, ‘No. No!’” she said in an interview. It would be more than a decade before Massie was charged with sexual abuse crimes.
In 2019, Tonya’s daughter was also sexually abused, making her the third generation of Peldo girls to be victims. The daughter was 14 when a 25-year-old relative, Blake Nelson, bought her a pack of cigarettes and then invited her into his trailer in Clark County, Washington, so that he could teach her how to give a massage, according to court records.
Tonya Peldo, her mother and her daughter all say they were abused by members of the OALC.
Nelson pleaded guilty to charges of communication with a minor for immoral purposes and fourth-degree assault in the case involving Tonya Peldo’s daughter. At his sentencing, Tonya told the judge how church leaders had tried to keep her daughter from reporting the abuse to police. Nelson’s own lawyer, Michele Michalek, said the pastors repeatedly called her law office to insist the case should be handled internally.
“They think that law enforcement shouldn’t be involved,” Michalek said.
A judge in Minnesota commented on the cyclical nature of abuse in 2023, when a man from an OALC family turned himself in to police after repeatedly abusing his son and daughter. At his sentencing, the judge took into account that the man and his siblings, who grew up in the church, had also been victims of child sexual abuse. She said she found it “almost incomprehensible” that the adults in his life didn’t know about the abuse he and his siblings had suffered as children.
“All I can see are the ripples of consequences for you and all of your siblings, who were abused or abusers, and then for your children,” the judge said.
A clipping from a 1951 newspaper showing Eija Marttinen, seen second from right and then called Tanninen, and her family after arriving in Nova Scotia from Finland, shortly before her father started the first OALC church in Canada.Courtesy of the Marttinen/Tanninen family
The OALC church is a branch of a broader faith called Laestadianism, a conservative Christian revival movement that began in the mid-1800s in northern Scandinavia. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, as millions of Scandinavians migrated to the U.S., some followers of the Laestadian movement brought with them more than language, traditions and religious devotion.
Alongside the faith came a deeply insular church culture shaped by strict obedience and a doctrine of forgiveness that critics and former members say enabled the concealment of wrongdoing.
One of them was Eija Marttinen. A photo in a newspaper in 1951 shows Marttinen as a little girl wearing a Finnish sailor suit and braids, standing alongside 14 family members and several large suitcases. Her family had just arrived in Nova Scotia from Finland, and they would soon launch Canada’s first Old Apostolic Lutheran Church. In the photo, Marttinen is smiling brightly toward the horizon, as if spellbound by the endless possibilities of a new world.
But even then, at age 9, Marttinen harbored a secret that would be the source of a lifetime of emotional pain. Now 84 and living in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, she said in an interview that her older brother sexually assaulted her starting when she was 5. Another brother soon started abusing her, too, she said. Both brothers are now dead.
Years later, Marttinen said she came to learn that there were other predators in the church. She kept silent about her abuse for most of her life, fearing she would be forced to forgive and still live with the stigma if she came forward. She only told her own daughter about the extent of the abuse in recent months, after reading the ProPublica and Star Tribune stories.
“They can do whatever they want and you have to forgive them. That’s not right. But you go along because you were brought up in it.
“I wish I wasn’t,” she added.
The Laestadian churches in Scandinavia have faced their own reckonings. From 2009 to 2011, a Finnish child welfare scholar, Johanna Hurtig, documented widespread sexual abuse cases among Finnish church members and found that the concept of forgiveness of sins had been warped into a tool to silence victims.
At first, church leaders were defensive, according to news reports. But they later acknowledged “serious mistakes” in how the church handled sexual abuse, including pressuring victims to forgive offenders instead of reporting them. They urged members to report abuse to police and child welfare authorities.
Several men were convicted in Finnish courts and sentenced to long prison terms.
In 2017, Norwegian police documented 151 cases of rape and abuse, many with child victims, in a remote northern village of some 2,000 people. Following a newspaper investigation, the police said they tied many of the cases to members of Laestadianism, with some incidents dating to 1953. The police found the practice of forgiving and forgetting often led to abuse being considered “settled” internally, effectively silencing victims and protecting perpetrators.
Moorcroft is small but home to a thriving OALC congregation.
The church’s emphasis on large families has created booms in places like Minnesota, Wyoming and southern Washington. Families rely heavily on one another socially, financially and spiritually while keeping their distance from what members often call “the world” — outsiders and secular influences viewed as dangerous or corrupting. Even ordinary activities like watching TV and dancing are treated as transgressions that must be confessed. One abuse victim said she felt anxious every time she turned on her car radio, fearing that if she listened to a pop song and died in a crash before asking forgiveness, she could go to hell.
Some church members hope the Swedish elders address sexual abuse during their visit, including the mother of a 15-year-old girl who revealed in May 2025 that her father had been abusing her for years. It happened both in Minnesota and after they moved to Washington, according to court records. The mother, according to child protection services reports, said she told her preacher about the abuse.
Authorities did not learn of the allegations until August, when her daughter saw a therapist after weeks of her mother trying to get help through church channels, according to the reports. That visit triggered an investigation by child protection authorities in Washington, who substantiated the complaint. Prosecutors in Minnesota charged the father with criminal sexual conduct, but he hasn’t been charged in Washington. The father has asked the court for a public defender and has not yet entered a plea. He did not respond to voice and text messages seeking comment.
Asked why church officials did not immediately contact law enforcement, a spokesperson for the church declined to answer, saying the case was “complex” and in authorities’ hands. However, he said that, in general, spiritual advisers need to use counselors and other professionals “to determine if there is a reasonable cause to report as dictated by law.”
But the mother said it was she — not the church — who set up the therapy session.
“Their job is to pick up the phone and say, ‘Hi, I’ve got some confusing, conflicting information but I’m concerned for the safety of this person,’” she said. “They don’t have to be investigators, all they need to do is tell somebody.”
The mother said she plans to raise the church’s failure to notify police with elders when they visit this summer. Nonetheless, she plans to remain in the church. Asked why, she said, “Because I want to go to heaven.”
An Old Apostolic Lutheran Church in Brush Prairie, Washington
Last summer, in the rural expanse of eastern Wyoming, Moorcroft police drove up the long dirt road leading to the OALC church, a large brick building on the edge of town with a white cross emblazoned under the eaves.
The investigators were looking for records that could verify the membership of a man who several children said had abused them during services. His name was Charles Massie — the brother of Clint Massie, who had pleaded guilty to similar crimes in Minnesota months earlier.
Over 10 years, authorities alleged, Charles Massie had sexually abused at least seven girls. Some of the abuse occurred at his house and some at his businesses, where young girls worked part time. But the vast majority of the abuse occurred at church, according to court documents. Investigators tallied 832 incidents where Massie sat near the girls’ parents, allegedly fondling the girls’ genitals and breasts. One victim, who told the police she was 5 or 6 years old when she was abused by Massie, said that he “raped me with his fingers.”
Wyoming has charged Charles Massie with nine counts of sexual abuse and sexual battery. He is being held in jail in Nebraska, where prosecutors also have charged him in connection with sexual assaults. He has pleaded not guilty in both states. He could not be reached for comment.
When investigators in Moorcroft contacted families of the victims, they learned that the families already knew about the abuse. One had learned of it three years earlier, according to charges. But according to court records, none of them had told the police. Instead, the charges say, the father of some of the victims had told their preacher, David Lindberg, about the abuse in 2024. Charles Massie would later turn himself in, but not for another year.
Day, the top prosecutor in Crook County, Wyoming, said there was “no support” for victims and the church did nothing to punish Charles Massie. “There are no consequences for him,” she said. “He’s allowed to sit in church with them every Sunday, even after they’ve come forward and said, ‘This man has been hurting us.’” She said Charles Massie turned himself in to the Moorcroft police after he admitted to a mental health provider that he had abused children; the provider told him that they would report Massie if he didn’t go to police.
Lindberg disputed the characterization that he did not act when Charles Massie confessed to him. “All I can say is, when I first heard about it, he came to me and he had a problem, so I told him he needs to go get therapy and turn himself in to the police,” Lindberg said. “And he did.”
He referred additional questions to a church spokesperson, Troy Massie, who is a relative of Charles and Clint Massie. In written responses, Troy Massie said the church told Charles to stop attending services after he confessed to Lindberg, though he could listen to services on the phone.
“We continue to improve our efforts as needed to protect all children,” he wrote.
OALC Member Speaks During His Sentencing for Rape
During his sentencing hearing in 2017, Carsie Tikka, who had been convicted of raping a child, lashed out at his lawyer, the judge and his accusers.Obtained by ProPublica and the Minnesota Star Tribune
The Wyoming church isn’t the only one to face accusations that it failed to report abusers. In southwestern Washington in 2017, a jury convicted church member Carsie Tikka of raping a 9-year-old boy. But one woman, who was a member of the church at the time, said that years before he was charged, Tikka had assaulted her stepchildren and the leaders had done nothing to stop him. Instead, Tikka asked her family for forgiveness.
After Tikka was convicted at trial, a court-ordered psychiatrist wrote in a report that Tikka had “a history of offending 29 males,” an allegation that Tikka denied in court. At his sentencing, Tikka said his conscience was clean. He said he had already “received the testimony of sins forgiven” by one of God’s disciples.
“You clearly by your statement here are not remorseful,” the judge remarked before sentencing him to life in prison without parole. “You put the blame on everyone else.”
Then Tikka illustrated the central problem facing prosecutors and victims alike — a powerful religious culture that prioritizes spiritual absolution over secular justice — with his final, defiant words:
“My sins have been forgiven,” Tikka told the judge. “Have yours?”
Former Tunisia intel chief accuses Saied’s government of spying on opponents, fabricating cases
Former Tunisian intelligence chief Kamel Guizani has accused relatives of President Kais Saied and senior officials in Tunisia’s government of spying on opposition leaders and fabricating court cases to imprison them.
Speaking on Al Jazeera’s Maghareb Podcast, Guizani alleged that members of Saied’s family and the president’s security chief were involved in surveillance operations and the unlawful use of state institutions. He said the case was the real reason behind the prosecution of judge Bashir Akremi and the dismissal of dozens of judges.
Guizani also accused former Interior Minister Taoufik Charfeddine of overseeing the fabrication of security-related cases, in cooperation with the Justice Ministry, to target political and human rights opponents and strengthen the ruling system.
He said that “some officers were forced to write reports lacking credibility in terms of time and place”, describing the actions as “state crimes” targeting anyone who stood in the way of President Kais Saied’s agenda since early 2022.
Guizani said investigations carried out by security agencies under his supervision “proved the existence of a close connection in the wiretapping case between the Director-General of Presidential Security, Khaled Yahiawi, and individuals from the president’s very close family circle”.
Kyrgyzstan’s UN upset signals Eurasia’s quiet rise
Kyrgyzstan representatives cheer after winning vote to become a rotational UN Security Council member. Image: X Screengrab
On Wednesday (June 3), Kyrgyzstan secured an upset victory over the Philippines to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council for the 2027-2028 term.
After taking a surprising 105-85 lead in the first ballot, the Central Asian nation went on to win decisively, 142-49, in a fourth round of voting. Kyrgyzstan was one of 59 countries that had never served on the Council. Its election marks only the second time a Central Asian country has held a seat, following Kazakhstan in 2017-2018.
An elated Kyrgyz delegation – some wearing traditional ak-kalpak hats – celebrated in the General Assembly Hall, exchanging handshakes and smiles with a long line of well-wishers.
The scale of the final vote was striking. That such a decisive margin favored a Central Asian candidate over a US-aligned Indo-Pacific one challenges conventional assumptions about where the center of global geopolitical gravity is shifting.
On paper, the Philippines appeared the obvious choice. A US treaty ally and founding member of ASEAN, it has deep diplomatic ties across the Global South and has served on the Security Council four times. Its strategic location — on the front lines of tensions with China and near Taiwan — only reinforced its relevance.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on May 30, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth praised President Ferdinand Marcos Jr for boosting defense spending by 12% this year, highlighting Manila’s push to build a “modern, technologically advanced and interoperable force” capable of operating alongside US forces.
Yet, Wednesday’s vote suggested that many countries in the Global South gave a collective shrug to this US-centric narrative. Rather than lining up behind alliance structures or strategic alignments, many countries in the General Assembly appeared willing to back a different kind of candidate.
Kyrgyzstan’s campaign leaned into that contrast. Its messaging — “The voice of Central Asia,” “Mountain nation, global vision,” and “Landlocked, ocean-minded” — emphasized representation and perspective over power politics.
Ahead of the vote, a senior Philippine diplomat had expressed confidence that countries such as the US and Japan would support Manila’s bid. The diplomat noted Kyrgyzstan’s backing from China and Russia, and argued it was clear which candidate stood on “the right side of history.”
The outcome, however, suggests that framing did not resonate. For years, the dominant narrative in global strategy has been the rise of the Indo-Pacific – a framework centered on maritime trade, naval power and US-China competition at sea.
By that logic, a country like the Philippines should have been the natural choice. But the General Assembly chose differently. Kyrgyzstan’s victory suggests that another map is beginning to matter: the Eurasian interior.
This region is increasingly a theater of strategic competition. Russia’s influence in Central Asia and South Caucasus is waning as it remains consumed by the war in Ukraine.
China, meanwhile, is expanding overland energy and infrastructure networks across Eurasia, as it seeks to reduce reliance on maritime routes vulnerable to disruption, particularly in the event of an armed conflict with the US.
At the same time, countries such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan have pursued multivector foreign policies, avoiding overdependence on any single power and a balancing act that has kept them engaged with multiple partners, including the US.
Washington has always struggled to categorize Central Asia – variously grouping it with Europe, the Middle East or Asia. Often treated as a space between more important regions, it is now emerging as a geopolitical arena in its own right — defined not by sea lanes, but by corridors, energy routes and common Turkic heritage.
None of this means that countries are necessarily siding with Russia and China over the US. Nor does it diminish the importance of the Indo-Pacific. And the Philippines will obviously remain central to US strategy vis-à-vis China.
But the vote does suggest something more subtle: a growing appetite for new narratives and a recognition that military buildup may not be the only path to credible deterrence. It also reflects an emerging new geopolitical map with Eurasia increasingly at its center.
Ken Moriyasu, a former correspondent for the Japanese newspaper Nikkei, is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute.
Male bowerbirds prefer to dazzle females with bright human-made items
Male bowerbirds are notorious for their complex mating rituals. They build intricate tunnels out of twigs—the bowers from which they get their name—and then decorate them with random colorful items gleaned from the environment. When a female of the species shows up to check out a male’s fancy digs, the male tosses his shiniest objects in her direction and shows off his plumage in hopes of impressing her.
According to a new paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science by University of Exeter scientists, urbanization and the associated growing availability of brightly colored human-made items have had a significant impact on courtship display behavior in Australian male bowerbirds. There are marked differences in the choice of decorations for bowerbirds in urban versus rural environments. This might be because urban birds simply have greater access to the items than their rural counterparts, since birds in both environments show a marked preference for human items.
The University of Exeter researchers monitored the bowers of 61 male great bowerbirds in two sites in Australia’s northern Queensland—the rural Dreghorn Cattle Station and the urban Townsville City—during the prime breeding season (September–December 2023). Then they photographed the bower decorations in situ from above in both visible and UV light (bowerbirds can see in the UV range), using an umbrella to create diffuse lighting.
Next, they selected the 10 decorations closest to the bower entrance, since these were the most likely to be used by the male bird for his displays. These were also photographed and marked to identify the original source. Then the team removed all existing decorations from each bower and created a mixed slush pile of 10 randomly selected urban bowers and 10 randomly selected rural bowers, and they left the site alone for three days. Males were never offered any items from their own bower.
When the team returned to the sites, they determined which decorations had been selected from the slush pile and moved to a bower, and whether it came from an urban or rural source. After recording the data, all the original decorations were returned to their bowers.
Green glass and red wire
A male great bowerbird in a rural environment displaying to a female great bowerbird. Credit: Caitlin Evans
The subsequent analysis revealed that rural bowerbirds most often used green glass and green leaves or seeds for decoration, while urban birds preferred green glass and red wire. Plastic items were also popular, although “we also found items including a pair of handcuffs, medicine jars at bowers near a hospital, and fluorescent mouth guards from a site near an Australian Rules football ground,” said University of Exeter co-author Caitlin Evans.
Urban bower decorations were more than 10 times more likely to be human-made than those of rural bowers, which had more natural items, such as fruit, seeds, leaves, and sticks. Urban bowers also had nearly five times as many decorations as rural ones, averaging 90 items per bower compared to 20 for the rural birds. One overachieving urban male gathered 300 items to decorate his bower. Both urban and rural male bowerbirds showed a strong preference for human items when given a choice of items sourced from each environment. And red decorations in urban bowers were more vivid, and the green items duller, than in rural bowers.
“Our results suggest that display produced by urban males may represent an adaptive change to a more attractive display and that rural males are restricted in their displays by the materials in their environment,” the authors wrote. Further, the ready availability of human items to urban birds “may reduce energetic costs and risks associated with leaving the bower unguarded.” Even rural birds manage to find some human items, most likely by raiding farm bins or garages.
A male great bowerbird in an urban environment displaying to a female great bowerbird. Credit: Caitlin Evans
The fact that urbanization appears to be altering the display traits of the great bowerbird might affect sexual selection, for example, by altering how females assess bowers when selecting a mate. The current study did not measure differences in male mating success relative to the use of human-made materials, although prior research has indicated that there are higher male display and mating rates in urban versus rural environments. This may be due to other factors, such as higher population density. Nor is it clear if urban female bowerbirds have different preferences for courtship traits than rural females.
“Our study demonstrates that availability of human items—often glass and plastic—is affecting the behavior of bowerbirds,” said co-author Laura Kelley, also from the University of Exeter. “We don’t yet know whether this has any negative or positive impact on them, but it’s a reminder of how human activity is changing the natural world in unanticipated ways.”
All EU members greenlight first step in accession talks, Ukraine PM says
All members of the European Union agreed to open talks with Ukraine and Moldova on the first cluster of issues in their accession talks, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said early on Thursday.
“Fantastic news,” she wrote on X. “We are one step closer to the EU membership: steadily moving towards our goal.”
Cyprus, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU, said on X it had starting preparing to formally open negotiation on the first group of negotiating chapters, which cover rule-of-law and democratic standards, with both countries.
“This marks a significant milestone in their European integration path, and sends a strong message of EU unity and determination,” it said.
The presidency said it would work “towards finalising the discussions” for the formal opening.
Earlier, Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar said his country and Ukraine had reached an agreement on the rights of the 100,000-strong Hungarian minority in Ukraine.
Magyar had previously said that agreement on the long-running dispute was essential if Budapest were to agree to Ukraine joining the EU.
Both Ukraine and Moldova are pressing for membership of the 27-member EU after more than four years of war pitting Kyiv against Moscow.
Passengers Injured After Flight Takes Terrifying 3000ft Plunge
A European passenger flight turned terrifying when a smaller jet suddenly dropped thousands of feet after flying into powerful “wake turbulence” reportedly left behind by an Emirates superjumbo jet nearly nine miles away.
Six people were injured in the frightening mid-air incident, including five passengers and one flight attendant, after Eurowings Flight 635 was hit by turbulence on Saturday, May 30.
The flight had taken off from Rhodes, Greece, and was headed for Cologne, Germany, when the ordinary trip suddenly turned into a nightmare in the skies.
According to FlightAware, the Eurowings plane left Rhodes Diagoras Airport around 10:30 a.m. local time. The aircraft, an Airbus A320-200, was carrying 157 passengers.
While flying over Bosnia and Herzegovina at about 36,000 feet, the crew was reportedly cleared to climb another 2,000 feet.
But ahead of the Eurowings jet was an Emirates Airbus A380-800, the massive double-decker plane known as the world’s largest passenger airliner.
The Emirates aircraft was flying from Dubai to London at 38,000 feet and was about 7.6 nautical miles, or roughly nine miles, in front of the Eurowings plane, according to The Aviation Herald.
Moments later, the Eurowings aircraft suddenly stopped climbing and began falling at a rate of about 3,000 feet per minute.
The plane eventually regained control at around 36,000 feet, but not before the terrifying drop left several people hurt.
A Eurowings spokesperson confirmed the incident and said the plane had encountered “brief wake turbulence.”
Wake turbulence is one of the hidden dangers of air travel. Every aircraft creates it, but larger planes can leave especially powerful invisible air currents behind them.
The Federal Aviation Administration says wake turbulence forms when strong rotating air vortices trail behind an aircraft. Those swirling forces are sometimes described as invisible tornadoes in the sky.
They can be especially dangerous for smaller aircraft flying behind a much larger jet.
The FAA says wake turbulence can cause “possible injury to occupants” of trailing aircraft and warns pilots to stay alert when flying behind another plane.
The strength of those invisible air currents depends on an aircraft’s weight, speed, wingspan, and wing shape. Planes classified as “heavy” or “super” require extra caution.
In this case, the Emirates A380 was the giant in the sky.
Even more unsettling, officials say the planes were apparently separated by more than the required minimum distance.
International Civil Aviation Organization guidelines state that aircraft should have at least seven nautical miles of lateral separation when one plane climbs or descends through the level of another.
The Eurowings aircraft was reportedly 7.6 nautical miles behind the Emirates jet.
That means the aircraft were operating within the guidelines, but the smaller plane was still shaken by the wake turbulence.
According to The Aviation Herald, one flight attendant was thrown against the cabin ceiling during the incident.
Despite the injuries, the Eurowings jet continued on to Cologne Bonn Airport.
When the plane landed, medical crews were waiting.
“The affected passengers and crew member were met and treated by medical personnel immediately after landing,” a Eurowings spokesperson said.
The airline added, “We regret the incident and wish those affected a speedy recovery.”
The German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation confirmed the incident has been reported. Officials said they will work with authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, who are expected to lead the investigation.
Emirates has not yet publicly commented on the incident.
For passengers, the ordeal was a chilling reminder that not all turbulence comes from storms.
Sometimes, the danger is invisible — and left behind by a giant aircraft miles ahead.
Iran is losing the war but winning what comes next
Iran is losing the war against the US and Israel by most visible measures. Its air defenses have been obliterated, its senior leadership dead, and its already flagging economy is on the verge of collapse, with its crucial oil and gas exports stuck behind a blockade.
Yet its core deterrents, namely an underground missile force and an enriched uranium stockpile, both motivations for Washington and Jerusalem to wage the war, are believed to be largely intact.
That means Tehran may not be winning on the battlefield, but could yet prevail in the postwar security architecture vis-a-vis the six Gulf states it has spent the last three months attacking in response to US and Israeli strikes.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has dismissed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Council’s barrage on Gulf allies as “indiscriminate targeting, flailing recklessly.” However, the targeting has been quite deliberate in hitting strategic and economic assets and has likely been more effective than Tehran anticipated.
Roughly 85% of Iran’s aerial campaign struck Gulf states that had explicitly refused to support America and Israel’s Operation Epic Fury. Airports, hotels, LNG terminals, refineries, desalination plants and data centers have all been targeted in Iran’s strikes.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has absorbed more Iranian missile and drone hits than any other country, including Israel.
Across the Gulf, capitals face the same stark choice. Back Washington or stay nominally neutral and risk strikes on their refineries and other economic infrastructure anyway. Tehran is betting that hitting Gulf states will eventually cause Washington to back down.
If that’s indeed Iran’s strategy, it has not worked yet. A fragile ceasefire has held in name, though both sides have recently resumed attacks as they negotiate the terms of a bilateral agreement. Anger among Gulf states at Iran is seething, but the stakes are not the same on both sides.
Iran is fighting for nothing less than the survival of its Islamic regime; the Gulf’s ruling monarchies are not. For them, the main question is what new order prevails once the shooting stops. And the potential answer increasingly threatens to divide the Gulf straight down the middle.
The UAE, for one, has opted to escalate rather than cower. It has absorbed the heaviest Iranian barrage of any Gulf state and, in response, has tethered itself even more tightly to Washington and Jerusalem.
It has reportedly put Israel’s Iron Dome air defense batteries on its soil and, according to the Wall Street Journal, struck Iran dozens of times during the war and into the tentative truce.
Dubai’s economy has suffered while risking a bigger disaster – a drone fired from Iraq, where pro-Iran militias operate, was recently downed near the US$30 billion Barakah nuclear plant. The longer the UAE stays this close to Washington, the harder it will be to pull back later.
Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has responded to direct attacks on its Petroline and Ras Tanura oil infrastructure by secretly striking Iranian launch sites while simultaneously initiating back-channel talks.
At the same time, Riyadh refused to cooperate with the US-led Project Freedom, which sought the use of its Prince Sultan Air Base to protect naval escorts through the Strait of Hormuz. Washington scrapped the initiative soon thereafter.
This two-pronged, if not contradictory, approach has led to fewer Iranian attacks on Saudi territory. Saudi Arabia has called for de-escalation in public while keeping the pressure on in private, putting in a perilous strategic middle ground.
It’s also creating cracks among Gulf states at a time when they would benefit from a more unified response. The Wall Street Journal reported that Riyadh has urged Washington to rein in the UAE’s strikes. That has reportedly angered the UAE’s leadership, who have carped that Saudi Arabia and Qatar have failed to coordinate a military response to Iran’s attacks.
Trump has kept the Abraham Accords and Saudi normalization with Israel on the table as a closing mechanism to a potential grand bargain. However, Riyadh cannot sell normalization with Israel at home while Iranian missiles hit Saudi refineries in response to a war Israel largely initiated.
Meanwhile, Qatar has kept a line to Tehran open throughout the war and is now the only Gulf capital through which either side will talk outside of the Pakistan channel. Kuwait, for its part, has taken Iranian missile hits and offered nothing. Neither will shape what comes next, though Qatar’s open line is the closest thing the Gulf has to a seat at the table.
The UAE is increasingly fused to the state that Iran considers its primary mortal enemy: Israel. Saudi Arabia has preserved its public restraint but is being written out of the talks.
Between them, the Gulf’s collective capacity to act as an independent principal has been undermined not only by their own choices but by what the war has done to each of them in turn.
The settlement now being negotiated between the US and Iran will thus be bilateral, with Gulf interests and security likely left to be handled in separate and later conversations. This is Iran’s win inside its military losses.
Tehran does not need the Gulf to surrender – it needs only a postwar settlement written without its participation. A bilateral deal with the US would likely leave Gulf security largely unaddressed and thus exposed to new rounds of Tehran’s pressure.
The bigger problem, however, reaches beyond the Gulf. By lifting the Hormuz blockade and allowing Iran to sell oil again, Washington’s main pressure point on Tehran’s nuclear file would narrow to one option: threatening another war, which will be harder to brandish convincingly as critical US midterm elections near.
Those who thus warn that a deal would favor Iran have the mechanism right and the victim wrong. A bilateral bargain that revives Iran’s economy and puts regional security off for a later date would mean the Gulf must fend for itself vis-à-vis Tehran.
A postwar order resting on American promises and Iranian goodwill — both shown to be unreliable in a time of war — will not translate into a new era of regional stability.
In say five years, the Gulf states will either have extracted binding security guarantees from whatever settlement emerges, or they will face a reconstituted Iran with less leverage than they hold today and no credible security architecture to contain it.
All told, Iran is losing the war but winning what comes after. None of this, of course, was by design. The Gulf’s wartime paralysis owes to its own divisions, leaving it without a voice in deciding what emerges from the conflict’s ashes.
Eric Alter is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs and a former UN civil servant.
Israel and Lebanon Renew Truce; Establish Hezbollah-Free ‘Security Zones’
Israel and Lebanon agreed Wednesday to renew their ceasefire and move forward with establishing pilot security zones in southern Lebanon, to be placed under the exclusive control of the Lebanese Armed Forces, as part of a US-backed effort to advance broader security arrangements between the two countries.
In a joint statement, the parties said they would “swiftly advance the creation of pilot zones in which the Lebanese Armed Forces will take exclusive control of the territory to the exclusion of all non-state actors.”
The initiative is intended to support progress toward a broader agreement between Jerusalem and Beirut: “These steps will enable progress toward a comprehensive peace and security agreement,” it said.
The statement also emphasized that decisions regarding relations between Israel and Lebanon should be made by their respective governments: “All countries reaffirmed that the future of the relationship between Israel and Lebanon must be decided by the two sovereign governments. They rejected any attempt, by any state or non-state actor, to hold Lebanon’s future hostage.” The language appeared to reference Iran, which supports Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, President Donald Trump said the United States is seeking to reduce Iran’s involvement in the Lebanon conflict: “We’re trying to separate Iran from the tensions in Lebanon.”
He also disclosed direct contact with Hezbollah: “We spoke with Hezbollah, we didn’t know they speak – actually we spoke with them for the first time. Yesterday, they agreed that they won’t shoot.”
The announcement came after continued tensions along the Israel-Lebanon border. Although there were reports that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) struck Lebanon after the ceasefire was announced, Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar, which is not affiliated with Hezbollah, reported that Israeli airstrikes ceased immediately following publication of the joint ceasefire statement.
Before the ceasefire renewal was announced, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said Israeli forces would continue operating against threats in Lebanon. During a visit to the Haifa Naval Base on Wednesday, Zamir said, “there is no ceasefire for our forces.”
“We are working to maximize the freedom of action that has been granted to us and will seize every opportunity to remove threats to the citizens of Israel and to our forces,” he said, according to remarks released by the IDF.
Zamir’s statements were made prior to the announcement of the agreement.
