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You want to try acting a whole show with your feet chained to the floor? Chris Genebach accomplishes it with flair as South Africas notorious Eugene de Kock, the apartheid-era Death Squad officer widely known as Prime Evil. The white de Kock wisecracks about a Hannibal Lecter vibe as he sits on the other side of a prison cell interrogation table from a black woman, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, but the 80-minute A Human Being Died That Night is anything but a psycho-thriller. Its an unflinching face-to-face dialogue about how people and countries become utterly unglued.

Nicholas Wrights script is based on the 2003 book by Gobodo-Madikizela, a research professor who worked with South Africas Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the 1990s. The theatrical challenge is to make compelling drama of interviews stuck in one room, but Logan Vaughns composed production for the Districts Mosaic Theater Company makes no bones about its source of electricity. Its de Kock. How did he show up for work each day ready to murder?

In Genebachs riveting performance, information gushes forth in torrents. Erica Chamblees diplomatic but dogged Gobodo-Madikizela presses de Kock for details: Who was targeted by the squads? What were the methods of torture and execution? The facts are harsh, and as Genebachs de Kock zips through the complicated incidents you begin to see him as a single, efficient piece of a vast, warped cultural-political machine.

[Athol Fugards Blood Knot, also now at Mosaic]

Yet hes weirdly personable, and this is where Vaughns production rises to the artistic level of its repertory mate this month at Mosaic, Joy Zinomans exemplary staging of Athol Fugards 1961 Blood Knot (like A Human Being, it is acted with rich South African pronunciations). Blood Knot watches brothers ripped apart by the social convention of race; Gobodo-Madikizelas project, on the other hand, examines whether forgiveness is possible under such extreme conditions as those South Africa suffered, which is why she sought out no less a monster than de Kock for her interviews. There is a moment when her hand grazes de Kocks on the table, and its a fleeting shocker. Chamblee and Genebach measure such rare displays expertly: the tone of Vaughns production is never remotely sensationalistic or sentimental.

Its clinical, and grippingly inquisitive. The show opens with slides projected behind the bars of Debra Booths constricted set (the design team is the same as for the similarly focused Blood Knot), and though Michael Giannittis lights subtly bump up and down as the interviews unspool, the dynamics are almost entirely in the hands of the actors.

Chamblee deftly keeps reframing the discussion as the empathetic, rigorous Gobodo-Madikizela, but naturally the bulk of the interest falls on de Kock. Chained in place and garbed in an orange prison jump suit, Genebach still finds plenty to work with in de Kocks grim tales, which he tells vividly but without undue embellishment. As Genebach plays de Kock quick mind, impulsive responses that seems guileless the man seems direct, frank, on the level. You wonder: Is he for real? Can you trust him?

The dialogue is loaded with grotesque incident, murky motivation and, eventually, sincere emotion. This would be wrecked by overplaying, yet the performance never stumbles. Simply from an acting point of view, this South Africa: Then & Now rep establishes a new high bar for Mosaic. And deep into the troupes second season, you can feel the dividends accumulating as this social-justice-oriented company finds lens after lens, from local to international, magnifying humanitys sharp sociopolitical divisions . . . and maybe, as the persistent Gobodo-Madikizela hopes, somehow softening even unforgivable crimes and the failures that seem most profoundly irresolvable.

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The Posts report on de Kocks 1996 testimony

A Human Being Died That Night, by Nicholas Wright, based on the book by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela. Directed by Logan Vaughn. With Jason B. McIntosh. Costumes, Brandee Mathies; composer, Mongezi Ntaka; sound design, David Lamont Wilson; projections, Patrick Lord. About 80 minutes. Through April30 at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St. NE. Tickets $40-$60. Call 202-399-7993 or visit mosaictheater.org.

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South African truth and reconciliation in 'A Human Being Died That Night' - Washington Post

A team of scientists on Mondaydocumentedwhat theyre describing as the first case of large-scale river reorganizationas a result of human-caused climate change.

They found that in mid-2016, the retreat of a very large glacier in Canadas Yukon territory led to the rerouting of its vast stream of meltwater from one river system to another cutting down flow to the Yukons largest lake, and channeling freshwater to the Pacific Ocean south of Alaska, rather than to the Bering Sea.

The researchers dubbed the reorganization an act of rapid river piracy, saying that such events had often occurred in the Earths geologic past, but never before, to their knowledge, as a sudden present-day event. They also calledit geologically instantaneous.

The river wasnt what we had seen a few years ago. It was a faded version of its former self, lead study author Daniel Shugar of the University of Washington at Tacoma said of the Slims River, which lost much of its flow because of the glacial change. It was barely flowing at all. Literally, every day, we could see the water level dropping, we could see sandbars popping out in the river.

The study was published in Nature Geoscience. Shugar conducted the study with researchers from six Canadian and U.S. universities.

The study found that the choking of the Slims River in turn deprived Kluane Lake, the largest body of water in the Yukon Territory. The lake level was at a record low in August, and two small communities that live on the lake may now have to adjust to the lower water levels.

The Kluane lake level dropped last year and is likely to continue dropping, Shugar said. If it drops enough that the lake level is below its other outlet, at the north end, it becomes what is called a closed basin. That will have changes to the chemistry, the structure of the lake, the biology.

The precipitating event for all of this happened in summer 2016, when meltwater fromthe retreating Kaskawulsh glacier burst through a channel of ice, suddenly draining a glacial lake that had fed Slims river and directing waters into a different river that ultimately heads south toward the Gulf of Alaska. Previously, these waters had ultimately fed into the vast Yukon river, which empties on Alaskas west coast.

The researchers found only a minuscule probability that the retreat of Kaskawulsh glacier which retracted by nearly half a milefrom 1956 to 2007 could have occurred in what they called a constant climate. They therefore inferred that the events in question could be attributed to human-caused climate change.

The beneficiary of the change, in hydrologic terms, is the Alsek River, known for its whitewater rafting. It saw far higher flows than normal as a consequence and empties eventually into the Gulf of Alaska, which should now be seeing a new infusion of freshwater.

Its important to underscore the scale of the changes this represents: The Kaskawulsh glacier is about three miles wide at its front, or toe. The river it used to fuel, the Slims River, had a floodplain a mile wide and a flow that ranged from .2 to .4 miles in width. The lake that it fed Kluane Lake is 45 miles long and more than 250 feetdeep in places. Now, all of this is changing.

These events have occurredin a relatively sparsely populated wilderness area, and so will not have ramifications for large human populations but they give a sense of just how dramatic and sudden climate-linked changes can be. Similarly, recently mountain glacier changes in the Bolivian Andes havecreated the riskof dangerous outburst floods that could imperil communities below them.

The current study represents a great example of a threshold response to warming over the last century-and-a-half, said Ken Tape, an Arctic ecologist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, who was not involved in the research. The glacier has been retreating gradually, but at a threshold encountered in summer 2016, the drainage abruptly changed in a matter of weeks and completely reorganized downstream ecosystems.

Tape cautioned that most glaciers, when they retreat, do not have downstream consequences as dramatic as in the case presented here. Flows increase or decrease commensurate with glacier mass balance, but rivers are not usually lost or gained in the process, and change is more gradual.

TheKaskawulsh glacier, at only 60 degrees north latitude, is in a relatively temperate region well below the Arctic circle, helping to make it particularly susceptible to climate change. The researchers provided measurements suggesting that just before the river reorganization, the glacier was experiencing quite warm temperatures for the springtime, which seems to have triggered a large burst of meltwater.

Shugar said that the researchers do not expect the glacier and the river system that depends on it to flip back rather, it has entered a new state.

We did some preliminary estimates of what it would take for the Slims River to be reestablished, he said, and it seems unlikely to occur in the current climate.

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For the first time on record, human-caused climate change has rerouted an entire river - Washington Post

WASHINGTON If Tom Ward had to die from his work, hed rather fall off a scaffold than endure the slow death his father did from the debilitating lung disease silicosis.

I would choose to go much quicker, he said, rather than to have my family watch me suffer.

Ward fears that other workers will face the same suffocating illness as his father, thanks to the regulatory rollback underway by the Trump administration.

Wards father spent several years working as a sandblaster in Michigan. It was most likely on that job that he breathed a lethal amount of crystalline silica, a carcinogenic dust that comes from sand and granite. Excessive silica has been ruining workers lungs for as long as rock and concrete have been cut. Frances Perkins, U.S. labor secretary under Franklin D. Roosevelt, spoke publicly of the dangers of silica back in the late 1930s.

After numerous efforts under other presidents failed, the Obama administration finally tightened the regulations covering silica last year, further restricting the amount of dust that employers can legally expose workers to. The tougher standards were 45 years in the making, the subject of in-depth scientific research and intense lobbying by business groups and safety experts. When the rules were finalized in March 2016, occupational health experts hailed themas a life-saving milestone.

But now the enforcement of the rules has been delayed and the rules themselves could be in jeopardy.

Last week, the Trump administration announced that it was pushing back the implementation of the new silica regulations. For now, the delay is just three months from late June to late September, since additional guidance is necessary due to the unique nature of the requirements, as the Labor Department put it. A spokeswoman said the agency wouldnt comment beyond that.

But to occupational health experts whove waited years for the tighter rules, the new delay casts a cloud of uncertainty over their future. The leading home-building trade group and other business lobbying groups have sued to halt the regulations, saying they are too costly for employers. Defending the silica rule would now be the responsibility of the Trump administration, which has eagerly dismantled one Obama-era regulation after another at the urging of corporations. (The rule could also be subject to an appropriations rider by the GOP-controlled Congress.)

While the administration has not signaled that it intends to reverse the silica rule, it has issued an executive order directing all agencies to review the regulations currently on their books, presumably for potential watering down or scrapping. Trumps own labor nominee, Alexander Acosta, cited that order during his confirmation hearing as one reason he would not yet commit to enforcing the silica rule if he becomes labor secretary.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) noted the huge public health implications at stake. You cant tell me whether or not, high on your list of priorities, would be to protect a rule that keeps people from being poisoned, she told Acosta.

The delay of the new silica regulations was not a surprise to Ward, given the Trump administrations promises to deregulate businesses in order to boost hiring. But it was nevertheless painful to see. Ward now leads training at the Michigan Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Union, a personal mission given that his father died at age 39 after an awful few years of suffering from silicosis.

Knowing it was 100 percent preventable is the part that really hurts, he said.

Silica has been called the silent killer. Its not visible to the naked eye particles can be one hundred times smaller than a grain of sand and the effects on the lungs are cumulative. But there are clear ways to curb exposureto silica, like wetting down rock thats being cut, installing ventilation or dust-collecting equipment on the worksite, and wearing respiratory equipment designed to filter out the dust.

When the proper precautions arent taken, the results can be debilitating. Railroad worker Leonard Serafin shared the story of his own battle with silicosis in a letter his family provided to The Huffington Post in 2012.

At the time, the Obama White House was sitting on the silica rule, and advocates worried that the reforms might not be finished before Obama left office. Serafin had worked as a trackman on a railroad for 32 years, laying out the crushed rock and gravel in which the tracks were laid. He said the work led to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and a litany of other lung maladies.

I never dreamed I would have to spend my retirement years in this debilitating manner, Serafin wrote. I find it difficult to attend social events such as concerts and plays with my family because of my chronic cough. Even coughing while standing at a cash register line at a retail store causes people to distance themselves from me. ... When I exert myself, my daily coughing becomes a spastic type of cough, which leaves me exhausted, breathless with chest pain.

Although U.S. regulators had been aware of silicas dangers for decades, it wasnt until 1971 that the federal government imposed legal limits on workers exposure to it: 100 micrograms per cubic meter for laborers in most industries, and 250 micrograms for those working in construction and shipyards. Many experts believed those limits were too meager, however. The caps werent lowered to the 50 micrograms recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until Obamas presidency.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has estimated that the new rules would cut down silica exposure for roughly 2.3 million workers, preventing an estimated 600 deaths annually. Extrapolating on that data, the AFL-CIO labor federation says even the three-month delay in enforcement will lead to an additional 160 worker deaths.

David Michaels, the head of OSHA under Obama, called the reform the most important health standard OSHA has issued in decades.

But in the eyes of the construction industry, its one of the most expensive. OSHA says that instituting the new controls would cost businesses an estimated $511 million annually. Meanwhile, industry lobbies say the real cost to them would be in the billions each year most of it due to additional equipment and labor.

While praising the Trump administrations decision, a consortium of construction industry trade groups urged Trump to extend the delay well beyond the original three months, saying it remains concerned about the overall feasibility of the standard in construction and has requested that the agency delay enforcement for a year.

Supporters of the rule note that those upfront costs dont take into account the long-term financial benefits to workers and society. Preventing disability and death saves money, after all.

OSHA estimated that the reforms would have a net benefit of $7.7 billion each year, largely due to savings on health care and lost productivity. The Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, calls the silica rule a case study in how seemingly expensive safety regulations can have economic benefits over the long term.

Ward thought the debate over the rules financial costs had finally been put to rest. For years, he heard dollars and cents being weighed against lives lost or saved. Now that hes hearing it again, hes worried about the bricklayers who will come up after him.

The rule really was to prevent future illnesses, said Ward. It may be too late for me and my generation. This is about the future generation of craft workers.

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The Human Cost Of Trump's Rollback On Regulations | The ... - Huffington Post