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Kim Jae Ryong appointed head of new “Organization Administrative Department”

"The role of the new OAD is similar to that of the Party's Central Administrative Department, which was headed by Jang Song Taek," a source told Daily NK North Korea recently established a new Central Committee agency called the “Organization Administrative Department” (OAD) that handles surveillance and “party control” over the country’s legal, security and police agencies, and Kim Jae Ryong, a former premier, has been appointed to head it, Daily NK has learned. Last month, North Korean media reported that the Fourth Executive Policy Council Meeting of the Seventh Central Committee, which was presided over by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Aug. 5, had “reviewed and deliberated” the “establishment of a new department in the Party’s Central Committee.” State media then reported that the leadership had “deliberated and decided” on “the issue of establishing a new department in the Central Committee and proposed its function and role” during the 16th Politburo Meeting of the Seventh Central Committee, which was held on Aug. 13. North Korean state media did not reveal the name of the new department, simply mentioning that the new agency will “protect the dignity and interests of the state and people, reliably guarantee and maintain the political stability and order of society, and strenuously protect our class stronghold and socialist construction.” The source, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told Daily NK that the objectives of the new department are to “strongly protect the Party’s monolithic leadership system by rectifying discipline and order through an organization that can dominate and guide legal, prosecution, security and police agencies.” According to the source, the new department’s director, Kim Jae Ryong, “is a typical Party official who has a high degree of loyalty to the Party and is well acquainted with Party policies.” The source further noted that Kim is part of a “pure faction” that has absolutely no connection with the country’s legal, prosecution, security and police agencies. After being dismissed from the premiership on Aug. 13, Kim reportedly became a party vice chairman and the head of an unspecified Central Committee department. The source’s report confirms that Kim has in fact become the head of the newly-formed OAD. “The role of the new OAD is similar to that of the Party’s Central Administrative Department, which was headed by Jang Song Taek,” the source said. “That being said, Jang made 90% of the decisions while heading the Central Administrative Department…[however], the authority wielded by Kim Jae Ryong under the OAD is limited.” According to the source, Kim Jae Ryong must report all issues raised in the department to Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong. The source told Daily NK that Kim Jae Ryong will report “only 1%” of the issues handled by the department directly to Kim Jong Un; all the rest – big and small – will go straight to Kim Yo Jong. “Unlike Jang Song Taek, who reigned with authority above that of [the country’s] legal institutions, Kim Jae Ryong does not have the right to make final decisions and is essentially a foot soldier for Comrade Kim Yo Jong [because he just] reports on the department’s monitoring and surveillance activities of legal, prosecutor, security and police agencies,” he said. Following the decision to create the new department, North Korean authorities are creating new party departments on the provincial, municipal and county levels to oversee legal, prosecution, security and police agencies. “[The North Korean authorities] plan to complete organizational and human resources-related activities by Sept. 15,” the source said. “I’m hearing that there will be a massive inspection conducted on legal, prosecutor, security and police agencies after Oct. 10 [Party Foundation Day].”

Organization Established

2010 Indiana earthquake

The 2010 Indiana earthquake registered 3.8 on the moment magnitude scale and struck near Greentown and Kokomo on December 30, 2010 at 12:55:21 UTC at a depth of 3 mi. [1][2] The quake occurred approximately 50 miles north of Indiana's capital, Indianapolis. [1] It joins only three other earthquakes that have affected the northern Indiana area since 1999. [3] The “extremely rare and unprecedented” earthquake had the largest magnitude of a northern Indiana earthquake in 175 years. [4] Despite being considered a rare occurrence, the affected region of northern Indiana lies near many fault lines including the Wabash Valley Seismic Zone and the New Madrid Seismic Zone. [5][6] Both zones are hotspots for tectonic activity, with the Wabash Valley Fault Zone reaching earthquake depths up to 18 km (11.4 mi.) deep. [7] It was incorrectly recorded by nearby stations as a 4.2 magnitude before being downgraded to 3.8. [8] No significant damage was reported from the incident, but the quake was felt by thousands, spanning across multiple cities and states. [9] Towns as far away as Kalamazoo, Michigan and states as far as Wisconsin and Kentucky reported the earthquake. [10][11]

Earthquakes

NAFTA is officially gone. Here's what has and hasn't changed

The US-Mexico-Canada Agreement takes effect Wednesday, fulfilling President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign pledge to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement -- which he's often referred to as " the worst trade deal ever made ." The new agreement was signed by Trump and his Mexican and Canadian counterparts in 2018 and approved by Congress earlier this year after Democrats added stronger labor rules. It was touted by the President as a major political win ahead of his reelection campaign but has since been overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic and other crises. Much of USMCA simply updates the 25-year-old agreement it's replacing. It's expected to create 176,000 jobs after six years and increase US GDP by 0.35%, according to a report released last year -- long before the pandemic -- by the US International Trade Commission, a federal government agency. By comparison, the United States added more than 152,000 jobs in January 2020 alone. But the deal provides certainty for business groups and farmers who feared Trump would rip up NAFTA without having a new deal in place, a move he threatened several times. The USMCA stands in contrast to Trump's efforts to renegotiate trade terms with China. After more than a year of negotiations, a preliminary agreement signed in January falls short of resolving major issues with intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers. It leaves tariffs on billions of dollars of goods in place and it's unclear whether China will keep its promise to more than double its purchases from American farmers. Trump has opted for bilateral deals and inked new agreements with South Korea and Japan . He pulled the United States out of the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership, known as TPP , that was negotiated by the Obama Administration. Here are some of the key changes in the USMCA: Auto manufacturing boost The USMCA creates a new incentive to build cars and trucks in North America. It requires 75% of a vehicle's parts to be made in one of the three countries -- up from the current 62.5% rule -- in order to remain free from tariffs when moving between the three signatory countries. It also requires more vehicle parts to be made by workers earning at least $16 an hour, which may provide a boost to manufacturing in the United States, where wages are higher than in Mexico. The International Trade Commission report found that these changes would add 28,000 jobs in the industry over six years, while also leading to a small increase in the price of vehicles that consumers pay. Though, a Trump administration report was more positive, projecting that the deal would create 76,000 auto jobs over five years. Labor laws strengthened in Mexico Manufacturing workers have long blamed NAFTA for sending jobs to Mexico, where wages are lower, and it was a priority for Democrats that the USMCA strengthen the enforcement of labor rules, creating a more level playing field for American workers. Democrats struck a deal with the Trump administration to strengthen the enforcement language in the deal. The changes were able to win the backing of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the United States. The deal provides for an interagency committee that will monitor Mexico's labor reform implementation and compliance with labor obligations. It also, for the first time in any US trade agreement, allows for "rapid response" panels to review whether specific facilities are violating workers' rights and to levy duties or penalties on products made at those facilities. US dairy farmers get more market access The original NAFTA eliminated tariffs on most agricultural products traded among the three countries. Canada and Mexico are already the two biggest export markets for US farmers and ranchers. The USMCA will keep those tariffs at zero, while further opening up the Canadian market to US dairy, poultry and eggs. In return, the United States will allow more Canadian dairy, peanuts and peanut products, as well as a limited amount of sugar, to cross the border. Updating NAFTA for the digital era The USMCA includes sweeping new benefits for the technology sector, in a chapter on digital trade that wasn't a part of the original NAFTA. The new provisions aren't expected to directly create new jobs but could provide a boost to US businesses in other ways. For example, the new trade deal prohibits Canada and Mexico from forcing US companies to store their data on in-country servers. It also ensures that US companies cannot be sued in Canada and Mexico for much of the content appearing on their platforms. Environmental protections The agreement provides $600 million to address environmental problems in the region -- like sewage spillovers from Tijuana that impact San Diego -- and makes regulations easier to enforce by doing away with a requirement to prove a violation affects trade. While the new enforcement measures pleased most Democrats, they didn't go far enough to get environmental groups like the Sierra Club to support the agreement.

Tear Up Agreement

The timing couldn’t be any better for soldiers of the Indonesian Army (TNI AD to take part in a joint military exercise with their United States counterparts

The timing couldn’t be any better for soldiers of the Indonesian Army (TNI AD) to take part in a joint military exercise with their United States counterparts, now underway until Aug. 14. Three days after the 15th Garuda Shield ends, the TNI AD soldiers will join the nation in commemorating the 76th anniversary of Indonesian independence. The two-week joint military exercise is the biggest ever between the two countries, involving more than 2,100 Indonesian soldiers and around 1,500 US troops. Upon learning that the exercise would be conducted at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia, both sides agreed to follow the strict health protocols as set by the World Health Organization. Sponsored by the US Army Pacific (USARPAC), this joint exercise held in three TNI AD training zones in Baturaja in South Sumatra, Amborawang in East Kalimantan and in Makalisung in South Sulawesi is intended to enhance their combined capabilities in interoperability through training and cultural exchange.

Military Exercise

2013 Alberta floods

In the days leading up to June 19, 2013, Alberta, Canada, experienced heavy rainfall that triggered catastrophic flooding described by the provincial government as the worst in Alberta's history. Areas along the Bow, Elbow, Highwood, Red Deer, Sheep, Little Bow, and South Saskatchewan rivers and their tributaries were particularly affected. A total of 32 states of local emergency were declared[5] and 28 emergency operations centres were activated[6] as water levels rose and numerous communities were placed under evacuation orders. [7] Five people were confirmed dead as a direct result of the flooding and over 100,000 people were displaced throughout the region. Some 2,200 Canadian Forces (CF) troops were deployed to help in flooded areas in addition to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Alberta Sheriffs Branch response. Total damage estimates exceeded C$5 billion and in terms of insurable damages, made the 2013 Alberta floods the costliest disaster in Canadian history at $1.7 billion, until the occurrence of the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire. Receding waters gave way to a mammoth cleanup of affected areas, aided by a spontaneous volunteer campaign in which many homeowners were assisted by complete strangers. Situated east of the Canadian Rockies, southern Alberta is a semi-arid region that does not usually receive high amounts of rainfall. A high-pressure system in northern Alberta blocked the passage to a low-pressure area to the south, 19-21 June. This blocked circulation and easterly winds pumped humidity on the rising slopes of the Rocky Mountains foothills, causing heavy rain into the province with rainfall amounts of over 200 millimetres (7.9 in) to fall in less than two days[when?] in many regions of the province, particularly west and southwest of Calgary. In Canmore, a town in Alberta's Rockies, over 220 millimetres (8.7 in) fell in just 36 hours,[when?] nearly half of the town's annual average rainfall. [9] In the town of High River, rainfall amounts at one weather station recorded 325 milimetres (12.8 in) in less than 48 hours. The rain falling on already saturated ground, coupled with the steep watershed and heavy snow loads remaining in the front ranges of the Rocky Mountains, resulted in a rapid increase in the size and flow of several rivers. [10] At the peak of the flooding, the Bow and Elbow rivers were flowing through Calgary at three times their peak levels from a 2005 flood that caused C$400 million in damages. [9] Within 48 hours,[clarification needed] by 8 a.m. MDT on June 21, the flow rate on the Bow River had reached 1,458 cubic metres (51,489 cubic ft.) per second (m3/s), five times its normal rate for this time of the year. The Elbow and Highwood rivers reached flow rates of 544 m3/s (inside Calgary) and 734 m3/s respectively, ten times their averages for this time of year. [11] According to data tracked by Alberta's Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Resource Development,[12][13][notes 1] "in the space of a day or two, the flows of the three rivers rocketed up five to 10 times their normal rates."[when? ][14] Government officials called the flooding the worst in Alberta's history. [15] By June 24, 2013, some 2,200 Canadian Forces (CF) troops had been deployed to help in flooded areas. Land Force Western Area brought in Coyote reconnaissance vehicles, Bison armoured vehicles, G-Wagen Jeeps, and other military vehicles. [16] As communities began to flood and people became displaced, area residents mobilized to offer support and assistance to evacuees and emergency response personnel. Some volunteers and several police officers worked up to 20 hours to help evacuation efforts despite knowing their own homes had been damaged or completely washed away. [17] While coverage of the flooding spread throughout social media sites, many people and businesses also took to Facebook and Twitter to open their homes up to neighbours and strangers who did not have other places to stay or offer whatever support they could. [18] In Calgary, Alberta's largest city, 26 neighbourhoods[notes 2] in the vicinity of the Bow and Elbow rivers were placed under a mandatory evacuation order on June 20 and 21 as the rivers spilled over their banks and flooded communities. [19] Affecting 75,000 people, it was the largest evacuation order in the city's history. [20] The city's downtown core was among the areas evacuated, as officials called for a "Neighbour Day" on June 21 and requested people to stay home, particularly the 350,000 people who work downtown. [21] All schools in both the public and Catholic school districts were closed and officials urged residents to avoid unnecessary travel. [22][23] On June 21, the Bow River had reached a record high water level of 4.09 m (13.4 ft). That same day, the river also reached a record high flow rate of 1,750 m3/s (62,000 cu ft/s). [24] Through social media,[notes 3] websites and blogs[notes 4] with a constant stream of updated contributions from the Calgary's mayor,[notes 5] numerous city councillors,[notes 6] the Calgary Police, media at all levels, and numerous Calgarians with Twitter,[notes 7] Flickr and Facebook accounts, the flood was extremely well-covered. [19][25][26][notes 8] The city's largest indoor arena, the Scotiabank Saddledome, was among the facilities damaged as flood waters were reported to have filled up to the first ten rows of the lower seating bowl. [27] The Calgary Stampede grounds adjacent to the arena were also severely flooded, less than two weeks before the scheduled opening of the annual exhibition and rodeo, however officials vowed the event would go on. [28] While emergency officials began to announce the partial lifting of some evacuation orders on June 22,[29] Mayor Naheed Nenshi stated that it would be several days before power could be restored to the downtown core. [30] City workers, assisted by Canadian Forces personnel from The Calgary Highlanders, reinforced a particularly large erosion of river bank near 8th Avenue S.E., which endangered several houses in the neighbourhood of Inglewood. [31][32] Calgary's central business district, home to many of Canada's oil company headquarters, remained inaccessible until June 26. [33] A spokesman for Imperial Oil, Canada's second-largest producer and refiner, said the company was working on plans to maintain essential operations, including allowing employees to work from other locations. [33] Shorcan Energy Brokers, which provides live prices for many Canadian crude grades, operated out of Toronto on June 21 rather than at its usual Calgary base, although no trades in either Western Canada Select heavy blend or light synthetic crude from the oil sands were executed. [33] Net Energy Inc, the other main Calgary crude broker, was closed on Friday, June 21, and there was no trading. [33] As the water began to recede, the city lifted evacuation orders for several communities. It allowed 65,000 residents to return to their homes and business on June 23 to assess for damage, but parts of 14 communities remained off-limits. [34] On June 27, the Bonnybrook Bridge collapsed under the weight of a Canadian Pacific Railway freight train. One of the pilings of the 101-year-old rail bridge had been scoured by floodwaters on the Bow River and undermined. CPR officials said that because the scour occurred underwater, they had not been able to inspect it, due to river conditions. However, rail regulations require the ability to inspect underwater. [35] The buckled bridge caused the train to derail. As the train was carrying hazardous petrochemicals, an evacuation was ordered for the local area and regions downstream, and the train was slowly pumped dry. [36] South of Calgary, the town of High River was evacuated after flooding of the Highwood River caused water to rise over the top of vehicles in the town's main streets and necessitated the rescue of over 150 people from the rooftops of their homes. [37] 350 Canadian Forces personnel and 80 Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers were dispatched to assist with rescue efforts.

Floods

Recession possible as 'profound' economic downturn driven by COVID lockdown hits Australia

We're in a different type of economic struggle now: It's less acute, more drawn out and with deep-seated anxiety. "My sense is that last year it was short, sharp pain, and then the government came in and supported," lead economist at Equity Economics, Angela Jackson, says. "This time around it's much longer, and I think the recovery might be much harder as a result." The Bureau of Statistics will release the National Accounts next week, including gross domestic product (GDP) for the June quarter. If it's a negative figure, a "technical recession" (which requires two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth) will be all but confirmed (as this quarter's GDP is guaranteed to be sharply negative). Either way, the Australian economy has once again found itself in quite a funk. Lockdowns are bad news for shopping centres and department stores. The Greater Sydney lockdown had only been in place for several days in June, but it was enough to produce a negative retail sales figure for the month (-1.8 per cent). Later this week July retail sales figures will be released. Economists expect sales will have collapsed by 3.3 per cent. "Consumption", or household spending, makes up roughly two-thirds of economic activity, so this will be a big hit. But, at least according to National Australia Bank's forecasts, that hit will come after the June quarter, with consumption tipped to add 0.8 percentage points to the GDP growth number being released next week. Another important contributor to GDP is business investment. While it's abundantly clear small businesses have faced enormous challenges amid lockdowns in several states and territories, medium businesses and large corporations have fared much better – particularly in the lead-up to the middle of the year. You only have to look at the results from the current corporate reporting season. Hundreds of Australian companies are about to reveal how they've fared over the past year. If you invest in shares or are looking to get into the market, here's why it matters. According to online stockbroking firm CommSec, aggregate net profit for ASX 200 companies is up 56 per cent on a year ago. Almost 75 per cent of companies have lifted profits and dividends are up 60 per cent. CommSec says JB Hi-Fi, Tabcorp, Ingenia and Domain have been among the top earnings performers. The bottom line is that the big end of town was making billions in profits earlier this year and they spent the extra cash both on returns to investors and investment projects. But it's not all down to size. Many big companies continue to be directly impacted by the pandemic. Companies like Corporate Travel, Sydney Airport and Star Entertainment "continue to be buffeted by lockdowns and border closures". All up, the National Australia Bank believes business investment will contribute 3.7 percentage points to June quarter GDP. But, again, that pre-dates the full effect of the Greater Sydney lockdown, the sixth Melbourne lockdown and the ACT lockdown, which is tipped to dent those investment plans this quarter, with NAB expecting the September quarter number to be "flat to negative". The federal government and Australia's export sector also make big contributions to economic output. You could be forgiven for thinking that exports will add to last quarter's GDP, but in fact the opposite is true. Yes, the price of iron ore was on a tear, but we're measuring "output" or volume here, not income. There have been, and continue to be, fewer shipments of iron, coal and gas out of the country. Iron ore prices have crashed 40 per cent over the past month alone, so what will it mean for Australia's sputtering, locked-down economy? Net exports are expected to pull GDP down in the June quarter by roughly 1.1 per cent. Government expenditure for the June quarter will be made up of wages to public servants and public infrastructure. The impact of federal government economic support payments will make contributions to GDP this quarter. I'm reliably informed the contribution from the Commonwealth government is simply too difficult to forecast with any great deal of accuracy. Suffice to say that without a contribution from the government, the current economic contraction would be more profound. Economic forecasting has become one of the hardest games in town recently. Indeed, from the corner store to big corporations, uncertainty has become the albatross around their necks. "Australian businesses, whether they are big or small, cannot continue to deal with the what-ifs and maybes — that's no way to plan the reopening of the economy," the Business Council of Australia argues. As a health strategy, the soft lockdown approach has been an abject failure. From a national economic viewpoint, the ongoing apprehension about total lockdown has come at enormous cost, writes Ian Verrender. "This constant state of uncertainty means business has no ability to plan, whether that's undertaking a major project, putting extra staff on for an uninterrupted tourism season or buying inventory for a local cafe. "We need certainty now, and we back the Prime Minister's call to stick to the numbers and develop a detailed plan to reach the targets." Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently unveiled a national plan to gradually lift COVID restrictions and open up the economy once 70 to 80 per cent of the population is vaccinated against the virus. The problem we have now is that only just over half the eligible population have had their first dose, and there are simply no guarantees we will ever reach the 80 per cent target. Economists expect the economy to have grown 0.5 per cent in the June quarter, but it's possible it will be a negative number (especially given the negative contribution from the export sector). Estimates for the September quarter range from a roughly 4 per cent contraction to as much as 5 per cent. The December quarter is anyone's guess and largely depends on vaccination rates. It's entirely possible we are now in a technical recession — AMP Capital puts the probability at 40 per cent (almost a coin toss). Having not experienced a technical recession in almost three decades, Australia now faces the risk of having two in little more than a year. The reality is many Australians already feel like they are in a recession. The billions of dollars in income support and disaster payments that have made their way to bank accounts across the nation attest to this (Service NSW still had a backlog of applications last week). Higher vaccination rates give us some hope lockdowns will soon become a thing of the past and maybe a reason why the current economic crisis lacks the panic and acute stress of last year's when vaccines were in early development and success was far from assured. However, a sizeable chunk of the Australian economy is hurting right now and there's no guaranteed way out. Economist Angela Jackson argues the pain is still all too real this time around. "Maybe it's not as deep, but it's much more profound," she says. It's quite shocking when the economic lights go out all of a sudden, but there's also an anxiety tied to feeling your way back in the dark that can also be deeply unsettling.

Financial Crisis

2019 Moscow protests

Starting from July 2019 numerous approved and unapproved rallies in Moscow (also known as part of the political crisis[2][3]) began, caused by the situation with the 2019 Moscow City Duma elections. Widespread public protests were triggered by numerous authorities' violations, claimed by the independent opposition candidates, during the registration procedure. [4][5] Rallies on Sakharov Avenue on 20 July and 10 August 2019 became the largest political rallies in Russia since the 2011–2013 protests. The July 27 rally established a record on number of detainees: 1373 people were detained. [6] The subsequent appeals of the MCEC's decisions to the CEC by the independent candidates didn't lead to any results. The protests were accompanied by massive administrative arrests of unregistered independent candidates[7] and two criminal cases: the obstructing the work of election commissions case and the riots case (also known as the "Moscow case"). [8] The Second Service of FSB participated in the investigation of the events. It was reported that the intelligence agency is trying to find opposition ties with foreign structures and is trying to prove financing of protests from abroad. [9] A number of media and politicians as well as the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights found no evidence of mass riots at rallies. [10] After the verification of the signatures collected by the candidates, the Moscow City Election Commission (MCEC) refused to register most of independent opposition candidates. The claimed reason was the high percentage of rejected signatures (exceeding permissible reject rate of 10%). Independent candidates accused the MCEC of forgery in verifying signatures aimed at prohibiting the opposition to participate in elections. During the verification some personal data of the signers was entered with errors. In addition, a significant part of the signatures was invalidated on the grounds of a so-called handwriting examination, which scientific validity and impartiality the candidates questioned. The candidates submitted to the MCEC statements confirming the validity of signatures from signatories, whose signatures were rejected on the grounds of handwriting examination. The candidates also submitted to the MCEC an opinion of professional handwriting experts on the insolvency of the MCEC examination. Despite this, the MCEC did not change the decision. In protest, one of the candidates, Lyubov Sobol, went on a hunger strike on July 13. [11][12][13] On the other hand, the MCEC registered 32 candidates from Communists of Russia party, which has very low popularity (during 2016 election to the State Duma it collected 2%). This party is regarded by experts as a spoiler for CPRF. [14] These candidates are almost unknown in Moscow, mostly students, housewives and low-skilled workers. [15][16] According to the MCEC, these 32 unknown candidates managed to collect the necessary signatures. However, Muscovites did not see any signature collectors for the candidates from Communists of Russia or pro-United Russia 'independent' candidates in the streets of their city. [17] Later, an opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta revealed that the same headquarters coordinates the actions of candidates from Communists of Russia and pro-United Russia 'independents'. [18] On July 14, 17 independent candidates met with supporters in Novopushkinsky Square. After that they went to the City Hall and finally to Mokhovaya Street to the MCEC building. Candidates demanded to accept signatures in their support and to allow them to participate in the election. The Police and the National Guard initially acted politely, but later they began to break up tents in the yard of the MCEC and to detain the protestors. [19][20] According to the OVD-Info portal, by the evening 39 people were detained, including candidates Ilya Yashin, Lyubov Sobol, Ivan Zhdanov and Yulia Galyamina. [21] Four protesters were hospitalized after a hard detention, several activists were beaten by the police. [22] Detained candidates called for supporters to meet again at the MCEC building the next day. [23] On July 15, 10 candidates arrived to a meeting with the head of the MCEC Gorbunov. The meeting planned to be open, however journalists were not allowed to enter the MCEC building and Gorbunov set several conditions: he would talk with the candidates one by one in a closed format only. Only 3 candidates accepted these conditions. [24] Later nine candidates were denied registration. [25] Then, Ilya Yashin announced that the MCEC removed him from the elections due to the allegedly exceeding the allowable number of false signatures and refused to accept written confirmations of the so-called "wrong" signatories. [26] In the evening of the same day, several hundred people gathered at Trubnaya Square for an action for admission of independent candidates to the elections. The candidates called for holding such meetings every day until their requirements were met. [27] On July 16, most of the independent candidates received registration denials, in particular, Lyubov Sobol, Ivan Zhdanov, Konstantin Yankauskas, Yulia Galyamina, Dmitry Gudkov, Gennady Gudkov, Alexander Solovyov, Sergey Mitrokhin, Elena Rusakova, Kirill Goncharov, Anastasia Bryukhanova. In all cases the reason was the exceeding of the maximum allowable percentage of invalid voter signatures. [28][29] Only a few independent candidates received registration. The action on Trubnaya that day took place despite the heavy rain. There were no detentions. [30] On July 17, meeting on Trubnaya Square took place again, about 800 people participated. [30] Gorbunov announced results of candidates registration campaign: 233 candidates were registered, 57 got a refusal. [31] Independent opposition candidates collected more than a thousand official statements from Muscovites, including statements with video, demanding that their signatures be considered valid. [32][33] They continued to conduct daily “For the Right to Choose” actions on Trubnaya Square till Saturday. The MCEC pointed out they are ready to consider the application and re-check the signatures. The PCCSHR recommended to allow independent candidates to participate in the election. [34] On July 20, a permitted rally was held on Sakharov Avenue with the same requirements.

Protest_Online Condemnation

2011 Zhongshan riot

The 2011 Zhongshan riot occurred on November 12, 2011 in Zhongshan, Guangdong, People's Republic of China. The case began in August 2011 when villagers tried to block production at the Jinrui Industrial park by extending a land leasing row. [1] Claims were made that the protest came after Dongsheng government officials sold off village land for their own personal gain. The villagers said the officials were not willing to give compensate 1.5 million yuan per mu of land. [2] The negotiations could not come to a conclusion, and police were sent to beat up the villagers instead. [2] According to the Hong Kong Oriental Daily news, thousands of residents were involved in the riot on November 12, 2011. [3] Residents of Yilong village attacked the Jinrui Industrial park in Xiaolan town. [4] They wielded clubs and threw stones. They burned two factory shops to vent their anger, and 3000 armed police were on the scene. [1] A report said three people had been beaten to death, but the police denied anyone had died on their Sina Weibo microblog account. [5][6] Photographs uploaded to the microblog, and other websites showed columns of police trooping through the village. [2] Crowds of residents engaged in stand-offs with the police and a nighttime sit-down protest. [2]

Riot

Strictly's Janette Manrara and Aljaz Skorjanec share intimate photo from home

Strictly Come Dancing stars Janette Manrara and Aljaz Skorjanec moved into a property together in London in December 2018, and a former photo shared by Janette shows how the couple like to relax at home. MORE: Strictly's Janette Manrara and Aljaz Skorjanec's beautiful home revealed Last year, Janette posted the image of herself and her husband snuggling together on their sofa, dressed in matching dressing gowns while watching the television. WATCH: Janette Manrara reveals glimpse inside plant-filled garden In the caption, the pro simply wrote: "Cuddles in robes at home." The snap also gave a glimpse inside their cosy living room, complete with a dove grey sofa and French windows. Strictly couple Janette Manrara and Aljaz Skorjanec enjoyed relaxing at home Janette and Aljaz often share glimpses inside their home and have done so more than ever since the coronavirus pandemic began. They have made it their own with cute personal touches including framed photos, lots of Disney memorabilia, and of course, their dancing trophies. Aljaz and Janette have been married since 2017 and are both hoping to start a family in the future, although they are concentrating on their dance careers for the moment. Janette and Aljaz have been married since 2017 Appearing on Lorraine, Janette gave fans an update about having children. "Especially as a woman, it's a big decision, for me whenever we do decide to have a child," she shared. "We talk about it all the time. We adore kids." She added: "You should see us around babies, we get so broody, both of us. We are definitely going to have children." RELATED: Janette Manrara's daily diet: what the Strictly star eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner In 2019, Aljaz and Janette also opened their hearts about their fairytale marriage and baby plans in an exclusive interview with HELLO!. "It's never going to be the perfect time to have a baby but we do talk about it a lot and we are very much looking forward to becoming a mum and dad," revealed Janette. "So it's definitely going to happen. When we don't know, we'll see. We're kind of taking it slowly. A dancer's career can be quite short, especially when you reach a certain level, and work is going so good for us at the moment that is the priority."

Famous Person - Marriage

On Thursday 71 people, thought to be Syrians, were found dead in a lorry in Austria. Some 200 others are feared dead after two boats sank off Libya.

The UN has said "much more is required" to prevent the deaths of migrants fleeing to Europe after hundreds were reported dead in recent days. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for a "collective political response" to avert "a crisis of solidarity". He called on states involved to "expand safe and legal channels of migration". On Thursday 71 people, thought to be Syrians, were found dead in a lorry in Austria. Some 200 others are feared dead after two boats sank off Libya. Mr Ban said he was "horrified and heartbroken" at the latest loss of life. "A large majority of people undertaking these arduous and dangerous journeys are refugees fleeing from places such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan," he said. "The international community must also show greater determination in resolving conflicts and other problems that leave people little choice but to flee," he added. Mr Ban called on nations to observe international law on asylum requests, and not to "force people to return to places from which they have fled if there is a well-founded fear of persecution... This is not only a matter of international law; it is also our duty as human beings." He said: "This is a human tragedy that requires a determined collective political response. It is a crisis of solidarity, not a crisis of numbers." Mr Ban also urged more action against people smugglers, a call echoed by White House spokesman Josh Earnest. "The violence and instability in North Africa and the Middle East isn't just destabilising the immediate region but is starting to have a destabilising impact on other regions of the world too, including in Europe," Mr Earnest said. Some 200 people are feared to have drowned after two boats capsized on Thursday as they tried to cross from Zuwara, west of Tripoli in Libya, to Italy. About 100 bodies have already been found and Libyan workers are continuing to search for 100 other people who are still unaccounted for. Some survivors were rescued having spent the night in the water, clinging to life jackets. While most of the victims of Thursday's capsizes are thought to be from Syria and African countries, a Bangladeshi diplomat told the BBC that at least five Bangladeshi nationals, including a six-month-old baby, were among the dead. Police in Italy detained 10 suspected traffickers after a separate incident in which 52 people were found dead in the hold of a ship off the coast of Libya on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Hungarian police said they had arrested four people over the discovery of the bodies of 71 migrants, thought to be Syrians, in an abandoned lorry in Austria, near the Hungarian border. The victims were 59 men, eight women and four children who are thought to have been dead for about two days. Officials said the victims probably died after suffocating in the vehicle, before it crossed into Austria from Hungary. Among the victims was a girl aged between one and two years old. Analysis: BBC's Bethany Bell in Vienna The headline in Austria's Kurier newspaper is stark: "Who will stop this madness? Refugee tragedy on the eastern motorway." This double-edged response to the lorry deaths reflects the feelings of many here in Austria, a country of 8.5 million which has seen a big increase in people requesting asylum, with 80,000 claims expected this year. Its main asylum centre, at Traiskirchen, is so overcrowded that hundreds have been forced to sleep outside there for weeks. Amnesty International recently said conditions there were "shameful". Many people are volunteering to help refugees. But others say the flow of migrants must be stopped. Far-right parties say there are too many foreigners in Austria already and are calling for the reintroduction of border controls. The government says it doesn't want that - but it says this problem can't be solved individually. It says Europe has to share the burden of looking after the refugees and migrants who arrive here every day. What we know about Austria lorry find 'Migrants', 'refugees' or 'aliens'? The Turkish city where migrants buy supplies Migrants' perilous route to Germany Tens of thousands of migrants from conflict-hit states in the Middle East and Africa have been trying to make their way to Europe in recent months. A record number of 107,500 migrants crossed the EU's borders last month. Some of them pay large sums of money to people smugglers to get them through borders illegally. The UNHCR says more than 2,500 people have died trying to reach Europe so far in 2015, not including Thursday's deaths.

Shipwreck

School closes after almost half of pupils and teachers test positive for Covid

A whole primary school has been sent home in Powys after almost half the school tested positive for Covid.40% of pupils and half of staff have tested positive at Cradoc Primary School in Brecon over the last few weeks. The local authority said the school was left with no alternative but to close.Lynette Lovell, interim chief executive of Powys County Council, said: “We can confirm that Cradoc Primary School has closed due to rising Covid cases.“Despite the school’s best efforts to mitigate the risk of infection among pupils and staff, including limited contact groups, daytime cleaning, handwashing, ventilation and outdoor learning, the number of positive cases within the school has increased significantly over the past couple of weeks with approximately 40% of pupils and 50% of staff currently testing positive.” Year 9 at Cwmtawe Community High School near Pontardawe have also been sent home for a week due to high cases.A Neath Port Talbot council spokesman said: “Staff at the school have taken regular LFD tests. Staff have now taken every precaution to safeguard pupils and themselves. However, the impact of staff illness and self-isolation has made it impossible to operate the school safely for all year groups this week.“The health and safety of our pupils and staff is of paramount importance, so, from Monday September 20 up to Friday September 24, Year 9 pupils will move to home learning.“We will continue to closely monitor the situation throughout the week. All Year 9 pupils should log on to Microsoft Teams via Hwb and follow their usual timetable. Teachers will make every effort to ensure appropriate work is available and, where possible, live lessons will take place.”Ahead of the new term a Welsh government plan said it should be "business as usual" in schools where possible, and that decisions would be taken with local risk factors in mind.

Organization Closed

Tokyo Olympics: Indian 4x400m Relay Team Breaks Asian Record But Fails To Qualify For Final

The Indian 4x400m relay quartet shattered the Asian record with an effort of just over three minutes in the Olympics heat race but failed to qualify for the final round by a whisker in Tokyo on Friday. The quartet of Muhammed Anas Yahiya, Noah Nirmal Tom, Arokia Rajiv and Amoj Jacob set a time of 3:00.25 to finish fourth in the second heat. India missed out on the eight-team final as they ended at ninth spot overall. The first three in each of the two heats and the next two fastest qualify for the final. The earlier Asian record was in the name of Qatar which had clocked 3:00.56 while winning the gold in the 2018 Asian Games. Jacob, who ran the last leg, was the best among the four Indian runners with 44.68 seconds as he overtook two rivals after the team was placed at sixth when he took the baton from Rajiv (44.84). National record holder Anas understandably clocked the slowest (45.60) time as he had to run the longest distance after starting the race in lane number 2. Earlier in the day, the race walkers failed to impress with below-par performances at Sapporo. National record holder Priyanka Goswami was among the leading pack around the halfway mark but eventually finished 17th while compatriot Bhawna Jat ended at 32nd in the women's 20km race walk event. In the men's 50km event, Gurpreet Singh pulled out after the 35km mark due to cramps under hot and humid conditions as the Indian race walkers ended their campaign. The 25-year-old Priyanka clocked 1 hr 32 minutes 36 seconds, well outside her personal best of 1:28:45 which she had come up with during the National Open Race Walk Championships in February. The event was held under hot and humid conditions. Priyanka was in the leading pack from the beginning and was the front-runner when she crossed the 8km mark but she eventually dropped down. Bhawna, on the other hand, failed to keep pace with the leading pack and was behind from the beginning to eventually end at 32nd with a time of 1:37:38. The 25-year-old Indian has a personal best of 1:29:54. Antonella Palmisano of Italy won the gold, clocking 1:29:12 while Colombian Sandra Lorena Arenas (1:29:37) and Hong Liu (1:29:57) of China took the silver and bronze respectively. In the morning, the 37-year-old Gurpreet, one of the lowest ranked athletes in the event, was 51st at the 35km mark with a time of 2 hr 55 minutes and 19 seconds but dropped out just after that. He had slowed down considerably and was seen sitting on the sidelines after the 35km mark, being helped by the medical team of the race but did not seem in much trouble. Gurpreet has a personal best of 3:59:42 which he had clocked while winning gold during the National Open Race Walk Championships in February. Promoted The temperature at the Sapporo Odori Park was around 25 degree celsius when the event started at 5:30am local time but rose to above 30 degree celsius when it ended after 9am local time. The humidity was at a very high 80 per cent. Fifty nine athletes started but 12 either did not finish or were disqualified. Dawid Tomala of Poland won the gold with a time of 3:50:08, while Jonathan Hilbert (3:50:44) of Germany and Evan Dunfee (3:50:59) of Canada took the silver and bronze respectively.

Break historical records

Marşandiz train collision

On 13 December 2018, a high-speed passenger train and a locomotive collided near Yenimahalle in Ankara Province, Turkey. Three cars (carriages/coaches) of the passenger train derailed in the collision. Three railroad engineers and five passengers were killed at the scene, and 84 people were injured. Another injured passenger later died, and 34 passengers, including two in critical condition, were treated in several hospitals. The Ankara–Konya high-speed train departed from the Ankara high-speed railway station (Turkish: Ankara YHT Garı) with 206 passengers on board at 06:30 local time (03:30 UTC) on 13 December 2018. [1] About four minutes later, a head-on collision occurred when the train collided with a locomotive returning from rail inspection duty, right before the Marşandiz railway station in the Yenimahalle district of Ankara Province. The high-speed train was traveling towards Konya Station at a line speed of about 80–90 km/h (50–56 mph). Three of its cars derailed, and a footbridge over the railway line collapsed onto two other cars. [1][2] Eight people, including three railroad engineers, were killed onsite. [1][3] A German citizen was among the victims. [4] 48 injuries were reported in the immediate aftermath of the incident, though the total was later updated to 84. [1][3] The injured passengers, three of them in critical condition, were rushed to several hospitals in Ankara. One injured passenger died afterwards. [5] Published photographs show that a TCDD E68000-class locomotive (unit number 68 041) and a TCDD HT80000 high-speed electric multiple unit were involved in the accident. [6] More than 40 ambulances, 20 fire trucks, police, National Medical Rescue teams, and fire and rescue teams rushed to the scene of the accident. [1][5] Heavy cranes for wreckage removal arrived at the accident site at 16:00 local time (13:00 UTC), and teams of firefighters and railroad workers continued with cutting and removal work into the night despite heavy snowfall. [7] It took three days to remove the wreckage, repair the track, and repair the railway electrification system, after which the line was reopened. [8] Controversy arose when the chairman of the United Transportation Union claimed that "the railway line ... was opened to high-speed rail traffic before the needed train protection system (Turkish: Tren Denetim Sistemi, TDS) was installed". The Minister of Transport and Infrastructure stated to the press that "such a signalization system is not a sine qua non installation for railway transportation". [9][10] The Chief Prosecutor of Ankara launched an investigation to ascertain the exact cause of the accident,[5] and appointed his assistant and three more prosecutors to the case. [11] A railway inspector, a train dispatcher and a switchman, who were responsible for directing the trains,[11] were detained on suspicion of negligence. [12][13] Records were obtained for technical analysis as evidence, being the digital records from the trains and the railway station, and radio communication records between the officials on duty. Surveillance camera footage covering the accident became public. [11] It appeared that the locomotive was on its assigned track. The high-speed train was wrongly directed to the same track, causing the head-on collision. [11] The prosecutors completed the initial investigation by taking the statements of the three detained railway personnel. The dispatcher stated that he "ordered the switchman to put the high-speed train on track H1 as the locomotive was on track H2". He added that "the switchman did not confirm his action of rail switching. In addition, he instructed the locomotive's engineer to drive slowly". He said that "the engineer of the high-speed train, however, did not report it as running on track H2, because normally he had to know that he had to pass nine railroad switches in order to go over to the track H1 from the track #1". He concluded that "the accident occurred due to lack of communication". The switchman gave the statement that "he received the order, and set then the electric railroad switch by pressing the related button on the board. However, he could not remember whether he had confirmed his switching action. He added that "he did not receive any training in handling of the board, which went in use four days prior to control the electric railroad switch". He accused his superiors as "even though they knew that he was not trained, he was assigned to night shift". The prosecutor sent the accused personnel to the criminal court on duty, which ruled their arrest. [14]

Train collisions

Yemenis displaced by conflict now face threats of looming famine

This is a summary of what was said by UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch – to whom quoted text may be attributed – at today's press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. A 12-year-old displaced Yemeni boy stands inside the tent he shares with his family at the hosting site for the internally displaced in Marib, Yemen, March 2020. © UNHCR/Marie-Joëlle Jean-Charles UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is today warning that hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Yemenis are at heightened risk of food insecurity as livelihoods have been lost to the combined effects of ceaseless violence and COVID-19 pandemic. According to the latest UN food security survey in Yemen, food insecurity is prevalent in areas of conflict, where half of Yemen’s four million displaced population resides. They live in and around the 16 districts worst affected by acute food insecurity, in Marib, Al Bayda, Abyan, Taizz, Hadramautand and Al Jawf governorates. They are increasingly at risk of famine-like conditions. Nearly 40 per cent of the most vulnerable displaced families say they have no access to income and 37 per cent were already eating less. UNHCR is particularly concerned about the impact on the most vulnerable among the internally displaced people (IDPs). Today, one in four displaced families is headed by a woman or a girl of whom every fifth is under the age of 18. Women are disproportionately impacted, in a country where socio-cultural norms often restrict their access to work. Many IDP women, including single and widowed women, report feeling excluded from humanitarian aid in Yemen because of cultural and social obstacles which restrict them from going out to provide for their families. For many, conflict, displacement and gender inequity only compound the hardships and difficulties they face. With rampant inflation and few livelihood opportunities, families no longer can afford basic meals. To put food on the table, many displaced families are selling off belongings, pulling children out of school and sending them to work, begging on the streets, or eating just once a day. UNHCR staff report that often a daily meal is nothing more than a bowl of rice, or a cup of tea with a piece of bread. Coping strategies such as limiting meal portions are most prevalent among displaced. An estimated four out of five displaced female-headed displaced families now resort to such measures. Displaced parents are pushed to make difficult choices between providing food for their families and protecting them from communicable diseases, like cholera and novel coronavirus. UNHCR, despite a funding crunch, is stepping up its support to the displaced families and their hosts in Yemen through direct cash assistance this winter. We have provided cash grants to more than 900,000 displaced Yemenis so far this year. Our data shows that almost all the supported households, some 97 per cent, also use this assistance to purchase food. UNHCR’s efforts need continuous international support to deliver assistance to the displaced Yemenis most exposed to risk. Six years of conflict have taken a brutal toll on civilians, pushing one in eight Yemenis into displacement. Action is needed now to shield them from hunger and famine.

Famine

World record-breaking relay team take Paralympic gold in Tokyo

The British Mixed S14 4x100m Freestyle Relay team set a new world record on their way to becoming Paralympic champions in Tokyo. The quartet of Reece Dunn, Bethany Firth, Jessica-Jane Applegate and Jordan Catchpole broke the previous world record, also set by Great Britain, by 1.58 seconds. They won the final by a huge 5.75 seconds, with their nearest competitors in the Australian team taking the silver medal in 3:46.38. Dunn, who already had two individual medals to his name – one gold and one silver, swam a superb opening 100m in 51.15. Next up was Firth who clocked a time of 57.77 for her leg before handing over to Applegate whose sensational swim put Britain in a great position ahead of the final leg. The anchor leg was swam by Team Waveney’s Catchpole who brought it home in a time of 52.68 to add to ParalympicsGB’s medal haul. Following the win, Dunn said: “I think it was a great race. We knew we could stand a good chance if we all put a good time in. I wanted to get close to the sub 51 mark on that first leg just to make Bethy’s job a bit easier.” Describing the team camaraderie, he added: “We’re like best mates. It’s good to have a bit of banter with your mates as well and most importantly enjoy the race.” Firth continued: “I feel like when we all come together we swim really well as a team. I had them beside me so I wasn’t as nervous as when I swim individually. “It was good. I just enjoyed being with everyone so it was nice to get in and race.” When asked what breaking the world record means, she added: “So much, I think we all do Great Britain so proud when we all swim individual events and against each other but when we come together we’re a proper team and I think that showed in the pool tonight.” Applegate added: “It was really exciting and for me personally, I just knew that I had to chase those other people down because I had to make it as easy for Jordan as possible.” Discussing his final leg, Catchpole said: “I saw Jess close the gap on the Australian’s and I heard Reece as I’m about to dive in just ‘safe takeover, safe takeover’ – so I just watched her touch and then I just knew all I had to do was bring it back.”

Break historical records

U.S. withdraws from UN Human Rights Council

The United States is set to withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council, with the U.S. ambassador to the UN calling the organization a "protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias". Ambassador Nikki Haley said the withdrawal was not a retreat from the U.S.'s commitment to human rights, but called the 47-member, international council “an organization that is not worthy of its name," according to The Independent . The U.S. has long called for the body to reform, saying it allows members that have been accused human rights violations. Ms Haley pointed to the involvement of countries like China, Cuba and Venezuela in her speech on Tuesday. “Look at the council membership, and you see an appalling disrespect for the most basic rights,” Haley said. Ms Haley also accused the council of maintaining a “disproportionate focus and unending hostility towards Israel" that shows it is "motivated by political bias, not by human rights". Read alsoPolitical differences between Trump, EU leaders threatening NATO – Stoltenberg Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the UN human rights chief, called the announcement "disappointing, if not really surprising". "Given the state of human rights in today's world, the U.S. should be stepping up, not stepping back," he said in a statement. Washington's withdrawal is the latest U.S. rejection of multilateral engagement after it pulled out of the Paris climate agreement and the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which was signed with a number of other world powers. It also comes as the U.S. faces intense criticism for detaining children separated from their immigrant parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. Mr al-Hussein has called on Washington to halt the “unconscionable” policy. Diplomats have said the US's withdrawal from the council could bolster countries such as Cuba, Russia, Egypt and Pakistan, which resist what they see as UN interference in sovereign issues. Ms Haley, announcing the withdrawal at the State Department alongside Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said that if the council does reform, the United States “would be happy to rejoin.”

Withdraw from an Organization

Aeroflot Flight 6833 crash

Aeroflot Flight 6833,[1] en route from Tbilisi, Georgian SSR, to Leningrad, Russian SFSR, with an intermediate stop in Batumi, was the scene of an attempted aircraft hijacking by seven young Georgians on 18–19 November 1983. The crisis ended with a storming of the Tu-134A airliner by Alpha Group that resulted in eight dead. The surviving hijackers were subsequently tried and executed. [2][3] On 18 November 1983, seven young people, all sons of Georgian intellectual elite families – attempted to flee the Soviet Union by hijacking an airliner of the state-run Aeroflot company. Among the hijackers were the painters Gia Tabidze, Davit Mikaberidze, and Soso Tsereteli, the actor Gega Kobakhidze (who had just been selected to play a role in Tengiz Abuladze's subsequently famous film Repentance[4]), and the physicians Paata and Kakhi Iverieli. They pretended to be a wedding party, boarded the airliner in Tbilisi, and tried to divert it to Turkey. There were 57 passengers and seven crew members on board. [5][6] The captain, Akhmatger Gardapkhadze, and the co-pilot, Vladimir Gasoyan (both of them were subsequently awarded the titles of the Hero of the Soviet Union) made sharp maneuvers to prevent the hijackers from taking aim. The hijackers were forced out of the flight deck but several people were injured in a clash. Rather than concede to the hijackers' demands, the pilot circled Tbilisi and later landed. [5] The Georgian Communist Party chief, Eduard Shevardnadze, called for the deployment of an elite Soviet special unit Alpha Group from Moscow. On day two of the hijacking the Alpha group stormed the aircraft and arrested the surviving hijackers. The incident claimed the lives of three crew members, two passengers and three hijackers. The aircraft received 108 bullet holes during the attack, and because its structure was weakened by manoeuvres that exceeded its design limits, the aircraft was written off. [7] The arrested hijackers as well as their friend and confessor Orthodox priest Theodore Chikhladze were tried by the Soviet Georgian court. The convicts declared that they wanted to "have a better life and live in a free society." Shevardnadze described them as "drug addicts" and "bandits", and demanded the death penalty. In August 1984, the three hijackers – Kobakhidze and the brothers Iverieli – were sentenced to death, while their female co-conspirator Tinatin Petviashvili received a 14-year jail sentence. Despite the lack of evidence, the priest Chikhladze was declared a "ringleader" and also sentenced to death. On 3 October 1984, all four men were shot. [7] Many details of the incident are still unclear and a series of questions remain open. Shevardnadze has been accused of rejecting the offer by the hijackers' parents to negotiate with their sons the release of the hostages. Many claims have been made that he demanded the death penalty for the hijackers to strengthen his positions among the Communist leadership and to show his loyalty to Moscow. The 108 bullet holes in the aircraft as well as the death of a stewardess remain a source of controversy. [7] In 2001, a Georgian producer of the Marjanishvili Theater, David Doiashvili, decided to make a performance of the 1983 events. However, the theater administration didn't accept the screenplay of the writer David Turashvili. The latter stated Shevardnadze was reluctant to recall old memories. Georgian human rights organizations claimed censorship in Georgia was still functional. The performance The Jeans Generation, or Belated Requiem was staged, however, at the private Liberty Theatre and gained a conspicuous popularity in Georgia. [8] In 2003, Georgian-born author and director Zaza Rusadze made a documentary Bandits about the event and its background. The movie was screened at several International Film Festivals and broadcast in German and French speaking EU countries in 2004, as well as on the 1st Channel of Georgian Public Broadcaster.

Air crash

Atlanta transit strike of 1950

The Atlanta transit strike of 1950 was a lengthy transit strike that lasted from May 18, 1950, to November 16, 1950, in Atlanta, Georgia. A month after author Margaret Mitchell was struck and killed by a taxi during a year when trolleys had killed five, there was a call in the city to increase safety on city streets. The city council passed an ordinance which required all cab and trolley drivers to apply for a permit. It required a $5 fee and a fingerprint which was the only method at the time to trace criminal records. The fingerprinting in particular was fought by Jesse Walton, president of Amalgamated Street Car Local 732, first in court cases which losses he appealed up to the United States Supreme Court (who declined to hear). Still not willing to comply, Walton called for a strike which began on May 18, 1950. Police Chief Herbert Jenkins suspended all force vacations to staff downtown intersections all day long to handle the great increase in automobile traffic. Mayor William Hartsfield called for legalized jitneys (which required a similar permit) to help reduce some of the traffic. The strike was to last 37 days and as Hartsfield's law was written, jitney permits were immediately revoked. The union voted to get permits on November 16, 1950, and found themselves working for a new company, the Atlanta Transit Company, as the former transit operator in Atlanta, Georgia Power, used this opportunity to get out of the transit business. This article related to a strike action or other labor dispute is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Strike

Lunar Eclipse 2021 Date: First Lunar Eclipse Or Blood Moon Of The Year

Lunar Eclipse 2021:The first Lunar Eclipse of the year will take place on May 26. It will be a total Lunar Eclipse as the Full Moon will pass through the Earth's dark umbral shadow. This Lunar Eclipse will be the first total eclipse of the moon since January 21, 2019. A total Lunar Eclipse is often called the Blood Moon because of the reddish-orange hue of moon during the eclipse. The term Supermoon simply means a bigger than the average Full Moon but the one we will see on May 26 will be the biggest of the year. On an average there are four to seven eclipses every year. Some of them are total and some partial. Full Moons around the world have different names depending on the local cultural and seasonal aspects. Here are the eclipses 2021 will see: Here's a word of caution. Do not get confused between a Solar Eclipse and a Lunar Eclipse. In a Solar Eclipse, the Sun gets darker while in a Lunar Eclipse, the Moon gets darker.

New wonders in nature

7 killed in fire, explosion caused by leaking LPG cylinder in Gujarat

Seven persons have succumbed to the burn injuries after leakage of gas from an LPG cylinder triggered fire and explosion inside a room on the outskirts of Gujarat's Ahmedabad city, police have said. The incident took place on Tuesday night (July 20), but the victims - labourers and their family members - died over the last couple of days during treatment, said S S Gameti, sub-inspector of Aslali police station in Ahmedabad rural on Friday. Besides men, the deceased included children and women, he added. "Some labourers working in a factory and their family members were sleeping in a small room when gas from their LPG cylinder started leaking on the night of July 20. When their neighbour knocked on their door to alert them, a labourer got up and switched on the light, which caused an explosion due to concentration of gas," Gameti said. "Ten persons were sleeping there at that time and all of them received severe burn injuries as fire engulfed the room. While three persons died during their treatment on Thursday, four others succumbed to the injuries at a hospital on Friday, he said. Three persons are undergoing treatment, the official added.

Gas explosion

Apricot kernels are being recalled over risk of cyanide poisoning

TORONTO -- The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has issued a nationwide recall for a brand of apricot kernels, warning that they may cause cyanide poisoning. The Bitter Apricot Kernels and the Extremely Bitter Apricot Kernels from the brand Our Father's Farm have been affected by this recall. The products in question come in 454-gram, 908-gram and 1.8-kilogram quantities and have a best before date of Jan. 31, 2022. The products may have been sold online and in stores. The CFIA is urging anyone who has these affected products in their home to not consume them. Health Canada says apricot kernels contain a naturally occurring amount of cyanogenic glycosides. The human body can detoxify small amounts of cyanide, but cyanide poisoning can occur if consumed in larger amounts. Health Canada allows for 20 parts per million of extractable cyanide in apricot kernel products sold as food. Symptoms of cyanide poisoning include weakness, confusion, anxiety, restlessness, headache, nausea, difficulty breathing. In more serious cases, cyanide poisoning can lead to shortness of breath, loss of consciousness, seizures, and cardiac arrest. This isn't the first time in recent months that the CFIA has issued a recall affecting apricot kernels. Back in March, the CFIA recalled 10 different apricot kernel products , also over concerns that they may cause cyanide poisoning.

Mass Poisoning

SpaceX announced on Monday that it will launch four private individuals on a Crew Dragon capsule into orbit around the Earth

SpaceX announced on Monday that it will launch four private individuals on a Crew Dragon capsule into orbit around the Earth, dubbed “the world’s first all-civilian mission.” It is scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of 2021. The company’s spacecraft will be commanded by Jared Isaacman, the founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments. The mission, known as Inspiration4, seeks to raise support for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Isaacman is donating the three accompanying seats on the mission “to crew members who will be selected to represent the mission pillars of leadership, hope, generosity and prosperity,” SpaceX said in a press release. “Inspiration4 is the realization of a lifelong dream and a step towards a future in which anyone can venture out and explore the stars. I appreciate the tremendous responsibility that comes with commanding this mission and I want to use this historic moment to inspire humanity while helping to tackle childhood cancer here on Earth,” Isaacman said in a statement. Isaacman has given St. Jude two of the seats on the mission, with one “reserved for a St. Jude ambassador with direct ties to the mission.” The third and fourth crew seats will be decided by online competitions that run from Feb. 1 to Feb. 28, listed on the Inspiration4 website. The third seat is open to those who donate to St. Jude, while the fourth is open to new and existing customers of Isaacman’s Shift4Shop eCommerce platform. The Inspiration4 crew will undergo training led by SpaceX, in which they will prepare for launch atop one of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets. Elon Musk, on a call with reporters after the announcement, noted that the Inspiration4 mission’s length of time and other parameters are up to Isaacman. “If you decide later you want to do a different mission you totally can,” Musk said. “You get to go where you want to go. But I think we’re nominally assuming it’s two to four days, but if you want to go longer that’s fine too.” SpaceX plans to use the Crew Dragon spacecraft named Resilience, which is currently docked with the International Space Station having launched the Crew-1 mission for NASA in November. Musk added that NASA has been briefed on the Inspiration4 mission “and is supportive.” Musk’s company has announced several private missions in the past few years, including a deal with Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa to fly on the company’s Starship rocket on a trip around the moon in 2023. SpaceX also has space tourism deals with Axiom Space, which aims to fly four people to the International Space Station on a 10-day trip early next year, and Space Adventures, which plans to fly four tourists on a five-day “free-flyer” trip to orbit by 2022.

New achievements in aerospace

See the Sun plunge into total darkness

On August 21, 2017 215 million Americans watched in awe as the Sun briefly went dark in a total solar eclipse. The sheer number of people who gathered to witness this cosmic phenomenon eclipsed the turnout for the 2020 presidential vote — a testament to how the universe can move us even when our terrestrial concerns cannot. On December 14, there will be another chance to marvel at the Sun, as this bright, fiery orb becomes obscured once more. To prepare you for the big day, here's everything you need to know about solar eclipses, how to see them in action, and when you need to look up. As the Moon orbits the Earth, it sometimes ends up positioned between the Earth and the Sun. In this position, it blocks the Sun’s light, resulting in a solar eclipse. While rare, these moments of cosmic alignment are fleeting, typically only last for a few minutes, according to NASA. There are three different kinds of solar eclipse, each dependent on the relative position of the Moon, Earth, and Sun. Of the three types of solar eclipses, the total eclipse is most dramatic. For it to occur, the Earth, Moon, and Sun have to be in direct alignment, and it can only be seen from a small band across Earth called the 'path of totality.' Similar to a lunar eclipse, the Moon casts two shadows onto the Earth. One is called the umbra and the other the penumbra. The umbra refers to the darker, inner shadow and it is only from a perspective inside the umbra that the Sun will appear fully obscured during a total eclipse. From the penumbra, you can still see the eclipse, but it will look more like a partial eclipse. As the Moon moves into place between the Earth and our star, it looks like an ever-increasing bite has been taken out of the Sun. The darkness grows as the eclipse progresses. Eventually, the Sun becomes completely obscured. From our vantage point, it looks as if the Sun has turned black and is surrounded by a halo of pulsing light. During a total solar eclipse, the interaction between the Sun and Moon is only a part of this visual feast. Because the light of the Sun is blocked, it creates some pretty weird effects on Earth. The sky grows dark as though the Sun is setting. Shadow bands — thin, wavy lines caused by light distortions from the Earth’s atmosphere — appear on surfaces. A particularly strange effect are crescent shadows, which look like moons early in their cycle of waxing and waning. Once the sky is fully darkened, the horizon may glow red, similar to a sunset. Solar eclipses are relatively common phenomena. Most years, there are two solar eclipses of any kind, but just a third of these — some 27 percent — will be total eclipses, according to NASA. Yes! NASA’s Curiosity rover captured images of an annular eclipse on Mars caused by the moon Phobos on March 26, 2019. Curiosity also got some shots of another Martian moon, Deimos, crossing in front of the Sun, but since the moon is so small, NASA dubbed the event a “transit” rather than an eclipse, according to NASA. Technically, yes, because it is always night somewhere during a solar eclipse, and the eclipse itself will simulate nightfall. The Sun has to be visible to for you to observe a solar eclipse in action, however. The next total solar eclipse will happen on December 14, 2020 at 11:15 a.m. Eastern. The eclipse will be visible from the Pacific, South America, and Antarctica. The path of totality runs through the South Pacific, Chile, Argentina, and the South Atlantic. The next total solar eclipse will occur in December 2021, and be most visible from Antarctica, according to NASA. Unfortunately, we in the United States will miss these cosmic events. But mark your calendars: A total solar eclipse predicted for April 8, 2024, will be fully visible from North America. There is also an annular solar eclipse supposed to take place on October 14, 2023 which will also be visible to people in the United States. A total solar eclipse is relatively uncommon phenomenon, and when they do happen, they will only ever be visible from certain parts of the Earth. To safely view an eclipse, wear appropriate eye protection such “eclipse glasses” that meet the ISO 12312-2 international standard. Looking directly at the Sun without protection will damage your eyes.

New wonders in nature

Sri Lanka's withdrawal from UN Human Rights Council resolution: what it means for survivors

Sri Lanka, under Gotabaya Rajapaksa, has withdrawn from a Human Rights Council resolution which shows commitment to reconciliation, accountability and human rights. Find out why this withdrawal is so significant for both survivors of torture and the future of human rights in Sri Lanka. In November 2019, Sri Lanka elected Gotabaya Rajapaksa as president. His election is part of a global trend towards authoritarianism in recent years, with ‘strong man’ leaders being elected across the globe (Donald Trump in the US, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Rodrigo Duterte in Philippines and Viktor Orbán in Hungary to name only a few). Gotabaya Rajapaksa is the latest in a long line of leaders not just getting away with cruelty, but being rewarded for it. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, together with his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, have been implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity during Sri Lanka’s long and brutal civil war in what the United Nations described as “an assault on the entire framework of international law”. They were also implicated in serious human rights violations in the period after the war ended in 2009. Gotabaya and Mahinda Rajapaksa were defence secretary and president respectively from 2005 to 2015. The extent of the serious human rights violations that occurred during their time in power cannot be underestimated. It is not surprising therefore that 11 years after the end of the civil war, justice and accountability in Sri Lanka remain as elusive as ever. The Sri Lankan government has withdrawn support from a key United Nations Human Rights Council resolution, which outlines the country’s commitment to promote reconciliation, accountability and human rights. In announcing the government’s intention to withdraw from this resolution, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa described those who are calling for accountability as “born traitors” who are “waiting for the first opportunity to betray the country”. Statements like these and recent political developments in the country raise serious concerns for the delivery of human rights in the country. The international community to ensure that an international mandate on Sri Lanka remains and to respond robustly to the deteriorating human rights situation in the country and the government’s failure to provide accountability to its citizens. For the last eight years, Sri Lanka has been the top country of origin for torture of survivors referred to Freedom from Torture for clinical services and medico-legal reports. Our doctors have documented more than 300 cases of torture by the state between 2009 and 2015, when President Mahinda Rajapaksa lost power. In 2015, Freedom from Torture published Tainted Peace: Torture in Sri Lanka since May 2009 , which analysed 148 of those cases. Who was tortured by the former Rajapaksa government and why? Findings from our report covering the post-war period under President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Tainted Peace , show torture was widely used to persecute minorities, political dissidents and civil society during that time. Torture survivors referred to Freedom from Torture include men and women from all ages, although most were aged 26-40. The majority belong to the Tamil ethnic group and had a real or perceived association with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). They were targeted for being members or supporters of the LTTE or involuntary supporters, their association through family members, and others were simply wrongly imputed or imputed for being forcedly recruited. Key findings include: Even after the end of the civil war, the Sri Lankan military, police and intelligence services continued to practice torture in a network of torture facilities across Sri Lanka, including unofficial detention centres; Sri Lankan citizens at particular risk of torture were Tamils with a real or perceived association with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), (whether direct or indirect through family members) at any level and whether current or historic; and The lack of due process reported, and the heavy scarring left on the bodies of victims, suggest that the perpetrators commit torture with impunity and without fear of the consequences. Where and how were people tortured in Sri Lanka? Torture took place in a variety of state-run facilities in different parts of the country, including military and intelligence facilities, police stations, camps for internally displaced people and so-called ‘Rehabilitation Centres’. Men and women were detained without observance of any due process rights, held in poor detention conditions, and often forced to sign documents after being tortured. Physical torture His hands were tied behind his back and cuffs were out on his ankle. A rope was then fixed to the ankle cuffs and he was suspended. In this position, he was subjected to burns with heated metal rods to his arms, torso and legs. One rod was used to burn him whilst the other was re-heated outside the cell. Medico Legal Report excerpt Men and women were subject to blunt force trauma of various forms during interrogation sessions and while in their cells. People described being beaten with a variety of objects on different parts of their body, including the head, and soles of the feet (known as ‘falaka’). Burning was another common method. Most were burned with either metal objects or cigarettes. Some survivors were also burned with other materials, such as caustic substances, electric shocks, scalding liquid, molten material, burning paper, firecrackers and charcoal. Suspension and forced positioning was also reported, often carried out concurrently with other forms of torture. Common forms of suspension used included ‘butchery’, ‘reversed butchery’, ‘cross suspension, and ‘parrot perch suspension’. The asphyxiation method most commonly reported was forcible immersion of the head in water, often when the person was suspended upside down. People also reported the forced aspiration of petrol or chili powder and the use of ‘waterboarding’. Gotabaya Rajapaksa Sexual torture In the afternoon two men came into the room. Both men took it in turns to make him take their penis in his mouth and then took it in turns to anally rape him. Through this time they were swearing at him and calling him filthy names, they held a gun to his head some of the time an also hit him with the handle of the gun. After he had been raped several times, he was left alone in the room with no clothes. He was kept naked for the rest of the time until he was released. Medico Legal Report excerpt Evidence of sexual torture was widespread between both men and women. Forms of sexual torture described include rape (anal, vagina, oral and instrumental), beating and other violence to the genitals, sexual assault by touching, sexual humiliation and individuals being forced to commit sexual acts on others. Women described being repeatedly raped by different officers. They were subject to vaginal and anal rape, often in the same torture episode, as well as rape with implements such as glass bottles and batons. Women also described being burned with cigarettes, beaten, bitten, cut or stabbed while being raped. In some occasions women were forcibly administered drugs or alcohol. Men who were raped described being subject to anal rape, oral rape and rape with instruments, such as glass bottles, plastic or metal pipes or batons. Other forms of sexual torture inflicted on men include having their testicles or penis squeezed, twisted, beaten or slammed in a drawer. Some men suffered sexual humiliation, such as being forced to masturbate others, being urinated or ejaculated on, or being forced to swallow semen or urine. Why is this important? Justice is a recurring theme in discussions that Freedom from Torture has with torture survivors from Sri Lanka and many other parts of the world, as we help them to rebuild their lives. Many survivors observe that the process of seeking justice helps them recover by affirming the unfairness of what they endured, restoring some measure of control which their torturers tried to take away and contribute to torture prevention efforts so that others are protected from the same suffering. Yet, President Rajapaksa has signalled a death knell for justice. In his inaugural campaign speech, he promised to release "all war heroes who were unjustly imprisoned". This includes soldiers imprisoned for mass murder and gang rape and is a process that has already started. He has also argued that investigations into war crimes by security forces is a “humiliation and victimisation” of police officers which has left the country vulnerable to a “re-emergence of terrorism”. Rajapaksa’s appointment of key figures during the civil war to government positions also signals his lack of commitment to bring justice to victims. Two of the most notorious appointments are Kamal Gunaratne, former Army Commander, as Secretary of Defense and C. A. Chandraprema, former death squad member, who has been nominated as the new Permanent Representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council. All the Tamil people have been asking for international justice. We don’t have trust in local justice. What the Human Rights Council has recommended is good Sri Lankan survivor of torture in treatment at Freedom from Torture The government states that it intends to “achieve sustainable peace through an inclusive, domestically designed and executed reconciliation and accountability process”, yet there has not been a good track record to date by any government on delivering on domestic remedies. Human rights violations, including torture, have continued. Sri Lankan torture survivors see a direct link between continued violations, successive failures of justice and accountability and the culture of impunity with the undermining of reconciliation efforts. Reconciliation cannot happen without a meaningful justice and accountability process. Tamil survivors have also made clear that any justice element that relies solely on domestic justice and accountability mechanisms is not credible. With little chance of domestic remedies delivering accountability, the Human Rights Council resolution is an important mechanism by which Sri Lankan survivors could seek accountability. Torture survivors receiving Freedom from Torture’s services identified the Human Rights Council process as an important mechanism for delivering justice and accountability, in spite of its flaws. The international community cannot turn its back on Sri Lankan victims and allow impunity to flourish in the country. That would not only be failing Sri Lankan nationals but also the entire rule-based system on which the United Nations is based. Now that the government has signalled its intention to walk away from the process, the international community must ensure that international oversight of Sri Lanka continues. It is clear that much of the most significant progress towards accountability in the country has taken place only at times of international scrutiny. Gotabaya Rajapaksa has declared himself to be president for “Sri Lanka’s future”. But a strong future is not achieved by ignoring and denying the crimes of the past.

Withdraw from an Organization

Exercise Steadfast Defender 2021 to test NATO readiness and military mobility

NATO exercise Steadfast Defender 2021 kicks off this month, bringing together more than 20 NATO Allies and partners from North America and Europe1. “Exercise Steadfast Defender 2021 will test NATO’s readiness and military mobility – with forces deploying across land and sea, all the way from North America to the Black Sea region and off the coast of Portugal,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. “With over 9,000 troops, the exercise demonstrates that NATO has the capabilities and the resolve to protect all Allies against any threat,” he added. Steadfast Defender 2021 will be the first large-scale test of NATO’s adapted Command Structure, with the involvement of two new NATO commands – Joint Support and Enabling Command based in Ulm, Germany and Joint Force Command Norfolk, based in the United States. At a virtual press conference today (6 May 2021) moderated by the NATO Spokesperson Oana Lungescu, Lieutenant General Brice Houdet, Vice Chief of Staff at NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) previewed the preparations and objectives of the exercise. He was joined by Colonel James Scott from Allied Joint Force Command Naples, Italy, Rear Admiral Andrew Betton, Deputy Commander of NATO Joint Force Command Norfolk, in the United States, Lieutenant General Jürgen Knappe, Commander of NATO’s Joint Support and Enabling Command in Ulm, Germany, and Major Jean François Lelubre from SHAPE. Lieutenant General Brice Houdet emphasised that Steadfast Defender 2021 is a long-planned defensive exercise. The first phase of Steadfast Defender 2021 focuses on the rapid reinforcement of NATO’s European Allies by North American forces. This phase is led by Joint Force Command Norfolk and will include a maritime live exercise with around 5,000 forces and 18 ships, including the UK’s Carrier Strike Group led by HMS Queen Elizabeth. Meanwhile, a table-top part of the exercise will take part in Ulm, Germany. This will train and test the ability of NATO’s new Joint Support and Enabling Command to coordinate the speedy movement of Allied forces and equipment across European borders. Some 300 personnel will be involved in this part of the exercise. In late May, NATO’s annual Noble Jump will take place under the umbrella of Steadfast Defender 2021.This will see the deployment of the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), led by Turkey, to Romania. Some 4,000 troops from 12 countries will be involved. Other associated exercises will take place in the region as well.

Military Exercise

1902 eruption of Mount Pelée

Mount Pelée or Mont Pelée (/pəˈleɪ/ pə-LAY; French: Montagne Pelée [mɔ̃taɲ pəle], meaning "bald mountain" or "peeled mountain")[3] is an active volcano at the northern end of Martinique, an island and French overseas department in the Lesser Antilles Volcanic Arc of the Caribbean. Its volcanic cone is composed of stratified layers of hardened ash and solidified lava. [4] Its most recent eruption was in 1932. [2][5] The stratovolcano's 1902 eruption destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre, killing 29,000 to 30,000 people in the space of a few minutes, in the worst volcanic disaster of the 20th century. [6] The main eruption, on 8 May 1902, left only two survivors in the direct path of the blast flow: Ludger Sylbaris survived because he was in a poorly ventilated, dungeon-like jail cell and Léon Compère-Léandre, living on the edge of the city, escaped with severe burns. [7] Mount Pelée is the result of a typical subduction zone. The subduction formed the Lesser Antilles island arc, a curved chain of volcanoes approximately 850 kilometres (530 mi) in length, between Puerto Rico and Venezuela, where the Caribbean Plate meets Atlantic oceanic crust belonging to the South American Plate. Other volcanoes in the island arc are also known for their volcanic activity, including Saint Vincent's La Soufrière, Guadeloupe's La Grande Soufriere volcano, Montserrat's Soufrière Hills, and the submarine volcano Kick 'em Jenny. [4] Volcanologists have identified three different phases in the evolution of Mount Pelée volcano: initial, intermediate, and modern. [4] In an initial phase, called the "Paléo-Pelée" stage, Mount Pelee was a common stratovolcano. The cone of Paléo-Pelée was composed of many layers of lava flows and fragmented volcanic debris. Remains of the Paléo-Pelée cone are still visible at the northern view at the volcano today. A second stage, now called the intermediate phase, started around 100,000 years ago, after a long period of quiescence. This stage is grouped by the formation of the Morne Macouba lava dome, then later on, the Morne Macouba caldera. During the intermediate phase, there were several eruptions which produced pyroclastic flows like those that destroyed Saint-Pierre in the 1902 eruption. Around 25,000 years ago, a large southwest sector collapse occurred, forming a landslide. This event was similar to the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. [4] The modern stage of the evolution of Mount Pelée has created most of the current cone, with deposits of pumice and the results of past pyroclastic flows. More than 30 eruptions have been identified during the last 5,000 years of the volcano's activity. 3,000 years ago, following a large pumice eruption, the Étang Sec (French for Dry Pond) caldera was then formed. The 1902 eruption took place within the Étang Sec crater. This eruption formed many pyroclastic flows and produced a dome that filled the caldera. Mount Pelée continued to erupt until 4 July 1905. Thereafter, the volcano was dormant until 1929. [8] On 16 September 1929, Mount Pelée began to erupt again. This time, there was no hesitation on the part of authorities and the danger area was immediately evacuated. The 1929 eruption formed a second dome in the Étang Sec caldera and produced pyroclastic flows emptying into the Blanche River valley. Although there were pyroclastic flows, the activity was not as violent as the 1902 activity. It culminated in another "spine" or lava plug, albeit smaller than the 1902 plug, being emplaced at the summit. The activity ended in late 1932. [4][9] The volcano is currently active. A few volcano tectonic earthquakes occur on Martinique every year, and Mount Pelée is under continuous watch by geophysicists and volcanologists (IPGP). Before the 1902 eruption—as early as the summer of 1900—signs of increased fumarole activity were present in the Étang Sec crater (Scarth, p. 30). Relatively minor phreatic (steam) eruptions that occurred in 1792 and 1851 were evidence that the volcano was active. Signs of unrest are likely to precede any future eruptive activity from Mount Pelée, and its past activity (including the violent eruptions uncovered by carbon dating) is an extremely important factor for hazard assessment. [10][11] The city of Saint-Pierre was never fully rebuilt, though some villages grew up in its place. The estimated population of the Commune of Saint-Pierre in 2004 was 4,544. [citation needed] On December 6, 2020, The Martinique Volcano Observatory (MVO) has raised Mount Pelee's alert level to Yellow [Restless] from Green [Normal] due to an increase in seismicity under the volcano beginning in April 2019, and observations of tremor last month. As far as is known, this is the first sign of activity since the end of the 1929-32 eruption. This volcano is, of course, highly dangerous, and great vigilance of its activity is required. Whether or not it is going to enter a new eruptive period is currently unknown. According to the MVO press release "The increase in seismicity of superficial volcanic origin (up to 4-5 km below the summit) observed since April 2019, is therefore clearly above the base level characteristic for Mount Pelée. In April 2019, volcanic seismicity appeared at depth around and under Mount Pelée (more than 10 km below sea level). It could correspond to the arrival at depth of magmatic fluids. Finally, new recorded tremor-type signals were observed on November 8 and 9, 2020: they could correspond to a reactivation of the hydrothermal system. Even if, in the current state of measurements, there is no deformation of the volcano on the scale of the observation network, the appearance, in a few months, of these three different types of seismic signals of volcanic origin shows a clear change in the behavior of the volcanic system, the activity of which is increasing from the base level observed over several decades. "[12] The Martinique volcano frog, Allobates chalcopis, is endemic to Mount Pelée,[13] and the only species among related frogs (family Aromobatidae) endemic to an oceanic island. [14] A 9,262 ha largely forested tract, encompassing the mountain and extending to the sea on its north-western side, has been recognised as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports populations of bridled quail doves, Lesser Antillean swifts, green and purple-throated caribs, blue headed and Antillean crested hummingbirds, Caribbean elaenias, Lesser Antillean flycatchers, Lesser Antillean pewees, scaly-breasted and pearly-eyed thrashers, brown and grey tremblers, rufous-throated solitaires, Antillean euphonias, Martinique orioles, Lesser Antillean saltators and Lesser Antillean bullfinches. [15]

Volcano Eruption

2016 European Lacrosse Championship

The 2016 European Lacrosse Championship was the 10th edition of the European Lacrosse competition for national teams. It was played in Budapest, Hungary from 28 July to 6 August 2016. [1][2] The draw was held in Budapest on 10 January 2016. [3] The four first qualified teams (England, Ireland, Sweden and Netherlands) were placed directly into groups A to D respectively. The other 20 teams were divided into five pots according to its position in the 2012 European Championship. [1]  Germany (5th) Scotland (6th)  Finland (7th) Israel (8th)  Czech Republic (9th)  Wales (10th)   Switzerland (11th)  Slovakia (12th)  Italy (13th)  Norway (14th)  Belgium (15th)  France (16th) Spain (17th)  Latvia  Poland  Austria  Russia  Denmark  Slovenia  Hungary

Sports Competition

1905 Tsetserleg earthquake

The 1905 Bolnai earthquake occurred in or near the Asgat Sum of Zavkhan Province in Mongolia on 23 July. The earthquake has been estimated at 8.25[3] to 8.4[2] on the moment magnitude scale. The Bolnai earthquake is believed to be a strike-slip rupture of a branch of the Bolnai Fault, extending about 300[3] to 375[4] km along the fault, and possibly an additional 80 km of the Teregtiin Fault. The fault displacement during the earthquake was greater than 6 m,[5] and possibly as much as 11 m,[2] and the duration is estimated at about two minutes. [4] The Bolnai earthquake was preceded in two weeks by the Tsetserleg earthquake, and is considered a part of the same general crustal movement. [2] There are few records of the immediate effects of the earthquake due to the remoteness of Mongolia in 1905. However, rockslides were reported in the nearby mountains, and supposedly "two lakes, each of eight acres in size, disappeared". [6] Lasting damage of the earthquake can be seen in the Mongolia special of the Amazon Prime motoring show The Grand Tour. [7]

Earthquakes

Gas Explosion at Mexico City Hospital Kills 3 and Wounds Dozens

MEXICO CITY — A gas refueling truck exploded outside a maternity and children’s hospital here on Thursday, killing three people, two of them babies, and leaving dozens injured in the destruction of nearly the entire building. Babies cried in the rubble, as neighbors rushed to pull them to safety. Mothers sobbed as they searched for their children. In all more than 70 were injured, including 22 sent to other hospitals with serious injuries. Emergency service officials said as many as nine babies were among those most gravely hurt. The explosion occurred as about 110 people in the city-run Hospital Materno Infantil Cuajimalpa were being evacuated after a leak was discovered as the truck was filling tanks in the kitchen area. A 25-year-old nurse and two babies — one three weeks old and the other six months old — were killed, the authorities said. Rescue workers continued their search of debris into the night. A cellphone video made by a witness showed a huge fireball suddenly erupt as a fire truck parked outside the grounds. Clemente Mendoza Arias, who lives a block from the hospital, heard a loud boom and rushed out, and found the hospital in ruins. He and neighbors tore through oxygen masks, IV tubes and debris as they tried to rescue people trapped between the buckling walls of the hospital. “The neighbors were the first to help,” he said. Sarahi Bobadilla, who scrambled out of a morning shower to help after feeling the earth shake from the blast, joined neighbors in helping to rescue three women and three babies. Another resident, Ángel Alcántara, told the newspaper Reforma that he and others heard the explosion and ran out to help. “We took out two nurses and four newborn babies,” he told the newspaper. Television images showed the hospital with a collapsed roof, walls stripped to the metal frame and piles of broken concrete slabs, in scenes that to many recalled the devastating 1985 earthquake. Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera said the explosion occurred around 7 a.m. because of a faulty gas delivery truck hose. Gas truck workers discovered the leak and called for firefighters, who arrived just as the blast occurred. Such explosions area a frequent occurrence in Mexico, where gas for furnaces is most often delivered by truck because of a lack of an underground pipe system. The gas is usually a mix of liquefied propane and butane, but it was unclear what kind the hospital was receiving. In May 2013, a tanker truck went out of control on a highway and exploded in a Mexico City suburb, killing 27 people in a poor neighborhood, including 17 members of one family. The company involved in the hospital blast, Gas Express Nieto, says it has 1,000 trucks spread across 80 percent of the country to deliver liquid propane gas to households. Mr. Mancera said the three workers from the company at the hospital would be detained; all were injured, including one seriously. A similar accident involving the hose from a Nieto gas truck killed three people in the city of Queretaro in July 2014, according to local media.

Gas explosion

Volunteers build ramp for 4 siblings recovering at home after Waukesha parade

Nearly three weeks after the tragedy at the Waukesha Christmas parade, volunteers are hard at work building a wheelchair ramp at Dylan Yourell's home. Posted at 10:25 PM, Dec 10, 2021 and last updated 2021-12-10 23:25:54-05 WAUKESHA, Wis. — Nearly three weeks after the tragedy at the Waukesha Christmas parade, volunteers are hard at work building a wheelchair ramp at Dylan Yourell's home. Yourell's four children were walking in the parade together when they were hurt. Some were hospitalized for several days. Thankfully, all four have been back home for some time now. Yourell's four children were walking in the parade together when they were hurt. Their mother tells News they are taking it day by day. Yourell stressed his story is one of many people's that day. "My story is just one, but my story is including finding two of my daughters on the road," Yourell said. It's been a challenging few weeks for the family, but Yourell says he's choosing to focus on how the community has rushed to help. TMJ4 Volunteers build a ramp for four siblings recovering at home after the Waukesha Christmas parade tragedy. "From law enforcement, from the people that were taking children in their vehicles and taking them immediately that they could not wait, and one of those situations included my son, so it does hold a personal note," Yourell said. "I just want to say thank you to everyone that was helping and being good on that day. Truly, I felt it coming up that road." Yourell's 8-year-old-son, Grayson, will need a wheel chair for a little while. Volunteers have already built a ramp at his mother's home, and they hope the ramp at his father's home will be finished in a few weeks. "Picture-frame decking and stainless steel horizontal railings," said builder Brock Held. "That's what he deserves after what he's gone through." TMJ4 Volunteers build a ramp for four siblings recovering at home after the Waukesha Christmas parade tragedy. Yourell lives around the corner from the parade route and down the street from where the suspect was caught. He hopes the ramp in front of his home will serve as a symbol of Waukesha uniting in this tough time. "I also believe it will be for anyone coming down this street, down this road, seeing this kind of epic thing, going into the Five Points, knowing that the community has come together, that good is battling evil," Yourell said. "I think that is important."

Famous Person - Recovered

2009 Summer Universiade

The 2009 Summer Universiade, officially known as the XXV Summer Universiade, was celebrated in Belgrade, Serbia from July 1 to 12, 2009. The event has also been organised by a range of co-host cities mostly in Vojvodina (Serbian Autonomous Province), close to Belgrade. It was the largest sporting event ever to be organised by the city. At this Universiade the biggest star was the Russian rhythmic gymnast Evgeniya Kanaeva, who won 5 gold medals. Russia was the leading nation in the medal table, with the most gold medals (27) and most medals (76). The bidding process for the 2009 Summer Universiade games began in early 2004. Together with Belgrade another two cities bid for the event – Monterrey in Mexico and Poznań in Poland. Working in Belgrade's favour were the various major sporting events the city was awarded to host in the upcoming 2005, 2006 and 2007 such as EuroBasket 2005, the 2005 European Volleyball Championship, the 2006 European Water Polo Championship, and the European Youth Olympic Festival 2007. Furthermore, the city launched two unsuccessful candidate bids to organize the Summer Olympic Games: for the 1992 Summer Olympics Belgrade was eliminated in the third round of International Olympic Committee voting, with the games going to Barcelona. The 1996 Summer Olympics ultimately went to Atlanta. [1][2] On 10 January 2005 in Innsbruck, Austria, Belgrade was announced as the host of the 2009 Summer Universiade. The ceremony of the host city announcement was attended by the now deceased Belgrade mayor Nenad Bogdanović. The mascot of the 2009 Summer Universiade is a sparrow bird. The organisers chose the sparrow not only because of its symbolic ties to the host city but also because it represents a fast, dynamic and skillful bird, attributes needed for those competing at Universiade. The mascot received a new more modern look in 2009 and a competition began to name the Belgrade sparrow. The three final names for the sparrow were published in the Serbian media in April 2009, with the finalists being Srba, Cvrle and Dživdžan. The final voting was left to the 10,000 Universiade volunteers who overwhelmingly chose the name "Srba". [3] The 2009 Summer Universiade took place in 69 venues across Belgrade and near bycities Inđija, Novi Sad, Obrenovac, Pančevo, Smederevo, Vršac and Zrenjanin. [4] Obrenovac hosted the water polo and volleyball competition, Inđija, Pančevo and Vršac the basketball, Novi Sad the athletics and volleyball, while Zrenjanin hosted the swimming competition. The venue for each sport can be found on the official website of the 2009 Summer Universiade in Belgrade. The opening and closing ceremonies took place at the Belgrade Arena, with a capacity of 20,000. A range of sports halls have undergone intense reconstruction to meet standards for the Universiade games. A number of venues were also newly constructed. Belgrade Arena Red Star Stadium Belgrade Fair SRC Tašmajdan SPENS (Novi Sad) Millennium Center (Vršac) The Universiade Village was home to all athletes participating at the 2009 Summer Universiade games. Often referred to as Belville, the village has been newly built and comprises 14 buildings containing modern apartments. The Belville complex consists of a residential area comprising 120,000m², commercial and business facilities comprising 34,800m² and educational facilities comprising 6,100m². The complex also includes 22,000m² of office space. The Belville complex was completed in May 2009 and officially opened in June 2009. 2000 Apartments have been offered for sale in spring of 2008, and the new owners will be allowed to move in during October 2009. Each building has been named after a flower. They are Iris Marigold, Dandelion, Violet, Lily of the Valley, Sunflower, Mimosa, Cyclamen, Gillyflower, Syringa, Jacinth, Rose, Tulipa, and Lily. During the construction of the village it was the largest development site in the Balkans. It is located in New Belgrade with the closest venues to it being Belgrade Arena (basketball and table tennis), EXPO XXI (wrestling and taekwondo) and TK Gazela (tennis). 2009 Summer Universiade village 2009 Summer Universiade village under construction. The host broadcaster of the 2009 Summer Universiade was Serbia's RTS, the national broadcasting corporation. It used its first and second channel to broadcast the games as well as its digital channel. The games were produced and broadcast in high definition television. Eurosport provided cable broadcasting to European nations. [5]

Sports Competition

Hootie’s Homegrown concert not happening, Firefly fall series postponed due to COVID-19

Updated: November 16, 2021 @ 5:07 pm An Igali king in Nigeria has just been coronated. That means… One of country music's newest stars who earlier this year fa… Darius Rucker typically performs for the Hootie and the Blowfish Homegrown Concert at the former Volvo Car Stadium, now Credit One Stadium. Here, he performs in 2011 to a full house. File/Staff Hootie’s Homegrown Roundup, a concert and school supply drive that typically benefits the Charleston County School District, will not take place this year due to the renewed COVID-19 pandemic.

Organization Closed

Saltmarshes vital to keep coastal ecosystems healthy and blue carbon storage in place

Often dismissed as hostile environments full of mosquitoes and swamps, saltmarshes play a vital role in keeping coastal ecosystems healthy. But with climate scientists predicting rising sea levels in the next century, saltmarsh environments are increasingly under threat. Now a new computer-modelled study by Natural Resources Eyre Peninsula and the University of Adelaide is mapping saltmarsh retreat and identifying management strategies to ensure the life-giving systems survive. It is hoped the saltmarshes will naturally retreat inland but in some areas barriers, including cliffs and man-made structures, might see plant species struggle and in some cases die out. Andrew Freeman of Natural Resources Eyre Peninsula said the tidal ecosystems were critical environmental cleaners. "Healthy saltmarshes are some of our biggest blue carbon storage sinks," Mr Freeman said. Deakin University Blue Carbon Lab head Peter Macreadie said mangroves, sea grass and saltmarsh ecosystems were key players in cleaning the atmosphere. "Saltmarshes are one of the most powerful carbon sinks on the planet," Associate Professor Macreadie said. "What they do is they grab carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and other forms and they lock it in the ground in a watery grave. "They'll preserve the carbon there for thousands of years," he said. "Our modelling shows that these ecosystems are highly vulnerable to sea level rise and other forms of coastal development, in fact around Australia we will see an Australia-wide decline in these ecosystems." He said saltmarshes were critical for recruitment for many Australian fisheries, particularly the prawn industry. "They are also prolific fish nursery areas, essential sediment fillers, buffers against erosion and storm surge and home to countless invertebrates and shorebirds," Mr Freeman said. The Eyre Peninsula saltmarsh study is identifying where saltmarshes could retreat as the seas rise using maps done by aerial laser technology. "One of the fundamental questions we are trying to answer is whether natural process alone will allow saltmarsh to move if new areas of land are provided," Mr Freeman said. "Will we have to actively assist this migration through new plantings?" University of Adelaide student Sophie Russell is cross-mapping the saltmarshes with predicted sea level rises by 2050 and 2100. Eyre Peninsula was the first region in South Australia to utilise the aerial precision coastal elevation data using LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) as part of a climate adaptation project. The project involved more than 3,000 km of flying to map the entire coastline of the region, resulting in a 3D map of the topography. Ms Russell said while some saltmarsh vegetation would be lost by physical barriers like cliffs and roads, other areas would open up. The project was also assessing management methods including fencing off areas so the saltmarsh would be able to retreat, installing culverts to assist the flow of the water as well as some plantings to encourage the vegetation to retreat. Associate Professor Macreadie said there were developments to place a value on blue carbon storage to encourage preservation. "You might have farmers [with low lying marginal land] instead of farming, whether it's sugar cane or asparagus or whatever else they could be farming blue carbon instead under a sea level rise scenario," Associate Professor Macreadie said. "There are projects around the world where people are collecting blue carbon credits for restoring their mangroves, sea grass or saltmarsh ecosystems and also some payments for protecting them as well," he said. "We are in the process of developing a blue carbon offset methodology to sit under the Emission Reduction Fund and the Federal Government are working very hard on this at the moment and hope to have something available to Australia rather soon." The South Australian Government this month announced its Blue Carbon Strategy for the state's one million hectares of mangroves, saltmarsh and seagrass environments that capture and store up to 3.6 per cent of the state's annual greenhouse gas emissions. Associate Professor Macreadie said identifying the value that these uncharismatic ecosystems provide to humanity was important. "As Bobby Kennedy once famously said … "We're still good at measuring GDP and GDP measures everything except that which makes life worth living," he said. )

Environment Pollution

Dubai doctor's sense of smell still affected 15 months after Covid

Dr Tamer Abbas Saafan, a bariatric surgeon, said his sense of smell is still distorted 15 months after having Covid-19. Leslie Pableo for The National More than a year after recovering from Covid-19, a distorted sense of smell persists for Dr Tamer Saafan, 43. In September 2020, the consultant surgeon from Dubai's Saudi-German Hospital contracted coronavirus. With just mild symptoms and a fever lasting two days, he recovered quickly and got the all-clear two weeks later. Quote I even returned to wearing perfume myself – although to me it smells pretty bad Dr Tamer Saafan, Saudi-German Hospital But then something strange happened. He noticed that his shower gel smelt bad. Then other scents, including his wife's perfume, hand soap and air fresheners, all began to smell putrid. “They all smelt bad – like sewage. Then I tried other brands of perfume, the majority of them smelt bad,” he said. Oud, the popular Arab fragrance used in everything from malls to laundry liquid, was particularly malodorous, he said. Now, 15 months later, he has learnt to adapt to it. He even has to ask his wife to check whether clothes are clean and smell fresh. “I used to get upset at first and asked my family not wear any perfume,” Dr Saafan said. “Now if something smells bad, I know it doesn’t, in fact.” Long Covid is a mystery for scientists – particularly who gets it and why. Studies show between 25 per cent and 50 per cent of people have some form of lingering symptoms, although most are mild. Dr Saafan said he is fortunate that his ailment is merely olfactory. Others suffer crippling fatigue. There are even hospital units dedicated to helping once severely ill Covid patients to get back on their feet.

Famous Person - Recovered

Car crash near Loon Lake kills two, closes highway for hours

LOON LAKE, Wash. — Two people were killed in a one-car crash west of Loon Lake on Tuesday. The crash closed down state route 292 in both directions for nearly four hours. The road was reopened at approximately 9:30 p.m., according to WSDOT East. According to Stevens County Fire District 1, a pickup truck with two passengers hit a bridge abutment. The driver and passenger died at the scene.

Road Crash

40 dead, many feared buried in mud after Brazil dam collapse

BRUMADINHO, Brazil (AP) -- The death toll from the collapse of a dam holding back mine waste in southeastern Brazil rose to 40 on Saturday as searchers flying in helicopters and rescuers laboring in deep mud uncovered more bodies. An estimated 300 people were still missing and authorities expected the death toll to increase during a search made more challenging by intermittent rains. Scores of families in the city desperately awaited word on their loved ones, and Romeu Zema, governor of Minas Gerais state, promised that those responsible "would be punished." Employees of the mining complex owned and operated by Brazilian mining company Vale were eating lunch Friday afternoon when the dam gave way, unleashing a sea of reddish-brown mud that knocked over and buried several structures of the company and surrounding areas. The level of devastation quickly led President Jair Bolsonaro and other officials to describe it as a "tragedy." The flow of waste reached the nearby community of Vila Ferteco and an occupied Vale administrative office. On Saturday, rooftops poked above an extensive field of the mud, which also cut off roads. After the dam collapse, some were evacuated from Brumadinho. Other residents of the affected areas barely escaped with their lives. "I saw all the mud coming down the hill, snapping the trees as it descended. It was a tremendous noise," said a tearful Simone Pedrosa, from the neighborhood of Parque Cachoeira, about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from where the dam collapsed. Pedrosa, 45, and her parents dashed to their car and drove to the highest point in the neighborhood. "If we had gone down the other direction, we would have died," Pedrosa said, adding that she had a feeling "that this was the end of my life." "I cannot get that noise out of my head," she said. "It's a trauma ... I'll never forget." In addition to the 40 bodies recovered as of Saturday afternoon, 23 people were hospitalized, said authorities with the Minas Gerais fire department. There had been some signs of hope earlier Saturday when authorities found 43 more people alive. Company officials also had said that 100 workers were accounted for. But the company said in a statement Saturday afternoon that more than 200 workers were still missing, while fire officials at one point estimated the total number at close to 300. Vale CEO Fabio Schvartsman said he did not know what caused the collapse. About 300 employees were working when it happened. Emergency workers suspended their search shortly after nightfall. They planned to resume at first light Sunday morning. For many, hope was fading to anguish. "I don't think he is alive," said Joao Bosco, speaking of his cousin, Jorge Luis Ferreira, who worked for Vale. "Right now I can only hope for a miracle of God." Vanilza Sueli Oliveira described the wait for news of her nephew as "distressing, maddening." "Time is passing," she said. "It's been 24 hours already. ... I just don't want to think that he is under the mud." The rivers of mining waste also raised fears of widespread contamination. According to Vale's website, the waste, often called tailings, is composed mostly of sand and is non-toxic. However, a U.N. report found that the waste from a similar disaster in 2015 "contained high levels of toxic heavy metals." On Friday, Minas Gerais state court blocked $260 million from Vale for state emergency services and told the company to present a report about how they would help victims. On Saturday, the state's justice ministry ordered an additional $1.3 billion blocked. Brazil's Attorney General, Raquel Dodge promised to investigate, saying "someone is definitely at fault." Dodge noted there are 600 mines in the state of Minas Gerais alone that are classified as being at risk of rupture. Another dam administered by Vale and Australian mining company BHP Billiton collapsed in 2015 in the city of Mariana in Minas Gerais state, resulting in 19 deaths and forcing hundreds from their homes. Considered the worst environmental disaster in Brazilian history, it left 250,000 people without drinking water and killed thousands of fish. An estimated 60 million cubic meters of waste flooded rivers and eventually flowed into the Atlantic Ocean. Schvartsman said what happened Friday was "a human tragedy much larger than the tragedy of Mariana, but probably the environmental damage will be less." Sueli de Oliveira Costa, who hadn't heard from her husband since Friday, had harsh words for the mining company. "Vale destroyed Mariana and now they've destroyed Brumadinho," she said. Daily Folha de S.Paulo reported Saturday that the dam's mining complex was issued an expedited license to expand in December due to "decreased risk." Preservation groups in the area alleged that the approval was unlawful. On Twitter, President Bolsonaro said his government would do everything it could to "prevent more tragedies" like Mariana and now Brumadinho. The far-right leader campaigned on promises to jump-start Brazil's economy, in part by deregulating mining and other industries. Environmental groups and activists said the latest spill underscored a lack of regulation, and many promised to fight any further deregulation by Bolsonaro in Latin America's largest nation. "History repeats itself," tweeted Marina Silva, a former environmental minister and three-time presidential candidate. "It's unacceptable that government and mining companies haven't learned anything."

Mine Collapses

As it happened: Trump announces US withdrawal from Iran nuclear deal

Saul Loeb, AFP | US President Donald Trump announces the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal at the White House, Washington, May 8, 2018. US President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the US will withdraw from the six-nation nuclear deal with Iran and will introduce new sanctions on Tehran. Follow the announcement and international reaction as it happened with FRANCE 24's live blog. “I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal,” Trump said from the White House. A presidential memorandum would begin reinstating "the highest level of economic sanctions", he said, adding: "Any nation that helps Iran in its quest for nuclear weapons could also be strongly sanctioned by the United States." Senior Trump aides later specified that companies would have 90 to 180 days to wind down business in Iran before facing punitive measures. Iran had warned of " severe consequences " if the White House withdraws from the agreement – known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA – and said it would also leave the deal if the US pulled out. However, Iranian President Hassan Rohani said Tuesday that Iran might remain in the accord with the other five signatories: Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia. Speaking on state television, Rohani said Iran was considering restarting its industrial enrichment programme but would wait until conferring with the other parties to the nuclear deal. "We will wait several weeks before applying this decision. We will speak with our friends and allies, the other members of the nuclear agreement." French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted that France, Germany and the United Kingdom "regret the American decision to exit the Iran nuclear accord". On his visit to Washington late last month, Macron sought to convince Trump to remain in the Iran agreement. In a joint statement shortly after Trump's announcement, the leaders of Britain, France and Germany said their governments "remain committed to ensuring the agreement is upheld, and will work with all the remaining parties to the deal to ensure this remains the case". They continued: "We urge the US to ensure that the structures of the JCPOA can remain intact, and to avoid taking action which obstructs its full implementation by all other parties to the deal." Iran's foes Israel and Saudi Arabia welcomed Trump's announcement, however. "Israel fully supports President Trump's bold decision today to reject the disastrous nuclear deal," Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu said, in a televised address.

Tear Up Agreement

2020–2021 New Caledonian protests

The 2020 protests in New Caledonia began on 28 October 2020 over a plan to sell a Vale-owned nickel and cobalt mine to a consortium led by Trafigura. The nickel mine and plant is known as the Goro mine. Independence leaders and pro-independence protesters wanted for the nickel plant to be owned by citizens of New Caledonia rather than foreign investors, though various arrangements have been proposed. The controversy over the nickel mining industry, a key part of New Caledonia's economy, rekindled interest in independence about a month after the French territory voted narrowly in a referendum to remain a territory of France. [1] Protests, riots, counter-protests and general civil unrest occurred in New Caledonia as a result of the planned sale of the Goro mine. Tension ran high in the territory, and lead to a collapse of its coalition government after resignations from pro-independence politicians. New Caledonia holds as much as a quarter of the world's known nickel reserves. The Vale-owned Goro mine has been wracked with difficulties over the years. Riots occurred in 2014 after about 100,000 litres of acid-tainted effluent spilled from the site into a local river. This concerned youth groups and environmentalists, and also resulted in protests at the plant. [2] Similar mining effluent spills have damaged the New Caledonian barrier reef. Vale has lost billions on maintaining operations at the Goro mine, and it was a financial drain on the company for years. [3][4][5] In November 2016, the French government afforded a state loan to Vale which consisted of 200 million euros. [6] The nickel sector employs about 1 in 5 people in New Caledonia. [7][8] According to the Asia Times, "The territory’s 290,000 population is closely divided between the Kanaks, who are Melanesian, and settlers who began arriving in the mid-19th century when France set up a penal colony. "[9] Conservative loyalist Sonia Backès has claimed that the Kanak independence movement is risking a civil war. [10] Two referendums relating the question of independence were held, and a third could follow, as per the Nouméa Accord. [11] Vale, a Brazilian corporation, owned the Goro nickel mine and plant for years. It was planned that the Goro mine would be sold to Trafigura, a Swiss-based commodity trader. [8] Following unrest and public backlash from people in New Caledonia, the deal was challenged. Vale postponed the sale of the mining operations, at the request of the territory's authorities. [12] The company stated that if the sale fails, it will shut down the plant. The Fiji Times said this could result in job loss for thousands of workers. [3] The French newspaper Le Monde claimed that some 3,000 jobs are at stake. [13] A group known as the Indigenous Customary Negotiating Body (Instance Coutumière Autochtone de Négociation), or ICAN opposed the deal to sell the mine to a foreign company, and along with independence leaders, wanted the mine sold to the domestic company Sofinor instead, backed by Korea Zinc. This has also been backed by the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front. [7][14][13] The French government was dismissive of the proposal to sell the mine to a domestic company. [15] The USTKE union, which backs the Labour Party, called for a general strike. [8] Protests and roadblocks across New Caledonia resulted in the nickel industry's day-to-day functions coming to a halt, including the prevention of successful delivery of nickel ore to the territory's Doniambo smelter plant in Nouméa. [16] Roadblocks and demonstrations also reached the island's main port, and colonial authorities suspended international flights. [17] Armed counter-protesters displayed French flags while occupying roadblocks previously held by independence activists. France banned the transport of weapons to counter violence. [7] The roadblocks were later removed. [18] Dozens of protesters were arrested, and several police officers injured. [13] Police reportedly fired tear gas at protesters in central Nouméa. [19][9] French President Emmanuel Macron and his overseas minister, Sebastien Lecornu, were asked to intervene in the crisis and to help to form a nickel strategy for the island which could be broadly accepted. [8][3][18] Vale stated that a fire had broken out at the mining plant and local security forces were protecting it. Vale suspended activities in New Caledonia. [20][21] Anti-independence counter-protesters organized a march in Nouméa, led by New Caledonia president Thierry Santa, which over 20,000 people attended. Regarding the COVID-19 pandemic in New Caledonia, the Loyalty Islands Province banned police mobile squads flown in from mainland France from entering the islands because they were allowed to leave quarantine early at the height of the unrest. [18] Kanak leaders called the move to allow police to escape mandatory quarantine a violation of health measures. [7] Negotiations with protesters resulted in blockades being removed. This allowed nickel ore to once again be delivered to the nickel smelter. [22] There were multiple cases of arson at mining-related sites. [23][24] A proposal by the president of New Caledonia's southern province would allow for fifty-one percent of the nickel plant's stake to go to New Caledonians. [25] Tensions were high in New Caledonia, with pro-independence figures wanting foreigners to hold zero stake in the mine. Anti-independence figures accused the pro-independence FLNKS movement of enacting a coup against the government, describing it as terrorism. [26]

Protest_Online Condemnation

1932 Colonial Building riot

The Colonial Building riot was a riot that occurred in front of the Colonial Building in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada on April 5, 1932. Prompted by the Great Depression and corruption in the Squires administration, a peaceful protest degenerated into riots and violence. The riots led to the fall of the Squires government and the defeat of Squires's Liberal Party. Richard Squires was elected as Prime Minister of Newfoundland in 1928, despite having previously been arrested in a 1923 bribery scandal. Shortly after, the Great Depression arrived in Newfoundland. Newfoundland was hit especially hard by the depression. At the same time, Squires was facing allegations of corruption. His finance minister, Peter John Cashin, resigned in 1932 alleging widespread corruption in Squires' administration and of falsifying minutes to hide secret payments he had received. John Middleton was asked to investigate the charges. His conclusion that there was no sign of falsified records was a major trigger for the riots. [1] In the afternoon of April 5, a large crowd of protester had gathered at the Majestic Theatre for a planned march to the Colonial Building. Beginning with 2,000 people, the protest eventually gained an additional 1,500 as they marched toward the Colonial Building. Upon arrival at the building, protest leaders presented a petition demanding investigation of the corruption charges against Squires. Protestors got impatient waiting for a response to the petition, and some started attempting to break through the doors. When the doors were finally breeched, protestors began entering the building and the police attacked everyone they saw with batons, including several uninvolved spectators, both inside and outside the building. In response, protestors began throwing objects through windows, breaking most windows in the building. There were also attempts to set the building on fire, which all failed. Prime Minister Squires exited the building at around 7:30, surrounded by bodyguards, but was found by the crowd, who forced him into a private residence. However, Squire successfully escaped through a back door of the house. Damage was estimated at $10,000. [2] Squires resigned as Prime Minister while the riot was still in progress, and called new elections. In the resulting election, Squires' Liberal Party won a mere two seats, losing to rival party United Newfoundland Party that won most of the seats. This government was dissolved in 1934 and replaced by the Commission of Government, a non-democratic body with representatives chosen by the British Government. Newfoundland would not see another democratic election until it joined Canada as its tenth province.

Riot

A year after Abule Ado explosion, victims struggle to move on

The Group Managing Director (GMD) of NNPC, Mele Kyari, while commiserating with victims on March 15, 2020, referred to the incident as “unfortunate but completely avoidable.” March 15, 2021 5 min read Sunday, March 15, 2020, would remain a black day for the residents of Ado Soba in the Abule Ado Abule Ado community of Amuwo Odofin Local Government Area of Lagos State . This was due to the early morning gas pipeline explosion that rocked the peaceful community and levelled to the ground, high rise buildings, bungalows, school, shops and led to the sudden death of many people there within a twinkle of an eye. The aftermath of the devastation was seen and felt within the community and its environs but Ado Soba suffered a large chunk of the natural phenomenon in which no fewer than 23 people allegedly lost their lives. Most buildings around the explosion site were reduced to rubbles. Those that withstood the impact had their roofs, doors, windows, railings blown away and glasses shattered. Scavengers, trying to make quick money, were seen carting away iron rods and other materials salvaged from the collapsed buildings. Most of the victims then could hardly talk about their experiences as they were either recovering from injuries, mourning their deceased ones or counting their losses. However, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) visited the community a year after the ugly incident and met a completely different scenario and a transformation that will make as anyone marvel. Indeed, any visitor to Ado Soba community one year after will hardly believe that it suffered a serious setback and devastation a year ago. The residents believing in the saying ‘when there is life, there is hope’ took the bull by the horn and began rebuilding their community and thus making it look better than what it was before the pipeline explosion of last year. Most of the houses in Ado Soba are now wearing a new look; roofs have been replaced and most buildings wearing fresh coats of paint, courtesy of the residents. An excavator was seen working at the explosion site. However, a building that is still standing out like a sore thumb and looking desolate because of its state of disrepair is the Bethlehem Girls College (BGC), a reminder of the incident. The landlords, residents and business owners had rebuilt, parked into their homes and started their businesses, and thus putting behind them the traumatic experiences of last year. Some of the victims, however, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that forgetting the incident had proved difficult because they are still struggling and living daily with the aftermath of the explosion. Damilola Oyerinde said that she was in the family sitting room that morning with her then 18 months old daughter when the force of the explosion threw her from the sitting room to the bedroom. “I was carried from the sitting room to the bedroom and my neck was trapped inside the glass. I couldn’t bring out my head,” she recalled. The 25-year-old hairstylist said that she was admitted at the Navy Town Hospital, Ojo, where she received stitches to close her cuts. She also said that her face, neck and body were also stitched from the cuts she got from the shattered glasses. “It was there a doctor discovered that I couldn’t see any longer. Then, I was referred to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) for an eye surgery. “During the course of the treatment, I was also referred to the National Orthopaedic Hospital (NOH), Igbobi. “While carrying out an x-ray, they discovered that I still have pieces of glasses in my body.” Mrs Oyerinde said the experience had left her physically, financially and emotionally traumatised because of the agony she has to live with. According to her, seeing the scar tissues all over her face and body daily, leaves her depressed. Advertisements She added that she had been jobless since her recovery because her shop also collapsed during the explosion. “I still live in fear because not even in my wildest dreams would I have believed something like this will happen to me. “I was told at the Orthopaedic Hospital to go for plastic surgery but how will I pay for it? So I didn’t even pursue that option. “I still go for the regular eye check-up every month. “I spend about N13,500 on treatment not to talk of the silicone gel I apply on my body daily. Each tube costs N5,000 and that is just for one week,” she added. She disclosed that all the hospital bills incurred during her treatment were paid by her husband, adding that she had not received any compensation from any institution. “I have tried so many times to reach out to the Lagos State Government (LASG). I went to the Lagos State Secretariat at Alausa because I heard there is a relief fund set up for those who sustained injuries. “They promised that they will call me. It is almost one year now I have not received any call from them,” she told NAN. She urged LASG to live up to its promises to compensate the victims, to help alleviate some of their sufferings. Promises unfulfilled NAN recalls that LASG set up a N2 billion Emergency Relief Fund with an initial donation of N250 million, after the incident, to assist the victims. Also, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) donated N200 million into the fund. Just a few houses from Mrs Oyerinde, a landlord, Francis Duru, recalled that his family of four were awake and were observing their morning prayers and devotions when they heard the blast. “Our house was shaken to its foundation and badly damaged. The roof, walls, doors and windows were blown away and destroyed. “My wife and children were injured,” he said. Mr Duru, who is also the Secretary of Soba Landlords and Residents Association, said he and other residents still live in fear and would always run out of their homes, sometimes naked, at the sound of sudden loud noises. According to him, 23 people died and about 300 houses, including businesses, were destroyed. He expressed his displeasure with the LASG and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for not paying compensations to the victims of the pipeline explosion. The secretary explained that the landlords and business owners who had rebuilt or renovated their buildings were able to do so through loans accessed from banks. “After waiting for the promises from LASG and other agencies and nothing was forthcoming, we had to approach banks and other institutions for help. “Some of us used our goods as collateral. Many of us are still servicing these loans and if we don’t pay, the banks will seize our goods. “The banks even come from time to time, threatening to seize the buildings” he added. Mr Duru, however, commended the LASG for giving N2.5 million compensation to relatives of those who lost their lives in the explosion. The secretary commended LASG and the Amuwo Odofin Local Government Council for helping to restore electricity supply to the community. He urged the governments to hasten the process for compensation for those affected during the explosion. “The state opened three accounts after the incident and Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu said the money realised from the accounts would be for compensation, rebuilding and for the lives that were lost. “Let them release those funds so that people here can have some relief from debts,” he said. Mr Duru also urged the NNPC to compensate for the damages that happened in the community and ensure that the pipeline is fixed and covered in order to avoid any future recurrence. For Alani Korodo, owner of a block manufacturing industry in the community, the incident came as a big blow, which not only set him 30 years back but also negatively impacted his health. The businessman, popularly known as Korodo in Abule-Ado, said that his business; including trucks for transporting materials, concrete cement blocks meant and building materials for sales were completely destroyed. “It has not been easy for me since the incident happened. I’ve been in this business for over 30 years. I started having negative thoughts so much so that it has begun to affect my health. “It has also affected my eyes and I cannot see very clearly now. I had to undergo two surgeries to regain my sight,” he said. He added that he had been so hopeful for a compensation but after waiting for almost a year without anything, he had decided to put his trust in God and move on with his life. Also, Mummy Precious, a businesswoman and a distributor of drinks and ice blocks to retailers in the community, said that she had decided to forget about the incident and move on with her life. According to her, she used to have a big and thriving business outfit before the explosion but the incident reduced it to a wooden shop. She said, “I keep praying and hoping that someday, she would pick up again. I’m thankful to God that I lost just my business. “What about those whose buildings collapsed, those that sustained injuries and worse still, those that lost their loved ones? “I had talked about it severally in the last one year, yet nothing came out of it. I am tired and really want to move on with my life,” she said. NAN also recalls that the Group Managing Director (GMD) of NNPC, Mele Kyari, while commiserating with victims on March 15, 2020, referred to the incident as “unfortunate but completely avoidable.” “It is very obvious that people are building on our right of way, which constitutes a serious danger to lives and property. “The incident happened as a result of overcharged air, resulting from gas leakages from activities around the pipeline. “Unfortunately, there was an ignition which led to a chain of events, CONCLUDING igniting our pipeline,” he said. Mr Kyari said that every asset on the right of way would be taken out to safeguard the public. NAN reports that the landlords and residents would hold a memorial service on March 14, to honour those who lost their lives.

Gas explosion

Lesmurdie fatality: Woman, 23, killed in Perth Hills power pole crash, driver in hospital

A young woman has died following a major car crash in the Perth Hills this morning. Emergency services were called after a gold Hyundai Accent crashed into a power pole along Welshpool Road East, near Melaleuca Road, in Lesmurdie about 11.25am. A 23-year-old passenger received critical injuries and was rushed to Royal Perth Hospital, where she died a short time later. The male driver, aged in his 30s, was taken to St John of God in Midland for treatment on minor injuries. In pictures supplied to The West Australian earlier today, a gold sedan could be seen blocking two lanes of traffic along the busy road in the moments after the crash. The driver’s side of the car was severely dented, with the passenger side completely totalled. Traffic was banked up in the area for several hours, with Welshpool Road east-bound closed between Crystal Brook Road and Tonkin Highway. It has since reopened and traffic is flowing. Major Crash detectives are investigating the incident. Anyone with information is asked to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or make a report online.

Road Crash

Redcar Council buys M&S shop to demolish as part of revamp

A council has bought an empty Marks & Spencer shop which could be demolished as part of a town revamp. The former store in High Street, Redcar, previously had a guide price of £1.29m. Redcar and Cleveland Council would not disclose what it paid, describing it as "commercially sensitive". The local authority has received £25m as part of the government's Towns Fund which is aimed to rejuvenate the coastal town. Council leader Mary Lanigan has previously promised to "make every penny count" of the government cash. The store closed in 2014 and property has entrances from the High Street and The Esplanade. It will make way for a scheme linking the High Street with the seafront which will provide an events space and allow existing and pop-up businesses to trade outdoors. Redcar councillor Neil Baldwin, an independent representing the Coatham ward, said it was the council's "intention to demolish" the building. "We have rundown areas all through the borough and there are places and buildings which are never going to be re-inhabited, and the council can take the first step and hammer away in terms of regeneration." The council is thought to be in discussions to potentially buy other buildings in the town, but these have not been made public, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said. "Officers are continuing to work with our partners on the Redcar Town Deal board to make sure this huge opportunity to transform the town is grabbed with both hands," a spokesman said. "A key element of the scheme is opening up a new events and cultural space between the seafront and the town centre and it is as part of those plans that the former Marks & Spencer building freehold has been bought. Other plans include a proposed outdoor watersports centre at Coatham, a family activity centre on The Esplanade, renovating properties in Station Road, along with an improved library for the town and a clean energy education hub at Redcar & Cleveland College. Loftus, in east Cleveland, which was awarded £5.8m from the Future High Streets fund, has seen public funds being used to buy the former Grade II-listed Barclays Bank building, as well as a former church and derelict chapel. Former council leader, Labour's Sue Jeffrey, has questioned whether it was value for money.

Organization Closed

Toxic chemicals in Katherine's drinking water could exceed new safety guidelines

Katherine's drinking water may not be safe to consume at certain times of the year, according to new safety guidelines released by the Federal Government. A new report commissioned by the Health Department has significantly stepped up safety guidelines for the amount of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in drinking and recreational water. PFAS chemicals are used in many products but were common in firefighting foam used by the Defence Force at their RAAF bases in Darwin and Katherine. The man-made compound does not break down in the environment, contaminating soil, water and shellfish around sites it was used. The presence of PFAS in soil and drinking water had sparked concern about potential health effects, but ongoing research has not found any definitive links between the chemical and ill health. The PFAS group includes several sub-categories of chemicals, but the focus in Australia is on perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), perfluoro-octanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorohexane sulfonate (PFHxS). Interim guidelines imposed by the Federal Government last year, and based on a European model, restricted drinking water values for PFOS/PFHxS at 0.5 micrograms per litre and PFOA at 5 micrograms per litre. Under the new limits there must be no more than 0.07 micrograms of PFOS/PFHxS per litre and 0.56 micrograms of PFOA, a decrease of seven and nearly nine times the original concentration. "There's been a shift in the daily tolerable intake guideline based off the US (model)," said NT Health Minister Natasha Fyles. "There is not more PFAS there, it's just that the level of tolerable intake has come down." While water for most Katherine residents will still be considered safe under the new guidelines, that may change when the town goes through the end of the dry season. "There is a slight period each year where the Katherine region does have 100 per cent bore water and it would be at this time that the impact of the PFAS could be felt on Katherine residents," Ms Fyles said. Power and Water will closely monitor Katherine's water supply during that time, said John Pudney, general manager of water services. "On occasions, particularly after the first [rain] in the wet season the Katherine river becomes highly turbid, full of bacteria, so it's very difficult to treat," Mr Pudney said. "We'll be seeking expert advice from toxicologists about what it might mean in the short term. "It is a whole of life guideline value ... so whether a day or a week really matters in the end, as I said, we'll see." )

Environment Pollution

Red Spears' uprising in Shandong (1928–1929)

National Revolutionary Army (NRA) The Red Spear Society staged a major uprising in 1928–1929 against the rule of Liu Zhennian, the Nationalist government-aligned warlord ruler of eastern Shandong province in Republican China. Motivated by their resistance against high taxes, rampant banditry and the brutality of Liu's private army, the Red Spear peasant insurgents captured large areas on the Shandong Peninsula and were able to set up a proto-state in Dengzhou county. Despite this, the whole insurgency was eventually crushed by Liu in late 1929. The Red Spear Society was a movement and network of peasant self-defense and vigilante militias that sprung up throughout China in response to the chaos of the Warlord Era in the 1910s and 1920s. As the influence of the Red Spears grew, branches of the movement were set up in several Chinese provinces, such as Shandong. The largest area of Red Spears activity in Shandong was its western counties, while the Shandong Peninsula in the east remained relatively calm until the late 1920s. The only eastern area with a large Red Spears presence was Laiyang county. [5][6] This changed in fall of 1928, as banditry on the peninsula rapidly increased, leading to additional villages joining the Red Spear Society to defend themselves. The Red Spears' power and influence consequently grew greatly. [7] Meanwhile, the situation for the civilian population in eastern Shandong worsened due to the ascension of Liu Zhennian. Liu, a former subordinate of Fengtian warlord Zhang Zongchang, defected to the Nationalists during the Northern Expedition in 1928. In return, the new Nationalist government in Nanjing allowed him to keep the Shandong Peninsula as his personal fiefdom. [8][7] Liu's rule was marked by the brutality of his private army,[7] and high taxes[7] (though these taxes were still lower than those under the previous regime of Zhang Zongchang). [1] Furthermore, Liu did nothing to curb the widespread and escalating banditry. All this motivated additional peasants to join the Red Spears and the peasant movement to take a more aggressive stance against the perceived oppression by the government. [7] The situation began to escalate in late 1928, as the Red Spears organized a militant tax resistance, so that officials no longer dared to venture into areas held by the peasant movement such as Laiyang and Zhaoyuan. [7] The escalating Red Spears' revolt was helped by the deteriorating security in Shandong, as elements of Liu's army mutinied at Longkou and Huangxian in January 1929 and then fled into areas controlled by the Red Spears. [9] This mutiny was followed by a full-blown rebellion of demobilized ex-warlord troops led by Zhang Zongchang who wanted to regain control of Shandong. This insurgency devastated the northern Shandong Peninsula, as over 50 villages and six towns were destroyed by rebel troops. Both Zhang's followers as well as Liu's soldiers plundered, murdered and raped civilians, while captured women and girls were sold as slaves on Huangxian's market for 10–20 Mexican dollars[10][3][11] (the Mexican silver dollar was the main currency used in China at the time). [12] This chaos allowed the Red Spears to further increase their power, as the desperate rural population flocked en masse to their cause in order to receive at least some protection from the rampaging soldiers and bandits. [3] By the time Liu Zhennian managed to crush the warlord rebellion in summer 1929, the Red Spear Society had grown so powerful that it had set up a proto-state in Dengzhou county. There, it had established a headquarters, named a magistrate, taken over the local administration and introduced land as well as head taxes in order to fund itself. [3] In several other counties the peasant rebels at least prevented tax collection by government officials. The Red Spears also introduced compulsory membership to a certain degree, so that at least one member of every family in those villages the insurgents controlled had to be a Red Spear. Those among the rural population who worked at Zhifu were also forced to pay a special tax which was used by the Red Spears to buy weapons and ammunition. [3] Access to the insurgent areas was tightly controlled, and anyone wearing a government or military uniform was shot on sight. At this point, even those who did not speak the local dialect and therefore appeared to be outsiders, no longer dared to venture into the Red Spears' territory. [3] The peasant insurgents even came to behave like a mafia, looting, raping, robbing and kidnapping for ransom. [13] The victims of these activities mostly belonged to the wealthier upper class or were Christians, who consequently fled into the city of Dengzhou. As historian Lucien Bianco noted, secret societies in rural China had the "chronic tendency to degenerate into gangs", though at least some of the peasant rebels' criminal activities may have stemmed from military necessity. [13] The number of Red Spears on the Shandong Peninsula had grown to about 50,000–60,000 in August 1929, and the peasant movement had thus become so strong that Liu Zhennian could no longer ignore them as he had done before. On 23 September, he launched an encirclement campaign between Dengzhou and Huangxian, pursuing a scorched earth policy to force the rebels into submission. His soldiers completely destroyed 18 villages and largely burned more than sixty others, killing all inhabitants they encountered, including women and children. By November, the Red Spears had ceased to exist in the area. [14] Overall, once Liu had decided to finally take action, he had been able to crush the uprising relatively quickly and easily. According to Bianco, this was typical of rural rebellions at the time, which had only a chance to succeed as long as no concentrated action was undertaken against them by government representatives. [15] Despite continued challenges to his rule, Liu himself remained in power until he was defeated in a war with the ruler of western Shandong, Han Fuju, in 1932. Han was a relatively capable and popular civilian administrator, and his reign restored order and stability on the Shandong Peninsula. [16] On the other side, many of those peasant rebels who had escaped or simply survived Liu's ruthless campaign found themselves with the official magistrate of Zhaoyuan. He gave the remaining Red Spears leaders jobs and enlisted the common fighters among the ex-insurgents into a local militia. This was an attempt to win them over, so that they would not resume their struggle against the authorities. [17]

Protest_Online Condemnation

LANSA Flight 501 crash

LANSA Flight 501 was a domestic flight from Lima to Cusco operated by a Lockheed L-749 Constellation aircraft registration OB-R-771. On 27 April 1966 flight 501 crashed into a mountain side in Tomas District. [1] The plane radioed a distress call 10 minutes after takeoff. At least four Americans, two Swiss, one Canadian, three Germans and one Spaniard were on board. Three of the Americans were Peace Corps volunteers. [2]

Air crash

An ordinary taxpayer considers Brexit: 23 June 2016

An on-going journal of one British taxpayer's evolving thoughts and reactions to Britain's referendum on 23 June 2016 of continued membership of the European Union. Sunday, 2 February 2020 Britain has left the European Union Britain left the European Union at 23:00 on Fri 31Jan2020. As at the date & time of this blog: the sky has not fallen on our heads; the four horsemen of the apocalypse have yet to arrive; the Church of the National Health Service is still with us; no government body has yet admitted to economic depression having just started; the planet has not blown up as a result of a Brexit-induced, man-made global warming event. Consequently, we can safely conclude that the Remainiacs' Project Fear was a complete pack of lies. Similarly, there is no evidence of the sunlit lands of bread and honey promised by the Brextremists' Project Fantasy. Even the much vaunted "trade deal" between the UK and USA is in doubt, as the American politico-military-industrial establishment turns in on itself in the run-up to its general election of Nov2020 (while the idiot Democrats use the "impeachment" process to divert attention from their own problems with Sanders & Tulsi eating the Democratic political lunch, so to speak, the American military establishment is beginning to realise that its primary aircraft manufacturer Boeing can't actually make aircraft any more. Oops. It's not really the ideal environment in which to talk about importing chlorinated chickens into the British food chain.) But now the real battle begins. Not between the EU and UK, of course. That particular piece of theatre generates too much income for various parasitic media interests, so the presentation of that fake battle shall continue. Besides, the presentation serves the establishment's needs for useful diversionary propaganda, to keep the eyes of the riff-raff away from what's really going on. The real battle is between the UK establishment and the UK non-establishment taxpayers (us ordinary plebs, or the "Deplorables", as Hillary Clinton would likely refer to us). UKGov is now stripped of its beloved alibi, its partner-in-crime, the EU. From now on, the people shall see the true deceit, mendacity, duplicity, incompetence, sabotage, snobbery and cynicism of the UK establishment. Blair's quangocracy and local government reforms continues to provide funded safe harbour for trained activists of Common Purpose, in turn providing by-passes for due process to replace just choices for public policy for corrupt choices for public policy and policy (mis-)implementation. Senior civil servants in positions of real sabotage remain largely unchallenged. The key example remains Mark Sedwell, who acquired fingers in every pie while serving in May's government and he is still doing the same job, with the same fingers in the same pies, in Johnson's government. This amounts to the ultimate conflict of interest, which the English have not seen since Oliver Cromwell. The civil service appears to have successfully suffocated a recent call by Cummings for "weirdos and misfits" be recruited into the civil service. Within the next few years - perhaps fewer than 5 - we shall find the UK establishment having put the UK into a fake position akin to that of 1971, that "there is no alternative but to re-join the European Union." We can predict this is the plan, because Nigel Farage has promoted Tony Blair's alleged statement that re-joining the EU is a non-starter, it is time for the UK to move on. This implies Blair contradicting his own well-documented belief that the UK shall inevitably re-join the EU (prediction or plan or plot?) and the beliefs of other key Remainaics, including Andrew Adonis. Yet, given that Remainiacs have no rational reasons to be Remainaics, why would anybody with a brain cell in their head believe that somehow these emotionally-driven, anti-democratic, pro-communist, subversive irrationalists would have somehow "changed their minds" or "seen the light"? But for a re-run of the bounce of 1971 - the bounce of the UK into the then European Economic Community, later the EU - the UK shall have no upside to mis-sell to us ordinary plebs. Population growth is flattening, expected to turn negative by the 2040s; with this will decline the promise of ever-lasting economic growth. So, either the bounce will be an anti-democratic bounce - as befits the anti-democratic technocracy that is the EU - or the bouncing "referendum" will be held at the wrong end of a gun. Literally. A gun provided by the newly militarised civilian police forces asunder the European Defence Union. We already see the prototype of this European Defence Force in France: after a year of ongoing protests between state against people, a recent development has been that the militarised police of France (representing the totalitarian anti-democratic French state) have been beating up the non-militarised fire fighters (representing our comrades, the ordinary plebs of France). The real purpose of the European Defence Union is no hyperbole. It's already here. Only Remainiacs are sufficiently deceitful to deny it. Britain could play host to the world's next Tiananmen Square! How ironic, considering the likely preaching about human rights that UKGov will give China as a prelude to trade talks. The UK establishment has a head-start against its people, having pre-arranged some sabotage with its EU alibi. On 01Feb2020 started the "Transition Period" of 11 months ending 31Dec2020. In this "Transition Period", the UK has no rights to influence legislation emanating from the EU, but must implement such legislation anyway. This gives the EU the perfect - albeit short - opportunity to stack the deck heavily against the UK general taxpayer, to fleece the taxpayer to the greatest extent since Brown nationalised toxic banks. Why would the EU turn down this particular gravy train? The UK establishment shall need every bullet under the European Defence Union to handle this one. As every day passes, the pressure for civil war in the UK grows and grows and grows.

Withdraw from an Organization

2012 El Salvador earthquake

The 2012 El Salvador–Nicaragua earthquake and tsunami occurred on the 26th of August at 22:37 local time (Central Standard Time) or 04:37 UTC on August 27. This earthquake, located off the coast of El Salvador measured magnitude 7.3 on the moment magnitude scale (Mw) and had a focal depth of 28 km. [1] No deaths were recorded however, more than 40 people at a beach were injured when they were caught in a tsunami generated by the earthquake. Waves from the tsunami were unusually large for an earthquake of this size. The large waves were attributed to the earthquake's unique rupture characteristic. [3] In addition to the absence of fatalities, damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami was minimal as a result of the sparse population around the affected region and the slow rupture characteristic of the event. Off the west coast of Central America, including El Salvador and Nicaragua, lies a convergent plate margin where two tectonic plates collide. The Cocos Plate, made of oceanic crust is moving northeast, towards the Caribbean Plate where Central America sits on continental crust. The two lithospheres meet at the Middle America Trench, where the Cocos Plate being denser, subducts under the Caribbean Plate. GPS data collected over a period of two decades show that the Cocos Plate is moving towards Central America at a rate of 8.23 ± 0.22 cm/year. [4] Seismic activity on the subduction zone or megathrust fault has been responsible for large and sometimes tsunamigenic earthquakes caused by the rupture of the fault. Many large earthquakes including the Mw  7.6-7.7 1992 Nicaragua earthquake was associated with rupture on the subduction zone. [5] The earthquake, like that of 1992, was caused by a rupture on the subduction zone. It was the first of three major earthquakes in 2012 with magnitudes greater than 7.0 Mw  associated with the same subduction zone. It produced slip of up to 1.2 meters on the first 4 km to 20 km section of the megathrust along a 50 km length. [6] The source region of this earthquake is considered the shallow section of the subduction zone. The low sediment accumilation at the trench and on the fault, in addition to the shallow source area, meant that less energy was required during the rupture. A rupture velocity of 2 km/s has been estimated for the event, which is unusually slow for most subduction zone earthquakes. In addition, the release of seismic energy occurred in long periods, a characteristic of tsunami earthquakes. [6] The seismic energy release from this event was at least 25 times smaller than earthquakes of similar magnitudes. However, with a rupture prolongation of 59 seconds, it was three times longer than usual. The rupture process of this event is reminiscent of the 1992 Nicaragua earthquake, another tsunami earthquake. [7] Given the earthquake released long-period seismic energy, shaking was relatively mild and in many parts of the coast, undetected by people present at the time. According to many residents living in San Salvador, the capital city, the earthquake was not perceived at all, or that shaking was very weak, only reaching level II on the Mercalli intensity scale. [8][9] Even at the coast, light shaking was reported by many residents for as long as three minutes. [10] No damage was reported as a result of the earthquake itself due to the weak shaking. [8] In just ten minutes of the earthquake, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) characterized the event as being a "slow earthquake". The PTWC issued the first bulletin material, a tsunami advisory, just eight minutes after the event to the coasts of Central America. After receiving strong evidence that the event was a tsunami earthquake, they revised the advisory to a tsunami warning. [10] The slow rupture characteristic of the El Salvador earthquake meant that it was an efficient tsunami generator. Field surveys conducted in September 2012 along the coast of El Salvador and Nicaragua showed that the tsunami had an estimated maximum height of over 6 meters along a 25 km stretch of coastline in the San Juan del Gozo Peninsula of Jiquilisco Bay, Usulután. [7] Many workers involved in conservation efforts were collecting sea turtle eggs along beaches at night when the tsunami struck. [11] The waves engulfed many workers and dragged them at least 90 meters inland, with some left hanging on trees a few meters above the ground. A ramada serving as a hatchery located some 70 meters from the shore, had its walls torn off and posts knocked down (but not pulled from the sand) by the advancing waves. [6] More than 40 people were injured, with at least three being serious and needing medical treatment. An eyewitness who was at the beach during the time of the event recalled seeing three waves although researchers speculate that there was a confusion in distinguishing waves of a tsunami and those caused by wind. [10] The same eyewitness said the waves penetrated at least 340 meters inland, where the water was less than one meter high. [10] Another survior said three waves were seen, the first of which carried him hundreds of meters inland. [10] After the tsunami, a local Civil Protection coordinator (who felt the earthquake for 20-30 seconds) arrived at the beach and described hearing gurgling noises, which were caused by the water draining into the sand. It took roughly 20 minutes for the tsunami water to retreat and completely drain. [10] Surveyers did not report same effects from the tsunami at Playa Costa del Sol, a more beach resort some 10 km west of the peninsula. The same can be said at La Puntilla where many seafront houses and businesses are located. No distinguishable impacts were made as a result of the tsunami. In addition, many eyewitnesses from El Salvador were interviewed and they did not observe any tsunami activity. [7] In Playa El Espino and Playa El Cuco, hotel workers and boat captains did not report any anomalies along the coast such as boats being moved significantly. [7] A resident in El Retiro saw two people and a horse dragged down a nearby beach by the wave. Further surveys later showed evidence of tsunami inundation and overwash. [10] In Nicaragua, the tsunami, with an estimated height of 0.5 meters or more caused some moderate inundations in some coastal settlements. [7] Just nine days after the earthquake, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, killing two and injuring at least 20. [12] This earthquake was located 450 km southeast of the El Salvador earthquake, on the same subduction zone, and was preceded by a sequence of foreshocks which began just after the August 27 event.

Earthquakes

Oil, gas drilling plan raises concerns for outback Coober Pedy's underground water supply

The outback town of Coober Pedy's council is concerned that the town's water could become undrinkable if a plan to drill for commercial quantities of oil and gas goes ahead. Mining company Tri-Star has proposed to do a stimulation drill to determine if commercial resources are in the Arckaringa Basin, an underground water source in outback South Australia. The basin sits below the much larger Great Artesian Basin, which is the only water source for Coober Pedy, population 2,000. Coober Pedy water manager Colin Pitman is concerned about the potential impact the drilling could have on the water supply. "The potential is there for aquifer water to be sucked into the shale deposits, if there's not a good enough seal in the shale deposits and the basin," Mr Pitman said. "Any activity that actually causes fracturing of the rock below the Great Artesian Basin, which could cause the hydrocarbons to penetrate the basin, would be a concern." Hydrocarbons are an organic compound consisting of hydrogen and carbon. Tri-Star plan to mine between William Creek and Mount Barry, 167 kilometres east of Cobber Pedy. In a written statement, a Tri-Star spokesperson said it did not expect there to be any effects on the environment. "Tri-Star is a responsible custodian of the environment, with an enviable track record of exceptional environmental performance," the spokesperson said. "We do not expect our operations to adversely impact the Great Artesian Basin or the local environment. "There is approximately 500 metres to 1,500 metres of rock between the aquifer and Tri-Star's target formations. "Tri-Star will have control measures in place to mitigate any risks, and our exploration and fracture stimulation activities will be undertaken in accordance with all regulatory requirements." A state government fact sheet said, before a project goes ahead it would need sufficient community support to proceed. Mr Pitman said the District Council of Coober Pedy still had not decided if it wanted to support the project. Coober Pedy sits outside the targeted area for the drilling, however Tri Star has decided to involve it in the consultation, because of its connection to the Great Artesian Basin. However if it does decide to support it, Mr Pitman said councillors wanted to be involved. "We'd want to be closely associated with the results," Mr Pitman said. "If it doesn't go ahead, many of the council members would be in favour of it not proceeding. "[Councillors] haven't taken a vote on it at this stage, but they've decided to gain the community's understanding of what they thought about the proposal." Representatives from Tri-Star and the state government will hold a community consultation session in Coober Pedy in early March to give locals more information on the project. "We have a long history of working with local communities and stakeholders," the Tri-Star spokesperson said. SA Greens leader Mark Parnell slammed the project as wrong and dangerous. "We have been told by scientists for many years that if we're serious about climate change, we have to leave most of the remaining fossil fuels in the ground," Mr Parnell said. "This project is bad at so many levels." Mr Parnell said drilling would cause harm to the natural landscape, despite Tri-Star saying it would protect the environment. "The oil and gas industry, when they cut through aquifers, when they mess with underground water, it can end in tears," he said. "It can cause huge amounts of pollution and it can damage water that other parts of the community rely on." We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work. This service may include material from Agence France-Presse (AFP), APTN, Reuters, AAP, CNN and the BBC World Service which is copyright and cannot be reproduced. AEST = Australian Eastern Standard Time which is 10 hours ahead of GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)

Environment Pollution

Delaware Humane Association to merge with the Delaware SPCA

The decision whether to go to the Delaware Humane Association (DHA) or the Delaware SPCA for animal welfare services is going to get a lot easier. The two organizations plan to merge. Both are non-profit, no-kill animal welfare agencies. Officials announced Wednesday the two are combining their resources and boards of directors. The SPCA’s Executive Director, Anne Cavanaugh, will serve as COO, and DHA’s Executive Director, Patrick Carroll, will serve as CEO. “We’re kind of in the same space in terms of animal welfare and animal wellbeing. We’ve both been around for a long time. We’ve worked together very closely,” said Carroll. “It just makes sense. Our missions are very similar. The work that we do is similar.” Carroll says there’s a lot of overlap of services between the two organizations, but notes the SPCA’s low-cost vet clinic will add to what the DHA can offer. “We turn people away often here at our Wilmington campus because we don’t have a vet clinic,” he said. “We usually refer them to one of the other shelters. So at least we can say, to those clients that need vet care, we can say we have another location and it’s only, you know, 15 minutes away.” The combined entities will share locations in Wilmington, Stanton/Newark, and Rehoboth Beach. Carroll says the merger is expected to be finalized this fall and will not interrupt services at any of those sites. He also says there will be no changes to staff. The merged organization will engage with a marketing company to decide on a new name. Delaware is also served by the Brandywine Valley SPCA and First State Animal Shelter and SPCA.

Organization Merge

Biden charts a path to a post-pandemic normal, with July 4 as his target

Biden marked a grim anniversary but has hope for the future in his first primetime address. President Joe Biden said he sees life in America returning to some semblance of a post-pandemic normal by July 4, predicting that Americans will be able to safely gather in small groups to celebrate Independence Day. “After this long, hard year, that will make this Independence Day something truly special,” he said during his first major primetime public address as president on Thursday night. “Where we not only mark our independence as a nation but we begin to mark our independence from this virus.” The president’s speech marked the anniversary of a grim year: Nearly 30 million Americans have been infected with Covid-19, and more than 530,000 have died from it, exceeding the death toll of World Wars I and II, plus the Vietnam War and 9/11. Biden said he carries a card updated with the nation’s death toll on the back of his schedule. Related “While it was different for everyone, we all lost something,” Biden said, speaking about families who lost loved ones and couldn’t say goodbye in person, those who lost their jobs, and millions living in isolation for months. “A collective suffering. A collective sacrifice. A year filled with the loss of life and the loss of living for all of us.” Halfway through his first 100 days, and hours after he signed the American Rescue Plan — a $1.9 trillion bill that puts money towards vaccine distribution, stimulus checks, testing, school reopening, unemployment, and more — into law, Biden was ready to promise better days ahead. “Finding light in the darkness is a very American thing to do. In fact, it may be the most American thing we do,” he said. The president laid out a detailed plan to get more vaccines into arms; Biden is using his presidential authority through the Department of Health and Human Services to direct states, tribes, and territories to make all adults eligible for a Covid-19 vaccine no later than May 1, “months ahead of schedule.” Biden’s plan doesn’t yet have a date for vaccinating children. Administration officials announced they’d increase the number of places where Americans could get a shot, as well as the number of people who could administer shots. Dentists, veterinarians, medical school students, and paramedics would all be considered vaccinators. The administration will also launch a website to help Americans find vaccines near them. Biden’s White House will also put its focus on reopening schools, aided by the $130 billion in the recently passed stimulus bill. Biden is making a big bet that Americans have been hungering for the government to be more involved in their lives amid the pandemic, not less. His vision is government as a force of good, rather than the everyone-for-themselves era of government that has prevailed since the 1980s. “Look, we know what we need to do to beat this virus,” Biden said. “Tell the truth. Follow the scientists — the science. Work together. Put trust and faith in our government to fulfill its most important function, which is protecting the American people.” The White House has often described the fight against the virus as a “wartime” effort, as Covid-19 has taken a tremendous toll on the American public — disproportionately impacting Black and brown communities. Biden echoed that on Thursday night. “It’s truly a national effort, just like we saw during World War II,” he said, pleading with Americans to get vaccinated and continue to wear masks. “I will not relent until we beat this virus, but I need you. I need every American to do their part.”

Famous Person - Give a speech

Palaeontologists announce the discovery of the Tiktaalik genus, an important fossil link between fish and land animals.

Scientists have discovered fossils of a 375 million-year-old fish, a large scaly creature not seen before, that they say is a long-sought "missing link" in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life walking on four limbs on land. In addition to confirming elements of a major transition in evolution, the fossils are widely seen by scientists as a powerful rebuttal to religious creationists, who hold a literal biblical view on the origins and development of life. Several well-preserved skeletons of the fossil fish were uncovered in sediments of former stream beds in the Canadian Arctic, 600 miles from the North Pole, it is being reported on Thursday in the journal Nature. The skeletons have the fins and scales and other attributes of a giant fish, four to nine feet long. But on closer examination, scientists found telling anatomical traits of a transitional creature, a fish that is still a fish but exhibiting changes that anticipate the emergence of land animals — a predecessor thus of amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs, mammals and eventually humans. The scientists described evidence in the forward fins of limbs in the making. There are the beginnings of digits, proto-wrists, elbows and shoulders. The fish also had a flat skull resembling a crocodile's, a neck, ribs and other parts that were similar to four-legged land animals known as tetrapods. The discovering scientists called the fossils the most compelling examples yet of an animal that was at the cusp of the fish-tetrapod transition. The fish has been named Tiktaalik roseae, at the suggestion of elders of Canada's Nunavut Territory. Tiktaalik (pronounced tic-TAH-lick) means "large shallow water fish." In two reports in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, the science team led by Neil H. Shubin of the University of Chicago wrote, "The origin of limbs probably involved the elaboration and proliferation of features already present in the fins of fish such as Tiktaalik." Dr. Shubin, an evolutionary biologist, let himself go in an interview. "It's a really amazing remarkable intermediate fossil — it's like, holy cow," he enthused. Two other paleontologists, commenting on the find in a separate article in the journal, said that a few other transitional fish had been previously discovered from approximately the same Late Devonian time period, 385 million to 359 million years ago. But Tiktaalik is so clearly an intermediate "link between fishes and land vertebrates," they said, that it "might in time become as much an evolutionary icon as the proto-bird Archaeopteryx," which bridged the gap between reptiles, probably dinosaurs, and today's birds. The writers, Erik Ahlberg of Uppsala University in Sweden and Jennifer A. Clack of the University of Cambridge in England, are often viewed as rivals to Dr. Shubin's team in the search for intermediate species in the evolution from fish to the first animals to colonize land. In a statement by the Science Museum of London, where casts of the fossils will be on view, Dr. Clack said the fish "confirms everything we thought and also tells us about the order in which certain changes were made." H. Richard Lane, director of paleobiology at the National Science Foundation, said in a statement, "These exciting discoveries are providing fossil 'Rosetta Stones' for a deeper understanding of this evolutionary milestone — fish to land-roaming tetrapods." The science foundation and the National Geographic Society were among the financial supporters of the research. Besides Dr. Shubin, the principal discoverers were Edward B. Daeschler of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and Farish A. Jenkins Jr., a Harvard evolutionary biologist. Michael J. Novacek, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, who was not involved in the research, said: "Based on what we already know, we have a very strong reason to think tetrapods evolved from lineages of fishes. This may be a critical phase in that transition that we haven't had before. A good fossil cuts through a lot of scientific argument." While Dr. Shubin's team played down the fossil's significance in the raging debate over Darwinian theory, which is opposed mainly by some conservative Christians in the United States, other scientists were not so reticent. They said this should undercut the creationists' argument that there is no evidence in the fossil record of one kind of creature becoming another kind. One creationist Web site (emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/evid1.htm) declares that "there are no transitional forms," adding: "For example, not a single fossil with part fins part feet has been found. And this is true between every major plant and animal kind." Dr. Novacek responded in an interview: "We've got Archaeopteryx, an early whale that lived on land and now this animal showing the transition from fish to tetrapod. What more do we need from the fossil record to show that the creationists are flatly wrong?" Dr. Shubin and Dr. Daeschler began their search on Ellsmere Island in 1999. They were attracted by a map in a geology textbook showing the region had an abundance of Devonian rocks exposed and relatively easy to explore. At that time, the land was part of a supercontinent straddling the equator and had a warm climate. It was not until July 2004, Dr. Shubin said, that "we hit the jackpot." They found several of the fishes in a quarry, their skeletons largely intact and in three dimensions. The large skull had the sharp teeth of a predator. It was attached to a neck, which allowed the fish the unfishlike ability to swivel its head. "Fish feeding in water readily orient the mouth toward food by maneuvering the entire body," said Dr. Jenkins, who assisted in the interpretation of the fossils. "The head is rigidly attacked to the trunk by bones linking the skull and shoulder girdle, and thus fish have no neck." If the animal spent any time out of water, he said, it needed a true neck that allowed the head to move independently on the body. Embedded in the pectoral fins were bones that compare to the upper arm, forearm and primitive parts of the hand of land-living animals. The scientists said the joints of the fins appeared to be capable of functioning for movement on land, a case of a fish improvising with its evolved anatomy. In all likelihood, they said, Tiktaalik flexed its proto-limbs primarily on the floor of streams and may have pulled itself up on the shore for brief stretches. In their journal report, the scientists concluded that Tiktaalik is an intermediate between the fish Panderichthys, which lived 385 million years ago, and early tetrapods. The known early tetrapods are Acanthostega and Ichthyostega, about 365 million years ago.

New archeological discoveries

Muslim Youth uprising

The Muslim Youth uprising is the official name given to an unsuccessful[1] "Islamic revolution" that was set to take place in Egypt on November 28, 2014. The Salafist Front, an Islamist organization which is part of the now banned Muslim Brotherhood-led Anti-Coup Alliance, had initially planned for the uprising earlier in November. The protests' main goal was to establish the "Islamic identity" in Egypt, which they claim to have been hijacked by "secular conspiracies". [2] On November 25, Egypt's interior minister, Mohamed Ibrahim, vowed to use lethal force against any attempts to assault public facilities. He said that his forces would use "all means" necessary to fight "terrorist factions". [3] The same day, Ibrahim held a meeting with heads of different police departments and security directors of Greater Cairo to discuss plans to counter any anticipated acts of violence. The meeting also included other government departments such as communications, information technology and transportation. [4] Security officials have been mainly worried that the supposed protests would be used as a cover by the insurgent group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, to carry out bombings and attacks on this day. [3] Two senior army officers were killed,[5] including a brigadier-general who was killed in a drive-by shooting in Abu Zaabal. [6] Two army conscripts were also injured. [5]

Protest_Online Condemnation

Trump Hates International Treaties. His Latest Target: A Nuclear-Weapons Deal With Russia.

The next casualty of President Trump’s suspicion of multilateral deals could be a 30-year-old arms accord with Russia. When Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev solemnly signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty at the White House, the leaders of the world’s superpowers hailed the transition from an era of “mounting risk of nuclear war” to one marked by the “demilitarization of human life.” But when Donald Trump unceremoniously declared the treaty dead over the weekend, the mood was different. After taking a shot at Barack Obama for not pulling out of the agreement in response to Russian violations, the president complained about how unfair it is that Russia and China get to “do weapons” that “we’re not allowed to,” and boasted of the hundreds of billions of dollars the U.S. military could “play with” were it to build new nuclear weapons of its own. The demilitarization of human life this was not. The Trump administration has yet to formally withdraw from the INF Treaty, but if the president makes good on his pledge, the move would be massively significant. Here’s why. For decades during the Cold War, the United States was obsessed with defending the homeland against the Soviet Union’s nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles. But by the late 1970s, it confronted a new threat from the Soviet nuclear arsenal: the deployment of shorter-range ballistic missiles capable of targeting America’s NATO allies with little advance notice. The United States responded with what the inexorable logic of the Cold War demanded: stationing similar missiles, capable of striking the Soviet Union, in Western Europe. But it simultaneously pursued negotiations that culminated in a 1987 agreement between Reagan and Gorbachev. Kori Schake: Trump is right to leave this nuclear agreement. The INF Treaty required the United States and the Soviet Union to permanently eliminate all ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers—the types of weapons systems, numbering in the thousands, that precipitated the showdown in Europe. In effect, it eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons. Along with the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which drastically reduced the number of long-range Soviet and American nuclear weapons, it was critical in ending the nuclear-arms race. The United States and Russia have for years been trading accusations that the other party is violating the INF Treaty (Russia purportedly with a banned cruise missile; the U.S. allegedly with its missile-defense systems in eastern Europe). But they have persisted with the agreement. Less than a year ago, the Trump administration unveiled a strategy of sticking with the INF while pressuring Russia into compliance through a mix of diplomacy, sanctions, and talk of researching and developing prohibited weapons systems of its own if necessary. As recently as this summer, Jon Huntsman, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, was still describing the INF to reporters as “probably the most successful treaty in [the] history of arms control.” What’s changed is that National-Security Adviser John Bolton now appears to have “the president’s ear on this issue,” Kingston Reif, the director of disarmament and threat-reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan organization that seeks to raise awareness about arms-control efforts, told me. Bolton, a proto–America Firster who joined the Trump administration in the spring, has long opposed international arms-control and nuclear-nonproliferation agreements that he claims are utterly ineffectual or intolerable infringements on the United States’ freedom of action. During the George W. Bush administration, he helped engineer the U.S. withdrawal from a treaty with Russia limiting antiballistic-missile systems and an agreement with North Korea rolling back its nuclear program, and he championed Washington’s exit from the Iran nuclear deal under Trump. In 2011, well before the United States was calling out Russia for violating the INF, Bolton argued for either bringing new countries into the treaty or scrapping the accord entirely, since it constrained America’s ability to counter rival nuclear powers like China and nuclear aspirants like Iran and North Korea. (Even without its own intermediate-range missiles near China, Iran, and North Korea, the United States can still deter these countries with other elements of its nuclear-weapons arsenal, such as nuclear-capable aircraft and submarines.) Trump has made a strikingly similar case—condemning the treaty for rendering the United States shackled and outgunned by a resurgent Russia and rising China, even as he floats the idea of one day reviving and expanding the agreement to include other nuclear-armed states. Rand Paul: The U.S. must engage with Russia. Richard Burt, who helped negotiate the INF Treaty during the Reagan administration, said that while he’d “love to believe that this is a very clever strategy to get leverage over the Russians” and compel them to adhere to the terms of the treaty, he seriously doubts it. Instead, he thinks Trump’s decision is an effort to shake off restraints and assert unfettered American sovereignty—just as the administration has done by withdrawing from the Paris climate pact and trade agreements. History teaches that leaders only agree to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons when they improve relations with adversaries and no longer fear the types of war they once did, the nuclear-weapons expert George Perkovich once told me. If that’s the case, however, the inverse is also true: When the ranks of adversaries swell and the specter of war looms large, nuclear buildups are a natural temptation. Trump’s intention to quit the INF and his hesitancy to renew another Obama-era nuclear-arms-control accord with Russia are in one sense symptoms of just how fierce competition between the world’s great powers has become. In walking away from the treaty, the president is recognizing a “changed reality” in both technological and strategic terms, Bolton declared on Tuesday during a visit to Russia. Burt, who is now a managing partner at the firm McLarty Associates, predicted that a U.S. withdrawal from the INF Treaty would prompt Russia to again deploy intermediate-range missiles and the United States to react by rolling out new sea- and air-based weapons systems even if it doesn’t redeploy ground-based missiles to Europe. (America’s NATO allies, which might not agree to host these missiles, have so far reacted to Trump’s announcement with a mix of praise and criticism.) Burt added that the United States and Russia are now both pouring vast sums of money into upgrading strategic bombers, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and shiny new objects like hypersonic glide vehicles and anti-satellite systems. Read: Trump’s pointless untruths about U.S. nuclear weapons “We’re in a process of sleepwalking into a new nuclear-arms race” with no restraints, Burt told me. When he served in government, in the 1980s, there was “a hypersensitivity [to] and awareness of the dangers of a nuclear conflict.” No longer. When it comes to arms-control and nuclear-nonproliferation agreements, Trump has shown himself to be a consummate deal breaker. At the same time, in his pursuit of a nuclear deal with North Korea, a better nuclear deal with Iran, and now an expanded INF Treaty with Russia and China, he has yet to prove himself a deal maker. Taken together, the moves could not just encourage an arms race among nuclear-armed states, but push other countries to consider whether they, too, want to add such weapons. “The existing framework for nuclear control and constraints is unraveling,” Burt noted. “If the two largest nuclear powers are walking away from arms-control agreements, it provides an excuse for other countries to acquire nuclear weapons.” “It’s easy to look back [at the Cold War] and say, ‘Gee, we avoided a nuclear conflict because we were so smart.’ I happen to think it was ‘We were very lucky,’” he continued. “And if we’re going to go through another nuclear-arms race, this time we might not be that lucky.”

Withdraw from an Organization

US withdraws from UN human rights council, calling it bias against Israel

US withdraws from UN human rights council, calling it bias against Israel US withdraws from UN human rights council, calling it bias against Israel Speed News Desk | Updated on: 20 June 2018, 10:51 IST The United States has officially withdrawn from the United Nations Human Rights Council alleging it of being bias against the human right abuser. RT @USUN : With members like China, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Venezuela the Human Rights Council is not worth its name. — Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) June 19, 2018 In a press meet on Tuesday US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said, "US withdrawal from the Human Rights Council," However, she added that the US would not retreat from human rights commitments. Addressing the press along with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Nikki slammed Russia, China, Cuba and Egypt for opposing the US for demanding necessary reforms in the council. Sickening irony that Nikki Haley announced U.S. will withdraw from UN Human Rights Council on Juneteenth (which marks of the “end” of slavery June 19, 1865 ), as Trump Administration is tearing asylum-seeking families apart and locking their children in caged detention centers. — Derrick Johnson (@DerrickNAACP) June 19, 2018 Accusing the council of being bias, Nikki said, "Look at the council membership, and you see an appalling disrespect for the most basic rights," She also added that the disproportionate focus and unending hostility toward Israel was a proof of political bias and not by human rights. The latest rejection of multilateral engagement has come after UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein called on Washington to stop its "unconscionable" policy. Currently, US is facing criticism for detaining children separated from their parents immigrating at the US-Mexico border. Maybe someone should have separated Nikki Haley from her parents when they came here from India. — heemy (@HIMANSHU) June 20, 2018 Twelve rights and aids groups, including Human Rights First, Save the Children and CARE, wrote Pompeo to warn the withdrawal would "make it more difficult to advance human rights priorities and aid victims of abuse around the world."

Withdraw from an Organization

1834 Jerusalem earthquake

The 1834 Siege of Jerusalem took place during the Peasants' revolt in Palestine, which erupted following the entry of Egyptian general Ibrahim Pasha into Ottoman Syria and his subsequent military conscription demand upon the Arab villagers of the region. The siege was engaged by local Arab peasant rebels upon an Egyptian garrison of about 2,000 soldiers, beginning from May 21 until the arrival of Ibrahim Pasha's main force on June 7. The crushing defeat of rebel reinforcements took place on June 9, led by Ibrahim Pasha. During the spring of 1834 discontent in Hebron and Nablus had begun to mount over Ibrahim Pasha's plans to conscript local men into his army. On 18 May, fighting broke out in Hebron and on 21 May a large rebel force dispatched on Jerusalem. Nearly 6-7,000 rebels marched on Jerusalem from Hebron, aiming to capture it from the Egyptians. At the time, the city had a garrison of some 2,000 men, while Ibrahim Pasha was based with the main forces at his headquarters in Jaffa. Pasha's troops in Jerusalem closed the city gates, and stationed 500-600 soldiers at the Jaffa Gate, where the first attack was expected. On 22 May 1,000 troops marched out of the city hoping to engage the rebels in the open, but failed to make contact with them. They returned to the city after sacking the village of Lifta. That night there was much shooting from outside the walls. On 26 May, the siege commenced with no food or water getting into the city. The defenders had two cannons, which they moved around the walls to disperse attacks. They could not rely on the loyalty of the city's Muslims and had to remain on duty day and night. In the early afternoon of 26 May, the area was shaken by two earthquakes with after-shocks and further strong quakes occurring until after midnight. Due to the quake, part of outer enclosure of the al-Aqsa Mosque collapsed as well as several houses and the tops of some minarets. The rebels however continued firing throughout. The following day there were further tremors. On 28 May, the rebels launched a strong attack but were repelled. Food and fuel shortages were beginning to be felt in the besieged city. Four days later, after midnight 1 June, the Egyptian garrison suddenly retreated into the castle. The following night, the troops briefly counter-attacked but returned into the castle, while the rebels entered the city looting shops. By 4 June the city, except for the castle, was under the control of the rebels. Two days later they retreated and the soldiers emerged from the castle, apparently looking for food. On 7 June Ibrahim Pasha arrived with one regiment and six pieces of artillery, having fought his way up from Jaffa for three days and nights. On 9 June, two hours North of Jerusalem, an Egyptian force from the city with reinforcements, consisting of 2,000 cavalry and 4,000 infantry engaged rebels approaching from Nablus. 1,500 rebels were killed and 11 taken prisoner. On 16 June, three hours to the South, near Solomon's Pools, the army were less successful and had to fight their way back to the city. On 18 June, a plague broke out in Jerusalem. The following month the Egyptian army occupied and disarmed Nablus, confiscating 1,500 guns. The Egyptians then attacked Hebron on 1 August, where the last of the rebels have retreated. The town was given over to plunder and all Muslim inhabitants that could be found killed. [1] On 16 August Commodore Paterson, US Navy, reached Jerusalem with his family, 16 officers and a surgeon. Three weeks later the surviving American Missionaries were evacuated to Beirut. [2]

Earthquakes

Rescue workers are trying to reach at least 15 miners trapped in a flooded gold mine in north-western Colombia.

Rescue workers are trying to reach at least 15 miners trapped in a flooded gold mine in north-western Colombia. The mine collapsed apparently due to flooding caused by drilling holes to extract the mineral. Officials said some of the miners were trapped at a depth of around 17 metres (55 feet). They said it may take three days to pump out enough water to reach the men, but the owner of the mine said they may already be dead. Leonardo Mejia, the mine owner, told reporters that several miners had managed to escape when they realised something was wrong. He said he feared the 15 missing miners were all dead. The National Mining Agency (ANM) said local firefighters reported that gases in the deep, vertical tunnels had contributed to the cave-in. Colombia is a major gold producer but more than half its mines are unregulated.

Mine Collapses

A private expedition starts examining the sunken MS Estonia

The relatives of the MS Estonia victims announced in early September they had established a foundation – Mare Liberum – to support their expedition and privately investigate the wreck of MS Estonia that sank on route from Tallinn to Stockholm on 28 September 1994 with a loss of 852 lives, the second-deadliest peacetime sinking of a European ship. The foundation’s manager, Margus Kurm – a former state prosecutor of the Republic of Estonia and from 2005-2009, the head of the committee for the investigation of the sinking of MS Estonia – said that “although numerous different investigations have been carried out, they have not been able to give the survivors and close relatives of the deceased exhaustive answers regarding the reason why Estonia perished.” “Quite on the contrary, diving operations performed in the past two years have led to new suspicions and questions which require a serious investigation,” Kurm pointed out. The expedition will look answers for seven questions: why and when did the visor disconnect from the ship?; did the ramp completely open before the sinking of the ship?; what exactly are the damage locations on the right deck, when and what caused such damage?; why and when did intermediary walls of the abaft and car deck of the ship become damaged?; does the hull of the ship have any more damaged locations of which we do not know?, what objects are located around the wreck and in the assumed trajectory of the sinking of the ship, and what is their connection with the sinking of the ship?; how exactly did different parts of the ship get filled with water? Utilising RS Sentinel, a diving support vessel that belongs to the German company, RS Offshore, Mare Liberum plans to conduct underwater research and investigate the shipwreck on the sea bottom. The ship has various sonars, two groups of underwater robots and four divers with the necessary research and recording equipment. “After gathering evidence, the entire collected material will undergo a thorough scientific analysis. Additionally, a 3D model of the bow visor of Estonia has been prepared, which now makes it possible to study damage of the visor from the distance,” the foundation said in a statement. RS Sentinel reached the location where MS Estonia sank on 22 September and the expedition’s first job is to examine the sea bottom with a multibeam sonar. “This doesn’t mean underwater diving – the sonar is located under the ship. The plan is to cover the entire area and to map the location of the wreck and objects that surround it,” Kurm noted. “After that we will conduct the first preparatory examination with an underwater robot, the goal of which is to identify the exact position of the wreck and to find out whether there is anything around it that requires a more detailed examination. If we encounter no problems, our second underwater robot crew will start the night shift to perform photogrammetric scanning of damage spots of the wreck,” Kurm explained. MS Estonia was a 16,000-ton, 157 metres-long (515.16 ft) cruise ferry, built in 1980 at the German shipyard Meyer Werft in Papenburg. It sailed as Viking Sally (1980-1990), Silja Star (1990–1991) and Wasa King (1991–1993), before named Estonia. The ferry, at the time the largest ship under the Estonian flag, began serving the Tallinn-Stockholm route in 1993 and was operated by the Swedish-Estonian shipping company, Estline. While on a scheduled crossing from Tallinn to Stockholm on the night of 28 September 1994, the ferry sank in the Baltic Sea. The vessel disappeared from the radar screens of other ships at around 01:50 EEST (less than half an hour after the first Mayday call was issued) in international waters, about 22 nautical miles (41 kilometres) from the Finnish island of Utö. The ship sank to the depth of 74 to 85 metres (243 to 279 ft) of water. Of the 989 on board, only 138 were rescued alive (one of whom died later in hospital). As such, it is the second-deadliest peacetime sinking of a European ship, after the RMS Titanic, and the deadliest peacetime shipwreck to have occurred in European waters, with 852 lives lost. Most of the victims were Swedes (501), followed by Estonians (285). The official disaster report, released in 1997, said the fatal event started when the locks on the ferry’s bow door failed from the strain of the waves and the door separated from the rest of the vessel, pulling the ramp behind it ajar. This allowed water into the vehicle deck, capsising and ultimately sinking the ship. Cover: A rendering of MS Estonia in the seabed. The sunken ferry is resting almost upside down.

Shipwreck

Albania, Croatia become NATO members

World Albania, Croatia become NATO members Albania and Croatia became NATO's newest members Wednesday in a historic expansion into the volatile western Balkans where the alliance fought its first war a decade ago. Link copied April 1, 2009, 6:37 PM UTC / Source: The Associated Press Albania and Croatia became NATO's newest members Wednesday in a historic expansion into the volatile western Balkans where the alliance fought its first war a decade ago. The two countries will be ceremonially inducted into NATO during a summit Friday and Saturday in Strasbourg, France, and Kehl, Germany, to mark the alliance's 60th anniversary. The two new states take total member nations to 28. "Albania and Croatia have worked very hard to meet alliance standards with regard to democracy, and the reform of their militaries," NATO spokesman James Appathurai said. NATO forces have operated in the Balkans since the mid-1990s, when thousands of peacekeepers were sent to Bosnia in the aftermath of a four-year civil war between Serbs, Muslims and Croats in which nearly 100,000 people perished. In 1999, the alliance mounted its first combat operation when its air forces bombed Serbia to end Belgrade's crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in what was then Serbia's southern province of Kosovo. 'Contributors to regional stability' Albania and Croatia have "overcome a difficult period in their history to become contributors to regional stability and international security," Appathurai said. "They will now benefit from collective security the alliance offers, but they will also bear the responsibility that collective security requires." Despite Croatia having a military force of only about 20,000 troops and Albania only 14,000, Croatia has sent 530 soldiers to the NATO-led force in Afghanistan and Albania another 140, according to NATO. Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha on Tuesday described joining NATO as the most important act in the country's history for nearly a century. Analysts say NATO membership sends a signal that the countries are politically stable. "Membership will be good in economic terms, coming at the times of financial crisis, as it would be a positive sign for investors," said Croatian economic expert Drazen Kalogjera. Last expansion was in 2004 Founded in 1949, NATO has twice taken on new members since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, its Soviet-dominated Cold War foe. Seven former communist nations entered in 2004, following Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic who joined in 1999. In contrast to the alliance's previous eastward expansion which infuriated Russia, Moscow has not objected to the inclusion of Albania and Croatia. The former six-member Yugoslav federation broke free of the Soviet Union in 1948, while Albania followed suit in the early 1960s. But NATO's latest enlargement was marred by the rejection of Macedonia, whose accession was blocked by member Greece. Athens objects to the neighboring nation's use of the name Macedonia, saying it implies a territorial claim on the adjacent Greek province of the same name.

Join in an Organization

Great fire of Tirschenreuth

The Great fire of Tirschenreuth took place on 30 July 1814 and destroyed nearly all of Tirschenreuth, a small town and regional centre in the east of Bavaria, close to the frontier with Bohemia. [1] The great fire was the greatest catastrophe in the town's history apart from the invasion by Swedish troops that took place in the context of the Thirty Years' War two centuries earlier. The fire was discovered between 9 and 10 in the morning in the storage barn of a toy maker called Joseph Scherbaum. [2] The cause of the fire is unclear, although the toy maker's wife was spotted heating her oven in the morning and it is possible that sparks from this action somehow ignited the surrounding building which went up in flames very quickly. Rising smoke was spotted from the church tower by the town's two watchmen. They immediately sounded the fire bell and hung a banner from the church tower pointing towards the direction from which the smoke was coming. [3] Within a short time fire spread from the blacksmith's house to the nearby properties. With just a few fire buckets and a small pump there was no realistic prospect of stopping the fire, and people concentrated on rescuing their families, livestock and living necessities, and moving these to the safety of the meadow by the Fish Hall, no longer on an island, but set on parkland which until a drainage project undertaken in 1808 had been a huge pond. [3] After the fire had raged for four hours the town was almost entirely destroyed. An exception was the priest's house and three small neighbouring houses. Half of the Church of the Ascension of the Virgin Mary also survived, but the timber interior of the tower was burned out. [4] Outside the town the Fish Hall also survived. [5] A total of 907 buildings were destroyed by the fire, made up of 307 houses and 600 sheds or other outbuildings. Rapid spreading of the fire had been exacerbated by the narrowness of the streets the through closeness of the buildings to one another, squeezed between the town wall on one side and the remains of two large recently drained bodies of water on two other sides. [1] The years following the fire were years of hunger. Tirschenreuth was rebuilt, but the outcome differed significantly from what had been there before. The gable frontages that had been a feature of the houses round the market place were omitted, and the town hall was also rebuilt without its old gables and roof window towers. The town's old castle was not rebuilt at all. On 28 January 1819 the town was able to celebrate its rebuilding. The total amount collected across Bavaria to support the project had been around 42,000 guilders, including 1,000 guilders from the king, who also donated approximately 12,000 tree trunks from the Royal forests to be used for the reconstruction.

Fire

2013 Seddon earthquake

The 2013 Seddon earthquake measured 6.5 on the Mww scale and was centred in New Zealand's Cook Strait, around 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of the town of Seddon in Marlborough. The earthquake struck at 5:09:30 pm on Sunday 21 July 2013 (05:09 UTC) at a depth of 13 kilometres (8 mi), according to Geonet. [2] The United States Geological Survey also measured the quake at 6.5, at a depth of 17 kilometres (11 mi). [3] The quake caused moderate damage in the wider Marlborough area and Wellington, the nation's capital city 55 kilometres (34 mi) north of the epicentre. Only minor injuries were reported. Several aftershocks occurred during 21–29 July. The Seddon earthquake is considered the first of an earthquake doublet,[citation needed] with a second earthquake of similar magnitude occurring on 16 August 2013. The earthquake was preceded by a series of foreshocks, the largest of which had a magnitude of 5.7. Below is a list of all foreshocks magnitudes 5.0 and above that occurred in the region between 19 July 2013 and 21 July 2013. The earthquake generated a series of aftershocks, the largest of which had a magnitude of 5.4. Below is a list of all aftershocks magnitudes 5.0 and above that occurred in the region between 21 July 2013 and 2 August 2013. The quake resulted in varying degrees of damage to thirty-five buildings within the Wellington CBD with glass from broken windows falling onto the main thoroughfares of Lambton Quay, Featherston Street, and Willis Street. Damage was also caused in Paraparaumu, Wainuiomata, Porirua and the Hutt Valley in the North Island. The Wellington Region emergency management office was activated on the evening of 21 July, as were those in the lower part of the North Island. [16] On 22 July parts of Wellington's central business district were closed to the public to allow for inspections to buildings with damaged and potentially dangerous façades. [18] Four people were injured in the quake, which lasted for 20 seconds, blowing out windows, cracking concrete and swaying buildings. [1]

Earthquakes

Sunken treasure: Volunteers, researchers excavate on Crescent Beach to unearth a shipwreck

Researchers from the St. Augustine Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP) are out in the field this week excavating what they believe is a centuries-old shipwreck that came ashore near Crescent Beach in November 2020 after a nor’easter pushed sand off part of the ship’s hull. The remnants of the 19th-century cargo vessel, likely the Caroline Eddy, were discovered by a local resident on the beach not far from the Matanzas Inlet. LAMP, the research arm of the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum, was called out to investigate. Historic find:Possible WWII-era plane washes up on St. Johns County beach The 'queen' returns:Woman who grew up on the St. Augustine lighthouse grounds returns for 90th birthday Now, LAMP's team is racing against the clock to dig up the wreck and take more measurements and photos before St. Johns County starts a beach renourishment project that will dump tons of sand onto this eroded stretch of the shoreline, including the area where the ship is located. The project is set to begin Sept. 7. "We’re just kind of in a race against time," Chuck Meide, LAMP's director, said Tuesday. Since Monday, he and other researchers, with help from community volunteers, have been hand-digging at the site with shovels, filling tarps with sand so they can get to the structure underneath. With at least 3 feet of thick, wet sand to remove before they could even glimpse the bones of the ship, it's been quite a job. "It's more deeply buried than we had anticipated," Meide said. Meide had requested an excavator machine from the county, but with it also being sea turtle nesting season the county was afraid it might disturb the natural habitat of the turtles. Among the group of volunteers helping to uncover the ship is Nikki Crowell, who teaches U.S. history at Freedom Crossing Academy in St. Johns County. Crowell, who is also more than nine months pregnant, said she couldn't pass up the opportunity to take part in her first excavation. "It's been really amazing to see how far we've come in just this time," Crowell said Tuesday as she took a break from shoveling. Also joining in the effort was Elery Duggan, 7, vacationing with her parents from Pennsylvania. "I just thought it would be cool to help and see more of it [the ship] come up," said Duggan. Meide and his team have investigated hundreds of shipwrecks, both in Florida and beyond, including the most recent find — known as the "Spring Break Wreck" — that washed ashore in Ponte Vedra Beach two years ago. Meide believes the group's research so far makes the structure unearthed at Crescent Beach a "strong candidate" for identification as a merchant ship that sank not far from the area in 1880. Meide said a log kept by the St. Augustine Lighthouse keeper at that time notes on Aug. 29, 1880, that a merchant ship out of Fernandina was, in fact, impacted by a storm that drove it at least 9 miles south of its original port of origin. After it sank, the wreckage was probably pushed onto the beach during a storm and covered with sand over time. Over the past 10 years, the loss of nearly a foot of sand from the Crescent Beach shoreline has likely exposed the wreck, Meide said. The timber, most of which has been oxidized due to the iron bolts it's constructed with, is strong enough to suggest the vessel could have carried a heavy load of cargo. Meide said the process of removing the wreck from the site would be too expensive so once the team is done with their work, they will rebury it. "It's safe and stable to be preserved again in its natural environment," said Meide. LAMP plans to create a 3D model based on the measurements and photos they take this time around so it may be studied in the future. The analysis will also include taking more material samples with help from Lee Newsom, professor of anthropology at Flagler College, who has worked with LAMP previously. "And hopefully, when it's all said and done," Meide said, "it will be here for another 141 years."

Shipwreck

Bengal Bubble of 1769

The Bengal Bubble, caused by the increasing overvaluation of the East India Company stock between 1757 and 1769, led to the Great East Indian Crash, a major financial crisis that occurred in 1769. The bubble and crash occurred in the wake of the conquest of Bengal by the East India Company in 1757 by Robert Clive. Following the battle, Clive and the company acquired increasing powers in Bengal, through the installation of the puppet regime of Mir Jafar, including control of the tax collection rights for the province from the weak and declining Mughal Empire. By 1769, the East India Company stock was trading at £284. By 1784, the stock had declined to £122, a fall of 55%, and a series of bailout measures and increasing control by the crown led to the demise of the company. Several historical events, including the attack on Company holdings by Hyder Ali in 1769, the Bengal famine of 1770, and growing revelations of the company's actions, were the immediate causes of the crash, but the primary cause was the predatory governance of the province by the company, which led to the collapse of the 18th century Bengal textile industry. In the wake of the crash and the resulting outcry in England, attempts were made to reform the company, but, due to the complicated situation in England at the time, it was only in 1784, with the passage of Pitt's India Act, that reform was seriously undertaken.

Financial Crisis

The gun battle near the town of Salman Pak, in an area known as Iraq's "triangle of death", continued for over two hours, according to police sources.

The gun battle near the town of Salman Pak, in an area known as Iraq's "triangle of death", continued for over two hours, according to police sources. Three people also died in a car bomb in the capital, and the bodies of 20 truck drivers were found south of Baghdad. It comes as a recount of votes cast in the country's historic election began. The latest attacks - which also led to the death of an Iraqi in Baquba, north of Baghdad - follow a brief lull after the election at the end of last month. Amid fears that such mounting violence will mar this month's Shia festival, the interim government has announced the borders will be sealed for five days. Bodies found Police said the attack in Salman Pak began when a car bomb exploded in the morning. A police convoy, which went in search of the insurgents, was then attacked with mortars and rockets in a fierce gun battle. Thursday's bomb blast in Baghdad happened in Tahrir Square, a busy district in the centre of the city, shortly after a US army convoy passed through the area. US military officials said there were no US casualties but at least three Iraqis are thought to have been killed. Iraqi police said they have also found the bodies of 20 truck drivers in their burnt out vehicles south of the capital. It is thought their convoy, carrying sugar to food warehouses, was attacked at least two days ago. At least nine Iraqis died on Wednesday, including a correspondent for a US-funded Arabic TV station. 'Tough battle' The government announced the closure of Iraq's borders for five days, starting next week, to boost security ahead of a Shia religious festival, Ashura. At least 170 people died in multiple suicide attacks during the festival last year in Baghdad and Karbala. Meanwhile poll results had been due on Thursday, but a recount of 300 contentious ballot boxes means the provisional tally could still be days away. Partial election results suggest the Shia United Iraqi Alliance list is in the lead, with a coalition of Kurdish parties in second place. The Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani, has told the BBC he expects a tough battle over the constitution that the new Iraqi parliament is to draw up. Mr Talabani, who is widely thought to have a good chance of becoming Iraq's next president, said there were likely to be sharp differences over the relationship between religion and the state. He said Kurds would reject the demand of some Shia Muslim groups for Islam to become the basis of Iraqi law.

Armed Conflict

US Withdrawal from UNESCO Will Undermine Collaboration on Science and Culture

The Trump Administration’s war on science has intensified with the announcement that the US is withdrawing from UNESCO, the international organization that works to promote peace & security through international cooperation on education, science and cultural programs. Founded in 1945, when nations were seeking ways to rebuild educational systems and cultural connections in the immediate aftermath of World War II, UNESCO today is a leading multi-lateral organization working on a range of issues crucial for achieving peace, equity and sustainability world-wide. “Every day, countless Americans and American communities pour their time and their hearts into UNESCO-led international collaborations on science, on education and on culture” says Andrew Potts who practices cultural heritage law at Nixon Peabody LLP. They work on preventing violent extremism via youth education, on literacy and educating women and girls, on science for development, and on free speech and journalist safety. And of course, they fight for cultural diversity and heritage through UNESCO projects like the World Heritage program, biosphere reserves and the Creative Cities initiative. UNESCO recognition and connections can bring economic benefits to US communities. For example, according to a State Department news bulletin from August 2017, Tucson, Arizona, which was listed as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy in 2015, has experienced an increase in tourism and restaurant revenues as a direct result, as well as millions of dollars of earned media coverage. The US withdrawal announcement on October 12th came smack in the middle of Iowa City’s eight-day UNESCO City of Literature Book Festival. It also came right on the heels of San Antonio, Texas’ second World Heritage Festival, a new annual event that already attracts thousands of visitors to celebrate and learn about the San Antonio missions – including the Alamo – that were added to the UNESCO’s World Heritage list in 2015. Although US World Heritage sites won’t lose their status when the US leaves UNESCO, there will likely be little or no federal support for collaboration and engagement with the international agency or its staff. The US has a complicated history with UNESCO. It helped to found the organization and has always been actively engaged, but it has also withdrawn once before. At the height of the cold war in 1984, Ronald Reagan pulled the US out. At that time, a report on the implications for US science published by the National Research Council identified disruptions to international scientific collaborations, reduced confidence in US scientific leadership and forfeiture of the right to participate in governance of UNESCO-led scientific initiatives. The US ultimately continued to provide an equivalent level of international financial support for science, culture and education, but the impacts of withdrawal were significant in the scientific community. George W. Bush took the US back into UNESCO nearly 20 years later in 2002, and then in 2011, the Obama administration drastically cut back on financial support to UNESCO in response to Palestine being granted full membership. The process for withdrawal takes some time, and the US will not formally cease to be a member of UNESCO until December 31st, 2018. The State Department has said the US remains committed to UNESCO’s important work and will seek observer status. Secretary Tillerson could put action behind that talk by committing to put the equivalent of the US’s former UNESCO dues payments into other international collaborations in science, education and culture. The opening words of UNESCO’s constitution carved in 10 languages in Toleration Square, Paris. Photo: UNESCO. Meanwhile, it is the words of the American poet Archibald MacLeish that are enshrined in UNESCO’s constitution and etched in 10 languages on the Tolerance Square wall at the organization’s headquarters in Paris: “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.” According to outgoing UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, “[that] vision has never been more relevant” than it is today. In a moving and very personal statement in response to the news of the US withdrawal, Bokova said, At the time when the fight against violent extremism calls for renewed investment in education, in dialogue among cultures to prevent hatred, it is deeply regrettable that the United States should withdraw from the United Nations agency leading these issues. Under Bokova’s leadership, with major involvement from the US, UNESCO has been at the forefront of efforts to protect heritage sites and museum collections in Iraq and Syria as ISIS forces have tried to destroy monuments and stamp out culture. She has also spearheaded implementation of the United Nations Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity, in a world where journalists’ freedom to work and safety is constantly under threat. Through its Science for Sustainable Development program which many US universities participate in, UNESCO has launched important initiatives to increase the number of women in science, to ensure science is at the heart of policy-making for sustainable development, to fully value Traditional Ecological Knowledge and to champion open access to scientific information. UCS led the team that produced UNESCO’s 2016 report on climate change and World Heritage. Photo: UNESCO. It is probably for its work on World Heritage that UNESCO is best known to most Americans. The World Heritage Convention was set up to help protect for future generations, natural and cultural heritage deemed to be of universal value for humankind. There are 23 World Heritage sites in the US, amongst them, the Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall in Philadelphia and Yellowstone, Yosemite and Mesa Verde national parks. Many of America’s World Heritage sites and cultural sites are at risk from climate change impacts including worsening wildfires, more intense storms, sea level rise and coastal flooding. The National Park Service, which is a global leader in researching and responding to the effects of climate change on protected areas, has historically been a major player in the World Heritage Convention under UNESCO’s leadership. Indeed, just as the US is planning to withdraw from UNESCO, the international World Heritage Committee is preparing a major effort to step up its engagement with the implementation of the Paris Agreement (a global commitment to act to reduce global warming emissions to address climate change), and the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and to update its policy on climate change for the first time in a decade. UCS will be fully engaged in that process, building on the policy recommendations in our report on climate and world heritage, published with UNESCO and UNEP in 2016. The Trump administration, however, is relegating federal scientists, experts and agencies to bystander status with one more pointlessly anti-science jab at the international community. In response Potts says, Now more than ever, as with the Paris Agreement, it will be incumbent on US cities, universities and NGOs to pick up the reins of global education, science and cultural collaboration; to continue to make American contributions to all these critical endeavors and to make sure American communities benefit from their progress.

Withdraw from an Organization

Two local nonprofits announce merger

RISE-Stand Strong leadership team pictured L-R (name, current title and new title with merged organization): Stand Strong – David Fields (Finance Director), now CFO, Karen Borges (Associate Director), now COO, Jennifer Adams (Executive Director), now CEO, – RISE – Jane Pomeroy (Executive Director), now CPO, Susan Lamont (Associate Director), now Client Services Director, and Sam Gottlieb (Finance & HR Director), now Chief People & Culture Director. –RISE and Stand Strong—two organizations dedicated to ending sexual and intimate partner violence in San Luis Obispo County—are merging into one larger, more robust organization effective July 1. This alliance will provide more comprehensive, inclusive services to those in our community who have experienced gender-based violence and are in need of shelter, therapy, advocacy, legal services, and other support throughout SLO County. Both organizations have been in existence since the mid 1970s, striving to support and empower survivors and providing prevention education to the community about sexual and intimate partner violence. “Thanks to the incredible dedication of both organizations’ board and staff members, we will be uniting two outstanding agencies, said Jennifer Adams, former executive director of Stand Strong. “Together, we will provide more seamless services to those in need while combining the strengths of both programs. We look forward to continuing the vital work of empowering survivors and preventing violence.” Adams will lead the merged organization as CEO. Jane Pomeroy, former Executive Director of RISE, will serve as Chief Program Officer, and Karen Borges, previous Associate Director of Stand Strong will serve as Chief Operations Officer. This dynamic team, accompanied by board members and staff, plan to unveil a new name and logo at a special Brand Launch Celebration on July 14 from 4-6 p.m. The media is invited to attend in person, and the public can join via Facebook Live. The live feed will be available both on RISE’s Facebook page and on Stand Strong’s Facebook page. Together, RISE and Stand Strong will continue to build a safe, thriving, and equitable community by empowering those impacted by sexual and intimate partner violence through innovative advocacy, healing, and prevention. A merged organization will provide streamlined services to clients throughout the entire county, reduce confusion for partners and donors and consolidate administrative functions. Additionally, there will be no reduction in staffing as a result of the merger, and all current services will remain available to the community. –Jennifer (Jenny) Adams, Executive Director of RISE San Luis Obispo County, is retiring on June 28, 2019. She has worked in the field of gender-based violence for over 20 years, serving as Executive Director for fifteen. She is excited to travel, spend time with family, and explore options for her… In "Business" Message from RISE: On June 25, 2018, RISE launched a public awareness campaign in an effort to reach our LGBTQ+ community and make our services more accessible to all survivors of sexual abuse/assault and intimate partner violence. In doing so, we made a grammatical mistake in the Spanish language portion… In "Community" –The Spokes Symposium 2021 brings together experts in the field and regional nonprofit leaders to discuss taking stock, pivoting, and building collaborations to survive and thrive during times of great change. The virtual event will take place from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. on three consecutive Tuesdays, April 13, 20,… In "Business" The news staff of the Paso Robles Daily News wrote or edited this story from local contributors and press releases. The news staff can be reached at info@pasoroblesdailynews.com.

Organization Merge

Meteors Great and Small

Abundant streaks of light have raced across the night sky this week during the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. The light show happens every year in mid- to late-August when Earth’s orbit intersects with the trail of debris left by Comet Swift-Tuttle. While the Perseids and other major showers (Geminids, Orionids, and Leonids) draw the most attention, meteors are visible any time of the year, albeit at a slower rate. That’s because Earth is bombarded with heaps of dust and sand-sized particles every day. Sometimes, an object is large enough to produce a brilliantly bright spectacle known as a fireball. Fireballs are meteors that have an apparent magnitude of at least -5, making them brighter than Venus. “More people see meteors during a shower because there are so many of them. For the Perseids, there are up to 100 meteors per hour,” said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Fireball events, on the other hand, are quite rare and can happen on any day of the year.” Data compiled by CNEOS scientists were used to produce the map above, based on an interactive version created by Alan Chamberlin . The map shows the locations of large fireballs detected by government sensors between 1988 and 2021. The size of each dot is proportional to the impact energy (kinetic energy) of each fireball; that is, the total energy the meteoroid brought into the atmosphere due to its velocity. As a meteoroid cruises into Earth’s atmosphere, some of its kinetic energy is converted into radiated energy—the bright optical flash detected by the sensors. The rest is converted into sound waves and energy at other wavelengths. Some goes into a blast shock wave. By observing many such events, scientists established a way to determine the total energy of an event based its optical flash. From this, scientists can derive the original size of the object before it entered Earth’s atmosphere. Using such calculations, scientists have estimated that the asteroid that lit up the sky in February 2013 over Chelyabinsk, Russia , initially measured 20 meters across. This is by far the largest fireball in the CNEOS database, which focuses on larger fireball events. All fireballs in the database stem from asteroids measuring at least one meter across. In contrast, the meteoroids associated with a meteor shower—the stream of debris released from a comet or asteroid—are much smaller, generally ranging from the size of a grain of sand to tens of centimeters. Fireballs associated with meteor showers are possible but infrequent. Still, some Perseids can appear quite bright. August 11, 2021 JPEG Meteors need not be fireballs to be photogenic. NASA photographer Bill Ingalls captured this photograph of a meteor zipping across the night sky on August 11, 2021, during the peak of the Perseid shower. Ingalls shot the 30-second exposure from the summit of Spruce Mountain in West Virginia. A few thin clouds lingered, reflecting light from distant urban areas. Notice that part of the meteor appears green. According to Bill Cooke, lead at the NASA Meteoroid Environment Office, this is due to the way the meteoroid excited oxygen molecules during its impact with the atmosphere. Cooke also noted that the Perseid shower is especially rich in bright meteors. He points to data from NASA’s network of all-sky meteor cameras , which can detect meteors that are brighter than Jupiter. “The number of bright meteors in the Perseids dwarfs all other meteor showers—30 percent more than the Geminid shower, which has better rates and is also noted for bright meteors,” Cooke said. The peak of the shower occurred from August 11-13, but it’s not too late to catch a glimpse of the summer phenomenon. The meteors should remain relatively abundant in the nighttime sky for a few days after the peak. Beyond that, keep looking up; you never know when a rare fireball might brighten the night or even the day. While the major meteor showers draw the most attention, large and bright fireballs can blaze through the sky at any time of year.

New wonders in nature

Multiple mudslides closed Highway 285 in Chaffee County after severe thunderstorm Tuesday night

CHAFFEE COUNTY, Colo. (KKTV) - Multiple mudslides closed down part of Highway 285 in Chaffee County after a severe thunderstorm Tuesday night. Colorado State Patrol reported a series of large mudslides just north and south of Poncha Springs at approximately 9:15 p.m. Tuesday night. The closure is from milepost 121 to 125. Several passenger vehicles and a semi truck/trailer were stuck in the mud and debris, although CSP has not reported any injuries at the time of this writing. CDOT crews will be working through the night to clear the roadway. It is estimated the highway will be closed until mid-morning Wednesday. CSP recommends these alternate routes: If traveling south, turn west on Highway 50 from Poncha Springs to Highway 114. Turn east (left) on Hwy 114 to Saguache and Highway 285. If traveling north on Hwy 285, turn west (left) on Hwy 114 in Saguache, Hwy 114 to Highway 50, the east to Poncha Springs.

Mudslides

Pan Am Flight 202 crash

Pan American World Airways Flight 202 was a Boeing 377 Stratocruiser aircraft that crashed in the Amazon Basin about 281 nautical miles (520 km) southwest of Carolina, Brazil on April 29, 1952. [1] The accident happened en route from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, during the third leg of a four-leg journey. [1] All 50 people on board were killed in the deadliest-ever accident involving the Boeing 377. [2] The investigation took place under exceptionally unfavorable conditions, and the exact cause of the crash was not established. However, it was theorized based on an examination of the wreckage that an engine had separated in flight after propeller blade failure. The Boeing 377 Stratocruiser registration N1039V, christened "Clipper Good Hope", made its first flight on September 28, 1949. At the time of the accident it had accumulated a total of 6944 airframe hours in flight. [1] It was equipped with four 28-cylinder Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major radial piston engines, each with a Hamilton Standard Model 24260 four-blade propeller. The propeller blades were constructed with a rubber core filling a steel shell, which was later identified as a design prone to structural failure. Flight 202 was an international scheduled passenger flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, destination New York City, New York, with three en route stops scheduled at Montevideo, Uruguay; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. [1] It began its route on the evening of April 28, 1952, in Buenos Aires, and after stopping off in Montevideo, it arrived in Rio de Janeiro at 1:05 a.m. local time (04:05 UTC) on April 29. It departed Rio less than two hours later, at 2:43 a.m. (05:43 UTC), heading for Port of Spain on the third leg of its journey. It was cleared to fly an off-airways route directly to Port of Spain,[1] which took it over the dense forests of the Amazon jungle that were still unexplored at the time. The flight reported abeam the city of Barreiras in eastern Brazil at 6:16 a.m. local time (09:16 UTC), flying at 14,500 feet under VFR conditions; the pilots estimated that the next position report would be at 7:45 a.m. (10:45 UTC), abeam the city of Carolina in the northeastern state of Maranhão, Brazil. This was the last known message from the flight. [1] Witnesses in the villages of Formosa and São Francisco reported seeing the aircraft overhead at about the time it reported abeam Barreiras; they described the aircraft as operating normally. [3] When the aircraft failed to report abeam Carolina and then abeam the city of Santarém in northern Brazil, local authorities initiated a missing aircraft alert. Brazilian Air Force, USAF, and US Navy aircraft searched the jungle, while Brazilian Navy ships searched the coastal areas off northern South America. The wreckage was not found until May 1, when a Pan Am Curtiss Commando freighter reported finding it in Caraja Indian territory 281 nautical miles (520 km) southwest of Carolina. [3] "The burned, broken wreckage of the Pan American Stratocruiser that vanished Monday night was found in northern Brazil today." There was no evidence that any of the 50 persons on board, including 19 Americans, lived through the crash. An air hunt over 320,000 square miles (830,000 km2) of jungle, river basins and plateau land finally located the ruins in the Indian country between the cities of Barreiras and Carolina. Airline officials said the find had been made by a C-46 Pan American cargo plane piloted by Capt. Jim Kowing of Miami. The scene is about 250 miles (400 km) southwest of Carolina, a Tocantins River town 1,100 miles (1,800 km) north-northwest of Rio de Janeiro. The double-decked Stratocruiser was reported to have broken in two; its charred wreckage was scattered on both sides of a 1,500-foot (460 m) high hill. Pan American officials said a Panair do Brasil airliner circled the scene of the crash; its pilot reported extensive evidence of fire and said he saw two of the big plane's engines lying 1,600 feet (490 m) apart in the hilly, heavily wooded area. A Pan American passenger plane was converted to carry a seven-man rescue unit, headed by Maj. Richard Olney of the United States Air Force base at San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Maj. Oliver Seaman, an Air Force flight surgeon. Pan American's office at Miami reported that, after circling the scene for four hours, the rescue plane returned to its base at Para without dropping the rescue team. It said they did not jump because there were no signs of survivors. [4][not specific enough to verify] Later, a 27-man investigation team flew via seaplane to Lago Grande, a tiny Indian village on the Araguaia River less than 40 nautical miles (70 km) from the wreckage, with the intention of trekking to the accident site. Unfortunately, the extreme nature of the terrain forced all but seven team members to return to Lago Grande before reaching the site. The remaining seven investigators, running short of water, food and other supplies, were only able to confirm that all on board had died on impact and that a huge fire had consumed the fuselage. A properly equipped and provisioned second investigation team built a base camp northwest of Lago Grande and finally reached the wreckage on August 15. They determined that the wreckage had fallen to the ground in three main sections. Most of the wreckage, including the fuselage, the starboard or right wing, the root of the port or left wing (including the nacelle for the No. 2 engine but not the engine itself), and the Nos. 3 and 4 engines (normally attached to the starboard wing) had fallen in an area of dense forest about 13 nautical miles (24 km) northwest of the base camp. The outer port wing and the No. 1 engine had fallen 765 yards (700 m) to the northwest of the main wreckage; the empennage and fractured parts of the No. 2 engine (normally attached to the port wing) had fallen roughly 1,100 yards (1,000 m) north of the main wreckage and 800 yards (700 m) northeast of the port wing. Although the No. 2 engine and its propeller were not found, evidence on the port wing root, the No. 2 engine nacelle, the leading edge of the vertical stabilizer, and the horizontal stabilizer led investigators to believe that the engine and/or propeller had failed in flight. There had been two prior engine separation incidents with the 377, on January 24 and 25, 1950. [5] In this case, investigators hypothesized that the propeller failure caused the engine to experience highly unbalanced loads and it eventually separated from the aircraft, precipitating an in-flight breakup. Debris from the propeller and engine may have contributed to the breakup by damaging control surfaces after being flung from the port wing during the failure.

Air crash

UW emergency pandemic aid creates equity, could use more vetting

The University of Wisconsin recently started distributing $28.6 million in emergency pandemic aid to students. The money comes from the third round of the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund in the American Rescue Plan Act Congress passed in March, which allotted UW $53.4 million in spending money. UW is required to distribute at least $26.7 million directly to students for personal use, but decided to spend $900,000 more than that total on students. In a press release, UW said the funds would be sent to “students facing the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic,” with $7.7 million going directly to more than 6,500 high-need students whose financial needs are outlined in the Free Application for Federal Student Aid forms. Of those students, more than 4,600 were Federal Pell Grant recipients. The remaining $19.1 million left over in the student fund is eligible for all UW students to receive through an emergency form where they can describe their reasons for needing extra money. This means the majority of money is easy for students to access, which can be good or bad, depending on how ethical the student body is. As COVID-19 crisis increases wealth gap, WI must reform social welfare programsWhether we realize it or not, the pandemic has changed our lives forever. It changed our ways of learning, working, Read… Let’s not forget how important this money is for the 6,500 high-need students that immediately qualified through their FAFSA status. The COVID-19 pandemic made paying rent nearly impossible, and increased medical and living costs, crippling savings for the working class. The ARPA was in part designed to help college students pay for these costs as they attend university. UW is accomplishing that goal for the 6,500 students that desperately need the money. These students get timely access to a few thousand dollars and can use it for anything from tuition to personal costs. Even in the “all students” bracket, UW is helping many students who aren’t in the high-need bracket but still face financial difficulties. The middle class tends to fall short of qualifying for financial aid through FAFSA, despite being unable to keep up with the nearly 25% increase in tuition costs over the past ten years, and the openness of this fund changes that. In this sense, it’s also easier for international or undocumented students to access funds quickly, which is rare, as FAFSA requires correspondence with the government. The Office of Student Financial Aid Communications Manager Karla Weber Wandel said all students who submitted applications to the open fund received money. “We’ve been able to provide some emergency grant to each student that has made a request,” Wandel said. “Students get to choose if they want these funds applied to their student account balance or if they want the amount directly refunded to them.” Silent Crisis: How small business foreclosures spell disaster for the USIt is no secret that the entire world is facing an insurmountable crisis. With almost 90,000 COVID-19 cases and counting Read… These payments are a glimpse at universal basic income proposals popularized by former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. All students are afforded a base-level financial safety net while some less affluent ones are given additional support. The emergency pandemic aid marks UW’s first major step towards equity that universities often fail to achieve, despite groups like Associated Students of Madison previously calling for an expanded and more consistent student payment system. But, the easy access to this aid also has its downsides. The emergency request form only requires that students create an itemized list of their financial needs, followed by a “brief statement explaining your current financial emergency.” There’s also a short survey students must fill out, which includes vague statements such as “concerned about covering future expenses.” As a public school, UW has minimal data on its students who don’t need financial aid and don’t fill out the FAFSA form when they apply to the school. This leaves the Office of Student Financial Aid with a mere paragraph to determine if a student should receive money that a financially desperate student could use to avoid eviction or pay for critical medicine. While it’s not immediately possible to prove that some students are lying on their emergency request forms to receive money they don’t necessarily need, it’s conceivable these students are potentially using money the university could set aside for others with serious financial difficulties. A recent example of government money finding its way to the rich is the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. Small, minority-owned businesses had trouble accessing the Paycheck Protection Program while massive chain restaurants — like Ruth’s Chris or Shake Shack — could easily take money from the fund. The Act also provided far more than the $1,200 each American received to millionaires and billionaires through tax breaks. American Rescue Plan shows hope as the country reaches one year of a pandemicWith the COVID-19 pandemic coming up on its one year anniversary, the United States has faced a devastating number of Read… Calling for a UW surveillance campaign to determine a student’s real financial status would only prohibit some students in that middle class category from receiving needed money. Instead, a more rigorous vetting process for students to receive this money would ensure fluffy wording doesn’t open the door for them to receive money they might not need. Direct financial aid can be an equitable opportunity to support both working and middle class students through easy access to money. In the future, UW needs to establish a more robust way to determine who gets these funds. Students not in the high-need bracket should have to show up for in-person interviews and outline a spending plan for their funds. Or, students could be required to reveal a partial picture of their financial status to apply for these funds. These policies would discourage any wealthy students who may be looking to take advantage of the situation from doing so. In a perfectly moral society, we wouldn’t have to worry about students taking money they don’t need. But, if the pandemic has proved anything, it’s that people are flawed. This article was published Sep 15, 2021 at 8:00 am and last updated Sep 11, 2021 at 12:34 pm

Financial Aid

2009 Iranian presidential election protests

Government: Opposition: Protests against the results of the highly controversial 2009 Iranian presidential election (Persian: پیامدهای انتخابات ریاست‌جمهوری دهم ایران‎), a disputed victory by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in support of opposition candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, occurred in major cities nationwide from 2009 into early 2010. [36] The protests were titled the Iranian Green Movement (Persian: جنبش سبز‎ Jonbesh-e Sabz) by its proponents, reflecting Mousavi's campaign theme, and Persian Awakening, Persian Spring or Green Revolution, reflecting the "Persian identity" of Iranians and the so-called "colour revolution" theme. [37][38][39] Protests began the night of 12 June 2009, following the announcement that incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won nearly 63 percent of the vote, despite several reported irregularities. However, all three opposition candidates claimed the votes were manipulated and the election was rigged, with Rezaee and Mousavi lodging official complaints. Mousavi announced he "won't surrender to this manipulation", before lodging an official appeal against the result to the Guardian Council on 14 June. [38] Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered an investigation into the claims of electoral fraud and irregularities, as requested by Green Movement leaders. [40][41][42] Ahmadinejad called the election "completely free" and the outcome a "great victory" for Iran, dismissing the protests as akin to little more than "passions after a soccer match". [43] Due to the sporadic cases of violence present at the protests, the government had the police and paramilitary Basij violently suppress them; protesters were beaten, pepper sprayed, arrested and tortured, and even shot in some cases. The most widely known firearm victim was Neda Agha-Soltan, whose last moments were uploaded to YouTube and broadcast around the world. [44][45][46] Opposition groups also reported thousands more were arrested and tortured in prisons around the country, with former inmates alleging mass rape of men, women and children by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, in prisons such as Kahrizak and Evin. [47][48] The Iranian government confirmed the deaths of 36 people during the protests,[32] while unconfirmed reports by Mousavi supporters allege at least 72 deaths (over twice as many) in the three months following the election. They claimed relatives of the deceased were forced to sign documents citing death by heart attack or meningitis. [49][50] Iranian authorities closed universities in Tehran, blocked websites, cutoff mobile signals[51] and banned rallies. [41] The creation of the Iranian Green Movement developed during these protests. It was also termed the "Twitter Revolution", due to protesters' reliance on Twitter and other social media to communicate. [52] Since 1980 following the collapse of the Shah's regime in 1979. The government is based on the concept of Velayat-e Faqih, which is a system of governance in which a faqih was to serve as the Supreme Leader. However, following calls that this idea was undemocratic, the system was moderately altered into the current "Islamic Republic", in which a council of clerics, who are elected by the people, choose the Supreme Leader who, per the constitution, has to be a cleric (though this was altered in 1988). The Supreme Leader, in turn appoints the members of the twelve member Guardian Council, who approve laws and candidates for elections, even at the presidential level. The President of Iran is not the commander-in-chief, and the control of the military, police, and the parallel Revolutionary Guards is under the control of the Supreme Leader. The Revolutionary Guards is a constitutionally protected paramilitary force that operates alongside the regular Armed forces, whose primary function is to protect the Islamic Republic. The Revolutionary Guards also have an auxiliary wing called the Basij, who provide support in enforcing religious laws and suppressing dissidents. [53][54] They are not considered full members of the Revolutionary Guards, and lack the training given to full-time members, although they can be called up at any time to assist the regular forces in times of trouble. Though Ayatollah Khomeini and his successor Ayatollah Khamenei, claimed that this system was democratic and the Revolutionary guards are necessitated to protect the government from military coups and foreign interference, critics contend that this system only serves to keep like-minded conservatives in power and marginalize any opposition, while using the Revolutionary guards to silence any dissidents. [55][56][57][58][59] The Islamic Republic has not escaped popular opposition in the past. During the 1980s, the Marxist-Islamist, Mojahedin Khalq was instrumental in opposing Ayatollah Khomeini through large protests and bombings against politicians such as Mohammad-Ali Rajai, Shahid Beheshti, and Khamenei himself, who escaped an assassination attempt that left his right arm paralyzed. [60][61][62] Following the 1981 Hafte Tir bombing, Ayatollah Khomeini declared the Mojahedin and anyone opposed to the Islamic republic, "enemies of god" and pursued a mass campaign of torture, rape, and execution against members of the Mojahedin, Fadaiyan, and Tudeh parties as well as their families, close friends, and even anyone who was accused of insufficient Islamic behavior, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Iranians who were usually tried in secret kangaroo courts run by hard line clerics. [63] Following Operation Mersad in 1988, Khomeini ordered all prisons to execute those still in captivity, resulting in an estimated 3,000[64] to 30,000[65] dead. Since then, no organized opposition has surfaced in Iran and following this experience, the Iranian Government usually employs heavy handed tactics to marginalize any attempt at regime removal and usually justifies this with the "enemy of god" classification. In 1997, following the unexpected victory of a before-little-known reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami, there was a revival of a moderate faction within the government whom the public believed had the ability to reform and curb the power of the conservatives and make the system somewhat democratic, and that Khamenei was willing to trust this faction in the hopes that it could recover the country after the eight-year war with Iraq, which Rafsanjani and the conservatives had failed to do. [66] However, rather than promoting a reform of the system, the reformists began questioning the concept of the Islamic republic itself and following the exposure of the murders of dissidents by the intelligence services in reformist newspapers (which were run by former Revolutionary Guards and intelligence agents now turned reformists), the government began to distrust Khatami and his faction, a conflict which reached the breaking point after the 1999 student protests, after which hardliners such as Mohammad Ali Jafari, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and Qasem Soleimani were promoted to take control of the Revolutionary Guards and the Security Services to crack down on most reformist movements. Despite reformists gaining a majority in the Majlis in 2000 and Khatami winning the 2001 election as well, Khamenei would oppose any attempts at liberalization of the government or society. [67] Most Iranians and observers in general have regarded the reform movement to have been a failure with Saeed Hajjarian, the main theorist behind the movement, declaring in 2003 that "the reform movement is dead. Long live the reform movement". [68] In 2005, Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected to the presidency, defeating now reformist Ali-Akbar Rafsanjani, placing the conservatives in charge of the government once more. Ahmadinejad would focus his presidency on confronting Israel. His speeches gained international infamy, which usually called for the destruction of Israel and claimed that the Holocaust was fabricated. The funding of anti-Israeli groups went up exponentially, particularly towards Hamas and Hezbollah, which have been labeled as terrorist groups by the United States. Despite Iran's huge oil and gas reserves, those sectors have been relatively neglected in favor of a nuclear energy program that has cost billions of dollars and has been condemned by Israel and the United States, who claim that the program is a cover up for a much larger nuclear weapons program. As a result, the United Nations has placed sanctions on the Iranian government, which has had a heavy impact on the economy, reducing the value of the rial from a low of 8,000 to the dollar in 2005 to 10,000 to the dollar in 2009. [69] Iran has been experiencing high birth rates since 1988, both due to an increase in standard of living and government encouragement of large families, with an estimated 60 percent of the country being under the age of 30. [70][71] However, the economy has failed to keep pace with the number of people entering the job market and Iran has been experiencing high unemployment rates since early 2000. Ahmadinejad began a campaign of privatization of state enterprises, but most companies ended up in the hands of government-connected officials and foundations (bonyads) operated by wealthy clerics and the Revolutionary Guards. [72] Estimates by the Los Angeles Times suggest IRGC has ties to over one hundred companies and annual revenue in excess of $12 billion, particularly in construction. [73] The Ministry of Petroleum awarded IRGC billions of dollars in contracts as well as major infrastructure projects. [74] Most government-issued contracts were awarded to these companies, and private enterprise in Iran has been struggling heavily against these groups. The election of the president of Iran in 2009 was preceded by many Iranian surveys and a survey by the US-based Terror Free Tomorrow organization. [75] The Terror Free Tomorrow opinion poll, conducted from 11 to 20 May 2009, predicted the high participation and showed similar ratios for the candidates to the later official result, with over a quarter yet undecided. [76][77] The many Iranian surveys show a wide range of differing results. An opinion in the New York Times claims that this is due to the high fluctuation among voters during the campaign season.

Protest_Online Condemnation

Thinking clearly about social aspects of infectious disease transmission

Social and cultural forces shape almost every aspect of infectious disease transmission in human populations, as well as our ability to measure, understand, and respond to epidemics. For directly transmitted infections, pathogen transmission relies on human-to-human contact, with kinship, household, and societal structures shaping contact patterns that in turn determine epidemic dynamics. Social, economic, and cultural forces also shape patterns of exposure, health-seeking behaviour, infection outcomes, the likelihood of diagnosis and reporting of cases, and the uptake of interventions. Although these social aspects of epidemiology are hard to quantify and have limited the generalizability of modelling frameworks in a policy context, new sources of data on relevant aspects of human behaviour are increasingly available. Researchers have begun to embrace data from mobile devices and other technologies as useful proxies for behavioural drivers of disease transmission, but there is much work to be done to measure and validate these approaches, particularly for policy-making. Here we discuss how integrating local knowledge in the design of model frameworks and the interpretation of new data streams offers the possibility of policy-relevant models for public health decision-making as well as the development of robust, generalizable theories about human behaviour in relation to infectious diseases. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic highlights the continuing importance of global infectious disease threats, and the need to develop rigorous scientific theories to understand, quantify, and forecast the risks that pathogens pose to humanity. One of the most important lessons of the pandemic so far is that the central forces shaping local and global variation in disease burden and dynamics have been social, not biological. Although substantial biological questions remain unanswered, the multiple waves of infection that have been driven by shifting control policies and the heterogeneous public response to them1,2, as well as the disproportionate impact of the disease on poor and marginalized communities around the world3,4,5,6, are the defining features of the pandemic’s trajectory on local and global scales. Epidemiological models that describe the spread of infectious diseases through populations have been developed during the pandemic to understand and predict pathogen transmission and to guide public health policies7,8. As a tool for synthesizing current knowledge, identifying key drivers of transmission, and planning public health policy, such models have a long history in research and public health9,10, and are increasingly used to make decisions about health policy and global funding11. Although uncertainties about biological aspects of pathogen transmission may be problematic for modelling, it is the social context—which is important not only in terms of model structure and parameterization but also with respect to the availability and interpretation of epidemiological data—that often presents the biggest challenges for capturing the essential features of disease dynamics8,12,13. Human societies are structured by cultural forces that define social relations, particularly between kin, and the spread of infection reflects these social structures—starting with the household or family unit, and extending to the structure of workplaces and public spaces, and the physical layouts of villages, towns, cities, and countries. The purpose of a model, whether purely theoretical or fit to data to inform decision-making in a specific context, will determine how detailed these social aspects of transmission need to be, with the adage that a model should be ‘as simple as possible but no simpler’ likewise taking on different meanings depending on the model’s intended function. Intrinsic to this decision is a question of scale13: capturing population-level dynamics may not require individual-level detail about social interactions, but a model intended to understand local drivers of transmission may. Data about social relationships that are relevant for modelling pathogen transmission are traditionally collected by censuses and other surveys14,15,16, but the expansion of access to the internet has started to open up possibilities for a more expansive, real-time, and global approach to the collection of survey data17,18,19 and the development of relevant social science theories about human behaviour. Furthermore, new data streams from mobile devices—for example, via social media—are offering vast, relatively unexplored datasets about human mobility on a global scale20,21. Despite the recent marked increase in the availability of these new datasets—a trend that has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic22,23,24—challenges remain in using them to parameterize transmission models. In particular, the extent to which data from mobile phones provide an accurate proxy for contact rates that spread disease remains unclear25,26. In fact, it is still difficult to parameterize social aspects of transmission in mechanistic models even in the context of sophisticated approaches to modelling and the addition of powerful new data. Nevertheless, as social scientists embrace and grapple with new data streams, infectious disease modellers have the opportunity to use them in the context of transmission models as “a way of thinking clearly”9 about the social drivers of epidemics. Here we describe key social parameters that modellers must consider to effectively capture the dynamics of pathogen transmission on different scales. We draw a distinction between models in which appropriately disaggregated data about baseline human social dynamics—grounded in local knowledge—can provide mechanistic insights into disease transmission, and the challenges introduced when the quality, resolution, or paucity of epidemiological and behavioural data may constrain predictive power even if the social aspects of a model are well-specified. We also discuss the importance of understanding and predicting deviations from baseline behaviour that result from infection and public health policies, an issue that may need to be addressed using a fundamentally different kind of model structure. Models are increasingly informing target product profiles, global strategies, and investments in global public health programs for many infectious diseases. Social and behavioural aspects of transmission are often ignored in the name of generalizability and parsimony, with authors adopting the language of physics to justify these simplifications while also claiming to provide public health value to specific populations. Too often the integration of these models in decision-making processes at the national level remains weak. We believe that one of the most important challenges for our field is the development of flexible frameworks that integrate social contexts that are relevant for disease, a challenge that requires closer collaboration between social scientists and infectious disease epidemiologists. All mechanistic frameworks of infectious disease transmission make assumptions about how frequently people are exposed to disease, for example owing to close physical contact between susceptible and infectious people (the contact rate), and about the probability of infection when exposure occurs. In the well-studied susceptible–infectious–recovered (SIR) model—first developed by Kermack and McKendrick nearly a century ago27—mixing within a single homogeneous population, and therefore infection risk, was assumed to be random. The conceptual separation of the transmission coefficient into social and biological components was not the norm until the 1980s, as it became increasingly apparent that the population dynamics of HIV were driven disproportionately by transmission within particular demographic groups, which reflected highly non-random patterns of sexual contact28,29,30,31,32,33,34. This separation provides conceptual differentiation of the social and cultural forces that drive uneven infection risk within a population from the biology of transmission itself30,35,36, and is an essential feature to include to incorporate the effect of heterogeneous social interactions on transmission (Box 1). In reality, assumptions of random mixing are always violated, even at the local and within-household scales, and the extent to which models must account for departures from them will depend on the mode of transmission of the pathogen and the purpose of the model. Kin structures are at the heart of all communities (Fig. 1). Comprehensive diary studies have revealed strong, age-structured mixing patterns related to household structures of nuclear families and peer groups shaped by schooling and patterns of employment14,16, but these contact rates can change over time17 and vary substantially around the world37. Recent technological developments have facilitated bluetooth-based and GPS studies of contact patterns37,38,39, providing rich, granular data with increasingly large sample sizes, and a foundation for developing general principles of human interaction that could be used in epidemic models. Passively collected, aggregated mobile phone data have also become increasingly available on a near real-time basis and at scale21. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many modellers have begun to examine whether local mobility metrics and foot-traffic data are useful proxies for contact rates within populations40,41,42,43,44,45,46. This can be effective when changes in mobility that occur on a scale that is measurable using mobile phone data are strongly correlated with contact rates. For example, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Badr et al.46 used aggregated mobility metrics from mobile phones to show that marked reductions in mobility occurred throughout the USA in mid-March of 2020, regardless of local social distancing policies, and that this was strongly associated with a drop in COVID-19 growth rates across the country. In this case, aggregated mobility data provided a meaningful proxy for the contact rates that drove changes in transmission on a county level. In general, however, if contact rates are decoupled from mobility patterns measured in this way—which the authors suggest occurred after April 2020 in the USA25—an understanding of local transmission patterns still requires local data collection and/or contextual knowledge. Kin structures can affect patterns of interaction at all geographic scales. For example, at the local level, in some cultures extended families live and interact within the same house or complex. Kin relationships also strongly affect normal patterns of visiting behaviour, as much movement in all human cultures involves visiting kin. In places without running water, it is common for laundry to be done in streams or rivers, and this is often an important social activity, especially for women and children. In some cultures, women and men have different roles, including differential participation in labour migration and agricultural work, and women may be confined to family compounds during the day. At the regional level, families regularly congregate for larger-scale social events such as weddings and holidays, with longer-distance travel connecting communities. When disease does occur, it is often measured by routine surveillance systems that only identify cases when treatment is sought, and when they are correctly diagnosed and reported. Careful examination of the interactions between people inside and outside their households that lead to heterogeneous infection risk can produce epidemiological models that yield powerful and generalizable insights, despite their specificity. For example, for the Aedes mosquito-borne virus that causes dengue fever, household variation in disease incidence has often been assumed to almost exclusively reflect the spatial distribution of mosquito vectors. However, by closely monitoring people’s movements in relation to dengue clusters in Iquitos, Peru, Stoddard et al.47,48 showed that patterns of inter-household mobility associated with visiting friends and family were also a major driver of dengue transmission and needed to be considered in addition to spatial variation in mosquito densities. Similarly, by combining detailed survey data and precise location information about an outbreak of another Aedes mosquito-borne disease, Chikungunya, in Bangladesh, Salje et al.49 reconstructed transmission chains to show that this disease was highly localized to socially connected households within particular communities, and that the 1.5 times higher risk of infection among women coincided with the 1.5 times higher likelihood that they stayed in the home during the day. The power of these studies reflects the combination of social science data and rich epidemiological information, coupled with sophisticated analytics. It is not that models without these details would be wrong per se, but rather that the addition of social science data provides important mechanistic insights into how transmission works on this local scale; behaviours and patterns of household visiting will define the course of any particular outbreak and must be understood when generating context-specific policy. These concerns in turn emphasize the continuing importance of on-the-ground data collection from surveys, the value of gender-disaggregated data—which the WHO only made standard practice for global health statistics in 201950—and the role of local knowledge in model and study design. Local knowledge is also key for interpreting epidemiological data used to fit and validate models (Box 2). Despite this, local social phenomena are often left out of disease models12, sometimes because they are developed in a different context, for use at a different scale, or for academic purposes by researchers who are unaware of local realities, or because the social science data are time-consuming to collect or unavailable. The rich new data sources discussed above raise the question of how much detail should be included in order to understand the mechanisms that drive disease or to capture population-level dynamics at different scales. In all models, a trade-off exists between parsimony and realism that hinges on the scale and purpose of the model: while it is certainly true that “it makes no sense to convey a beguiling sense of ‘reality’ with irrelevant detail, when other equally important factors can only be guessed at,”9 it is also the case that a failure to capture the critical deviations from assumptions of random mixing may lead to weak predictions, misspecified estimates of transmission51, and poor policy decisions. Therefore, matching the model and data structures to the scale of the research or policy question becomes the most important challenge for capturing the social drivers of epidemiological dynamics within a population. Susceptible–exposed–infectious–recovered (SEIR) models provide a mechanistic description of the transmission of a pathogen as it spreads between people in a population. In the simplest of these frameworks, the reproduction number (R0) of a disease (the average number of secondary cases arising from a single infected individual in an entirely susceptible population) can be defined as R0 = bk/r, where b is the probability of infection given contact, k is the contact rate between people in the population, and r is the rate of recovery. As the contact rate is directly proportional to the reproduction number (R0) of a disease, the size, speed, spatial heterogeneity, and effect of an epidemic, as well as the interventions needed to prevent and contain it, are all fundamentally linked to the social and cultural processes that generate patterns of exposure. Assumptions must be made about how the contact rate scales with population size, and will depend on the transmission route of the pathogen. Beyond single population models, epidemic models designed to study the spread of infectious diseases in subdivided or geographically separate populations (also often called metapopulations) also have a long history. Early models of this type considered an arbitrary number of mixing populations35,54,96,97,98,99,100,101,102, and several of these efforts were stimulated by the need to develop models that could be used to help control the transmission of gonorrhoea in the USA103,104. These models established the importance of core groups of highly sexually active individuals for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Similar early frameworks were developed to describe the importance of non-random biting of mosquito vectors for malaria transmission105,106, and many early models focused on the fundamental question of ‘who mixes with whom’28,29,107. Since then, a substantial body of theoretical work has been developed that examines how heterogeneous local mixing patterns, sometimes formalized as explicit contact network structures, can influence epidemics within a population108,109,110, often using stylized abstractions of human interactions111,112,113. The ubiquitous finding of these studies is that heterogeneous contact patterns can be important for both the spread and control of disease. Perhaps one of the least measured or understood uncertainties associated with models of pathogen transmission is in the epidemiological data that are used to parameterize, fit, and validate them. In particular, understanding the social and institutional environments in which case data are generated and reported is essential for any meaningful evaluation of whether a model is fit for purpose. For many pathogens, the data available to fit an epidemiological model are derived from surveillance systems based on the reporting of cases from clinics or hospitals around the country to a central government agency (Fig. 1). Any infection that is not diagnosed within this system will of course not be captured by routine surveillance, and missing cases can occur if infections are asymptomatic, if healthcare is not sought by the infected individual, if cases are misdiagnosed or there is a lack of diagnostic capacity, or if there are reporting delays or failures. These issues are exacerbated among marginalized populations who may not wish to engage in the health system, and in poorly resourced or designed health systems where reporting may be slow, incomplete, and lacking essential metadata. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, asymptomatic infections have made it challenging to assess the total number of cases in a community, but additional factors—patchy access to diagnostic tests throughout the epidemic, variable testing criteria in different contexts, culturally specific treatment-seeking behaviours, and misaligned reporting incentives at different levels of government—have all contributed to wildly unreliable case counts. This has led to challenges in fitting models and estimating the reproduction number114,115 during the pandemic. ‘Nowcasting’ approaches have been developed to adjust for reporting delays116, and these have been successfully adapted for COVID-19 in some settings117. In addition, the use of alternative epidemiological data that may be more reliable, or are reported in a different way—for example, using excess mortality118 or even environmental proxies of transmission such as viral concentration in wastewater119—can provide a proxy for cases. Serological studies that measure antibodies in the wake of an infection can also be used to inform models about transmission dynamics120,121. However, few models consider the institutional and social aspects of epidemiological data as more than a ‘reporting rate’ that can be estimated or assumed and is usually opaque with respect to mechanism. Exactly how social aspects of surveillance should be included in modelling frameworks in different settings remains unclear, but is an important consideration for future work. Travel outside the community also plays a key role in spreading diseases (Fig. 1), and spatial models of infectious diseases often incorporate travel as a migration rate between populations. Traditionally, simple, theoretically derived gravity and radiation models—both based on the reasonable idea that large populations attract travellers, but not requiring specific data about mobility—have often been used as fixed parameters to describe mobility dynamics in these metapopulation models52,53,54. The increasing availability of mobile-phone-derived data on regional mobility is permitting the validation of these frameworks in real-world settings. The results of such studies suggest that gravity models systematically underestimate the volume of long-distance travel in our highly connected world, and may do poorly in rural areas55,56,57. They also highlight the importance of seasonal patterns of connectivity or asymmetric population shifts, such as holiday travel or displacement due to conflict or natural disasters. A recent comparison of aggregated mobile phone data from three countries showed that seasonal patterns of travel are a general feature of modern societies58. For example, in Kenya, this seasonal flux in population density, coinciding with school term times, was shown to be a stronger predictor of the regional patterns of the childhood infection rubella than rainfall and other explanations, explaining Kenya’s unusual three-peak pattern of rubella incidence59. Using mobile phone data to measure travel patterns in Bangladesh, Mahmud et al.60 observed large travel surges occurring out of the capital city of Dhaka to all parts of Bangladesh during the Eid festivals. In 2017, this holiday coincided with a large Chikungunya outbreak in the city, which spread throughout Bangladesh after the holiday, just as outbreaks of respiratory viruses in the global north at the end of December are often associated with holiday travel61,62. Mobile phone data therefore provide valuable insights about these relative travel routes of millions of people between different places for the first time, as well as asymmetric movement patterns and large shifts in population density. There are limits to the insights mobile phone data streams can afford, however, primarily related to a gap in social insight; they are spatially coarse relative to contact patterns that spread disease, as previously discussed; they have implicit biases (for example, they do not include children and other people without phones); and they usually do not tell us anything about who is travelling and why. It will be important to measure and quantify bias and representativeness in these datasets26,63,64 as they are used more routinely, as well as to engage in meaningful efforts to standardize approaches to both analysis and privacy for this relatively new public health application26. Analogous to the problems with random mixing assumptions in single-population models, the contact rate between populations often reflects travel by particular subsets of the population; in other words, the probability of travelling is not randomly distributed, but the mobility rates in most models assume that it is, and usually mobile phone data are not disaggregated demographically, in order to preserve the privacy of subscribers. When mobility data are available that are disaggregated, by gender for example, striking differences in mobility may emerge. A study of an urban setting in Latin America41 illustrates this heterogeneity well—women are both more localized in their movements and visit fewer locations than men, which may be important for infection dynamics in a given setting, depending on the pathogen. Surveys have shown that women with children also travel less to urban centres across sub-Saharan Africa compared to other demographics56. In a rural setting in Bangladesh, a survey of patients with malaria showed similar trends, with men travelling much greater distances than women65. Given that global gender roles often follow this pattern, it is likely that these findings are general and relevant for building robust disease models, especially when combined with gender-disaggregated health data. Contextual understanding coupled with disaggregated data, often generated using traditional social science approaches, is therefore not something we can do away with in the era of big data. Rather, these new data streams are uncovering dynamics that will be much more powerful when complemented by social science data and analysis. Some of these gender differences in regional mobility are related to occupational activities, which is another important factor that drives contact rates between populations. Labour migration has long been studied by social scientists, but is challenging to incorporate into epidemic models. The importance of labour migration in particular demographic groups, for example linked to forest and plantation work, agriculture and livestock, or gold mining66,67, has been known to drive regional patterns of malaria transmission for decades68. In the Sahel region of Africa, where the malaria burden is intense and highly seasonal, pastoral livestock farming is a key economic activity, and pastoralist communities are highly mobile as they search for pasture and water for their livestock, often in areas that expose them to malaria, and they exhibit seasonal migration within and between countries (Fig. 2). Rapid environmental changes and competition for land have adversely affected pastoralist production systems, which has resulted in conflicts, volatility in mobility patterns, and various other adaptive behaviours that are hard to generalize, but are fundamental to malaria transmission and control in the region. Transhumance is a type of nomadism in which the seasonal movement of people is driven by the need for livestock pasture. In the rainy season, pastoralists in the Sahel region spread into rich, but short-lived, pastures, while they move further south with the onset of the dry season. After spending the height of the dry season in the more humid south, they move back north before the beginning of the agricultural activities of the rainy season94. These seasonal movements involve both cross-border (red arrows) and national (blue arrows) travel patterns that shape the lifestyles of these populations.

Disease Outbreaks

Nailsea school closed by flooding to reopen by Sept. 29th

A special school which shut after being flooded by heavy rain is set to reopen next week. Pupils at Ravenswood in Nailsea, Somerset, were sent home a day after the term started when the deluge poured into classrooms and damaged the electrics. Another downpour days later causing further damage. The council said pupils, who have unique and complex needs, should be able to return on September 29. Councillor Catherine Gibbons, executive member for children's services at North Somerset Council, promised a review and said the authority would learn lessons from the incident, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said. She told a full council meeting on Wednesday: "I can't thank the school enough for the way that they responded, the way they managed to get the children out and set up remote learning again for those who could do it. "These are children with anxieties, for whom change is difficult to deal with, and therefore having prepared your child to go back to school, having talked them through what's going to happen and then suddenly find that the school is closed and they're going to be doing other things was very challenging." The flooding was caused by damage to a temporary roof covering in place as part of work, which started in the summer and was due to end in October, to upgrade the main school structure. Headteacher Mark Senior described the damage as "catastrophic". It affected the primary classrooms, post-16 buildings, sensory room, discovery room and creative arts department. Councillor Gibbons told the council meeting: "Parents have asked how the children will be supported to catch up lost learning. "The team has advised to focus for now on their wellbeing and make sure that when they go back to school they feel safe and comfortable, and look at the academic side of catching up once they feel that that's okay."

Organization Closed

Woman 'shocked' to find plastic in endangered eastern quoll scats

A Tasmanian woman says she was shocked to discover pieces of blue plastic in quoll scats left around her property, with a wildlife expert calling for people to be more mindful of how they dispose of their waste. Elaine McDonald said she often spotted quoll scats on her property at Nichols Rivulet in Cygnet, south of Hobart, but that this was the first time she had sighted plastic intertwined in it. "I was just shocked, of course, how could that happen? Because I never have any garbage out," she said. "It is upsetting, because they breed under my house, and I see the baby quolls disperse and you just always hope that they disperse successfully. "And this really makes you wonder." Earlier this month, Bruny Island resident Maxine Hindell shared a photo of a dead quoll with its head stuck in a cream container at Apollo Bay on the island's north. "It never occurred to me that a quoll would get its head stuck in a bottle," she said. "The beach [Apollo Bay] is along the D'Entrecasteaux Channel, so we get a lot of plastic waste wash up, and we're near fish farms, so we get a lot of waste from them," she said. "[But] it's not like there's whole piles of it — there was just that one bottle [on the day I found it]." Ms Hindell said it showed the impact waste could have on wildlife. "The person who threw that away would never have thought that a quoll would get its head stuck in it and die," she said. "It was really sad. It must have been an awful way to go. It was a horrible thing to see." Menna Jones, an associate professor at the University of Tasmania, has worked with quolls and Tasmanian devils for more than 30 years, and said it was unusual to see plastic in quoll scats. "The amount of plastic waste in scats, we honestly don't see that much of that. However, we do see it with Tasmanian devils a lot," she said. "Plastic waste can be eaten by wildlife if it is tainted by food and food odour. "In this case it has passed it all the way through, but it can cause an obstruction and result in the death of an animal." She said it was a good reminder to dispose of plastic waste mindfully. "The quoll that put its head inside to lick up whatever food and got stuck and died, that's very unfortunate and it is really irresponsible of the people who discarded their rubbish in the manner that they did," she said. "Our quolls and devils are listed as endangered, so we do need to be very careful to take good care of them."

Environment Pollution

Young Juventus loanee diagnosed with neuropathy

In 2019, Daouda Peeters completed the move from Sampdoria to Juventus, joining the club’s U23 side. The 22-year-old is currently spending the season on loan at Standard Liege, but unfortunately, his campaign has been interrupted by a rare medical condition. According to JuveNews, the young Belgian has been diagnosed with neuropathy, a condition that causes nerve dysfunction, and could result in pain, numbness and muscle weakness. The player is out indefinitely, and Juve’s medical staff are currently in constant contact with their Belgian counterparts. Last season, Peeters was a part of Andrea Pirlo’s first team squad during some matches, but never made it to the pitch. Nevertheless, he had already made his Serie A debut under Maurizio Sarri’s watch, playing 14 minutes during the Old Lady’s trip to Cagliari in July 2020. The youngster is a physically strong defensive midfielder who is mostly renown for his ability in retrieving the ball. Juve FC say Despite reaching the age of 22, Peeters has thus far been unable to cement himself a regular spot with Juve’s first, and he’s unlikely to do in the future. Nevertheless, the young man has all the tools to make a name for himself somewhere else, and here’s hoping that he gets fully cured from this unfortunate medical condition and find his way to the pitch as soon as possible. Name * Email * This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. © 2020 Juvefc.com, Trade names and marks Juventus, Juve and Shield Device are the exclusive property of Juventus | Images via Getty

Famous Person - Sick

2019 Honduran protests

The 2019 protests in Honduras corresponded to a series of protests and riots that occurred in October, that called for the resignation of President Juan Orlando Hernández; this as a direct consequence of the trial on drug trafficking charges against his brother Tony Hernández, carried out in the United States. These protests first were against the privatisation of health and education then soon turned into an anti-government revolt that has killed dozens of people. [1] After the 2017 Honduran general election, widespread protests and dramatic demonstrations erupted nationwide leading to the 2017-2018 Honduran protests and the violence that ensued. 38 protesters were killed and thousands of demonstrators were detained. Many were injured during clashes at demonstrations in January 2019. Honduras has a stagnant economy and since president Juan Orlando Hernandez took power in the 2013 Honduran general election, the Growth Domestic Product or GDP growth has been slow and steadily. Protests took place in 2015 and 2013 and after the reforms was brought, many had enough. In the last week of April, Riot police and protesters have clashed in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, during a demonstration against education and health reforms. These demonstrations were met with tear gas as protesters threw stones and chanted slogans and cheered on songs against the president and his narco-style dictatorship. Many protesters threw firebombs as a result of the tear gas but the response was still tear gas. Buildings were then set on fire. On May 30–31, healthcare workers and students threatened a nationwide strike and it went ahead, disrupting airline flights and health services from their routes and work. Mass demonstrations and violent protests rocked the capital Tegucigalpa and other cities. [2] In June–July, the military forces were sent in to detain and quell the mass unrest from going ahead but it made it even worse. Water cannons was deployed on rock-throwing doctors and students in June while working people went on strike in July. At least 5 protesters were killed in clashes with the security forces in June–July. [3] On August 7, mass demonstrations were held against the government led by mostly students. Tear gas and live bullets was used to disperse protesters while throwing stones and chanting slogans against president Juan Orlando Hernandez. [4] On August 18, A series of rioting took place between football teams leaving three dead in clashes. Groups of supporters came out in groups protesting and clapping during the intense clashes. [5] On Independence Day, anti-government and anti-presidential protests took place throughout the country against president Juan Orlando Hernandez. Brutal violence ignited and turned into rioting. [6] In October, long-lasting protests and fighting took place in protests. Bullets was fired to disperse protesters on 9 October but they came out on the 10th, chanting songs and cheering on the opposition leader yet police did not intervene. On 21–24 October, a series of riots took place. [7]

Protest_Online Condemnation

Cristiano Ronaldo breaks all-time Euro goals record

Updated 6:57 PM, 16 June, 2021 0 COMMENTS Ronaldo now has 11 goals, two ahead of Michel Platini’s nine, who had held the record for the all-time scorer in this tournament since 1984 Cristiano Ronaldo became the top scorer in the history of the European Championship when he scored a brace in the final minutes of Portugal’s opening match against Hungary in the Puskas Arena in Budapest on June 15. Ronaldo now has 11 goals, two ahead of Michel Platini’s nine, who had held the record for the all-time scorer in this tournament since 1984. However, Ronaldo is behind Platini in goals per game ratio since the latter had scored all his nine goals in a single tournament, the 1984 Euros.  Even though Portugal, the defending champions, boast a stronger team compared to their Euro 2016 squad, victory did not come easy to them. The match was close for most of its duration until Raphael Guerreiro opened the deadlock with a goal in the 84th minute. Ronaldo also was absent through most of the game until the final 10 minutes when he scored two. His first at the 87th minute, which cemented him as the record highest scorer, was a penalty. He dribbled another goal in the 92nd minute to solidify Portugal’s comfortable victory over Hungary in stoppage time. Ronaldo also got an early chance to achieve his record-breaking 10th goal in the 44th minute. Guerreiro had sent a cross in Ronaldo’s way, which the Portugal captain could not convert. Advertisement In retrospect, Ronaldo achieved his record at the best time. The Puskas Arena in Budapest is the only Euro 2020 venue that does not put constraints on crowd capacity due to COVID-19. The stadium holds almost 68,000 fans. This was not the only record Ronaldo broke. He also became the first player ever to score at five different European Championships: 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020. ⏰ RESULT ⏰ ? Cristiano Ronaldo becomes all-time EURO top scorer ?? Ronaldo nets twice in Portugal win; Guerreiro also on target Who did it best? ? #EURO2020 — UEFA EURO 2020 (@EURO2020) June 15, 2021 The 36-year-old is also only four goals away from breaking the all-time international scoring record of 109 goals by Iranian Ali Daei. Ronaldo currently has 106 goals in 176 appearances for his country. Portugal will be facing Germany next. They’re set to play against France, who were the Euro 2016 runner ups, on June 24, where the ex-challengers would look to even old scores.

Break historical records

The science of tsunamis and what parts of New Zealand are most at risk

EXPLAINER: The earthquake struck on a Wednesday in March at 8:32am, 50 kilometres off the coast of Gisborne near the Hikurangi Trough . Even though it registered magnitude 7.1, it was not widely felt along the coast. The shaking caused no damage. Thirty minutes later, enormous waves rushed in. There was almost no warning. The “silent” tsunami hit 115km of coastline on the East Coast, from Mahia Peninsula to Tokomaru Bay. * Understanding the crisis in Yemen: Starving children and the Middle East's cold war A 16-metre wooden bridge near Pouawa was flung almost a kilometre inland. Two men were thrown off their feet and deposited on a nearby road. Two women and another man were trapped in a cottage as the water hurtled inland. The currents rose to head height. Their home disintegrated as the water receded. Only the kitchen was left. The size of a tsunami is measured by the maximum height it reaches above sea level, or what scientists call its run-up. The 1947 Gisborne event was one of the largest tsunamis recorded in New Zealand. Run-up heights of about 10 metres were recorded . Not only was this a colossal tsunami, it was a strange one. A locally generated tsunami near Gisborne on March 26, 1947, caused widespread damage along the coast. This was all that remained of a four-roomed house at Turihaua Point that filled head-high with water. Seaweed was left hanging on the power lines in the background. (Published with the permission of Tairawhiti Museum.) The waves were caused by what’s called a tsunami earthquake. This type of shake involves a rupture of the Earth’s crust at speeds lower than typically observed during a regular earthquake . A lot of energy is still released, but it’s released over a longer period of time. Therefore, the intensity of the ground-shaking and the magnitude of the subsequent tsunami do not match up. This kind of earthquake is a big problem. When people feel the ground shake, they’re much more likely to flee inland. When they don’t, they may well stay put. The curious case of the 1947 Gisborne earthquake illustrates the uncertain risks we face in New Zealand. Last week’s trifecta of earthquakes rammed that point home. The country sits on the boundary of the Pacific and Australian plates . Big earthquakes are inevitable. The Hikurangi subduction zone off the East Coast, the Puysegur Trench to the south and the Kermadec Trench to the north can all generate major tremors. We are also vulnerable to distant tsunamis originating off South America . Landslides, both underwater, and from coastal or lakeside cliffs, can also trigger major waves. Never mind the risk of volcanic eruptions. Between 1835 and 2013, about 80 tsunamis reached the coastline. At least six of these were more than 5m high, says Dr David Burbidge, tsunami team leader at GNS Science . This is how tsunamis work, how we seek to protect ourselves, and which parts of the country are most at risk. The basics Throw a stone into a lake, and you’ll see the ripples. Now imagine a hunk of rock hundreds of kilometres long suddenly lurching upwards from the sea floor. Imagine how big those ripples would be. This is a tsunami, a series of waves, caused when water is very suddenly displaced. There are four causes: A large underwater earthquake. Tsunamis are more likely to be caused by megathrust earthquakes . These occur at subduction zones where two tectonic plates meet, and when one plate is suddenly forced below the other. This causes vertical movement on the ocean floor (the seabed thrusts upwards suddenly), which leads to a huge amount of energy being released, and a lot of water being displaced. Landslides can and have caused tsunamis in New Zealand . Waves can be generated by slippages both underwater and from cliffs and mountains near a body of water. The explosion from a volcanic eruption or the sudden collapse of a volcano itself can cause major displacement and tsunami waves. A meteor suddenly crashing down could cause a tsunami. It had been suggested that the Mahuika crater southwest of Stewart Island was caused by a meteor that may have triggered an enormous tsunami. However, a 2010 scientific paper poured cold water on this claim. Tsunamis (the Japanese word for harbour waves) are sometimes referred to as tidal waves. The tidal forces of the Earth, sun and the moon have nothing to do with tsunami waves. PacificTWC / YouTube What happened after the 2009 Samoan tsunami hit. What happens when the Earth moves? An underwater megathrust earthquake occurs typically at a subduction zone, where two plate boundaries meet. Hundreds of kilometres of the sea floor can be ruptured and tossed upwards by such quakes. Vast amounts of energy are released. Last Friday’s 8.1 magnitude quake was a thrust event . The 2011 Japanese earthquake released enough energy to shift the axis of the planet and subsequently changed the length of a normal day by 1.8 microseconds . It triggered one of the most destructive tsunamis in history. When a quake like this hits, the water above the epicentre is immediately displaced, and shoots upwards . The Earth’s gravity pulls it back down, and the waves of energy released by the quake rush outwards – going back to our earlier example, as if an enormous stone had been tossed in the lake. It’s best to think of tsunami waves not as a quantity of water moving but as bursts of kinetic energy surging through the ocean. In deep water, tsunami waves move at high speeds (up to 800kmh or as fast as a jet plane). The section of wave above the water is typically quite small – up to only 1m high. This is called the wave’s amplitude – the distance from the centre of the wave to the top of a crest or to the bottom of a trough. NASA A tsunami wave looks just like this. Don’t let this fool you. The waves are enormous – they’re just flattened out, with most of their energy (a little like icebergs) beneath the water. In open waters, the distance between two successive tsunami waves (what’s called the wavelength) can be more than 500km . When an earthquake strikes on land, the waves of energy released dissipate fairly quickly. We’re not going to feel a quake centred inland in Chile. But waves can travel through water for a much longer period of time. A tsunami generated off South America can - and has - reached Kiwi shores and done damage . As the waves reach coastlines, they begin to slow, through a process called shoaling . You will have seen this happen with regular, wind-generated waves at a beach. As they get closer to shore, their height increases relative to the depth of the water. It’s the same with tsunamis. Powerful waves that once surged through deep bodies of water are pushed upwards by shallow topography. As all that energy is still present, the amplitude, or height of the wave, rapidly increases and, as it does, the wavelength drastically decreases. The waves get very tall and much closer together. For example, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was 30m high. “When the waves reach land, the only way they can go is upwards. So the wave gets bigger and bigger until they hit the shore,” explains University of Otago earthquake science chairman Mark Stirling . The Science Learning Hub , a government-led project, also offers an excellent explanation: “It’s a bit like squeezing a toothpaste tube – all the toothpaste is forced upwards.” The University of Waikato/Supplied In deep water, a tsunami moves very fast and has a long wavelength and a small amplitude. As it enters shallower water, it slows down and the wavelength decreases. This causes the wave to become much taller. The image was supplied by the Science The physical make-up of a wave, particularly the bit at the bottom, the trough, also explains why water appears sometimes to be pulled outwards before the tsunami strikes. Think of it this way. A wave isn’t just water rushing forward, above the surface. There’s also the trough, the lowest point of the wave. If the trough arrives first, water doesn’t rush in. Instead, it’s sucked out and people may well see what’s called drawback, a classic and terrifying sign of an incoming tsunami crest. The coastal make-up also has a significant impact on how the tsunami behaves. Tsunami damage to the historic Little Pigeon Bay cottage and a map showing the tsunami inundation zone.

Tsunamis

Charing Cross (Northern line) tube crash

The Charing Cross (Northern line) tube crash occurred at 08:32 hours on 10 March 1938, when a Northern line train ran into the rear of a stationary train near Charing Cross (now Embankment). Twelve people were slightly injured. The accident was caused by a signal technician carrying out a temporary repair to a faulty signal even though he was not familiar with the layout and did not have access to the signalling diagram. [1] During the morning rush hour, the advanced platform starter signal on the northbound line at Waterloo station had developed an intermittent right side fault which sometimes caused it to show 'danger' even though the line ahead was clear. This was causing significant delay to the service because drivers were having to carry out the 'stop and proceed' rule which required them to wait one minute, pass the signal and then proceed slowly with caution as far as the next signal. [1] The signal lineman for the area was unavailable and so one was summoned from Kennington station. When he arrived, he gave instructions for the platform staff to hold the next train even if the signal turned green, and then he and the Stationmaster entered the tunnel to look for the fault. He quickly found a faulty signalling relay, which although it was energised had a voltage across a front contact (a contact that is made when the relay is energised). As a temporary measure to get the trains moving, he shorted out the contact with a piece of wire terminated in two crocodile clips. This cut the relay out of action and reduced the clearing distance of the signal. The lineman knew this but did not expect it to incur a significant risk as the track circuit for a starter signal is only short. Because he only had a wiring schematic and not a signalling diagram he didn't appreciate that the starter signal was 'slotted' to four other track circuits, and was only supposed to clear once all those sections of line ahead were unoccupied. The effect of his actions meant that the signal would now revert to clear once a train had passed it by just 33 yards, rather than the 615 yards it was designed to. [1] When he returned to the station he stood by the tunnel headwall with a red hand lamp and held every train for one minute after the signal turned green as a precautionary measure. After several trains had passed he went in search of a second wire with the intention of temporarily connecting the faulty signal's circuit to an unused pair of contacts on the same relay, to restore normal operation. While he was searching the collision took place just beyond Charing Cross station. In the inquiry, the signal engineer was held wholly to blame, because although his temporary fix was reasonable under the circumstances, the instructions that he gave to the platform staff were incorrect. The holding of the train for one minute after the green aspect was reasonable, but the driver should have been instructed to, "... proceed at caution and be prepared to stop short of any obstruction". The absence of the last instruction meant that the driver would proceed at full speed and be unable to stop short of another train. As a result, the berth circuit (not to be confused with the berth track circuit) was developed whose purpose was to detect contacts that were closed when they shouldn't have been and to rupture the relay supply fuse if such a condition was detected forcing the controlled signals to show an unchanging danger indication. The berth circuit was retrofitted to every automatic signalling system in Britain.

Train collisions

1995 Men's Ice Hockey World Championships

The 1995 Men's Ice Hockey World Championships was the 59th such event sanctioned by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). Teams representing 39 countries participated in several levels of competition. The competition also served as qualifications for group placements in the 1996 competition. The top Championship Group tournament took place in Sweden from 23 April to 7 May 1995, with games played in Stockholm and Gävle. In the tournament final, Finland won the gold medal by defeating Sweden 4–1 at the Globen arena in Stockholm. The Finnish goals were scored by Timo Jutila and Ville Peltonen, who scored a hat trick. The gold medal was the first in Finland's history. Sweden had written a fight song, "Den glider in", which also was intended to be the official song of the championships. After the finals, the song became very popular in Finland. [1] Because of the 1994–95 NHL lockout, it originally created a dream scenario for the tournament hosts. With a cancelled NHL season, all NHL players free from injuries would have been available. [2] But when the NHL season began in late January 1995, it instead created a scenario where fewer NHL players than usual became available. The Canadian and American teams would logically be hit the hardest, but the Americans found a way to lead their group in the first round. The Canadians, who struggled in the early tournament, beat the Americans in the quarter-finals, lasted until overtime against Sweden in the semifinal, and then beat the Czechs for the bronze. Andrew McKim, playing in the minors for the Adirondack Red Wings, ended up being the tournament scoring leader. [3][4] Switzerland was relegated to Group B. Time is local (UTC+2). Played in Bratislava, 12–21 April. The hosts bettered their Group C record of the previous year, this time winning all their games. Thirty-eight-year-old Peter Stastny led the tournament in scoring. [3] Slovakia was promoted to Group A while Romania was relegated to Group C. Played in Sofia 20–26 March. Nine teams took part this year because Yugoslavia was given the right to return to the group that they had last played in as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The consequence was that two teams were relegated. [3] They played in three groups of three where the first place teams contested promotion and the third place teams contested relegation. Two years after failing to qualify for Group C, Belarus got a rematch against Ukraine and Kazakhstan, this time coming out on top. Belarus was promoted to Group B. Both Yugoslavia and Bulgaria were relegated to group C2. Played in Johannesburg and Krugersdorp in South Africa from 21–30 March. Two groups of five played round robins where the top two from each contested promotion. The bottom five teams were relegated to qualification tournaments for 1996 Group D. Belgian player Joris Peusens was only fifteen years old. Greece was relegated to Group D qualification. New Zealand was relegated to Group D qualification. Croatia only needed to tie Lithuania in their final game to earn promotion to Group C1, and they did so. Israel, Australia, and South Africa, all were relegated to Group D qualification. The final standings of the tournament according to IIHF: List shows the top skaters sorted by points, then goals. Source: [1] Only the top five goaltenders, based on save percentage, who have played 50% of their team's minutes are included in this list. Source: [2]

Sports Competition

2001 Omsk An-70 crash

On 27 January 2001, an Antonov An-70 prototype crashed close to Omsk Tsentralny Airport, Russia during testing of the aircraft. All 33 passengers and crew on board the aircraft survived. The accident involved the sole surviving An-70 prototype, as the first prototype had been destroyed in a mid-air collision six years previously. This placed the future of the An-70 project in doubt; however, the aircraft was later repaired and returned to flight. [1] The aircraft arrived at Omsk at 0:30 and was refueled with 38 tons of jet fuel. [2] 5 hours after landing, the four engine propfan lifted off the runway on its way to Yakutsk for cold weather testing. Within seconds of becoming airborne one of the Progress D-27 engines with Contra-rotating propellers reached an over-speed condition and automatically shut down. The forward propeller stopped rotating but due to the nature of the failure the aft propeller kept turning, producing negative thrust. At this point the flight crew increased power to the remaining three engines but a problem with the RPM sensors on one of them led to automatic engine shut-off. Thus, the An-70 ended up flying at low speed with only two properly functioning engines, with the third engine generating over 11,000 pounds of negative thrust and disrupting airflow across the wing. [2] The crew successfully made a 180-degree turn to head back towards departure airport but crash landed hard in the snow and ice within several hundred yards of the runway. Of the 33 people aboard (11 crew and 22 specialists from Antonov), 4 were injured, 1 seriously. [3] The accident investigators found that the pilots acted with remarkable skill to turn the aircraft around and crash-land it on the field without lowering the landing gear. UR-NTK was one of two An-70 prototype transport planes produced. Prototype 1 was destroyed in a mid-air collision in 1995. The fuselage of Prototype 2 was completely fractured between the midsection and the tail by the heavy landing during this incident. [2] The plane was insured but only for $1 million - a fraction of its actual cost. The aircraft was disassembled on site and relocated to the local "Polyot" aircraft repair factory in Omsk and restored to flying condition. [2] The damaged airframe required months of repair and as of 2012[update] is the only AN-70 in existence, still performing important flight testing. Three possibilities for the accident were investigated. Engine/Prop malfunction, fuel or oil defects in sub-zero temperatures leading to fuel starvation due to water in the fuel system freezing, or an act of sabotage or terrorism. Sabotage & terrorism were investigated by Russia's FSB which found no corroborating evidence. The fuel crystallization theory was discounted very early by the team of experts investigating the accident, leaving an engine or a propeller malfunction the only remaining possibility. [2] The cause of the crash landing of the An-70 near Omsk remained the subject of much debate for a long time and the reason for heated exchange of accusations between the Antonov Design Bureau and the OAO Motor-Sich - the manufacturer of the D-27 engine. The manufacturer of the SV-27 propeller - Aerosila - also received some blame. A report released by the investigation team in mid-March, by Ukrainian "Aviation and Time" magazine, provided preliminary details into the cause. [2] According to the report, immediately after take-off one of the engines was automatically shut off by its electronic safeguards after it exceeded the safe RPM limit. The front set of blades of the contra rotating propeller assembly stopped but the aft part of the propeller assembly continued turning due to the damaged oil line that powered the blade actuators. This caused the negative air flow estimated at 5,000 kg/11,023 lbs. of thrust. At the end of March 2001 Antonov's first deputy designer-general Dmitri Kiva provided further details about the cause announcing that the accident was caused by disintegration of the oil line leading to the propeller hub pitch mechanism that attaches to the engine. Kiva said that the pilots attempted to compensate for the loss of power by increasing the settings of the remaining three engines. [2] At some point another D-27 automatically shut off after the safe RPM limit has been exceeded. The aircraft was repaired for approximately $3 million and made its first flight after the catastrophe on 5 June of the same year. On 7 June 2001, the repaired An-70 made a successful appearance at the VVTV-2001 armaments expo in Omsk. Previously in early May An-70 developers announced that the aircraft will be presented at the 2001 Paris Air Show, but after the VVTV-2001 show in Omsk, France excluded the An-70 from the air show citing the aircraft's alleged poor safety record. The engine/propeller problems were compounded on the pages of Russian newspapers by the existing problems in relations between Russia and Ukraine. Much of this negative publicity was instigated by competitors of Antonov, specifically ZMKB "Progress" and OAO Motor-Sich in Russia and in the West. In reality, however, Ukrainian engine designers and manufacturers had little to do with the cause of the accident. The faulty propeller hub pitch mechanism was manufactured in Russia. [2]

Air crash

Naval forces from the United States, Israel and two Gulf Arab states are taking part in a joint security drill in the Red Sea

A sweeping measure was introduced in the Senate Friday that could open up health care and disability compensation to a huge swath of veterans made sick by burn pits and other toxic exposures during military service. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., reintroduced the Presumptive Benefits for War Fighters Exposed to Burn Pits and Other Toxins Act, which would do away with most of the burden of proof on veterans to show they got sick from breathing in burning garbage for up to a year at a time while deployed. The measure was also introduced last year and never got any serious traction. This year, its bipartisan sponsorship means it could have a better chance of becoming law. Read Next: 'Why Are We Talking About It?' Congress May Face Impasse on Extremism in the Military Veteran advocates have grown increasingly impatient, faulting Congress for being unable to pass any significant legislation that delivers care and compensation to veterans made sick by exposure to burn pits and other toxic environments. The VA has also not issued clear guidance on who can get compensation for toxic exposure. The VA estimates 3.5 million veterans have been exposed to burn pits, according to a 2015 report. Yet the department has denied claims of roughly 75% of veterans. As of January, the VA had approved claims related to burn-pit exposure for 3,442 veterans out of 13,830. It is unlikely the data paints a complete picture. It’s unclear how many suffer from serious burn pit-connected health ailments, or how many veterans are sick and unaware that illness is linked to service abroad. The VA maintains the science is not clear on diseases potentially caused by burn pit exposure. Advocates, however, have argued the department is stalling and repeating mistakes made with Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange and World War II veterans exposed to radiation. The department itself and Congress are also likely wrestling with the enormous cost of providing care to such a large potential pool of veterans who connect their illnesses to burn pit exposure. The VA is the second-largest federal agency in terms of size and budget, and costs could quickly balloon if it was required to provide care to any veteran who believes their cancer is service-connected. "The VA continues to deny them care by placing the burden of proof on veterans suffering from rare cancers, lung diseases and respiratory illnesses," Gillibrand said in a statement. "Congress cannot sit by as the VA ignores its duty. The bottom line is that our veterans served our country, they are sick and they need health care -- period." Under current rules, veterans who believe their illness came from toxic exposure or burn pits must establish a direct service connection for benefits, a process that can include a doctor's statement and proof of where a veteran served, among other documents. For veterans affected by burn pits, this can prove especially challenging -- it can be virtually impossible to prove the exact location of overseas service or that there was a burn pit there. It could also be a monumental task to prove a cancer was caused by that burn pit. If Gillibrand and Rubio's bill became law, veterans would only have to prove they received a campaign medal associated with the Global War on Terror or the Gulf War, and that they suffer from one of a long list of qualifying health conditions. Those conditions include the following: Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., who has been a top voice on Capitol Hill for veterans affected by burn pits and has led the effort on presumptive care, will introduce a House version of Gillibrand's bill in conjunction with an April 13 press conference that he, Gillibrand, and Rubio will hold in Washington, D.C. with veteran advocates including Jon Stewart. Stewart, the former "Daily Show" host, has thrown his advocacy weight behind the burn pits issue after successfully lobbying to secure health care for victims of the 9/11 attacks who got sick after inhaling the toxic smoke, fumes and dust. "There's a lot of similarities between the first responders' struggle and those exposed to burn pits," Stewart said in an interview with Military.com. "And not just the health struggles, but the struggles with having it recognized by the government. The only difference between this and 9/11 is, we did this to our own troops as opposed to an attack. We operated those burn pits." Many who work on or lobby for veterans' issues also believe President Joe Biden's personal connection to the issue could put it on the fast track for action. Biden suspects his son, Beau, who was a major in the Delaware Army National Guard, died of brain cancer in 2015 due to exposure to burn pits in Iraq. Beau Biden was at Balad Air Base. "[Beau volunteered to join the National Guard at age 32 because he thought he had an obligation to go," Biden told a Service Employees International Union convention in 2019. "And because of exposure to burn pits -- in my view, I can't prove it yet -- he came back with Stage Four glioblastoma." Biden has yet to mention burn pits since his inauguration. Related: Why 2021 Could Be a Game-Changing Year for Veterans Sickened by Burn Pit Exposure The Kremlin has rebuffed allegations that a buildup of Russian troops near Ukraine reflects Moscow’s aggressive intentions. Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador pointed to what he called many threats from Ukraine and provocative actions by U.S. warships... Military.com is pleased to stream this year's Veterans Day parade in New York City live. "I was most shocked when I learned about what life was like when the veterans came back from war." A Montana Army National Guard soldier has become the first woman to complete the seven-week U.S. Army Sniper Course at Fort... Israel has warned that it would act with military force if needed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. At least five service members allegedly were part of the deadly pro-Trump mob that assaulted the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The military's non-tactical vehicle fleet alone is the second largest in the federal government next to the U.S. Postal... Max Cleland, who lost three limbs to a hand grenade blast in Vietnam and went on to represent his native Georgia in the U.S... The Kremlin has rebuffed allegations that a buildup of Russian troops near Ukraine reflects Moscow’s aggressive intentions. Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador pointed to what he called many threats from Ukraine and provocative actions by U.S. warships... Naval forces from the United States, Israel and two Gulf Arab states are taking part in a joint security drill in the Red Sea... Volcanic activity beneath Iwo Jima, site of a defining World War II battle, is pushing sunken naval vessels to the surface. A new hotline and a more comprehensive, comparative claims processing system are among the efforts to assist Gulf War and...

Military Exercise

Guinea declares end of Marburg virus disease outbreak

Brazzaville/Conakry, 16 September 2021 – Guinea today declared the end of the Marburg virus disease outbreak having recorded no new cases over the past 42 days—two incubation periods, or the time between infection and the onset of symptoms. The virus was confirmed on 9 August, marking the first time the disease emerged in the country and in West Africa. Only one case—the index patient who was diagnosed with the virus posthumously—was recorded and more than 170 high-risk contacts monitored for 21 days. The disease, a highly infectious virus that causes haemorrhagic fever, was detected in southern Guinea, the same region where the initial cases of the February—June Ebola 2021 outbreak as well as the 2014—2016 West Africa Ebola outbreak were detected. Guinea’s health authorities, with support from World Health Organization (WHO), promptly mounted emergency response, deploying expert teams to carry out further investigations, step up disease surveillance, assess the risks and bolster community mobilization, testing, clinical care as well as infection prevention and control measures. “Without immediate and decisive action, highly infectious diseases like Marburg can easily get out of hand. Today we can point to the growing expertise in outbreak response in Guinea and the region that has saved lives, contained and averted a spill-over of the Marburg virus,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. While the outbreak has been declared over, flare-ups can occur. WHO continues to support Guinea in its efforts to remain vigilant, maintain surveillance and build capacity to respond quickly to a possible resurgence of the virus. Guinea’s health authorities, WHO experts and scientists are deepening investigations into the source of the Marburg outbreak, including analysis on bats as well as undertaking serological surveys to not only help understand how the virus emerged, but also help prevent potential future outbreaks. Marburg, which is in the same family as Ebola, is transmitted to people from fruit bats and spreads among humans through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected people, surfaces and materials. Although there are no vaccines or antiviral treatments approved to treat the virus, supportive care—rehydration with oral or intravenous fluids—and treatment of specific symptoms, improves survival. A range of potential treatments, including blood products, immune therapies and drug therapies, are being evaluated. In Africa, previous outbreaks and sporadic cases have been reported in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda.

Disease Outbreaks

Chude and Ego Foundation set to transform low-income communities

GMD/CEO VFD Group Limited, Nonso Okpala has announced the launch of the Chude and Ego Foundation in honor of his parents—Late Nze Chude O. Okpala, and Theresa Nwakego Okpala. Chude and Ego Foundation set to transform low-income communities The Foundation was launched with the sole aim to transform low-income communities by addressing social challenges, providing free world-class education to children, and healthcare interventions amongst other purposive initiatives. news Delta youths are making a difference in Nigeria's economy, says Gov Okowa Commenting on the reason behind the initiative, Okpala stated: “Although it’s supposed to be a fundamental right for all, so many children in Nigeria and in Africa will never get an education; while this is sad for families, it is particularly abysmal for the country and the continent - the amount of talent eroded and potential economic loss. "These individuals, if given the right opportunities, could become the catalyst for the new African Renaissance, you just never know. What we intend to do with the Chude and Ego Foundation, is to provide these opportunities.” Chude and Ego Foundation set to transform low-income communities Pulse Nigeria The first project, a transformative free secondary boarding school for underprivileged children with high potential will kick off in Uga Community, Anambra State in September 2022. Prospective students will undergo a rigorous evaluation and selection process to assess their potential. The school will be benchmarked against international standards similar to schools like Children’s International School, Lekki and Saint Savior’s Ikoyi, Lagos amongst others. The foundation will: i. Provide education that is comparable to the best on the continent broadening the horizon of its students by leveraging the Foundation’s network to provide varied social experiences, targeted internship and placement opportunities that inspires and expands their worldview outside of their community; ii. Partner with innovative companies that are within the network of the foundation and the Okpala family and sponsors of the Foundation to provide work placement opportunities; Chude and Ego Foundation set to transform low-income communities Pulse Nigeria iii. Prepare and sponsor them for further education in the short run but ultimately, build a university to continue the intervention programme of the Foundation; and track and document the individual progress of students and instil the right type of attitude and culture that will enable them to pay forward to the society and the next generation. To ensure sustainability, the Foundation and School’s activities will be financed through an endowment strategy that would aid the projects to be self-funding and self-reliant. Founders and other benefactors will provide two forms of financial support, “operational support” and “Endowment contributions. However, it is noteworthy that the endowment contributions will never be spent; the operations funds will applied judiciously to the day-to-day running of the school.

Financial Aid

ACC establishes task force to prepare for high-end fight

Several F-15E Strike Eagles, assigned to the 4th Fighter Wing, sit on the ramp for Agile Flag 21-2 at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., April 30, 2021. Air Combat Command developed the experiment to create a lead wing, aligning squadrons from different locations under a single commander, enhancing their readiness as a team before deploying into a contested environment. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Betty R. Chevalier) Air Combat Command leadership has created a task force to tackle the challenge of preparing combat air forces for strategic competition with a near peer, as outlined in the 2018 National Defense Strategy. ACC’s Campaign Plan working group will work to execute three primary lines of effort: -Implement a new combat air forces force generation model -Optimize wings for the high-end fight -Train Agile Combat Employment-capable forces Years of low intensity combat in the Middle East, coupled with a force management construct not currently optimized for combat in a highly contested environment, has created an opportunity to drastically reform how ACC organizes, trains and equips its forces. “Peer competition, crisis and combat does not provide us with ‘months’ to assess and study requirements, execute the RFF (request for forces) process, work sourcing, schedule deployments and eventually become a cohesive team,” said Gen. Mark Kelly, ACC commander. “We have to generate high-performing combat teams before combat – and get them in place at the speed of relevance.” The task force’s primary effort is the creation of a new two-year combat air forces force generation cycle, with four distinct six-month phases designed to increase and sustain readiness. Forces will deploy as needed in the “Available” phase, recharge in the “Reset” phase, begin increasing readiness levels in the “Prepare” phase, and gear up to deploy in the “Ready” phase. “This is part of ‘Accelerate Change or Lose,’” Kelly said. “If you don’t like change, you’re going to really dislike irrelevance and outright hate a kinetic defeat.” In order to optimize ACC forces, the command is working to develop a standard for how a wing should be organized as they rotate through the new CAFFORGEN cycle, and finalizing mechanisms needed to assess readiness and certify wings for eventual deployment. This plan will impact expeditionary Airmen who physically deploy into a theater, as well as Airmen who deploy in place. “Having 100 percent of our forces 100 percent ready is simply unsustainable,” Maj. Gen. Mark Slocum, ACC director of air operations. “We’re creating a model that will provide predictability and sustainability for our Airmen, maintenance, and equipment. It will afford the time and space for our forces to achieve high-end readiness. This is what our nation requires for the current threat.” Core to meeting the command’s third LOE of training ACE-capable forces is the lead wing construct, which changes the way some forces are organized for deployments. Lead wings will align, train, and exercise as an aggregated force package, enabling them to arrive in theater fully combat credible for employment by the air component commander. “The lead wing will provide theater commanders a wing-echelon unit that’s organized, trained, and equipped to generate combat power at the speed of relevance in a contested environment,” Slocum said. “We have traditionally deployed to fixed locations with well-established bases, which makes it easier for our adversaries to target, track, and even infiltrate our operations. ACE-ready forces will operate in quickly constructed locations with limited lead time and limited time on the ground. With ACE, we will deploy forward, conduct operations, and relocate forces before the enemy can react.” Some of the smaller ACC cross-functional teams efforts under the Campaign Plan umbrella include the FLAG Redesign, Multi-Capable Airmen, Air Base Squadron, and Lead Wing Command and Control working groups, among others. “I’m excited to have our best and brightest working on these issues through the Campaign Plan effort,” said Lt. Gen. Christopher Weggeman, ACC deputy commander. “In order to truly have airpower anytime and anywhere, we have to get this right – this is the ACC staff’s number one priority.”

Organization Established

While negotiators from the United States and the European Union (EU) declared victory in rescuing global trade talks in the early hours on Sunday

While negotiators from the United States and the European Union (EU) declared victory in rescuing global trade talks in the early hours on Sunday at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) denounced the results as a sell-out of poor countries and the environment. "After days of closed-door negotiations, rich countries have delivered a deeply unbalanced text as a take-it-or-leave-it option," said Celine Charveriat, head of Oxfam International's Geneva office. "This puts developing countries in the unfair position of having to accept a bad deal or reject and get blamed by the U.S. and the EU for failure." The final deal, which was announced at about 2:00 a.m. Sunday morning, appeared to put back on track the Doha Round of international trade negotiations, which was launched by 147 nations in Abu Dhabi at the end of 2001. Bush's Trade Representative Robert Zoellick smiles before a news conference at the World Trade Organization (WTO) headquarters in Geneva early August 1, 2004.   Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) also complained about what it called "undemocratic procedures and intense pressure" from the U.S. and the EU in the rush to secure a final accord. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse The Round, which seeks to liberalize trade in a host of economic sectors, broke down at a ministerial meeting in Cancun last September when a group of poor countries led by Brazil and India demanded that Washington and Brussels commit themselves to sharp reductions in agricultural subsidies that they argued were making it impossible for farmers in poor countries to compete. The World Bank has estimated that estimated US$300 billion in annual subsidies and other support given to farmers by western governments are costing developing countries some $60 billion a year, more than the total amount of official economic aid that these same governments and international agencies, like the World Bank, provide them annually in grants and loans. The agreement on a framework for further negotiations was concluded by a small group of countries, including the U.S, the EU, Australia, India and Brazil, that were delegated to hammer out a consensus for moving forward. "Today's decision is a crucial step for global trade," said U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick shortly after the WTO secretariat announced the accord. "After the detour in Cancun, we have put these WTO negotiations back on track." The Brazilian delegate, Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, also put the best spin on the final agreement, insisting, "This is the beginning of the end of (agricultural) subsidies. It is a rare combination of social justice and trade coming together." But the NGOs were considerably more skeptical in their assessments, insisting that the results were considerably less balanced than Amorim had suggested. Calling it a "face-saving exercise," Greenpeace said the final result was "highly imbalanced in favor of rich countries, which make vague promises in return for key concessions by developing countries," particularly in opening their markets wider to manufactured goods, services, and agricultural exports from wealthy nations themselves. In addition, the Amsterdam-based group charged the accord will "open the door for further liberalization in sensitive sectors such as fisheries and the trade in forest products." "The deal is not a victory for multilateralism, but a dangerous fudge," said Daniel Mittler, Greenpeace International Trade and Policy Advisor. "The secretive process practiced in Geneva this week once again showed that the WTO is an undemocratic organization mainly responsive to rich-country interests. The WTO does not seem capable or willing to deliver equitable and sustainable development for all; it only seems to be interested in ensuring its own survival." Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) also complained about what it called "undemocratic procedures and intense pressure" from the U.S. and the EU in the rush to secure a final accord. "Corporate lobby groups will be the big winners, the environment and the poor the big losers," said FoEI's Alexandra Wandel, point in particular to the agreement on Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA), a part of the framework accord which calls for the liberalization of all natural resources, particularly in fisheries, gems, and mining. NAMA would make it much more difficult for developing countries to protect these resources from foreign investors or collect revenue from their export. "The NAMA agreement could further deepen the de-industrialization crisis in these countries, thus accelerating unemployment and poverty and forcing countries to rely heavily on unsustainable and harmful exports of natural resources." At the same time, FoEI charged that the "so-called concessions" made by the EU and the U.S. in agricultural negotiations - a commitment to cut some farm subsidies by 20 percent - may "turn out to be empty promises." "The commitment to eliminate export subsidies credits is missing any substance as no end-date is mentioned in the text," the Brussels-based group said. "On domestic support for agriculture, language in the framework agreement clearly opens the door for the EU and the U.S. to maintain nearly their entire level of current subsidies and to use these to continue the dumping of agricultural goods in developing-country markets. At the same time, developing countries could be forced to give up import protections used to achieve food sovereignty." That criticism was echoed by Oxfam which called the agreement "deeply disappointing and not sufficient to meet the needs of developing countries" and warned it may indeed cause the Round to collapse before their scheduled completion in late 2006. "The draft is unacceptable because it fails to meet the needs of developing countries," said Charveriat. "Presented as a breakthrough, the text on agriculture does little to address the problem of export dumping, instead introducing dangerous loopholes for yet more subsidies from the U.S." She stressed that the framework failed to address the issue of U.S. cotton subsidies that were recently ruled illegal by the WTO itself. Instead, the issue of cotton is to be folded into overall agricultural negotiations without any specific commitment to eliminate them. Production in the heavily subsidized U.S. cotton industry has had the effect of driving down global prices for a key commodity to levels that threaten the livelihoods of millions of small-scale cotton farmers in poor countries, particularly in West Africa. To gain an agreement from key West African cotton-producing nations - namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali - Washington agreed to accelerate cuts in its subsidies and mobilize more development assistance. On the other hand, the four countries - the last three of which are among the world's poorest nations - agreed to lower tariffs to agricultural imports, a concession likely to increase U.S. food exports to them. But Charveriat said the deal was unfair, particularly because the WTO had already ruled that the U.S. subsidies were illegal. "This is a serious betrayal of developing countries and will have massive implications for the 10 million West African farmers whose livelihoods are currently undermined by U.S. export dumping," she said. "There are no cast-iron commitments here and no clear timeline for reform."

Sign Agreement

China's Tianwen-1 Mars mission adjusts orbit to prepare for a Red Planet landing

China's Tianwen-1 spacecraft now orbiting Mars is slated to perform systematic checks of onboard equipment after adjusting its orbit in preparations for the country's first Martian landing attempt later this year. The Tianwen-1 orbiter used its 3,000-newton engine on Feb. 15 to place itself into a polar orbit around the Red Planet. Tipping the scales at 5 metric tons, Tianwen-1 — consisting of an orbiter, lander and rover — will perform several more orbital adjustments before placing itself into a parking orbit from which the orbiter will perform an initial survey of candidate landing areas. Sometime in May or June, the Mars orbiter will be briefly placed in a deorbit and entry arc to release the landing capsule, replete with the as-yet-unnamed Tianwen-1 rover. The rover will egress from the lander onto the Martian surface a few days after touchdown, following an appraisal of the surrounding terrain. For at least 92 Martian days (or about 95 Earth days), the rover will conduct high resolution, on-the-spot surveys of Mars. Within 148 pages, explore the mysteries of Mars. With the latest generation of rovers, landers and orbiters heading to the Red Planet, we're discovering even more of this world's secrets than ever before. Find out about its landscape and formation, discover the truth about water on Mars and the search for life, and explore the possibility that the fourth rock from the sun may one day be our next home. The first mission of China's deep exploration plan, Tianwen-1 will carry out a comprehensive study of Mars by orbiting, landing and roving on the Red Planet, conducting studies of Mars' magnetosphere and ionosphere, and studying the planet's surface and subsurface, according to Zou Yongliao, deputy director of the National Space Science Center at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, who published a paper in the journal Advances in Space Research last month about Tianwen-1's payloads and science objectives. Scouting for subsurface water ice on Mars is the duty of Tianwen-1's Mars Orbiter Subsurface Investigation Radar (MOSIR) — a subsurface radar sounder. MOSIR is intended to search for water ice and liquid water that may be associated with signs of life in the polar layered deposits, the Tianwen-1 lander/rover touchdown site and other selected areas. The lander/rover machinery is expected to land on Mars in May or June. Chinese space engineers and scientists have selected candidate landing zones within the relatively flat region in the southern part of the Utopia Planitia, a large plain. "When the probe brakes in the Martian atmosphere, it will face a process of high temperature, and deviation of attitude due to aerodynamics, which will have a negative impact on the deceleration," said Tan Zhiyun, deputy chief designer of the Mars probe with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, told China Central Television (CCTV) in a recent interview. "Considering the unpredictability of the Martian atmosphere, there will be a lot of uncertainty and risks," he added. Next, the lander/rover entry vehicle deploys its parachute with its speed slowing to less than 100 meters per second (224 mph). "The process will take about 80 to 100 seconds. When reaching 100 meters [328 feet] above the Mars surface, it will enter a hover stage," Tan said. At that time, a microwave ranging and velocity sensor system is to make a measurement of the surface, he added, and a three-dimensional laser camera will take images of the surface of the landing area. The lander may perform translational motions at the 100-meter (328 feet) mark to assure the landing spot is safe. The entire landing process will take about nine minutes, during which the probe should slow its speed from 11,000 mph (17,600 kph) to a standstill. Miao Yuanming, deputy chief designer of Mars probes with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, cautioned in a CCTV interview that among all the 44 endeavors launched to the Red Planet since 1960, 25 of these explorative activities have resulted in mission mishaps. Miao added that out of the ten most recent Mars exploration activities since 2006, only one has resulted in failure, he said, showing that great progress has been made.

New achievements in aerospace

Russia Sentences Blogging Couple to Prison for X-Rated Cathedral Photo Op

A Moscow court has sentenced two bloggers to nearly a year in prison for staging an X-rated photoshoot across from St. Basil’s Cathedral near the Kremlin, the state-run TASS news agency reported Friday. Ruslan Bobiyev, an internet prankster from ex-Soviet Tajikistan, stirred outrage last month with the photo of himself standing in front of St. Basil’s with his girlfriend Anastasia Chistova simulating oral sex while crouched in front of him in a police uniform. Authorities placed the couple under arrest for 10 months and fined them 5,000 rubles ($50). The court also ordered to deport Bobiyev to Tajikistan. Bobiyev and Chistova were later charged with “insulting religious feelings.” Moscow’s Tverskoy district court on Friday found Bobiyev and Chistova guilty and sentenced them both to 10 months in penal colony each, according to TASS. They are the first people to receive real prison time for “insulting religious feelings,” with all previous convictions resulting in fines or suspended sentences. Prosecutors had requested a 10-month sentence for the couple under the law that imposes a maximum prison term of one year. The state-run RIA Novosti news agency circulated police footage of Bobiyev, who said he had over 100,000 Instagram followers before his account was blocked, apologizing for the provocative photoshoot. Bobiyev does not intend to appeal the sentence, RIA Novosti cited his lawyer as saying. Russia criminalized insulting the feelings of religious believers in 2013 after anti-Kremlin group Pussy Riot's “Punk Prayer” performance at a central Moscow cathedral.

Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 702 crash

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 702 was a scheduled flight from Addis Ababa to Milan via Rome on 17 February 2014. [1][2] The aircraft, an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767-300ER, was hijacked by the unarmed co-pilot, Hailemedhin Abera Tegegn, en route from Addis Ababa to Rome, and landed at Geneva. All 202 passengers and crew were unharmed. Hailemedhin[note 1] was arrested by the Swiss authorities and being convicted in absentia by an Ethiopian court. Flight 702 was scheduled to depart from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at 00:30 EAT (UTC+3) on 17 February 2014. [3] The aircraft's transponder began to emit squawk 7500 — the international code for an aircraft hijacking — while flying north over Sudan. [4] When the pilot exited the cockpit to use the restroom, the co-pilot locked the cockpit door and continued to fly the aircraft. [5] The flight was scheduled to arrive at Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport in Rome, Italy, at 04:40 CET (UTC+1), before continuing to Malpensa Airport in Milan, Italy. [3] Instead, the aircraft was flown to Geneva, Switzerland, where the co-pilot circled several times while communicating with air traffic control at Geneva International Airport while trying to negotiate political asylum for himself and an assurance that he would not be extradited to Ethiopia. [4][5][6][7] At 06:02 CET (UTC+1), the airplane landed at Geneva International Airport with about 10 minutes of fuel remaining, and having suffered the flameout of one engine. [4][5] The co-pilot exited the aircraft by scaling down a rope he threw out of the cockpit window before walking over to police; he surrendered after identifying himself as the hijacker, and was taken into custody. [5] The airport was briefly shut down during the incident; no passengers or crew were injured. [8] The flight was escorted by Italian Eurofighter and French Mirage fighter jets while traversing their respective airspaces. The Swiss Air Force did not respond because the incident occurred outside normal office hours, which are 08:00–12:00 and 13:30–17:00 Monday to Friday; a Swiss Air Force spokesman stated: "Switzerland cannot intervene because its airbases are closed at night and on the weekend. It's a question of budget and staffing. "[9][10] Switzerland relies on neighboring countries to police its airspace outside of regular business hours; the French and Italian Air Forces have permission to escort suspicious flights into Swiss airspace, but do not have authority to shoot down an aircraft over Switzerland. [10] The hijacker of Flight 702 was Hailemedhin Abera Tegegn, 31, who was the co-pilot of flight 702. [11] In May 2014, the Swiss government declined a request by the Ethiopian government to extradite Hailemedhin to Ethiopia. [5] Swiss authorities initially said that Hailemedhin would face trial in Switzerland. [5] However, in November 2015, the Swiss public prosecutor determined that Hailemedhin (who had been detained in Switzerland ever since his arrest) would not be prosecuted after a panel of experts "unanimously decided that [Hailemedhin] was in a state of complete paranoia" during the hijacking and was incapable of rational thinking. [12] Hailemedhin was then set to appear before a Swiss federal court, which would order the pilot to undergo mental health treatment. [12] In March 2015, the Ethiopian high court in Addis Ababa convicted Hailemedhin in absentia and sentenced him to 19 years and six months in jail. [13] The limitations of Switzerland's air defences were made apparent by this incident. Although a proposal to improve coverage was already in motion, the hijacking led to the implementation of a 24-hour readiness organisation. From 4 January 2016, a pair of Swiss F/A-18 Hornets were kept at 15 minute QRA readiness between 8.00am and 6.00pm on weekdays. This was increased as of 2 January 2017 to the same hours daily. [14] Since 31 December 2020, the Swiss Air Force maintain a pair of interceptors at 15 minute readiness 24 hours a day for 365 days a year. [15][16][17][18]

Air crash

Watch Chinese Weightlifter Shi Zhiyong Break a World Record to Win Weightlifting Gold

Zhiyong's victory means that of the five Chinese lifters who have competed so far in Tokyo, the nation now has four gold medals and a silver The fact that weightlifter Shi Zhiyong is taking home a gold medal isn't all that surprising. After all, he hasn't been in an international competition since he made his debut in 2012. What is slightly surprising, however, is the manner of Shi's victory: setting, as he did, the first weightlifting world record of the Tokyo Olympics and lifting an incredible 19kg more than his nearest competitor in the men's 73kg category. Speaking after his victory, Shi explained how winning alone wouldn't have been enough to satisfy him. "What makes it exciting is not to get the gold medal, it's to break my own record. So that means a lot for me," Zhiyong said through an interpreter. "If I didn't manage to break my own record, just to get a gold medal, I would feel regret." A post shared by LUXIAOJUNBARBELL (@luxiaojunbarbell) To take the gold medal, Zhiyong lifted a total of 364kg in his two lifts (a 166kg snatch and a 198kg clean and jerk), which was enough for him to win gold for the second consecutive Olympics. Zhiyong's victory also means that of the five Chinese lifters who have competed so far in Tokyo, the nation now has four gold medals and a silver. Of the other athletes competing in the 73kg category, Venezuela's Julio Mayora ran Zhiyong closest, even attempting a world-record 199kg clean and jerk before signing off with a backflip on stage. Meanwhile, Team USA's C.J. Cummings could have become the first men's weightlifting medalist for the United States since 1984, but he wasn't able to recover from what he described as a "terrible" snatch part of the contest. Cummings still had a shot at a bronze medal when he attempted a 198kg in the clean and jerk but was unable to finish the lift. "I'm not done. This is a learning experience," the former world junior champion told The Associated Press. "I've got plenty more in me."

Break historical records

Dumped horse carcasses in Darwin's rural area spark contamination investigation

Dozens of horse carcasses, car bodies and dangerous substances are being illegally dumped in a catchment area for Darwin's water supply, prompting concerns about potential contamination. The issue at the McMinns and Howard East borefields near Howards Springs has triggered an investigation by the Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority (NT EPA). The ongoing dumping has forced the Power and Water Corporation to spend around $100,000 per year to clean up its land above the Koolpinyah aquifer, which typically supplies up to 15 per cent of Darwin's water. The aquifer is also considered a back-up emergency water supply for Darwin, if the city's regular supply from the Darwin River Dam were to fail. "This is very disturbing for us because it has the potential to contaminate the water supply," said Danny Browne, the corporation's senior headworks coordinator for water services. "We have rough estimates … of approximately 300 horse [carcasses] on this site at the moment." He said asbestos, fertiliser and oil from dumped cars have also been found there. While the Power and Water Corporation has treatment facilities and testing regimes designed to protect the city's water supplies, there are many private bores in Darwin's rural area that also tap into the Koolpinyah aquifer. "They don't have the same barriers and same testing regimes that we do in Power and Water, so there is a big implication to the whole community with [illegal dumping] like this," Mr Browne said. The sight of horse carcasses — including skulls, bones and hooves — was particularly confronting for workers, he said. "It is disturbing for us and our staff," Mr Browne said. "We run a public water supply and we don't expect to have to confront these sort of things as part of our daily job." The horse carcasses are strewn across multiple sites, and authorities believe some were dumped at least seven months ago and others could be many years older. The ABC's 7.30 recently revealed the widespread slaughter of race horses for pet food and human consumption at abattoirs and knackeries in New South Wales and Queensland. Some of the hooves at the borefields near Darwin still have aluminium horseshoes attached to them, including models such as the Kerckhaert Extra Sound Kings Plate, which is advertised as a shoe for horse racing. But the former president of the Professional Farriers Association of NSW, Bob Sim, said that does not mean the carcasses belong to racehorses. "[Those shoes] are generally used for racehorses but can be used for any type of horse, like whether it be a pleasure horse or [a] pony looking for lightness of the shoe," said Mr Sim, who has more than 30 years' experience in the industry. His view was shared by several other farriers and horse experts contacted by the ABC, who said the shoes could also be used by show jumping and dressage horses, or those in need of light, therapeutic shoes with cushioned pads. The Northern Territory Government's Animal Welfare Branch confirmed it was not investigating the issue as there was no evidence the animals had been mistreated and it was not possible to know who their previous owners were. The slaughter of race horses is not illegal in Australia. The NT EPA said it was first alerted to the illegal dumping of animal carcasses and other contaminants in April this year. "NT EPA officers attended the site and observed dumped wastes, including chemical and spilled oil drums, car bodies, domestic white goods, remnants of burnt tyres and an estimated 30 horse and cattle carcasses and animal bones," a spokesman said. "[The Power and Water Corporation] had already contracted a local licensed contractor to remediate soil contamination from spilt oil." The issues are still under investigation and individuals involved could face fines between $12,000 and $600,000, while body corporates could face fines of up to $3 million. "Illegal dumping of waste is unacceptable and can lead to prosecution," the NT EPA spokesman said. Darwin's rural area is currently facing a severe water shortage. As a result, the Power and Water Corporation in June voluntarily reduced its take from the 10 bores it uses to tap into the Koolpinyah aquifer. Mr Browne urged residents in the area to alert authorities if they saw illegal dumping in the water catchment area. "We'd like the public to help us to reduce this impact because it has the potential to affect Darwin's drinking water supply as well as the rural area's own private bores," he said. )

Environment Pollution

1984 Romeoville petroleum refinery disaster

On July 23, 1984, an explosion and fire took place at a Union Oil petroleum refinery in Romeoville, Illinois, outside Chicago, killing 17 people and causing major property damage. [1] The explosive force propelled the upper portion 14 metres (46 ft) of the vessel a distance of 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) from its original location, while the base remained at the center of the resultant fire. The tower was constructed from 25 millimetres (0.98 in) thick plates of type ASTM A516 Grade 70 steel per ASME Section VIII pressure vessel code. The vessel was 18.8 metres (62 ft) tall, 2.6 metres (8.5 ft) in diameter. Beginning in 1970 the vessel served as an amine absorber tower, used to strip hydrogen sulfide from a process stream of propane and butane. Inspection identified hydrogen blisters and laminations and in 1974 several meters of the lower shell section were completely replaced using manual metal arc welding. After welding, no post weld heat treatment (PWHT), a vital process that reduces the residual stresses formed during welding and restores the macro structure of the steel,[2] was performed. Two years later, in 1976, a Monel liner was installed into the bottom head to reduce corrosion; however, the previously repaired section was not covered by the liner. [3] Prior to the explosion, an operator tried to close off the main inlet valve to stop gas leaking from a 150 millimetres (0.49 ft) horizontal crack the vessel. The crack grew to 600 millimetres (2.0 ft) and the operator initiated evacuation. The crack continued to grow and a significant quantity of flammable gas was released as company fire fighters gathered at the scene. The gas ignited, fatally wounding personnel, damaging the refinery, and launching the upper portion of the vessel to 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) from its original location. Failure analysis of the vessel segments included the following non-destructive testing methods. The cause of cracking did not become clear until metallographic results were combined with stress corrosion cracking and hydrogen embrittlement tests, followed by fracture mechanics analysis. It appeared that an already existing crack had extended through more than 90% of the wall thickness and was about 800 mm in length. Further, it was determined that hydrogen embrittlement had reduced the fracture resistance of the steel by more than half. The vessel had been put into service in 1970 and had undergone several repairs and modifications before the July 1984 incident. The vessel was fractured along a path that was weakened by extensive cracking adjacent to a repair weld joining a replacement section to the original vessel. These pre-existing cracks initiated in areas of hard microstructure known to be susceptible to hydrogen stress cracking. This hard microstructure formed during the repair welding of the replacement section. The cracks grew through the vessel wall as a result of hydrogen pressure cracking. When the depth of the largest of these pre-existing cracks exceeded 90% to 95% of the wall thickness, the remaining thin ligament of steel in the cracked section ruptured and leakage occurred. This crack caused a complete fracture of the vessel circumference at the operating stress level of only 35 MPa (roughly 10% of the rated strength of the steel) because the toughness of the vessel steel had been reduced by hydrogen embrittlement.

Gas explosion

Boston Police Strike

Boston police officers went on strike on September 9, 1919. They sought recognition for their trade union and improvements in wages and working conditions. Police Commissioner Edwin Upton Curtis denied that police officers had any right to form a union, much less one affiliated with a larger organization like the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which some attribute to concerns that unionized police would not protect the interest of city officials and business leaders. Attempts at reconciliation between the Commissioner and the police officers, particularly on the part of Boston's Mayor Andrew James Peters, failed. During the strike, Boston experienced several nights of lawlessness. Several thousand members of the Massachusetts State Guard, supported by volunteers, restored order by force. Press reaction both locally and nationally described the strike as Bolshevik-inspired and directed at the destruction of civil society. The strikers were called "deserters" and "agents of Lenin. "[1] Samuel Gompers of the AFL recognized that the strike was damaging the cause of labor in the public mind and advised the strikers to return to work. Commissioner Curtis refused to re-hire the striking policemen. He was supported by Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge, whose rebuke of Gompers earned him a national reputation. Nine were killed in several days of civil unrest and the threat of a general strike. Eight of the nine were fatally shot by members of the State Guard. The police strike ended on September 13, when Commissioner Curtis announced the replacement of all striking workers with 1,500 new officers, given higher wages. The strike proved a setback for labor unions. The AFL discontinued its attempts to organize police officers for another two decades. Coolidge won the Republican nomination for vice president of the U.S. in the 1920 presidential election. In 1895, the Massachusetts legislature transferred control of the Boston police department from Boston's mayor to the governor of Massachusetts, whom it authorized to appoint a five-person board of commissioners to manage the department. In 1906, the legislature abolished that board and gave the governor the authority to name a single commissioner to a term of five years, subject to removal by the governor. The mayor and the city continued to have responsibility for the department's expenses and the physical working conditions of its employees, but the commissioner controlled department operations and the hiring, training, and discipline of the police officers. [2] In 1918, the salary for patrolmen was set at $1,400 a year ($24,100 in 2021). Police officers had to buy their own uniforms and equipment which cost over $200. New recruits received $730 during their first year, which increased annually to $821.25 and $1000, and to $1,400 after six years. [3] In the years following World War I, inflation dramatically eroded the value of a police officer's salary. From 1913 to May 1919, the cost of living rose by 76%, while police wages rose just 18%. [2] Discontent and restiveness among the Boston police force grew as they compared their wages and found they were earning less than an unskilled steelworker, half as much as a carpenter or mechanic and 50 cents a day less than a streetcar conductor. Boston city laborers were earning a third more on an hourly basis. [3] Police officers had an extensive list of grievances. They worked ten-hour shifts and typically recorded weekly totals between 75 and 90 hours. [a] They were not paid for time spent on court appearances. [2] They also objected to being required to perform such tasks as "delivering unpaid tax bills, surveying rooming houses, taking the census, or watching the polls at election" and checking the backgrounds of prospective jurors as well as serving as "errand boys" for their officers. [5] They complained about having to share beds and the lack of sanitation, baths, and toilets[2] at many of the 19 station houses where they were required to live, most of which dated to before the Civil War. The Court Street station had four toilets for 135 men, and one bathtub. [5] Boston's police officers, acting with the sponsorship of the police department, had formed an association known as the Boston Social Club in 1906. In 1917, a committee of police officers representing the Social Club met with Commissioner Stephen O'Meara to ask about a raise. He was sympathetic, but advised them to wait for a better time. They pressed the issue in the summer of 1918 and, near the end of the year, Mayor Andrew Peters offered salary increases that would affect about one-fourth of the officers. O'Meara died in December 1918, and Governor Samuel McCall appointed Edwin Upton Curtis, former Mayor of Boston, as Commissioner of the Boston Police Department. [6] After another meeting where representatives of the Social Club repeated their salary demands, Peters said: "while the word 'strike' was not mentioned, the whole situation is far more serious than I realized. "[7] He also made it clear to the rank and file that they were not entitled to form their own union. [8] Curtis did not share his predecessor's or the mayor's sympathy for the police, but in February 1918 he offered a wage compromise that the police rejected. [9] In May, Governor Coolidge announced raises, which were also rejected. [10] When the Social Club's representatives tried to raise grievances with him, Curtis set up his own grievance committee to handle management-employee disputes, based on the election of representatives from each precinct house by secret ballot, and it met just once. [2][10] A few months later, in June 1919, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), responding to repeated requests from local police organizations, began accepting police organizations into their membership. [11] By September, it had granted charters to police unions in 37 cities, including Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Miami, and St. Paul,[12] though not without protests from some city officials, who opposed the unionization of police, firefighters, and teachers. [13] The Boston police decided to organize under an AFL charter in order to gain support from other unions in their negotiations and any strike that might ensue. On August 9, 1919, the Boston Social Club requested a charter from the AFL. On August 11, Curtis issued a General Order forbidding police officers to join any "organization, club or body outside the department", making an exception only for patriotic organizations such as the newly-formed American Legion. His administration argued that such a rule was based on the conflict of interest between police officers' duties and union membership:[14] It is or should be apparent to any thinking person that the police department of this or any other city cannot fulfill its duty to the entire public if its members are subject to the direction of an organization existing outside the department.... If troubles and disturbances arise where the interests of this organization and the interests of other elements and classes in the community conflict, the situation immediately arises which always arises when a man attempts to serve two masters, – he must fail either in his duty as a policeman, or in his obligation to the organization that controls him.

Strike

Cleveland FBI looking for suspect who may be involved in two robberies

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WJW)– The Cleveland Division of the FBI is looking for a suspect who they say could be involved in two bank robberies. The first robbery happened Friday at around 5:30 p.m. at Dollar Bank on Fulton Parkway. According to the FBI, the suspect gave a note indicating a bank robbery. No weapon was seen. The man-described as 5’9″- fled on foot. Then, on Monday, the FBI said a male suspect robbed the Citizen Bank on Pearl Road. Similar to Friday’s robbery, a note was passed indicating a bank robbery; no weapon was seen. No one was injured. Anyone with information is asked to call Cleveland Division of Police – 2nd District, the Cleveland Division of the FBI or Crime Stoppers. Tips can remain anonymous and reward money is available for information leading to the successful identification and prosecution of the individual responsible.

Bank Robbery

2017 World Cup of Pool

The 2017 World Cup of Pool was the eleventh edition of the tournament. The event was held in York Hall, London, England, from 13 to 18 June. A total of 32 two-player teams participated in the tournament. [1] A total of $250,000 constituted the prize fund. [1] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] The final was played between the United States and Austria. Austria were crowned World Cup of Pool champions after victory over USA, with a final score of 10–6. [8]

Sports Competition

US’ Georgia Army National Guard to Join African Lion Military Exercise

Rabat - The US’ Georgia Army National Guard has announced its participation in the annual US-Morocco joint military exercise known as African Lion, due to take place in June.According to a press release from the Georgia Army National Guard, more that 700 troops will travel to North Africa to participate in the US-Morocco joint military exercises held under the African Lion 21 name.African Lion is the largest military exercise in Africa. The US will send approximately 4,000 service members, of which 740 will be Georgia Guard troops, while approximately 5,000 members from Royal Moroccan Armed Forces, the Tunisian Armed Forces, Senegalese Armed Forces, as well from Italy, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, will participate.This year African Lion exercises will include “operating a tactical command post, conducting situational training exercise lanes, conducting field training exercises and conducting indirect fire gunnery table qualification,” which will culminate in “a combined and joint live-fire exercise,” said the press release.Read also: Morocco: 50% Increase in Military Expenditures in Last 10 Years The Georgia Guard underlined that “African Lion offers the opportunity to improve interoperability and cooperation while demonstrating the strong military bond that exists between the participating nations.”The African Lion exercise is designed to provide training for US, Moroccan, Tunisian, Senegalese, and “other regionally-based African partnered forces.” It will also reinforce the knowledge learned from previous African Lion exercises, while providing both a foundation and a structure for future military cooperation in the region and beyond. Major General Andrew M. Rohling, Deputy Commanding General for Africa and US Army Southern European Task Force-Africa Commander, previously said that the military exercise was “a great opportunity to strengthen one of the oldest strategic relationships of the United States,” speaking of Morocco. From 2003, the maneuvers had run uninterrupted until in 2020 the annual exercise was reduced in scale “to minimize exposure of US and partner nation service members to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).”

Military Exercise

The dominant Chinese women's sprint team looked a bit vulnerable at the world championships last year in Berlin

IZU, Japan -- The dominant Chinese women's sprint team looked a bit vulnerable at the world championships last year in Berlin, when Germany took the gold medal on home soil and the reigning Olympic champions had to settle for bronze. That was the world championship, though. The Chinese are still the queens of the Olympics. After breaking the world record in the heats, the duo of Bao Shanju and Zhong Tianshi beat the German team of Lea Sophie Friedrich and Emma Hinze to win the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics on the first day of track cycling Monday. "The time was amazing for us," Zhong said of the world record, "but the final, we were just thinking, 'Just do it.'" They certainly did it. What you missed in Tokyo: Heartbreak for USWNT and USA baseball, but Biles is back 136dESPN Bao and Zhong got out to a quick start and led by .325 seconds at the midway point of the sprint. But the German team came on strong at the end, and the margin was a razor-thin 85 thousandths of a second. "Of course we wanted to win the gold medal. We thought we could make it. We were motivated to do it," said Heinze, who teamed with Pauline Grabosch at worlds. "We tried our best and they were just super fast." In the race for bronze, Daria Shmeleva and Anastasiia Voinova representing the Russia Olympic Committee beat Laurine van Riessen and Shanne Braspennincx of the Netherlands. The Russian duo won silver five years ago in Rio. The Chinese have been the standard in women's team sprint since the event debuted at the Olympic program. At the 2012 London Games, the team of Gong Jinjie and Guo Shuang broke the world record in qualifying, then lowered it again in the first round. The duo then appeared to win the gold medal, but they were relegated to silver because of an early exchange, allowing the German team of Kristina Vogel and Miriam Welte to claim the event's first gold medal. The Chinese didn't make the same mistake in Rio. That time, the new pairing of Gong and Zhong broke the nation's own world record in the heats and cruised carefully past the team representing Russia for their long-sought gold. Tokyo 2020 • Medal Tracker | Results | Schedule Earlier Monday, Germany shattered the world record in the women's team pursuit at the Izu Velodrome, setting a time of 4:07.307 to qualify first in an event most believed would be a showdown between the British and Americans. The team of Franziska Brausse, Lisa Brennauer, Lisa Klein and Mieke Kroeger was on a record pace from the first lap of the 4-kilometer timed ride. The group easily eclipsed the mark of 4:10.236 that Britain set at the Rio Games. "We fully knew the world record was going to be broken, and we fully expected it to be the Australians or the Americans," Britain's Elinor Barker said. "It's unfortunate for us that Germany was so much faster." The British team of Barker, Katie Archibald, Laura Kenny and Josie Knight also went faster than their previous mark, qualifying second in 4:09.022. The world champion U.S. was third in 4:10.118 and Italy was fourth in 4:11.666. Germany will face Italy and Britain will match up with the U.S. on Tuesday for spots in the gold medal match. In the men's team pursuit, Denmark broke the Olympic record with a time of 3:45.014, just off the world record pace they set last year in Berlin. The team of Lasse Norman Hansen, Niklas Larsen, Frederik Madsen and Rasmus Pedersen lowered the Olympic mark of 3:45.895 that Italy set earlier in qualifying. Australia, the silver medalists in Rio, had to scratch its qualification run when a touch of wheels sent Alexander Porter to the wood surface in Turn 1. The rules allowed them another chance, but the energy expended on their initial run cost them, and they were unable to catch two-time defending gold medalist Britain for the final spot in the medal round. "When you land on your face at 65 kilometers an hour and you have half an hour to do it again, that's absolutely amazing," said Simon Jones, the performance director for Australia's team. "We did pretty well considering. We'll come back tomorrow and try to go as quickly as we can go." Denmark will face Britain and Italy will go against New Zealand on Tuesday for spots in the gold medal race.

Break historical records

Impact of U.S. Withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Deal

The Situation: On Tuesday, May 8, 2018, President Trump announced that the United States has withdrawn from the Iran Nuclear Deal and will fully reimpose its suspended sanctions targeting Iran. The Result: All currently suspended U.S. sanctions in respect of Iran, including sanctions applicable to non-U.S. persons, will be reimposed by November 5, 2018. Looking Ahead: The reimposition of U.S. sanctions will have limited impact on U.S. companies. However, foreign companies majority-owned or controlled by U.S. persons must now begin winding down any Iran-related activities. In contrast, the impact of the reimposition of U.S. sanctions on non-U.S. companies is less clear, and as the international response develops, non-U.S. companies will increasingly face a complex compliance landscape. As reported earlier this week, on May 8, 2018, President Trump announced that the United States will reimpose, after specified wind-down periods, all nuclear-related sanctions lifted under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ("JCPOA") (commonly known as the "Iran Nuclear Deal"). As a result, the U.S. sanctions regime will revert to its pre-JCPOA scope by November 5, 2018. In light of the comprehensive U.S. primary sanctions that remained in place after implementation of the JCPOA, President Trump's announcement will have little impact on U.S. companies. In contrast, foreign subsidiaries of U.S. organizations and their non-U.S. counterparts face a dramatically changed compliance landscape. With the reimposition of U.S. extraterritorial, or secondary, sanctions, non-U.S. companies must navigate increasingly complex terrain as they assess continued engagement with Iran, compliance with U.S. sanctions, and the pending response of the other JCPOA signatories. Immediate Impact The background of the JCPOA, the resulting international sanctions relief, and President Trump's criticism of the deal are, at this point, well-known (see "Iran Nuclear Deal Reached; Sanctions Remain in Place," "Implementation Day Triggers Significant Changes to International Sanctions Against Iran," and "Potential Options for U.S. Sanctions on Iran Under the Trump Administration"). Although the policy implications of President's Trump's announcement may be subject to debate, the immediate impact is clear. In connection with the announcement, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") issued Frequently Asked Questions setting out a staged reimposition of U.S. sanctions over the next 90 to 180 days (subject to any extension that may be put in place by the United States at a later stage). Following a 90-day wind-down period ending on August 6, 2018, the United States will reimpose its secondary sanctions targeting activities related to: During the same period, the United States will revoke the following authorizations: Following a 180-day wind-down period ending on November 4, 2018, the United States will reimpose its secondary sanctions targeting activities related to: Effective November 5, 2018, the United States will also revoke General License H (and any subsequent wind-down authorizations issued in connection with that general license), which previously authorized foreign entities majority-owned or controlled by U.S. persons to engage in most transactions involving Iran. It appears all other Iran-related general and specific licenses, including licenses issued under the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 ("TSRA"), issued by OFAC will remain unaffected. Finally, no later than November 5, 2018, the United States will redesignate all persons who had been removed, through the JCPOA, from the List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons and/or other U.S. sanctioned parties lists. Consequently, by November 5, 2018, the United States is currently expected to have reimposed all sanctions that had been lifted pursuant to the JCPOA. Near- and Long-Term Implications As a practical matter, the reimposition of U.S. sanctions suspended under the JCPOA will have limited impact on U.S. companies. As noted in our prior Alerts and Commentaries, substantial U.S. sanctions in relation to Iran have remained in place and continued to prohibit U.S. persons from engaging, directly or indirectly, in virtually all transactions or dealings with Iran without authorization. The reimposition of U.S. sanctions will, however, have immediate impact on non-U.S. organizations that are majority-owned or controlled by U.S. persons and on U.S.-linked aviation companies. As noted above, the United States intends to revoke all specific and general licenses issued in connection with the JCPOA "as soon as administratively feasible," including General License H and aviation-specific licenses issued under the JCPOA SLP and General License I. In their place, OFAC intends to issue authorizations that will likely narrowly authorize only activities necessary to wind down previously authorized activities. Companies that rely on these authorizations should immediately reassess their existing Iran-related activities, including in-process and pending transactions, in order to prepare to wind down Iran-related activities and ensure compliance with U.S. sanctions during the wind-down period. The near- and long-term implications of President's Trump announcement for non-U.S. companies are less clear. Non-U.S. persons are not, with limited exceptions, subject to U.S. primary sanctions. However, U.S. secondary sanctions provide for an array of penalties that, in effect, foreclose access to U.S. markets—a meaningful deterrent for non-U.S. companies. The United States appears poised to rigorously enforce the renewed sanctions and has advised non-U.S. companies to begin winding up soon-to-be sanctionable activities to "avoid exposure to sanctions or an enforcement action when the applicable wind-down period ends." Continued engagement with Iran will therefore become an increasingly fraught proposition for non-U.S. persons, and one that may be further complicated by the international community's response to the United States' withdrawal. In that regard, following President Trump's announcement, the European Union has reiterated its commitment to "the continued full and effective implementation of the JCPOA," as long as Iran meets its nuclear-related obligations, adding that it "is determined to work with the international community" to preserve the deal. Although the European Union has not yet indicated any measures it may implement to preserve the JCPOA, it suggested earlier this year that it may expand its Blocking Regulation—Council Regulation (EC) No. 2271/96 of November 22, 1996—to protect EU-based organizations doing business in Iran following any U.S. withdrawal. The Blocking Regulation was adopted in 1996 by the European Union (European Communities at the time) in response to the extraterritorial application of U.S. sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and Libya. It prohibits EU companies from complying with blocked sanctions "whether directly or through a subsidiary or other intermediary person, actively or by deliberate omission." The importance of the Blocking Regulation in the last decade has been limited. This would change if the scope of its application is expanded to cover the U.S. secondary sanctions in relation to Iran, possibly protecting EU companies from enforcement of U.S. judgments or administrative decisions giving effect to the secondary sanctions. Historically, enforcement of the Blocking Regulation has generally been very limited, but expanding its scope now has the potential to lead to increased enforcement actions across Europe. An expanded Blocking Regulation would, however, place EU companies squarely between the competing demands of U.S. sanctions and EU and national requirements. The European Union may also try to negotiate an exemption for EU companies from the reimposition of the U.S. sanctions. The prospects of relief for EU companies under either approach remains uncertain. China and Russia have likewise consistently reaffirmed their commitment to the JCPOA, and in a joint statement last month confirmed their "unwavering support" for the deal. In light of current tensions between the United States and Russia and China, it seems unlikely that the U.S. withdrawal will lead Russia or China to alter its commitment to the JCPOA or have a substantial impact on Russian and Chinese business interests in Iran. As the international response to the U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA develops, non-U.S. companies should take steps to protect their interests in light of the pending reimposition of U.S. sanctions. In particular, non-U.S. companies should reassess their Iran-related activities to determine their potential liability under the soon-to-be imposed U.S. secondary sanctions and/or any potential blocking statutes; open dialogues with their financial institutions, insurers, and other service providers regarding any Iran-related activities; and, significantly, prepare to possibly wind down any potentially sanctionable Iran-related activities in order to move promptly to comply with U.S. secondary sanctions, if warranted.

Tear Up Agreement

1994 European Cup Winners' Cup Final

The 1994 European Cup Winners' Cup Final was a football match on 4 May 1994 contested between Arsenal of England and Parma of Italy. It was the final match of the 1993–94 European Cup Winners' Cup and the 34th European Cup Winners' Cup final. The final was held at the Parken Stadium in Copenhagen, and Arsenal won 1–0 with the goal coming from Alan Smith. It is widely considered as the peak of Arsenal's famous defence. Arsenal became the fourth London club to win the trophy after Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea and West Ham United. [1] Having beaten Antwerp in the same competition in the previous year, Parma were aiming to become the first side to win consecutive finals; five sides had previously failed to do so after reaching the final for a consecutive year. The final was the first time that Parma had come up against English opposition. On the other hand, Arsenal had three times played out two-legged affairs with Italian clubs. The first meeting was in the 1970–71 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, when they overcame Lazio 4–2 on aggregate, drawing the first leg in Rome and winning the second leg 2–0 at Highbury. Arsenal had also faced Italians in the 1979–80 European Cup Winners' Cup at the semi-final stage; Arsenal won 2–1 on aggregate. The most recent meeting was in the quarter-finals of this year's competition, where they overcame Torino 1–0 over two legs. [2] It was the first time Parken Stadium had hosted the major European competition's final and the first time any European competition's final had been held in Denmark. The stadium had opened only recently – in 1992 – and was the home of Copenhagen and the Danish national football team, taking two years to construct at the cost of 640 million Danish kroner. It was built on the site of the national team's previous home, Idrætsparken. [3] A crowd of 33,765 witnessed a tactical match. Parma's Tomas Brolin hit the post early on but, in the 20th minute, Lorenzo Minotti miss-hit an overhead clearance and Alan Smith capitalized, beating Luca Bucci with a left-footed volley. [4] Arsenal then invited pressure from Parma but, by controlling Gianfranco Zola and Faustino Asprilla, defended their lead and became the fourth London club to win the trophy. [1] The final was noted for Arsenal fans singing "one nil to the Arsenal" throughout the match. [5] Arsenal were without their leading goalscorer Ian Wright, who missed the final through suspension as well as the injured John Jensen, Martin Keown, and David Hillier. [6] Assistant referees: Josef Zvonic (Czech Republic) Otakar Draštík (Czech Republic) Fourth official: Lubomír Puček (Czech Republic) Match rules

Sports Competition

1980 Kano riot

The Kano 1980 riot was a riot in Kano, Nigeria led by Maitatsine and his followers and the first major religious conflict in postcolonial Kano. Over 4,177 civilians, 100 policemen and about 35 military personnel were killed, including Maitatsine himself, and is generally regarded as marking the beginning of the Yan Tatsine insurgency. Because of this, there was widespread impression that Nigeria's security and economy was threatened by illegal aliens and this belief was fueled by the fact that other West African nationals had aided in armed robberies. Illegal aliens from Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Mali and Burkina Faso along with over 6,000 Nigerian Muslim fanatics killed over 100 policemen while injuring 100 policemen. The army was called and alleviated the situation before the fanatics could overrun the country. However, official sources state that illegal aliens did not cause the trouble. When President Shehu Shagari called for all the foreigners to leave Nigeria, it created the worst international crisis since the end of the civil war in January 1970 and implemented a search of commercial, industrial and residential buildings to ensure their departure which caused tension with neighboring countries and international allies. The United States State Department described Nigeria's actions as "shocking and violation of every imaginable human right". The European Economic Community also criticized it and Pope John Paul II called it ""a grave, incredible drama producing the largest single, and worst human exodus in the 20th century". British politician Michael Foot sent a letter to the Nigerian High Commissioner in London, saying ""an act of heartlessness, and a failure of common humanity". British newspapers also commented with The Guardian saying it was "inhumanity, high-handedness and irresponsibility." South African politician P. W. Botha also criticized Shagari in the situation, comparing him to Adolf Hitler and other white right-wing groups said it was worse than apartheid in South Africa. French media such as the Jeune Afrique ran a front-page story "La Honte (The Shame)", saying the situation was "an act of barbarism unparalled in the world" while Ghana newspaper Ghanaian Times said it was an "electoral gimmick" by the National Party of Nigeria-controlled government to deflect attention from its failures so it could win the 1983 election and also said the illegal alien expulsion was "create mass hysteria by infiltrating Sudan-trained mercenaries into Ghana to subvert the Ghanaian Government". Ghanaian politician Jerry Rawlings said it was a "calculated plot" against the Ghanaian government.

Riot

2006 H5N1 outbreak in India

An outbreak of the H5N1 virus in India in 2006 negatively affecting the people living in the area as the poultry industry was their main source of income at the time. [1] Soon after many birds were reported dead in the village of Navapur, in the Nandurbar district of Maharashtra, the government intervened, first confirming the presence of the bird flu and then destroying numerous birds to control the spread of the virus. Residents felt the government overreacted, believing the government had wrongly attributed the reason for the bird deaths; had unnecessarily disrupted their main source of income; and did not compensate them properly for the government's destruction of the birds. Residents also believed that the media caused unnecessary panic over the incident. The government denied any over-reaction to the flu outbreak and stated that they had enough Tamiflu vaccine to protect the Indian population. The first reports of bird flu in India came from the village of Navapur in the Nandurbar district of Maharashtra on 19 February 2006. Villagers reported many bird deaths in the village. Maharashtra State Animal Husbandry Ministry authorities rushed to the spot. Lab analysis proved that the poultry was indeed affected with the H5N1 virus. [citation needed] Soon after the presence of the virus was confirmed culling operations began. 253,000 birds and 587,000 eggs were destroyed within five days. [citation needed] Villagers who were exhibiting flu-like symptoms were quarantined and kept under observation. Blood samples from 150 persons were sent to the National Institute of Virology, Pune, for analysis. [citation needed] Movement of people into the area was strictly regulated and passenger trains were instructed not to halt at Navapur. Governments of states which border Maharashtra banned the import of poultry from the latter. Some other state governments such as those of Tamil Nadu and Jammu and Kashmir also introduced similar restrictions. The government of India asked pharmaceutical companies such as Cipla to manufacture anti-flu medication. The Government also started stockpiling Tamiflu. [citation needed] The Indian Army was set on alert to aid in evacuation operations and drug-distribution measures. [citation needed] The poultry industry is the main source of income for the people of Nawapur who claimed the Government is overreacting. According to them, the cause of the bird deaths was in fact the seasonal Ranikhet disease and not bird-flu. They alleged that the compensation guaranteed to them by the government after culling had not been handed to them. They also said the media created an unnecessary clamour over the incident. [citation needed] Prices of chicken products across India plummeted resulting in a steep rise in the prices of mutton and fish. The poultry industry was expected to lose hundreds of millions of rupees because of this. Airlines including Air India, Jet Airways, Indian Airlines and Kingfisher Airlines took chicken off their in-flight menus. [citation needed] Both the state and central governments denied any overreaction. [citation needed] The centre said it had enough supplies of Tamiflu and that there was no cause for worry. [citation needed]

Disease Outbreaks