The future looks tough for public broadcasting, but its independence must not be compromised

Anyone who watched the finale of Strictly Come Dancing last month could be mistaken for thinking that all was right with the BBC. Viewing figures might have been down on the Covid years, but here was event TV that mustered all the resources at the corporation’s disposal – musicians, costumiers, lighting and sound technicians – into a glittering occasion that delivered a new success story for multicultural Britain: the lovable Sudan-born wildlife presenter, Hamza Yassin. One-third of the Reithian mission – to entertain – was jubilantly fulfilled. Yet those dipped figures (down to 9.2m, nearly 2m below the previous year) reflect a more difficult story that unfolded over its centenary year, calling into question what John Reith’s objectives – to inform and educate as well as to entertain – might mean as it moves into its second century.

In April, the corporation’s director general, Tim Davie, announced that, in order to meet government-imposed funding cuts, it would have to seriously reduce the number of programmes that it produces and was considering turning more television and radio stations into archive services, dedicated to recycling existing material. In October, the audio producers’ trade association wrote to the broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, pointing out that by April 2023, Radio 4’s drama output – a seedbed for talent – will have fallen by 50% since quotas that protected key genres were removed in 2017, calling into question the BBC’s commitment to developing writers and putting out one-off radio production.

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Brazil’s president has long sought a multipolar global order and now pledges to ‘have relations with everyone’

For months, a sitting president with authoritarian sympathies sowed doubt in his country’s democracy. When he lost the election by a narrow margin, his supporters led a violent march on the capital in denial of the final result. But the institutions of democracy proved robust to these attacks. And on inauguration day, the rightful winner came to power in a peaceful ceremony.

Such parallels between recent presidential elections in the United States and Brazil are striking. Outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro endorsed Donald Trump and Trump endorsed Bolsonaro in return. Joe Biden did not go so far, but was quick to recognize the victory of incoming president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over noisy claims of fraud by his opponent. “America is back,” Biden said on the eve of his inauguration. “Brazil is back,” Lula said two years later.

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The Panjandrum, a rocket-propelled explosive cart, was one of the more curious weapons to have come out of World War II.

British Government/Wikimedia Commons

• World War II led to many successful innovations in technology — including weapons.
• Some however were considered major flops.
• From explosive rats to a 155-foot-long gun, here are some of the most bizarre weapons from WWII.

Unfortunately, war can drive innovation. During World War II, the world’s major powers set their sights on advancing technology, medicine, and communications in order to be efficient and fearsome in battle. Some of the advancements made in WWII were fundamental to modern technology — others, not so much.

Here is a look at some of the most bizarre, useless, and downright insane weapons developed on both sides during WWII.

1. A ship-mounted aerial mine rocket launcher

Crewman on HMS King George V with 7-inch UP Unrotated Projectile antiaircraft projectiles.

Royal Navy via Wikimedia Commons

The unrotated-projectile rocket launcher was an especially ill-conceived antiaircraft measure. Created to protect ships from enemy planes, the unrotated projectile was fired from a ship, and, upon reaching 1,000 feet in elevation, it would explode and disperse mines attached to parachutes via 400 feet of cable. 

The general idea was to create an aerial minefield wherein enemy planes would become ensnared in the mess of cables, pulling the mines into their fuselages and downing the plane. However, the mines, cables, and parachutes were all easily visible and enemy pilots had no trouble flying above or below the “aerial minefield”.

Here’s what the weapon looked like when launched:

The unrotated projectile firing and parachuting downward.

Youtube / This Is Genius

The undetonated mines would then be at the mercy of the wind, and they would often float back down toward the British ships that fired them.

“There are no records of UPs bringing down any aircraft. It’s entirely possible that this system injured or killed more Britons than enemies due to accidents, fires, etc,” according to a page dedicated to one of the battle cruisers that carried the weapon. 

2. Panjandrum

The Panjandrum, a rocket-propelled explosive cart, was one of the more curious weapons to have come out of World War II.

British Government/Wikimedia Commons

To find a way to breach the German’s concrete defenses in Normandy, the British military devised a large carriage-like contraption called the Panjandrum — a name from a nonsense term coined by an 18th-century British playwright, according to Merriam-Webster.

The device was propelled by rockets attached along the rim of the two wheels. In the middle, a drum would be filled with explosives. According to Wired, the hope was that the Panjandrum could speed toward a concrete wall and blow a hole big enough for a tank to pass through.

But during testing, the device repeatedly lost control and veered off its intended path. In one testing incident, generals had to flee for cover and a cameraman was nearly moved down, according to “Pigeon Guided Missiles: And 49 Other Ideas that Never Took Off,” a book co-authored by James Moore and Paul Nero.

Nikita Karatsupa, the Soviet Union’s most celebrated border guard, and his dog, Ingus, in 1936.

не указаны via Wikimedia Commons

3. Suicide bomb dogs

In 1942, Hitler’s Nazi infantry invaded Soviet Russia with German “Panzer” tanks.

The Russians, who had used military dogs since 1924, sought to turn their canine soldiers into antitank mines by strapping explosives around the dogs’ bodies.

During training, the dogs were starved and let loose on stationary Soviet tanks that had food hidden under them.

Once the dogs were underneath the tank they were trained to pull a detonator cord with their teeth. However, most dogs were unable to comprehend or execute the task while the sights, sounds, and smells of battle raged around them. 

The dogs would usually turn around and run toward their Russian handler, only to be shot and killed on sight.

4. Explosive rats

An explosive dummy rat that was sold at a Bonhams auction.

Courtesy Bonhams

Dogs were not the only unfortunate animal victims of experimental war weapons.

The Special Operations Executive branch of the British military also used dead rats that were filled with small explosives, according to Military History. The plan was to infest the German’s coal supply with the rats, which would then detonate once they were unknowingly shoveled into a broiler at a military base or of a steam engine.

The rats were not used as expected because the Germans discovered the device, but, according to The Guardian, they did cause some disruption. Records from the Special Operations Executive branch showed that the German’s discovery of the device prompted a massive search operation for more explosive rats, The Guardian reported.

5. The largest gun ever used in battle

Screen grab

Eager to invade France, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler demanded a new weapon that could easily pierce the concrete fortifications of the French Maginot Line — the only major physical barrier standing between him and the rest of Western Europe.

In 1941, the year after France fell, German steelmaker and arms manufacturer Friedrich Krupp A.G. began constructing Hitler’s Gustav gun, according to the documentary “Top Secret Weapons.”

The four-story, 155-foot-long gun, which weighed 1,350 tons, shot 10,000-pound shells from its mammoth 98-foot barrel. 

The gun’s size was not only its source of strength but also its downfall.

The huge gun could only be transported via the rail system and was an easy target for Allied bombers flying overhead. The project was scrapped within a year.

6. Dummy paratroopers

The back of the decoy dummy, “Rupert.”

Courtesy Air Force Museum of New Zealand

As part of the Normandy landings in June 1944, the UK’s Royal Air Force and Britain’s Special Air Service carried out a deception operation to mislead the Germans away from the actual drop zones of Allied troops.

To do so, about 400 stuffed burlap mannequins were released outside the drop zones in Normandy and north of France, according to the Air Force Museum of New Zealand.

These figures, codenamed “Rupert,” were under half a meter tall, contained small explosives to destroy the dummy, and were attached with a noisemaker that mimicked the sound of a firing rile, according to the museum.

Actual British soldiers who were dropped with the dummies were told to allow some German troops to escape so that they could report the sightings of a massive drop of paratroopers.

The operation, codenamed “Titanic,” appeared to be a success as German records revealed that troops were directed to the area of the dummy drop, according to the New Zealand museum.

The US also had its own version of a dummy paratrooper, which can be seen in this declassified video:

 

7. V-3 cannon

The extremely long German V-3 cannon.

Bundesarchiv, Bild via Wikimedia Commons

The V-3 was the unnecessary younger sibling of the V-1 and V-2 rockets that pulverized London during the Blitzkrieg. 

Devised in the summer of 1944, the V-3 was designed to fire 300 nine-foot-long dart-shaped shells every hour. A series of secondary charges positioned along the 416-foot barrel was meant to speed up the projectile, which would hypothetically be able to reach London from well over 100 miles away in the French town of Mimoyecques. But when the V-3 finally became operational, the velocity of the shell was a mere 3,280 feet per second, which was estimated to be about half what was needed to reach London.

Hitler had authorized the production of 50 of these weapons, but before the original plans for the V-3 could be implemented, Allied forces bombed and destroyed the gun, despite Germany’s best efforts to hide the munitions under haystacks.

youtube

In the end, only two miniature (if you can call 150-feet long miniature) versions of the gun became operational, with only a few shots ever fired to an unknown effect.

8. The Krummlauf curved barrel

 

To solve the conundrum of shooting a rifle while taking cover, the Germans created a curved barrel attachment that would allow soldiers to shoot their weapons around corners.

The device was called Krummlauf and gave a soldier the ability to shoot a weapon from within a tank, according to the Imperial War Museums.

But the attachment turned out to be highly impractical. The bullets often shattered in half before exiting the barrel and the attachment itself became distorted from the immense pressure after a few hundred rounds.

9. A mini “tank-like” remote-controlled demolition vehicle

Wikipedia

The Nazis’ Goliath tracked mine was anything but Goliath-like in stature. Known as the “Doodlebug” by American troops, the Goliath was run with a joystick operated by a controller. It had coiled within its compartments 2,145 feet of cable leading back to the controller. The mini-tank was powered by two electric motors, later replaced by gas burners, and able to carry more than 100 pounds of high explosives.

The Goliath was meant to slide under Allied tanks and deliver its explosive payload to their vulnerable undersides. However, it proved to be susceptible to cord-cutting, and later on, radio-controlled models were introduced. The Germans built 7,500 Goliaths during the war, which suggests that they met with some success. 

However, the real success of the Goliath was that it paved the way for radio-controlled weapons, which in our modern age are becoming the new mode of warfare.

10. The “Fugo” balloon bomb

A Japanese balloon flying over North America.

Toronto Star Archives/Toronto Star via Getty Images

In November 1944, Japan released thousands of paper balloon bombs made out of the bark of the mulberry tree.

The balloons were “33 feet in diameter and could lift approximately 1,000 pounds,” according to J. David Rodgers, a Missouri University of Science and Technology professor.

“But the deadly portion of their cargo was a 33-lb anti-personnel fragmentation bomb, attached to a 64-foot long fuse that was intended to burn for 82 minutes before detonating,” he wrote.

The bombs were released into the Pacific jet stream, which would silently carry the large devices from Japan to the US without a pilot. The trip would take several days, NPR reported.

Despite releasing thousands of these devices, the balloon bomb turned out to be ineffective, not to mention resource intensive. It took 30 minutes to an hour to prepare one balloon and required about 30 men to do so, according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

During the war, there were only six reported casualties from the balloons, Rodgers wrote — a minister’s wife and five Sunday school students on a fishing trip who encountered one of the balloons near Bly, Oregon. Only a few hundred balloon bombs have been found.

Amanda Macias contributed to this report.

Kids who live in Death Valley, California, enjoy the playground in the Cow Creek residential area.

Courtesy of Crystal Taylor

• With average daytime temperatures of nearly 120 degrees in August, Death Valley is one of the hottest regions in the world.
• More than 300 people call the area home, most of them employees of the National Park Service and local hotels. 
• Two residents told Business Insider what it’s like to live in such extreme temperatures.

Death Valley reached a scorching 130 degrees on an August 2020 afternoon. That’s 54 degrees Celsius, or roughly the internal temperature of a steak. By September 2022, Death Valley shattered the world record for the hottest temperature recorded in the month of September, hitting 126 degrees.

Record-setting or not, most days in July and August feel like you’re walking into an oven, said Brandi Stewart, a year-round Furnace Creek station resident and the public information officer for Death Valley National Park.

“It’s pretty oppressive,” Stewart said. “You go outside and you just immediately feel it, you feel it on your skin. It’s dry; you don’t feel yourself sweat because it evaporates so quickly.”

Death Valley’s 300 to 400 year-round residents experience highs of 110 to 125 degrees Fahrenheit throughout August. At night, temperatures dip into the low 90s. Yet despite the scorching heat, residents manage to work, socialize, and even exercise outside. 

Stewart and Patrick Taylor, chief of interpretation and education for Death Valley National Park, told Business Insider what it’s like to live in one of the hottest places on Earth.

It takes time to get used to the heat 

Taylor’s first summer in Death Valley was “pretty hard,” he said.

When a body isn’t adjusted to extreme heat, high temperatures can overwhelm it quickly, causing profuse sweating and exhaustion before worse outcomes like heat stroke. Most human bodies adapt after a few weeks, though, primarily by sweating more, reducing core temperatures, and altering blood vessels to increase blood flow to the skin.

Taylor estimates that it took him — and most others — about a year to adjust fully to Furnace Creek’s highs. He has now spent a total of seven years there.

“I don’t know if anyone actually enjoys it when it’s 125, but it’s not as intimidating,” he said.

Plus, Stewart said, Death Valley’s heat is dry, which means sweat evaporates quickly and cools the body more efficiently.

She knew she’d gotten accustomed to the heat, she said, after she started bundling up on 80-degree days.

“I’ve been on the phone with people today and yesterday, and they’ll say, ‘It’s 80 degrees outside and I’m wearing shorts and a T shirt,'” she said. But in that climate, Stewart added, “I’m probably wearing pants and a long sleeved shirt.”

Children host a bake sale at the Cow Creek complex.

Courtesy of Crystal Taylor

In the winter in Death Valley, highs hover in the 60s, while temperatures drop to the high 30s at night.

The Death Valley community stays close

Cow Creek, Timbisha Shoshone Village, and Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley’s three main year-round communities, are remote: The nearest town is an hour’s drive. Some local kids take the hour-long bus ride to school, though Taylor and his wife homeschool their five daughters.

The Cow Creek complex has about 80 housing units, most of which are within walking distance of one another, Taylor said. There’s a shared gym, playground, and county library. Most of the homes have two types of air conditioning: Ordinary A/C units and “swamp” or evaporative coolers, which take in dry, hot air and filter it through wet pads to cool it down.

But not all residents use both systems — or any cooling system at all.

“Some employees never ever use air conditioning,” Taylor said. “If it gets to 95 in the house, it gets to 95.”

He said they forgo air conditioning mostly to save money on utilities. 

Most residents’ family members don’t like visiting in the summer, Taylor added, so year-rounders spend a lot of time together.

This branch of the National Park Service “tends to attract really motivated employees that wanna work hard and don’t run off when things are challenging,” he said.

The approximately 150 National Park Service employees in the area have set up community groups — “there’s a book club, a crafting club, people who like to go out running,” Taylor said.

Yes, Death Valley residents go running. Outside. Even in July.

“We’d never, ever tell a visitor to go running in Death Valley in the summer,” Taylor said. “But if you run every day and your body is used to running at 119 degrees, then 120 isn’t much of a difference.”

Residents take extra precautions when going outside

Brandi Stewart, a resident of Death Valley National Park, bakes cookies on her car’s windshield.

Brandi Stewart

In the summer, Death Valley’s heat makes even simple activities dangerous. 

Taylor and his family never leave the house without a backup satellite phone, just in case they lose cell reception.

Stewart doesn’t drive to the grocery store without her boyfriend and a huge jug of water; she also inspects her car constantly to avoid the possibility that it breaks down, stranding her in a remote area.

“The biggest fear I have is getting a flat tire and having my vehicle malfunction,” she said. 

Taylor and Stewart both said they tell visitors to the park that they must take similar precautions. 

“A concern we have right now [is] that the attention we have to our heat records will bring more people out,” Stewart said.

Climate change is making life in Death Valley even tougher

The coronavirus pandemic has made it harder for the small group of Death Valley residents to gather, but they’re staying in touch via technology like everyone else. 

“We’re all going through the same thing together; we’re all experiencing these high temperatures. It fosters this sense of community, that you’re going through this hard thing all together,” Stewart said. 

They’re also facing another enormous threat: climate change.

In Death Valley, six of the 10 hottest months on record have occurred in the last 20 years. In July 2018, the area set a world record for hottest month ever recorded, with average temperatures of 108.1 degrees Fahrenheit — breaking its previous record of 107.4 degrees the year before.  

Taylor said the temperature changes have made it harder to connect with fellow residents.

“When we look at our trends over the last decade or so, [Sunday] aside, it doesn’t seem like generally the daytime highs are noticeably higher than they’ve been historically. The big trend is the overnight lows,” he said.

Ten years ago, Death Valley’s average low temperature in August was 86 degrees, according to NOAA. Last year, it was 90. In the same time frame, average low temperatures in September have increased from 74 to 80.

“We used to go out and play at night, and now we can’t go out and socialize as much as we used to,” Taylor said. “Maybe before, we’d have a barbecue; now it’s too hot to do that four months out of the year instead of one month.”

A car in San Francisco drives through highway amid flash floods on New Year’s Eve

Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

• A major highway was shut down in the Bay Area on New Years Eve after heavy rains led to flooding. 
• Meanwhile, the Midwest and Plains region is under a winter weather watch as storm moves east. 
• This is the 2nd major weather event since Christmas, when Winter Storm Elliot tore through the US. 

Extreme weather is halting plans for many Americans again this holiday season. 

A week after a blizzard tore through much of the US over Christmas weekend, a storm that paralyzed much of  Northern California starting Saturday is moving east, putting over 15 million in California, the Midwest and the Plains region under a winter weather watch. 

Since Saturday morning, about six miles of Interstate 580 in the Bay Area near Oakland has remained closed due to flooding, the San Francisco Gate reports.  Nearby, officials are pumping water to clear another Bay Area highway, Niles Canyon Road, after rain triggered a landslide on New Year’s Eve, according to ABC.

Several other highways along the coast also have been shut down since then, and over 100,000 residents have lost power since Saturday in the Sacramento region, per local station CapRadio.  In Lake Tahoe, thousands more did not have power on New Year’s Eve and cars spun out on some roads during the snowstorm, prompting more closures. Millions were asked to evacuate or shelter in place in the region.

As the storm moves east, meteorologists predict places like the Rockies will get up to two feet of snow by Monday, and that parts of the Midwest and Great Plains also will be hit, according to CNN. 

The storm is the result of an “atmospheric river,” or long clouds holding massive amounts of water vapor “equivalent to the average flow of water at the mouth of the Mississippi River,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Another one is expected in the Bay Area on January 2,  the San Francisco Gate reported. 

Extreme weather like this defined 2022 worldwide: There was drought in Europe and Africa; flooding in south Asia; wildfires and heatwaves in Europe. In the US in September Hurricane Ian ripped through the western coast of Florida. 

Experts predict more in 2023, as climate change worsens, and a Pacific Ocean weather pattern called La Niña makes parts of the northern US colder and wetter, and parts of the southern US hotter and dryer. 

An illustration of a nuclear bomb exploding in a city.

Shutterstock

• A nuclear attack on US soil would most likely target one of six cities: New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Washington, DC.
• But a public-health expert says any of those cities would struggle to provide emergency services to the wounded.
• The cities also no longer have designated fallout shelters to protect people from radiation.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

The chance that a nuclear bomb would strike a US city is slim, but nuclear experts say it’s not out of the question.

A nuclear attack in a large metropolitan area is one of the 15 disaster scenarios for which the US Federal Emergency Management Agency has an emergency strategy. The agency’s plan involves deploying first responders, providing immediate shelter for evacuees, and decontaminating victims who have been exposed to radiation.

For everyday citizens, FEMA has some simple advice: Get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned.

But according to Irwin Redlener, a public-health expert at Columbia University who specializes in disaster preparedness, these federal guidelines aren’t enough to prepare a city for a nuclear attack.

“There isn’t a single jurisdiction in America that has anything approaching an adequate plan to deal with a nuclear detonation,” he said.

That includes the six urban areas that Redlener thinks are the most likely targets of a nuclear attack: New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. These cities are not only some of the largest and densest in the country, but home to critical infrastructure (like energy plants, financial hubs, government facilities, and wireless transmission systems) that are vital to US security.

Each city has an emergency-management website that informs citizens about what to do in a crisis, but most of those sites (except for LA and New York) don’t directly mention a nuclear attack. That makes it difficult for residents to learn how to protect themselves if a bomb were to hit one of those cities.

“It would not be the end of life as we know it,” Redlener said of that scenario. “It would just be a horrific, catastrophic disaster with many, many unknown and cascading consequences.”

Cities might struggle to provide emergency services after a nuclear strike

Nuclear bombs can produce clouds of dust and sand-like radioactive particles that disperse into the atmosphere — what’s referred to as nuclear fallout. Exposure to this fallout can result in radiation poisoning, which can damage the body’s cells and prove fatal.

The debris takes at least 15 minutes to reach ground level after an explosion, so a person’s response during that period could be a matter of life and death. People can protect themselves from fallout by immediately seeking refuge in the center or basement of a brick steel or concrete building — preferably one without windows.

“A little bit of information can save a lot of lives,” Brooke Buddemeier, a health physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, told Business Insider. Buddemeier advises emergency managers about how to protect populations from nuclear attacks.

“If we can just get people inside, we can significantly reduce their exposure,” he said.

The most important scenario to prepare for, according to Redlener, isn’t all-out nuclear war, but a single nuclear explosion such as a missile launch from North Korea. Right now, he said, North Korean missiles are capable of reaching Alaska or Hawaii, but they could soon be able to reach cities along the West Coast.

Another source of an attack could be a nuclear device that was built, purchased, or stolen by a terrorist organization. All six cities Redlener identified are listed as “Tier 1” areas by the US Department of Homeland Security, meaning they’re considered places where a terrorist attack would yield the most devastation.

“There is no safe city,” Redlener said. “In New York City, the detonation of a Hiroshima-sized bomb, or even one a little smaller, could have anywhere between 50,000 to 100,000 fatalities — depending on the time of day and where the action struck — and hundreds of thousands of people injured.”

An estimate of the damage from a 15-kiloton blast in New York City. Thermal radiation can result in third-degree burns, while an air blast could kill people and topple residential buildings.

Nukemap 2.65/Alex Wellerstein/Google Earth/Business Insider

Some estimates are even higher. Data from Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear-weapons historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology, indicates that a 15-kiloton explosion (like the one in Hiroshima) would result in more than 225,000 fatalities and 610,000 injuries in New York City.

Under those circumstances, not even the entire state of New York would have enough hospital beds to serve the wounded.

“New York state has 40,000 hospital beds, almost all of which are occupied all the time,” Redlener said.

He also expressed concern about what might happen to emergency responders who tried to help.

“Are we actually going to order National Guard troops or US soldiers to go into highly radioactive zones? Will we be getting bus drivers to go in and pick up people to take them to safety?” he said. “Every strategic or tactical response is fraught with inadequacies.”

Big cities don’t have designated fallout shelters

In 1961, around the height of the Cold War, the US launched the Community Fallout Shelter Program, which designated safe places to hide after a nuclear attack in cities across the country. Most shelters were on the upper floors of high-rise buildings, so they were meant to protect people only from radiation and not the blast itself.

Cities were responsible for stocking those shelters with food and sanitation and medical supplies paid for by the federal government. By the time funding for the program ran out in the 1970s, New York City had designated 18,000 fallout shelters to protect up to 11 million people.

A sign for a nuclear fallout shelter on a building in Brooklyn.

Brendan McDermid/Reuters

In 2017, New York City officials began removing the yellow signs that once marked these shelters to avoid the misconception that they were still active.

Redlener said there’s a reason the shelters no longer exist: Major cities like New York and San Francisco are in need of more affordable housing, making it difficult for city officials to justify reserving space for food and medical supplies.

“Can you imagine a public official keeping buildings intact for fallout shelters when the real-estate market is so tight?” Redlener said.

‘This is part of our 21st-century reality’

Redlener said many city authorities worry that even offering nuclear-explosion response plans might induce panic among residents.

“There’s fear among public officials that if they went out and publicly said, ‘This is what you need to know in the event of a nuclear attack,’ then many people would fear that the mayor knew something that the public did not,” he said.

But educating the public doesn’t have to be scary, Buddemeier said.

“The good news is that ‘Get inside, stay inside, stay tuned’ still works,” he said. “I kind of liken it to ‘Stop, drop, and roll.’ If your clothes catch on fire, that’s what you should do. It doesn’t make you afraid of fire, hopefully, but it does allow you the opportunity to take action to save your life.”

Both experts agreed that for a city to be prepared for a nuclear attack, it must acknowledge that such an attack is possible — even if the threat is remote.

“This is part of our 21st-century reality,” Redlener said. “I’ve apologized to my children and grandchildren for leaving the world in such a horrible mess, but it is what it is now.”

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Swiss banks just ain’t what they used to be.

Back in the day, you could stash your ill-gotten gains in their alpine vaults, tax-free, no questions asked. But before you jet off to Gstaad for a little white collar crime après-ski, be warned: Switzerland is now incredibly lame. Just ask Pierin Vincenz.

The 65-year-old former Swiss banking CEO was charged this year with a number of financial crimes he allegedly committed in cahoots with the awesomely-named Beat Stocker. Swiss authorities say Vincenz and Stocker made over $27 million by amassing shares in companies they then arranged to have sold to Raiffeisen, the bank Vincenz ran.

Seems like the sort of thing the Swiss financial system was built for, but alas! Cancel culture has prevailed where any number of warring nations have failed and gotten the once-neutral country to come down firmly on the side of snitches and feds. Swiss authorities are now combing through Vincenz’s expense accounts like a vengeful human resources director.

Unlike the chocolate-covered derelicts raking this captain of industry over the coals, we here at the Washington Free Beacon still believe in capitalism. So we take Vincenz at his word when he says there was a perfectly legitimate reason for each of these business expenses:

—$4,000 to a Hyatt in Zurich for damaging a hotel room during a “massive” fight with a stripper. Was he supposed to leave the room trashed?

—$750 for a Tinder date Vincenz claims was actually a job interview. Well, we found half our staff on JSwipe, so who are we to judge?

—$216,000 in strip club charges the financier claimed were necessary to meet potential clients. Yes, networking is important!

—$30,000 Vincenz spent chartering a private jet for a “cooking club” trip to Mallorca. Actually this may not pass the smell test. Wasn’t there a buffet at the strip club?

Vincenz defended his spending during his trial, telling the court, “I don’t have the feeling I have done anything criminal here.”

We agree. But, unfortunately for Vincenz, we don’t have jurisdiction in Switzerland, which in April sentenced him to four years in prison and ordered him to pay millions of dollars in fines and restitution.

It’s unclear if Switzerland will strip Vincenz of the “Banker of the Year” title it bestowed upon him in 2014. But in case they do, we’d like to give him something to make up for it. Congratulations, Herr Vincenz. You are now and forever a Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year.

The post 2022 Man of the Year: Pierin Vincenz appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.