Hidden Purpose of Covid mRNA Injections

 The Hidden Purpose of the mRNA Injections and the Covid Technocracy Agenda

Stefan Becker

Oct 10, 2026

I deem it important to know which ingredients can be found in the mRNA injections that have been given to billions of people.

It should be of concern that no official analyses of the ingredients of the Covid vaccines have been made anywhere in the world. As pharmaceuticals of any kind are in general very strictly regulated and monitored by official institutions, the content and composition of these injections should have become known very soon after the vaccine rollout. But this did not happen. Why? Because, once the public would know what exactly is in the vaccines, they would become very concerned. To prevent this, the actual ingredients have never been disclosed.

mRNA Vaccine Analysis Argentina

A group of scientists in Argentina performed a sophisticated chemical analysis of AstraZeneca, CanSino, Moderna, Biontech/Pfizer, and Sputnik V vaccines, using advanced Precise ICP-MS methods.

The full report on the results of their study can be found here:

https://mail.ijvtpr.com/index.php/IJVTPR/article/view/111/361

Instead of finding the chemical elements declared by the manufacturers, the study found 55 undeclared and often severely toxic chemical elements.

This would normally not be possible, as the guidelines according to which pharmaceutical products are being manufactured (GMP) ensure that each produced batch will only receive clearing for use when it contains exactly the specified ingredients of the formula initially authorized by the respective authorities.

What Was Found in the mRNA Vaccines?

The following chemical elements have been found in the various mRNA vaccines:

Sodium, Chromium, Boron, Gallium, Arsenic, Strontium, Cerium, Vanadium, Palladium, Barium, Magnesium, Rubidium, Aluminium, Nickel, Potassium, Hafnium, Phosphorus, Cobalt, Copper, Niobium, Calcium, Tin, Gold, Lithium, Titanium, Selenium, Molybdenum, Lanthanum, Gadolinium, Zinc, Terbium, Erbium, Thorium, Iron, Thallium, Uranium, Manganese, Yttrium, Ruthenium, Cadmium, Praseodymium, Neodymium, Europium, Dysprosium, Holmium, Ytterbium, Tungsten, Platinum, Lead, Antimony, Samarium, Zirconium, Rhodium, Silver, Tellurium, Mercury, Bismuth.

Since the researchers also referred to ICP-MS analytical methods, in the end 57 undeclared substances were found in the vaccines.

The above list of substances contains all the elements found within the various analyzed products. Please refer to the full report to learn which vaccine contained which elements. Not all elements were found in each vaccine. The greatest number of undeclared substances were found in the products from Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, and Moderna.

It’s no wonder that so many side effects have been observed in those people who were treated with these injections. There are numerous highly toxic and dangerous elements (including many heavy metals) contained in the preparations that should never be injected into a human body.

On the other hand, it can safely be assumed that none of these elements ended up in the vaccines by accident. They are there for a reason.

What are the mRNA vaccines Meant to Accomplish?

When considering what actually is in the vaccines compared to what is officially claimed to be in the vaccines, it becomes apparent that these injections were never meant to protect against infections with respiratory diseases.

It is of concern that within the tested samples, 12 of the 15 lanthanides of the periodic table of chemical elements were found. These elements have magnetic and luminescent properties, and their safety for use in the human body has not been demonstrated yet. These elements are considered highly cytotoxic (can cause damage or death to living cells).

The Argentinian researchers came to the conclusion that the mRNA vaccines were being used as a worldwide nanotechnological experimentation. At least it could be proven that most of the elements needed for self-assembling nanotechnology could be isolated in the vaccine samples.

Changing the Composition of Vaccine Contents

Another surprising find of the study was that the content of the vaccine vials changed with time. The researchers tested the sample vaccines multiple times during their study. Despite ensuring well mixed homogenous solutions when drawing solutions for testing, the chemical elements that were found in the samples changed with each new analysis. The researchers assumed that this was due to the assembling processes that occurred during the time until the next analysis happened.

In the report, it says on page 20, section 4.3:

“In addition to the analysis of the composition, researchers from different parts of the world have been carrying out studies on samples of COVID-19 vaccines and observing the phenomenon of self-assembly of nano and microparticles of orthogonal morphology (Delgado, 2022; Nixon, 2023; Lee and Broudy, 2024a; Zelada, 2024)”

In this video it is shown, how this self-assembly takes place:

https://rumble.com/v2y5lfu-evidence-of-crimes-against-humanity-darkfield-blood-microscopy.html

Conclusions

While mainstream news and politics still hold up the narrative of a severe pandemic during 2020 and 2021, the chemical analysis of the so-called Covid vaccines reveals that they were not intended to protect their recipients from respiratory infections.

It seems obvious that the alleged pandemic provided the excuse to inject most of humanity with self-assembling nano technology. Psychological warfare techniques were being rolled out in rapid time to achieve broad acceptance throughout the population regarding untested and experimental medical treatments. Within less than a year, people all over the world and from all walks of life were accepting these treatments without resistance.

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I presume that our mobile devices are capable to connect with the injected nano technology that has meanwhile self-assembled into artificial neural networks both throughout the human body and inside the human brain.

We may also wonder whether the expedited roll out of 5G technology parallel to the alleged pandemic was meant to connect the injected technology with central IT-servers. In addition, shortly before the staging of the pandemic, the positioning of meanwhile 10,000 Starlink satellites in space happened.

What Are We in For?

When considering how well-coordinated this agenda has been executed throughout the whole world, the only conclusion can be that all local authorities on Earth report to a central authority. This central authority must have comprehensively created the necessary preconditions for such an undertaking.

It can also safely be assumed that no benign and sympathetic considerations are behind all the occurrences during the alleged pandemic.

It has thus become apparent that justice cannot be achieved within governance structures on Earth.

The Many Forms of Dehumanization

The issue of what actually is contained within the mRNA injections has not received much attention, even among those who have seen through the false Covid narrative. The main focus has been mostly on the effects the spike proteins have on the body, the much higher death rates from the injections, the biological effects on heart and brain, as well as the enormous rise of severe illnesses.

Contrary to usual good manufacturing practices (GMP) mandated in the pharmaceutical industry, there was no batch-consistency to be found with the mRNA injections. This led many critics to think that those who did not succumb to the many severe side effects of the injections should consider themselves lucky.

This is a situation that makes us aware of how multi-layered the assault upon humanity is, perpetrated by the powers that direct our fate.

It can be deduced that some of those treated with the Covid vaccines have been genetically altered. With most of the injected people, their hippocampus and amygdala have been harmed and they lost some of their functionality. However, probably all who got vaccinated have received self-assembling nanosized network components. Considering the technical capabilities of todays cell phones, Wi-Fi routers, smart TVs and appliances, as well as the 5G transmitters, there are many ways to pick up signals from those internal nano networks. It must be assumed that signals and instructions can be submitted to the internal nano servers as well.

Enforced Brain Wipe

Besides these rather technical or biological approaches and assaults against our humanness, there has been at least one major psychological assault as well.

The enactment of the alleged pandemic included a multi-leveled psychological assault on the mental integrity of the human mind and psyche. The constant presentation of ever changing and increasing threats by the ‘virus’ as well as the perpetually and without rhyme or reason enforced restrictions put our minds into a continuous panic mode. Our whole way of living was being devastated and dismantled.

When confronted with such an onslaught of frightening and unprecedented threats, the hippocampus in the human brain reacts with the wipe-out of some fundamental memories. These memories are erased and replaced with the newly made experiences.

This was an intended and desired effect of the specific measures taken against the populace during the alleged pandemic.

What Will Come Next?

The approach described above has been applied to a lesser, albeit efficient, degree even before the Covid years. The event of 9/11, various other staged terrorist attacks, chemtrails, the application of glyphosate, the alleged threats caused by climate change, and many more narratives have been continuously rolled out to unground and deform human consciousness and authentic self-perception.

Humanity has been primed a long time in advance for what happened during the Covid years.

Meanwhile, an unquestioning obedience of authority has been achieved in over eighty percent of humanity. Those who still have differing ideas or understandings, those who question the official stance regarding certain topics, will be reined in by new legislation limiting freedom of expression and speech.

This situation did not come about unintentionally or by accident. Everything that took place during the past 200 years has happened to prepare us for what is to come.

Naturally, every precaution has been taken to ensure that we as humanity will be unable to fathom the scope and consequences of what the powers that direct our fate have in mind with us. Therefore, no promising attempt is being made to prevent the intended overall agenda from being enacted.

Considering the scope of what is enacted and staged, and assessing the rapid roll-out of a transhumanist agenda and what is being done to our humanness and sovereignty, it can be concluded that something significant will soon be taken from us. Something that we ourselves haven’t been aware of and will soon no longer be able to become aware of.

Even if we cannot name, define, access, touch, or consciously make use of what is meant to be extracted from us, we should be able to realize how precious that mysterious treasure within us must be. Just look at the scope of what has been done to us throughout the past couple of centuries. It rendered us utterly helpless and completely dependent upon outside systems. Yet, we offer no meaningful resistance against our suppression and for the most part only engage in pursuits that the earthly controller beings ‘allow’ us or impose on us. And all this is leading to a moment in time when we will have lost any understanding of what exactly we are going to surrender irrevocably.

„Covid 19“, Psychological Operations, and the War for Technocracy

I’d like to draw your attention to the book ‘„Covid 19“, Psychological Operations and the War for Technocracy’ by David A. Hughes which you can download for free here:

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-41850-1

It is completely incomprehensible to me how people can just blank out what is being done to them, to their loved ones, and to humanity at large.

What I can understand though is that once you have faced the truth about the Covid narrative and why it has been enacted and staged the way it was, there is no turning back to any form of conventional life under the current systems.

Here I would like to provide you with a brief summary of the Covid 19 war against humanity as presented by David A. Hughes in his above-mentioned book.

Covid 19 represents an omniwar operation against humanity waged throughout every domain of our lives, e.g. financial control, biosecurity, Agentic AI, cognitive warfare, digital surveillance, environmental control, food systems, and reproduction control. Covid 19 is the largest psychological warfare operation in history. A main objective of this warfare was to ‘depattern’ the human mind and to reprogram behavior.

This war was enacted by ways of applying shock and stress techniques to entire societies. The so-called ‘lockdowns’ in 2020 were a shock-and-awe operation, and other techniques associated with ‘depatterning’ the mind were additionally deployed, including disruption of behavioral patterns, isolation, and defamiliarization.

We were subjected to psychological torture techniques including the inculcation of chronic stress and the mandatory wearing of face masks (originally deployed against inmates at Guantánamo Bay). The public was traumatised by fear of death from the ‘virus’ and was made to feel responsible for the deaths of others. A trauma bonding was instigated, intended to last decades and to bind an infantilized population in loyalty and obedience to its ‘omnipotent’ masters.

The primary purpose of face masks and PCR tests was to spread fear. Waves of fear/terror were sent by terms like ‘new variants’, and ‘immunity escape’. The spurious concept of ‘long Covid’ projects the danger out into the future.

This form of menticide attacks the cognitive faculties of victims to break down their mental integrity and render them susceptible to indoctrination. During ‘Covid-19’, confusion was weaponised in various ways, including a proliferation of nonsensical and ever-changing ‘rules’, last-minute U-turns on key Government decisions, the unpredictability of restrictions easing or tightening, and a fundamental irrationality in Government behavior.

The public was gaslighted to think that anything but the ‘vaccines’ were to blame for injuries/deaths of young people. A Soviet-style abuse of psychiatry was used to pathologize dissent.

The ‘pandemic’ was a media-driven social phenomenon that served to deflect attention from far-reaching technocratic agendas being advanced across every area of life. The term ‘pandemic preparedness’ now provides cover for building the institutional architecture of global dictatorship under the pretext of public health.

The ‘vaccines’, which instead of protecting people have caused catastrophic harm, are likely bioweapons aimed at controlling the population in multiple ways. Yet, despite the ‘Covid-19’ narrative being saturated with deceit, most people cannot and will not see it, owing to cognitive dissonance.

Mass paranoia was inculcated through the lie that ‘anyone can spread it’. Guilt was weaponized to blame and shame those not following the ‘rules’ and not ‘protecting others’. Mask mandates segregated society. Dissenters were scapegoated. A new form of hate speech was introduced: ‘anti-maskers’, ‘anti-vaxxers’, etc.

The ‘vaccinated’ were turned on the ‘unvaccinated’ through mechanisms of blame, medicalized apartheid, incitement of hatred by the media, and lies that hospitals were filling up with ‘unvaccinated’ patients.

The ‘Covid-19 vaccines’, shot into as many people as possible for no sound medical reason, could form part of an advanced weapons system, not least in the context of the emergent “IT/Bio/Nano era” envisaged by NASA in 2001, involving the use of nano technologies to connect human beings to an external network.

The Fellowship of the Truth Seekers

Everything that has been done to us is meant to dissuade us from ever trying to find a way out of our predicament. As long as we accept our subjugation to the neediness of our physical existence, as long as we subjugate to the ageing and failing of our physical bodies, we will be prevented from undertaking any meaningful attempt at protecting and saving ourselves. We will always have to put first the pursuing of worldly endeavors that ensure our financial capability to care for ourselves until our physical body completely gives up.

Yet, very soon whatever assets we have amassed or strived to secure for the future will be taken away from us, as you can observe when looking around the world. At any place which you might deem suitable to escape all that is coming, there is an allegiance to the agenda 2030. Almost everywhere preparations for smart cities are being made.

Look at how you presently manage your financial funds and assets. You use the same devices that already track all your movements, communications, and transactions of any kind.

None of us by themselves will be able to escape the Matrix we have been trapped in. Not in life and even less so in death.

Only by venturing beyond our current way of life and by getting together as a group do we stand a chance.

The truth about Nicolas Flamel and the philosophers' stone

 'The legend is so strong': The truth about Nicolas Flamel and the philosophers' stone

Sophie Hardach

 

An artist's impression of Nicolas Flamel from 1754 (Credit: Getty Images)

The myth of Nicolas and Pernelle Flamel, medieval Parisians said to have made gold with a 'philosopher's stone', sparked a centuries-long obsession. Now a new examination of Flamel's centuries-old will has shed a light on how the legend emerged.

For 600 years, writers, artists and scientists have been fascinated by the legend of Nicolas and Pernelle Flamel: a medieval Parisian couple who were said to have created the mythical philosophers' stone, a mysterious substance that supposedly turned ordinary metals into gold.

Flamel, a real person who was born in the 1330s and died in 1418, in fact never had anything to do with the practice of alchemy, the ancient, mystical tradition which aimed to create gold, cure all diseases and bring immortality.

Still, Flamel's mythical reputation as an alchemist inspired generations of scientists and writers including Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and JK Rowling, who mentions Nicolas and Pernelle Flamel in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

This autumn, the will of Nicolas Flamel is on public display for the first time at a new exhibition at the Musée de Cluny in Paris. Stored in a Parisian hospital archive for centuries, the document sheds a new light on how he ended up being revered as an alchemist, says Maëlys Bitouzet, one of the curators of the exhibition. "They were documents that had never been studied," until the museum evaluated them in 2024, says Bitouzet.

The quest to uncover why Flamel became known as an alchemist also sheds light on the enduring appeal of this ancient tradition, and its sometimes-overlooked place in the history of science.

The quest for the 'philosophers' stone'

The first alchemical writings appeared around 2,000 years ago in ancient Egypt. Through copies and translations, they spread to Europe in the 12th Century with the Islamic Conquest. The word "alchemy" is thought to be an Arabic-Greek hybrid, with an unclear meaning – it could refer to melting or to Egypt. Alchemy used routes which we now know are not scientifically viable, though some of the elusive aims have since been achieved in very fleeting, experimental set-ups.

Throughout its history, alchemists wrote about their efforts to create an enigmatic, powerful stone.

"The earliest reference to 'the stone of the philosophers' is in the 7th Century, in a Byzantine text," in the eastern Mediterranean, says Matteo Martelli, a professor in history of science at the University of Bologna in Italy and expert on ancient alchemical texts. "'The philosophers' were what alchemists called themselves."

 

A house built by Nicolas and Pernelle Flamel in 1407, in 51 rue de Montmorency, Paris (Credit: Romain Tach)

The concept of the stone appears even earlier, in a text dating from the 1st Century BC, where the author "refers to a stone that is not a stone", says Martelli. "There is this cryptic way of talking about this stone, which was later called the philosophers' stone," he adds, noting it wasn't literally a stone, but came in different forms such as a powder or liquid.

The stone was meant to turn other metals into gold or silver, not necessarily for personal gain, but as a way of perfecting nature, says Martelli. In medieval Europe, an additional belief grew that the stone would bring health benefits and even immortality.

This is where Flamel enters the history of alchemy.

A Parisian alchemist?

Traces of Flamel's real life are dotted around Paris, including his tombstone, which is a visitor magnet at the Musée de Cluny, France's National Museum of the Middle Ages. "In the [Harry Potter] book, Flamel is an alchemist, a sorcerer, so it's surprising to people that there's a real tombstone, and that Flamel was a real person," says Bitouzet.

In the late 15th Century, some 50-75 years after his death, an alchemical text known as Le Livre Flamel (The Flamel Book) was published in France – the first alchemical manuscript published under the name "Flamel". While it was actually by an anonymous author, not the real Nicolas Flamel, it became a huge success.

"[Le Livre Flamel] was very popular, it was re-copied, and then people really began to associate it with [the real] Nicolas Flamel," says Bitouzet. Over the centuries, other writings appeared under his name, sometimes including detailed real facts about Nicolas and Pernelle Flamel's life in Paris, such as where they had lived.

The first Livre Flamel, from the late 15th Century, describes a step-by-step alchemical procedure that results in a liquid, Bitouzet says. According to the book, immersing lead into this liquid transforms it into gold.

"It talks about the theory of alchemy, how one can help metals reach a purer state. And then it really gives you the practical recipe [for a philosophers' stone], as if Flamel is giving you little tips to make your philosophers' stone a success," says Bitouzet.

"Le Livre Flamel", an alchemical manuscript from the late 15th Century (Credit: Bibliothèque universitaire de Bologne)

Martelli, who has seen the original, 15th-Century Livre Flamel, notes that some of the procedures and ingredients are the same as those in the much older, Eastern manuscripts. In other words, while the attribution to Flamel was fake, the recipe did tap into genuine alchemical history.

So why did someone copy ancient alchemical instructions, then publish them under the name of a real, dead person? Flamel's will, and other documents and artefacts, have shed a new light on this mystery.

A real-estate empire

The last will and testament and related documents had been kept in the archive of the Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts in Paris, which specialises in eye disease and dates to 1260. Flamel was one of the hospital's benefactors and included it in his will. 

"They were documents that had never been studied," until the museum evaluated them in 2024, says Bitouzet.

A man who was rich, who was not aristocratic, but who had a high social standing – people found that strange – Maëlys Bitouzet

Other historical records and monuments already painted a picture of Flamel as a wealthy property owner who donated to churches and charities. But the newly studied documents show that his investments and impact were far bigger than had previously been assumed, says Bitouzet.

"He really had a real-estate empire," says Bitouzet. "Before [the discovery of the will and related documents], we vaguely knew that he owned a lot of real estate, but we didn't know exactly what he owned and where these houses were." 

Flamel was the creditor of hundreds of property owners in and around Paris, and himself owned around 10 houses, according to the documents, Bitouzet says. His will stipulated various charitable donations and shows him making detailed arrangements for joint Masses to be read for him and his wife after his death (Pernelle had died earlier than him). These Masses continued for centuries, until the eve of the French Revolution in 1789.

Nicolas Flamel's testament from 1416 (Credit: Archives nationales de France)

After Flamel's death, a legal battle over his inheritance put his wealth in the spotlight. This combination of fame, wealth and philanthropy could explain why people thought Flamel was an alchemist, Bitouzet says.

"A man who was rich, who was not aristocratic, but who had a high social standing – people found that strange," Bitouzet says. Alchemy – seen then as a way of doing God's work – could have explained his wealth, charitable donations and seemingly blessed life, she adds.

Fake author, real history

As early as the 1700s, some questioned whether Flamel was really the author of the texts in his name, but it didn't stop the interest in him. Real-life reminders of Flamel may have helped keep the legend alive. A house built by the Flamels in 1407 and offered as shelter to the poor stands in the Rue Montmorency to this day – it's one of the oldest houses in Paris.

Recreating a 'philosophers' stone'

Scientists today are trying to replicate ancient alchemical recipes to shed a light on their real chemical processes. In 2024, Martelli and others reproduced one for a philosophers' stone: based on eggs, it resulted in a powder.

Lucia Maini, a professor in chemistry at the University of Bologna who collaborated on the project, points out that eggs, which contain sulphur, can react with silver and give it a golden sheen – which could explain why alchemists thought they had found a way to make gold. "They were trying to understand nature by observation," says Maini, who sees alchemy as a precursor to chemistry.

Pernelle is also mentioned in the writings published under Flamel's name as a virtuous woman who worked with Nicolas, and who would have also been able to create a philosophers' stone if she had wanted to, says Bitouzet.  

Martelli points out that publishing texts under the names of famous people, a phenomenon called pseudo-epigraphy, was common from the earliest days of alchemy. "Pseudo-epigraphy is a feature of the alchemical tradition," he says. "So what happens with Flamel is a mechanism that we can see in many moments in the history of alchemy. It's just to make a text more authoritative, more legitimate." 

The broader quest to produce the philosophers' stone did lead to scientific breakthroughs. For example, phosphorus was first isolated in the 17th Century by a German alchemist trying to find the philosophers' stone. 

Today, though, the main reason Flamel continues to fascinate people is his immortal life in books and art, says Bitouzet. "The legend of Flamel is so strong that people don't want to give up on it, even when they know he wasn't an alchemist," she says.

South Korea's approach to solving food waste...

New York has a food waste problem. South Korea has already solved it

Soo Min Kim

(Credit: BBC Serenity Strull/Getty Images)

South Korea has cut household food waste going to landfill from 97% to almost nothing. New York City has started sending its scraps the same way.

On a Saturday afternoon in Yeouido, Seoul, South Korea, Seunghwan Hong collects the week's vegetable trimmings, leftover rice and fruit peel, and heads downstairs to the food waste disposal unit in his apartment complex. He taps his card on the scanner, the lid pops up, the weight of the scraps is displayed, and a charge is added to his household account.

The transaction takes less than a minute. But behind it lies one of the most ambitious waste management experiments in the world.

South Korea has gone further than any other country in committing to solve the problem of household food waste. Today, New York is taking its first steps toward replicating its success.

South Korea's 30-year waste transformation

Food waste is an almost universal problem in developed countries. In the US, a family of four wastes around $56 a week (£42) in discarded food. Globally, more than a billion tonnes of food is wasted each year, making up 10% of the world's climate-warming emissions.

South Korea's answer was sparked by a waste crisis driven by rapid urbanisation in the 20th Century. Landfill and sanitation issues abounded where food scraps were discarded with general waste.

Seunghwan Hong empties a week's worth of household food waste into an RFID-enabled bin at his apartment complex in Seoul (Credit: Yeni Kim)

The cumulative effect of the changes to the country's food waste management since the 1990s (see below) has been remarkable: South Korea's food waste recycling rate rose from just 2.6% in 1996 to nearly 97% in 2023.

How South Korea got to almost-zero food waste

In 1995, the South Korean government introduces a volume-based waste fee

In 1997, food waste separation is made mandatory

In 2005, the government bans food waste from landfill altogether

In 2010, a pilot programme introduces smart bins

In 2013, the government prohibits dumping food waste leachate (the liquid released from food scraps) into the ocean

One of the most visible changes to residents has been the smart bins, like the one Hong uses for his weekly scraps, enabled with RFID (radio-frequency identification) scanners. Government figures for 2025 show 151,934 smart bins in use across the country, serving over 8.61 million households.

"Seeing the weight and the cost of my food waste made me more aware of how much I am throwing away," says Hong.

Not only does this cut emissions from household food going to landfill, but these scraps can become a source of energy and reduce the need for fossil fuels.

What happens to South Korea's food waste

Hong's food scraps, and those of millions like him, are among those that reach an energy facility that turns the waste into power.

It's a more climate-friendly answer than landfill. When organic waste is buried in landfill, it breaks down without oxygen and releases methane, a greenhouse gas that has more than 80 times the heat-trapping potency of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. The waste also releases leachate – a dark, noxious liquid that can percolate through soil and contaminate groundwater.

When food waste is sent to a bioreactor, this methane can be collected and burned as fuel instead. Climate-warming carbon dioxide is produced as a result, but the potent methane is prevented from being released into the atmosphere.

The Daejeon Bio Energy Centre in central South Korea recycles 70-75% of what it receives into energy. It produces enough electricity to meet the daily needs of approximately 6,000 South Korean households, and there are more than 340 facilities like it across South Korea.

The Daejeon Bio Energy Centre processes both solid household food waste and food waste leachate collected from across Daejeon province (Credit: Daejeon Bio Energy Centre)

The energy produced from the plants reduces the need for fossil fuels. In 2024, the government aimed to displace fossil fuels valued at roughly 230 billion Korean won ($170m/£126m) by 2026.

Challenges remain. The cost of running the system is considerable. Despite household fees contributing to running costs, the government spends more than 600 billion Korean won ($430m/£319m) on managing municipal waste, including food waste.

"South Korea has made significant progress in food waste recycling, but we're now at a turning point, with new technologies and policies helping to take this progress even further," says Munsol Ju, a senior research fellow at the Korea Environment Institute.

New York's challenges: compliance and rats

New York City made food waste separation mandatory for residents in October 2024, citing South Korea as a model. Residents are required to separate food scraps into a designated bin or a labelled container with a secure lid, set out for curbside collection alongside recycling. The programme covers nearly 3.4 million households, making it the largest organics recovery effort in the United States. But compliance has been challenging, with many residents not consistently separating food waste.

Getting residents on board has been a considerable effort. The NYC Department of Sanitation carried out more than 60,000 conversations with residents in a recent door-to-door campaign across all five boroughs. Enforcement has been active too: the department has issued over 63,000 notices of violation to households failing to comply since the programme launched.

 

Smart Composting Bins are 24/7 drop-off sites where New Yorkers can bring food scraps and plant waste to be composted and reused (Credit: Getty Images)

In addition to the mandatory curbside composting programme, New York City has placed more than 400 smart composting bins across the five boroughs to make food composting more accessible. Unlike the designated bins collected weekly from homes, these solar-powered bins are accessible around the clock via mobile app and free to use.

"I love having these bins because it makes composting a lot more convenient," says Grace Fu, a resident of East Village, Manhattan.

The bins do come with practical challenges. "They have attracted so many rodents near our apartment that we had to move ours inside the building," Fu says. "More frequent clean-outs would help."

In 2025, New York City Department of Sanitation managed around 140,000 tonnes of the city's residential organic waste – roughly 9% of the approximately 1.5 million tonnes generated by households annually. That is a significant uptick on previous years, but still a long way off South Korea's 97%.

Once collected, household food waste is sent to one of two destinations, depending on the district: some goes to the Staten Island Compost Facility to become fertiliser, while the rest is co-digested with sewage sludge at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Resource Recovery Facility in Brooklyn to produce biogas and biosolids.

As about 70% of New Yorkers live in apartments, the South Korean approach has potential, says Steven Cohen, director of the Sustainability Management programme at Columbia Climate School.

"South Korea's RFID bins could make each resident directly accountable for their own organic waste," says Cohen. "In a circular economy, organic waste needs to be separated, recycled and reused as energy."

New York still has an extremely long way to go. "The problem is that most people in this city still don't separate their organic waste properly," Cohen says, adding better education on why food waste recycling matters would boost participation, as could incentives.

Back in Yeouido, Seoul, Hong picks up his empty food waste bin and heads back upstairs to his apartment. The screen on the disposal unit has already gone dark. It's a chore that has simply become a part of life.

"Food waste is a collective responsibility," Hong says.

Russia and China turn Arctic into working trade corridor

 🇷🇺🇨🇳 How Russia and China turn Arctic into working trade corridor

Russia and China are giving the Arctic route something it has long lacked - regular commercial traffic.

Chinese shipping companies are expanding operations along Russia’s Northern Sea Route, with at least six operators reportedly planning more than 50 voyages this season, mostly between Russian and Chinese ports.

🚢 Sea Legend is preparing a seasonal China-Europe container service with an advertised transit time of around 20 days, while New New Shipping has opened a route linking Tianjin with Murmansk.

Energy is part of the same picture. Russian LNG is increasingly moving through the route toward Chinese markets.

China heads north

Beijing’s Arctic interest is not new. Under its “Polar Silk Road” concept, China has long viewed northern shipping lanes as a possible extension of its trade network, while Chinese companies invested in projects such as Yamal LNG and Arctic LNG 2.

❌ For years, however, harsh conditions, high costs and limited traffic kept those ambitions modest.

That started to change after 2022, when Western companies pulled back from several Russian Arctic projects. Russia needed new buyers, capital and logistics partners; China wanted secure energy supplies and greater access to northern routes.

New Arctic landscape

👉 China is no longer simply buying Russian resources. Its shipping companies are gaining practical experience operating along the NSR, building knowledge of Arctic navigation, logistics and seasonal trade. At the same time, the route is beginning to support two-way trade: Chinese goods are moving north toward Russia while Russian raw materials travel in the opposite direction, gradually turning the Northern Sea Route into a more integrated trade corridor.

Disruptions around the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz have shown how quickly conflict can interfere with global energy and shipping flows, giving Russia and China another reason to develop alternative routes outside the most exposed regions.

While traffic along the Northern Sea Route remains small compared with established global routes, the direction of change is clear - Chinese and Russian economic interests are increasingly intertwined.

Smuggling V2 rocket out of Nazi-occupied Poland

'One of the Third Reich's most fearsome weapons': The daring mission to smuggle a V2 rocket out of Nazi-occupied Poland

Fiona Macdonald

Getty Images

In 1977, the BBC looked back at the summer of 1944, when Allied agents spirited away pieces of Hitler's "wonder weapon" – by hiding them in the apartment of a German officer.

On 6 August 1944, the Soviet Union's Red Army reached the village of Blizna, northwest of Rzeszów in Poland, liberating it from Nazi occupation. A remote rural settlement surrounded by agricultural fields and dense pine forest, it might have seemed to be of little military significance. Yet deep craters on the woodland floor, metal debris and fake farmhouses hinted at its secret purpose. 

Before the Nazis had retreated a few days before, Blizna had been the test launch site for a new weapon, one that Adolf Hitler hoped would turn the tide of the war against the Western Allies. Known by the Germans as the Vergeltungswaffe (Vengeance Weapon) 2, the V2 rocket was the world's first modern ballistic weapon. Designed by the engineer Wernher von Braun, with a range of approximately 170 miles (280km) and a warhead weighing one tonne, the rocket's supersonic speed and high flight altitude made it a "wonder weapon", capable of exploding without warning in the cities it targeted.

But in the summer of 1944, parts of the V2 were smuggled from Poland to Britain in one of World War Two's most audacious covert missions.

The Nazis began developing the V2 in 1936. However, British intelligence hadn't been aware of the rocket's existence until early 1943, as experts told the BBC in the 1977 documentary The Secret War. "There'd been a little information before 1939 that the Germans might be developing long-range rockets," said Dr RV Jones, the Chief of Scientific Air Intelligence. "Then we heard nothing more until December 1942, when a new agent, who turned out to be a Danish chemical engineer, told us he'd overheard a conversation in Berlin between two engineers who said that there was a new weapon being developed and tried up on the Baltic coast." 

The turning point came in 1943, when two German generals who had been captured separately were brought to Britain for interrogation – and then allowed to talk alone together, not suspecting that the room was bugged. They debated why the rockets hadn't been used yet, saying that something must have gone wrong because they'd been told more than a year earlier that the weapons would be ready in only a few months. According to Jones, one of them said, "Well, we're somewhere near London, and we've heard no bang, so nothing could have happened." 

As Jones recalled in 1977, "[Intelligence analyst] Charles Frank… was just sitting opposite me, and he suddenly looked up from reading the interrogation report and said, 'Look, we'd better take those rockets seriously.'"

The British discovered the Nazis' secret V2 research centre at Peenemünde, on an island close to the Baltic coast, and bombed it in August 1943. After the air raid, the Nazis moved their testing, training, and launch site for the V2 rocket away from Germany. They chose a location further east in Poland, about 150 miles (240km) south of Warsaw, protected by forest cover. Blizna was considered so strategically important that it was visited in the following months by both Hitler and his architect of the Holocaust, Heinrich Himmler. 

Yet there was a flaw in the V2 test weapons that was to delay their deployment by almost a year. Most of them broke up in mid-air, just short of their target 200 miles (320km) away, near the river Bug in East Poland. A special detachment of German troops was stationed there to recover the pieces of the fallen rockets for analysis by scientists.

Hidden under vegetables

As the narrator of The Secret War William Woollard recounted in 1977, however, "The main disadvantage of this new location was that the local civilian population was less than enthusiastic about German secret weapons falling on them from out of the sky. They'd been asked by the Polish resistance movement to try to collect the wreckage before the Germans got to it."

In May 1944, a V2 rocket crashed – relatively intact – into the marshy banks of the river Bug. Local villagers covered it with reeds and called in a Polish resistance leader, Lieutenant Tadeusz Jakobski. "It was here that the rocket landed without exploding," he told the BBC from the site 33 years later. "The Germans failed to find it, and after a few days they stopped looking altogether. We then pulled the rocket up to the bank, and the team of experts came from Warsaw to dismantle it." 

The parts were loaded into sacks, which were hidden under vegetables and transported on carts to Warsaw along little-used country roads – shadowed by armed partisans in the woods. Despite constant security checks in the Polish capital, the rocket fragments were successfully smuggled into the city, and the scientists tasked with analysing electronic components included the physicist, Professor Janusz Groszkowski. With fears that his laboratory at the university might be searched by the Gestapo, the resistance decided that a private apartment would be better suited for his work – the apartment of an unsuspecting German officer.

Once the cargo was loaded, the plane was unable to take off

The electronic units were hidden by night in one of the officer's own suitcases. "Before my visit, this case was taken from the room of the officers to the special room prepared for me to make [my] investigation," Groshkowski told the BBC. He worked for hours at a time in the small room, with the constant danger of the officer returning unexpectedly.

Yet, Groszkowski recounted, "[That] never happened during my stay there." Resistance agents were monitoring the German officer. "The servant asked him by telephone what he wished to have for the dinner… to make sure that he was at that time in his office in the airport," said the physicist. "But if he said, for instance, that he's ready to come earlier, I would [disappear]." 

The subterfuge in Warsaw was followed by a top-secret operation to extract the components, codenamed Wildhorn III (or Operation Most III). On the night of 25 July, an RAF Dakota transport plane fitted with additional fuel tanks to allow for a flight time of 18 hours landed at an abandoned airfield near the Polish village of Wał-Ruda – in territory surrounded by German military units. It was to be loaded with 19 suitcases containing key V2 fragments, technical blueprints, and scientific reports.

Informed about the operation through encrypted codes broadcast over BBC radio, the partisans emerged from nearby woods as the Dakota landed just after midnight. However, once the cargo was loaded, the plane was unable to take off, its wheels stuck in the muddy ground. Twice everything was unloaded, and attempts were made to wedge straw and planks under the wheels to add traction, some partisans digging the mud away from the wheels with their bare hands. At one point, the operation's commanders believed they would have to evacuate the passengers and burn the aircraft. The crew even splashed gasoline on the landing gear. But the plane finally succeeded in taking off.

The only way to beat the V2 

The daring Allied airlift had allowed one of the Third Reich's most fearsome weapons to be spirited out of Nazi-occupied Europe, from right under the noses of the German army. The V2 rocket arrived safely in London on 28 July 1944, and British intelligence began to analyse Hitler's "wonder weapon".

"Moving the whole rocket was unnecessary and impossible – V2s weighed about 12.5 tonnes and were 14m (46ft) long – but the Poles meticulously stripped it down so that all the essential components were included on the flight back to Britain," Guy Walters, the historian and author of Stealing Hitler's Rocket, tells the BBC. "These pieces were absolutely vital because for the first time the British scientists were able to get their hands on parts that hadn't been partially destroyed."

The covert mission had provided crucial information about a terror weapon that was to strike London for the first time less than six weeks later. "What the British didn't know was whether the rocket had a guidance system. If it had a guidance system, then work could be done to jam it remotely, thereby causing the rockets to go off course. What the stolen rockets taught the Brits was that the rocket did not have a guidance system, which thereby saved British scientists oodles of time from trying to develop countermeasures. The only real way to beat the V2 therefore was to win the war."