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News | Toronto & Local News - GTA News Headlines - Canada News
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Chatham-Kent fire is still on the scene of a natural gas explosion in Wheatley, Ont., Friday, Aug. 27, 2021. The explosion occurred on Thursday afternoon, destroying 2 buildings and injuring 20 people. Fire officials said today that there is a risk of another explosion since the source of the natural gas is believed to be coming from an abandoned underground well. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Rob Gurdebeke
Technical experts will be heading to a small community in southwestern Ontario to find the source of a recurring gas leak suspected of causing an explosion last week, officials said Wednesday.
Twenty people required medical attention and a building was levelled after the blast that took place in Wheatley, Ont., last Thursday. One person remains in hospital.
The area where the explosion took place was being evacuated due to a suspected gas leak for the third time in recent months when the blast occurred.
The mayor of Chatham-Kent, which includes Wheatley, said the situation had to be addressed.
“It's essential that we find and remediate the source of this gas because if we don't, the citizens of Wheatley will be living in fear of when's the next leak going to happen,” Darrin Canniff told reporters.
Canniff had called last week for the provincial government to help find the source of the leak because local officials didn't have the expertise or authority to do so.
Chatham-Kent's chief administrative officer said Wednesday that technical experts from the province would be arriving in the community in the next few days to investigate a hydrogen sulphide leak thought to be behind the blast.
Don Shropshire said the leak could be coming from an abandoned gas well or from an unknown underground source.
“We don't know whether someone's going to identify the source on the first attempt, or whether that's going to take several attempts,” he said.
“We need to not only get control of the initial emergency but also to try and find the source of the gas, take steps to mitigate it so we're not going to be dealing with this every several weeks.”
The explosion at a privately owned building in downtown Wheatley was close to a location where hydrogen sulphide gas was first discovered in June, prompting an evacuation order and the declaration of a state of emergency.
In July, the municipality declared a second state of emergency after confirming hydrogen sulphide was once again present in the building that was levelled in Thursday's blast.
Ontario's solicitor general said on Friday that the province had launched an investigation and would be working closely with the municipality.
Chatham-Kent's fire chief said crews were methodically removing debris from the blast site to allow provincial experts to get to the suspected source of the leak. Chris Case noted that there's no gas currently detected at the site.
Officials said there was no timeline established for when residents can return to the two-block area around the blast site, or when the source of the leak will be found.
More than 120 households sought aid following the explosion and Shropshire said Wheatley is currently providing emergency shelter for 27 people. Others are being housed in hotels across Chatham-Kent and Leamington, Ont.
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Gas explosion
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2011 Burkinabé protests
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The 2011 Burkinabé protests were a series of popular protests in Burkina Faso. On 15 February soldiers mutinied in the capital Ouagadougou over unpaid housing allowances;[1] President Blaise Compaoré briefly fled the capital and sought safety in his hometown of Ziniaré. [2] By Sunday 17 April, the mutiny had spread to the town of Pô in southern Burkina Faso;[3] there were also protests over a court's decision to sentence several officers to prison sentences. The mutiny followed popular protests over rising prices in several cities across Burkina Faso,[2] and protests starting 22 February over the death of a student in police custody in February, as well as the shooting of several other protesters. Five student protesters were reportedly killed in February. [4] France24 suggested that Burkina Faso could be caught up in a full-scale uprising similar to that seen in several North African and Middle Eastern countries, proposing the rise of a "Burkinabè Spring". [5]
On 22 April, a coalition of 34 Burkinabè opposition parties called for a rally on 30 April to demand President Compaoré's resignation. [6]
By 27 April, farmers were protesting in Bobo-Dioulasso over low prices and merchants rioted in Koudougou over the closure of 40 shops due to unpaid rent. The house of Koudougou's mayor and its police station were burned. [7] Later, that same evening, riot police joined the widespread mutiny in Ouagadougou. [8]
Four young demonstrators protesting the police mutiny on 28 April were injured when police fired live ammunition to disperse protesters after they torched a police station in Ouagadougou. [9]
On 29 April, President Blaise Compaoré announced he had negotiated with the army and they had agreed to put a stop to the mutinies and protests ravaging the country. [10]
Some 3,000 protesters attended the opposition rally on 30 April in Ouagadougou, which lasted for hours despite the hot weather. Several local pop music stars joined the protest, performing and calling on Compaoré to step down. Several protesters carried signs comparing Compaoré to ousted Tunisian strongman Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who was toppled in a January revolution. [11] Bénéwendé Stanislas Sankara, an opposition leader, said the rally was to demonstrate the desire of the Burkinabè people for reforms so that wealth from Burkina Faso's natural resources is distributed more evenly, not just benefiting those who are already rich and powerful. [12]
Health Minister Adama Traoré said on 30 April that six people had died so far as a result of the mutinies, including an 11-year-old reportedly shot and killed while at school. [12]
On 1 May, an affiliation of trade unions and civil servants in Ouagadougou canceled a planned march to commemorate May Day and protest the government due to concerns about bolstered security and the risk of agents provocateurs infiltrating the demonstration. [13]
On 15 May, soldiers fired their guns in the air through the night, apparently to protest the tardiness of reforms and benefits promised to the army rank-and-file. [14]
Three people were reportedly killed and 136 were injured during major daylong protests by students and soldiers in Ouagadougou on 24 May. [15] Students also protested in Gaoua and Bobo-Dioulasso in support of a teachers' strike, torching ruling party offices in Gaoua. [16]
The teachers' union and the government reached an agreement on 25 May, the day after the violent demonstrations, to raise wages in exchange for an end to the strike. [17]
Soldiers mutinied again on 27 May in Tenkodogo and 1 June in Bobo-Dioulasso,[18] among other cities and barracks particularly in eastern and northern Burkina Faso, firing into the air for hours on end in both daytime and nighttime hours. Shooting reportedly quieted in the north by 27 May after continuing throughout the weekend, but it had again spread to other parts of the country by that time. [19]
On 3 June 2011, at least seven people were killed as pro-government forces quelled the protests and mutiny in Bobo-Dioulasso,[20] including a 14-year-old girl. An army spokesman said 109 were detained in the government's strongest effort yet to end the mutiny. [21] Traders upset by mutineers' extensive looting in Bobo-Dioulasso called for the government to offer swift recompense for their losses. [22]
The government said it replaced all 13 regional governors as of 9 June, appointing three army officers among others to replace them in a bid to ease tensions. [23]
With the protests quieted,[24] Reforms Minister Bongnessan Arsene Ye said on 23 June that the government established a 68-member committee to consider changes to the constitution. However, opposition leader Benewende Stanislas Sankara, a key figure in the protest movement, said the opposition had declined to be represented in the committee over concerns that the changes to the constitution would allow President Blaise Compaoré to further extend his term of office rather than creating a more democratic process in Burkina Faso. [25]
In October 2014, protesters rose again to protest President Compaoré's attempt to change the Constitution of Burkina Faso so he could remain in power for another term. They stormed the National Assembly of Burkina Faso, Compaoré's presidential palace, and the state broadcaster's headquarters, among other locations.
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Protest_Online Condemnation
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At least four Southern African countries (Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe) are facing serious outbreaks of African Migratory Locust (AML)
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× At least four Southern African countries (Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe) are facing serious outbreaks of African Migratory Locust (AML), threatening the winter crops and the main planting season due to start in October. × Seven million people who are still recovering from the impact of the 2019 drought, may experience further food insecurity and following crop damage from the AML (Note: this is separate to the Desert Locust emergency in Eastern Africa). × The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is working closely with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the International Red Locust Control Organization for Central and Southern Africa (IRLCO-CSA) to support the affected countries to respond to the locust outbreaks. It should be noted though, that IRLCO-CSA primarily focuses on the control of a different locust pest: the Red Locust. × Awareness of the situation is low due to the absence of dedicated national locust units and, consequently, a lack of regular monitoring and reporting. × FAO promotes preventive strategies for locust management, which rely on early warning and early reactions. Delaying the response would prove more costly financially, environmentally, socially and economically. × The build-up and spread of the pest could exacerbate the impacts of COVID-19 and threaten the next planting season. × Urgent actions are needed to identify locust hotspots and ensure the pest is controlled in them. × The capacity of countries to monitor the spread of the pest through regular surveillance and mapping should be enhanced in order to increase their ability to take timely and anticipatory action to prevent the pest from causing serious damage to crops and pastures. × The impacts of COVID-19 and restrictions on movement are hampering effective monitoring of the evolution of the pest populations. × The 2020/21 la Niña event could accelerate the multiplication of the AML in the affected areas and increase the threat it poses to crops, grazing and livelihoods.
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Insect Disaster
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US begins formal withdrawal from World Health Organization
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Updated: Jul. 07, 2020, 2:10 p.m. | Published: Jul. 07, 2020, 2:10 p.m. The logo of the World Health Organization is seen at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. President Donald Trump announced plans last month to withdraw the United States from the international health agency. By The Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has formally notified the United Nations of its withdrawal from the World Health Organization , although the pullout won’t take effect until next year, meaning it could be rescinded under a new administration or if circumstances change. The withdrawal notification makes good on President Donald Trump’s vow in late May to terminate U.S. participation in the WHO, which he has harshly criticized for its response to the coronavirus pandemic and accused of bowing to Chinese influence. The move was immediately assailed by health officials and critics of the administration, including numerous Democrats who said it would cost the U.S. influence in the global arena. Former Vice President Joe Biden has said he supports the WHO and Democrats suggested he would reverse the decision if he defeats Trump in November. Trump is trailing Biden in multiple polls and has sought to deflect criticism of his administration's handling of the virus by aggressively attacking China and the WHO. The withdrawal notice was sent to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday and will take effect in a year, on July 6, 2021, the State Department and the United Nations said on Tuesday. The State Department said the U.S. would continue to seek reform of the WHO, but referred to Trump’s June 15 response when asked if the administration might change its mind. “I’m not reconsidering, unless they get their act together, and I’m not sure they can at this point,” Trump said. Guterres, in his capacity as depositary of the 1946 WHO constitution, “is in the process of verifying with the World Health Organization whether all the conditions for such withdrawal are met,” his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said. Under the terms of the withdrawal, the U.S. must meet its financial obligations to the WHO before it can be finalized. The U.S., which is the agency's largest donor and provides it with more than $400 million per year, currently owes the WHO some $200 million in current and past dues. On May 29, less than two weeks after warning the WHO that it had 30 days to reform or lose U.S. support, Trump announced his administration was leaving the organization due to what he said was its inadequate response to the initial outbreak of the coronavirus in China’s Wuhan province late last year. The president said in a White House announcement that Chinese officials “ignored” their reporting obligations to the WHO and pressured the organization to mislead the public about an outbreak that has now killed more than 130,000 Americans. “We have detailed the reforms that it must make and engaged with them directly, but they have refused to act,” Trump said at the time. “Because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms, we will be today terminating the relationship.” The withdrawal notification was widely denounced as misguided, certain to undermine an important institution that is leading vaccine development efforts and drug trials to address the COVID-19 outbreak. “To call Trump’s response to COVID chaotic and incoherent doesn’t do it justice,” said New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “This won’t protect American lives or interests — it leaves Americans sick and America alone.” Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the health committee, called Trump’s decision to withdraw an “abdication of America’s role as a global leader.” “It is the opposite of putting America first — it will put America at risk,” Murray said in a statement. “Refusing to work with our partners across the world to fight this pandemic will only prolong the crisis, further undermine our international standing, and leave us less prepared for future crises.” UN Foundation President Elizabeth Cousens called the move “short-sighted, unnecessary, and unequivocally dangerous. WHO is the only body capable of leading and coordinating the global response to COVID-19. Terminating the U.S. relationship would undermine the global effort to beat this virus — putting all of us at risk.” The ONE Campaign, which supports international health projects, called it an “astounding action” that jeopardizes global health. “Withdrawing from the World Health Organization amidst an unprecedented global pandemic is an astounding action that puts the safety of all Americans and the world at risk. The U.S. should use its influence to strengthen and reform the WHO, not abandon it at a time when the world needs it most,” ONE president Gayle Smith said.
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Withdraw from an Organization
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2019 Baku protests
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The 2019 Baku protests were a series of nonviolent rallies on 8, 19 and 20 October in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. The protests on 8 and 19 October were organized by the National Council of Democratic Forces (NCDF), an alliance of opposition parties, and called for the release of political prisoners and for free and fair elections. They were also against growing unemployment and economic inequality. Among those detained on 19 October was the leader of the Azerbaijani Popular Front Party, Ali Karimli. Although the Constitution of Azerbaijan allows peaceful assembly after notifying the relevant government body in advance, in practice Azerbaijani government requires such assemblies to have a permission from local municipalities. [1] The women's request for a rally was rejected by the authorities on the grounds that the proposed site had many shops and restaurants and was therefore unsuitable. [1]
On 8 October NCDF organized a protest in support of the freedom of assembly. The participants gathered in front of the Baku mayor’s office, protesting against the decision of city officials to deny permission for a rally at the Mahsul Stadium in central Baku. The protesters were instead offered an area in Lokbatan,[3] around 20 km away from Baku. Some fifty demonstrators were allowed to protest at the venue, while several dozen more who were barred from joining the protest tried to break through the police cordon. They were dispersed and some of them were detained. [3] News media were also not allowed to cover the event. [3] According to police, seventeen protesters were reprimanded for violating the "mass demonstrations law," while four received administrative protocols for the same reason. [3]
Before the 19 October protest police cordoned off several streets in central Baku, the operation of three metro stations (28 May, Jafar Jabbarly and Shah Ismail Khatai[4]) was suspended and the internet access was restricted. [2] The Baku Police Department declared the 19 October protest "unlawful". [4] Hundreds of members of the Rapid Police Unit were deployed. [4] On that day Ali Karimli was arrested and detained by police shortly after he began joining the protest in central Baku. He was released late in the evening. [5] According to police, sixty protesters were detained, of them forty-two were released with a "warning". [5]
On 20 October protesting women gathered near a statue of Khurshidbanu Natavan on Baku's Nizami Street and were met with police, who demanded they leave the site. Apart from posters, the protesters also wrote the same slogans on their clothes, fearing that the posters would be torn apart by police. [6] Several protesters wore slogans commemorating Elina Hajiyeva, a teenager who earlier that year committed suicide in Baku because of school bullying. [6]
In a statement on 19 October the European Union called "on the authorities to release peaceful protesters remaining in detention", noting that "freedom of assembly is a fundamental human right and we expect Azerbaijan to ensure that it can be fully exercised, in line with the country’s international obligations". [7] Member of the European Parliament Kati Piri stated that "the violence was accompanied by a state-run smear campaign against the opposition and civil society activists, including an unprecedented attack on the EU diplomats fulfilling their professional tasks". [8] Another Member of the European Parliament Tonino Picula urged Federica Mogherini and the European Commission "to suspend further negotiations on the new agreement between the EU and Azerbaijan until the Azerbaijani government commits itself fully to the respect of fundamental rights". [8]
The US embassy in Baku called on "the government to credibly investigate reports of police violence, hold accountable those responsible, and release expeditiously those who remain in detention". [9] The embassy also noted that "freedom of assembly and freedom of speech are universal human rights guaranteed in Azerbaijan’s Constitution". [9]
Former Ambassador of Azerbaijan to Benelux Arif Mammadov staunchly criticized Azerbaijani authorities for violent crackdown of the 19 October protest. [10]
Human Rights Watch criticized the Azerbaijani authorities for refusing to allow the peaceful assembly of opposition. [5]
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Protest_Online Condemnation
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First Cooperative Association and Alceco have decided to proceed with a combination
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An Ag Partners grain elevator and hub plant in Hartley, Iowa is shown. Ag Partners is a brand name of Albert City-based Alceco, which is pursuing a merger with First Cooperative Association of Cherokee. CHEROKEE, Iowa -- First Cooperative Association, a Cherokee-based cooperative grain elevator firm and Albert City, Iowa-based Alceco have decided to proceed with a combination. Alceco is best known by the name of its solely owned subsidiary, Ag Partners. The boards of directors of both firms voted unanimously in a joint meeting Wednesday to move forward to the next phase of a proposed merger. Back in December, the boards voted to undertake a study to see if a merger would be beneficial for the firms, according to a joint press release. A final decision on the merger is expected by the end of June. Members will receive information describing the voting process via mail. The boards also named Troy Upah, the current CEO of Alceco, to be the CEO of the combined operation. Merle Lyons, the general manager of FCA, has been named COO of the merged organization. Headquarters of the new firm are expected to be in Cherokee, with home offices maintained in Albert City. Charles Specketer, president of the FCA board, described the combination as a "merger of equals" in a statement. "By joining together, we will become the leading cooperative in Northwest Iowa, which provides significant advantages to our members. This merger will also enable enhanced benefits for employees, expand employee growth and development, and help recruit and retain the best and brightest team right here in our area," Specketer said in the statement. First Cooperative Association (FCA) is purportedly the oldest active cooperative elevator in the country, dating to 1887 when it was incorporated as Farmers Cooperative Elevator in Marcus, Iowa. FCA has 20 locations throughout Northwest Iowa. Alceco, which dates to 1905, operates 17 retail and wholesale agronomy outlets, grain/petroleum facilities and feed mills throughout the state. Alceco acquired full ownership of Ag Partners last year. Prior to that, Ag Partners had been a joint venture between Alceco and Cargill since its formation in 1997. Hear what Steve Nelson had to say ahead of his retirement as Nebraska Farm Bureau president. The elevator should be partially functional within a week and fully functional during the week of Sept. 21, an official said. ALBERT CITY, Iowa -- Alceco, a co-op based in Albert City, Iowa, has signed a letter of intent to acquire full ownership of Ag Partners, LLC, … SHELDON, Iowa | Chris Johnson, leader of the Ag Partners LLC complex in Sheldon, calls the soon-to-be-completed pelleting mill a "$7 million beauty.” SHELDON, Iowa | Chris Johnson, leader of the Ag Partners LLC complex in Sheldon, calls the soon-to-be-completed pelleting mill a "$7 million beauty.” Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.
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Organization Merge
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Yellen warns failure to raise debt ceiling could trigger 'economic catastrophe'
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Former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Holtz-Eakin on the options for the U.S. debt ceiling. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen renewed her call for Congress to raise or suspend the nation's debt before October, warning that failure to do so could trigger an unprecedented financial crisis in the U.S. "The U.S. has always paid its bills on time," Yellen wrote Sunday in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. "But the overwhelming consensus among economists and Treasury officials of both parties is that failing to raise the debt limit would produce widespread economic catastrophe." WHAT IS THE DEBT CEILING? The Treasury Department began implementing so-called extraordinary measures to keep the government running after the debt limit was reinstated in August around $22 trillion – about $6 trillion less than the actual level. Yellen has told Congress the federal government will run out of cash to pays its bills sometime in October. The battle to raise the government's borrowing limit carries big risks for the broader economy: With the total debt standing at $28.5 trillion, the government would be forced to slash federal aid programs unless the cap is either suspended or lifted. But lawmakers are at an impasse over the debt ceiling: Democrats are pressuring Republicans to support an effort to raise or suspend the ceiling, adamant that they won't stick it in a partisan $3.5 trillion spending bill. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has rejected an appeal by Yellen to raise the ceiling, arguing that Democrats have the ability to go it alone. "Let’s be clear: With a Democratic President, a Democratic House, and a Democratic Senate, Democrats have every tool they need to raise the debt limit. It is their sole responsibility," McConnell tweeted last week. "Republicans will not facilitate another reckless, partisan taxing and spending spree." WHITE HOUSE SOUNDS ALARM ON DEBT CEILING, WARNS MEDICAID, FOOD STAMPS AT RISK President Biden has countered that Democrats joined with GOP lawmakers three times under the Trump administration to suspend the limit, and that the rising deficit is due to Republican spending. He's argued the sweeping tax and spending package Democrats are still crafting will be fully paid for. "Let me remind you, these are the same folks who just four years ago passed the Trump tax cut," Biden said in Thursday remarks at the White House. "It just ballooned the federal deficit." The House is slated to hold a vote this week on a measure to suspend the debt limit and a separate short-term measure to extend the government's funding beyond its expiration on Sept. 30. The game of brinkmanship on Capitol Hill has alarmed Wall Street analysts and traders, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunging 586 points, or 1.7%, on Monday. The S&P 500 index fell 1.69%, and the Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 1.99%. GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE If the U.S. failed to raise or suspend the debt limit, it would eventually have to temporarily default on some of its obligations, which could have serious and negative economic implications. Interest rates would likely spike, and demand for Treasurys would drop; even the threat of default can cause borrowing costs to increase. "The U.S. has never defaulted. Not once," Yellen wrote. "Doing so would likely precipitate a historic financial crisis that would compound the damage of the continuing public health emergency.
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Financial Crisis
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1891 Mino–Owari earthquake
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The Nōbi earthquake (濃尾地震, Nōbi Jishin) struck the former Japanese provinces of Mino and Owari (present-day Gifu Prefecture) in the Nōbi Plain in the early morning of October 28 with a surface wave magnitude of 8.0. The event, also referred to as the 1891 Mino–Owari earthquake (美濃・尾張地震, Mino-Owari Jishin), the Great Gifu earthquake (岐阜大地震, Gifu Daijishin), or the Great Nōbi earthquake (濃尾大地震, Nōbi Daijishin), is the largest known inland earthquake to have occurred in the Japanese archipelago. The earthquake came at a time when Japan was undergoing a transformation into a more industrial nation and while advancing its scientific understanding in many fields. Damage from the event was widespread and the loss of life was significant. The many kilometers of visible fault breaks on the surface of the earth presented scientists with opportunities for field investigations that ultimately led to an improved understanding of the fault scarps that earthquakes often generate. Records of historical earthquakes and tsunami extend further back in time in Japan than any other country that lies along the Pacific Rim (the first documented event occurred in 416 AD). These historical documents supported the date verification of the 1700 Cascadia earthquake that occurred off the Pacific Northwest coast of North America. The dilemma of earthquakes in Japan was made a priority following the 1854 Ansei-Nankai event that brought great destruction to the southwest portion of the country. With the onset of the Meiji period, the feudal government system was superseded by an empire that began to focus on advancing the Japanese society up to Western standards, especially in science. [6]
While the government brought in foreign experts (yatoi) during the building of the country's modern infrastructure, the high seismicity in Japan proved to be an ideal laboratory setting during the establishment of the new science of seismology. In 1876, John Milne came from England to teach at the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo. Following the earthquake of February 22, 1880, Milne's attention turned to seismology as a primary area of study. That earthquake also triggered the formation of the Seismological Society of Japan, which was an organization to help foreign scientists stay coordinated in their efforts. Shortly thereafter, the Japanese had their own organization (the Japan Meteorological Agency) that had taken control of an earthquake reporting system that was initially created by Milne. Ultimately, the system and the 1891 earthquake provided data by which seismologist Fusakichi Omori developed a law of decay for aftershocks. [7]
The four main Japanese islands of Kyushu, Shikoku, Honshu, and Hokkaido lie in a convex arrangement pointing to the Pacific Ocean, while the oceanic trenches that form the western boundary of the Pacific Plate are convex in the opposite direction, toward Eurasia. The continental crust above the subduction zones had previously been associated with the Eurasian Plate, but northern Honshu and Hokkaido have more recently been treated as part of the North American Plate, due to a poorly defined plate boundary between Eastern Siberia and Alaska and a newly forming boundary at the eastern perimeter of the Sea of Japan. This portion of the crust has been known locally as the Okhotsk Plate. The southwestern border of the plate is called the Itoigawa-Shizuoka Tectonic Line. It is a region of faulting that traverses the width of central Honshu, but it has not generated any large earthquakes. Moving westward, though, the Atera, Miboro, Atotsugawa, and Nobi faults have all produced large events. Two of those events occurred beyond the terminus of the 1891 rupture: the 1945 Mikawa earthquake that hit near Nagoya on the Fukozu Fault and the 1948 Fukui earthquake that occurred near the Sea of Japan. [6]
The October 1891 event was the largest recorded inland earthquake in Japan's history. Surface faulting stretched 80 kilometers (50 mi) with horizontal displacement up to 8 meters (26 ft) and vertical slip in the range of 2–3 m (6 ft 7 in–9 ft 10 in). In that era, scientists believed that large shallow earthquakes were the result of magma moving underground or even subterranean explosions. Bunjiro Koto, a professor at the University of Tokyo, was so influenced by the extraordinary surface faulting that he diverged from the traditional belief and proclaimed that sudden fault slip had been the cause and not simply a secondary consequence of the event. [5][8]
The earthquake was recorded on Gray-Milne-Ewing seismographs at weather observation stations at Gifu, Nagoya, Osaka, and Tokyo as well as a station housed at the Imperial University of Tokyo. Although the units went off scale after 8.5 seconds at Gifu and 13.5 seconds at Nagoya (probably due to an inundation of large S waves) the seismograms they produced have been beneficial for seismologists to develop an understanding of the fault rupture process. The records from the stations at Gifu and Nagoya were especially useful as they were the closest to the fault zone. [3][4]
Within the first several decades of the event, Koto and Omori documented the comprehensive fault breaks that were visible on the surface, and a later investigation by T. Matsuda revealed that the breaks followed a general northwest-southeast trend. Matsuda's 1974 survey also documented intermittent and complementary conjugate faults that were aligned northeast-southwest and labeled the arrangement the Nobi fault system. The strike-slip breaks were described as primarily left-lateral offset of three major faults. The surface rupture did not extend over the full distance of the individual faults, but the Nukumi segment ran 20 km (12 mi) with a maximum offset of 3 m (9.8 ft). The Neodani and Umehara faults had rupture lengths of 35 km (22 mi) and 25 km (16 mi) and maximum offsets of 8 m (26 ft) and 5 m (16 ft) respectively. [4]
The shock occurred near Nagoya, and was felt throughout the country, but was the strongest in central Japan. The cities of Gifu and Ogaki experienced heavy damage, due largely to fire, but Osaka and Nagoya were also significantly affected. The earthquake was strong in Tokyo, lasting for many minutes, and knocked items off shelves and stopped clocks. [9]
The initial report of the disaster in Tokyo's The Asahi Shimbun newspaper gave only limited details. It stated that a new building for the Home Ministry in Tokyo lost several chimneys and that the reason for the loss of power in Yokohama was that a brick chimney had fallen at the power plant and had damaged equipment there. The following day though, the paper revealed that many homes had been lost and other industrial buildings were damaged or destroyed in Osaka, including the Naniwa cotton textile mill, a new western-style three-story brick building. On November 3, as the extent of the damage was becoming clearer, the same paper reported that more than 1,000 Japanese homes and other buildings had collapsed in Nagoya. [9]
More than 3,000 aftershocks were reported by the Gifu weather observatory in the 14 months following the event. According to a 1976 study by Takeshi Mikumo and Masataka Ando, three or four shocks per year were still being detected. Several university studies of the microearthquake activity were undertaken in the 1960s and 1970s and the areas southwest of the Neodani fault and near Gifu and Inuyama were found to be experiencing elevated activity. [4]
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Earthquakes
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I-70 reopens east of Grand Junction after mudslide closes roadway
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CDOT closed I-70 in both directions at exit 46, Cameo, near Palisade, due to the mudslide just before 7:30. Author: Laura Casillas Published: 8:20 PM MDT July 28, 2021 Updated: 10:36 PM MDT July 28, 2021 COLORADO CITY, Colo. — The Colorado Department of Transportation ( CDOT ) closed Interstate 70 in both directions at the Cameo exit, near Palisade due to a mudslide Wednesday just before 7:30 p.m. The road reopened a little after 10 p.m. A message from CDOT's Twitter account said there may still be water and mud on the road and urged drivers to be cautious. This closure comes after I-70 in Glenwood Canyon has closed numerous times this summer due to mudslides. CDOT automatically closes that flood-prone stretch of highway anytime a Flash Flood Warning is issued by the National Weather Service . The Grizzly Creek burn scar is located right near the highway, and burn scars are especially vulnerable to flash flooding due to the lack of vegetation to absorb moisture. As a result, flood-driven mudslides are common near or even over the interstate. If detouring, CDOT asked motorists to use the northern alternate route, which adds an extra 2.5 hours of travel time. Westbound motorists from the Denver metro area should plan on exiting I-70 at Exit 205 at Silverthorne and traveling north on Colorado 9 toward Kremmling or exiting I-70 at Exit 157 at Wolcott and traveling north on Colorado 131 toward Steamboat Springs. > Watch video above: I-70 back open in both directions after Glenwood Canyon mudslides Travelers will continue west on U.S. 40 and then south on Colorado 13 to complete the alternate route and return to westbound I-70 at Exit 90 at Rifle. Motorists traveling eastbound from Utah or Grand Junction can reach the Denver Metro area by traveling the route above in reverse.
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Mudslides
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Republic Protests
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Anti-government protesters
59th government of Turkey
The Republic Protests (Turkish: Cumhuriyet Mitingleri) were a series of peaceful mass rallies that took place in Turkey in 2007 in support of a strict principle of state secularism. [1]
The first rally took place in Ankara on 14 April 2007, just two days before the start of the presidential election process. [1] The second one took place in Istanbul on 29 April. [14] The third and fourth rallies took place consecutively in Manisa and Çanakkale on 5 May. [11] The fifth rally took place in İzmir on 13 May. [2]
The number of people gathering for the first protest in front of Anıtkabir, the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in Ankara, was cited as ranging from "hundreds of thousands" to 1.5 million people. [5] In the second protest, more than one million people gathered for the protests in Çağlayan square, Istanbul according to AFP[6] and Reuters. [7] The BBC reported hundreds of thousands of people. [15] Over one million people reportedly participated in the fifth rally. [9]
Turkey's preservation and maintenance of its secular identity has been an issue and source of tension long before the demonstration. In the past, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has spoken out against the active restrictions on wearing the Islamic-style head scarves in government offices and schools, and taken steps to bolster religious institutions. According to the Guardian Unlimited, Erdoğan showed his Islamist nature when he initiated a move in 2004 to criminalize adultery, which eventually failed under intense pressure from the secularist forces in the country and the European Union, which Turkey has been trying to join. [16]
General Yaşar Büyükanıt, Chief of the Turkish General Staff, warned against Islamic fundamentalism in October 2006. Prime Minister Erdoğan replied that there was no such threat. [17] In a press conference two days prior to the demonstration, Büyükanıt stated: "We hope that someone is elected president who is loyal to the principles of the republic — not just in words but in essence." This statement was widely interpreted as a hint from the General urging Erdoğan not to run. [16]
The serving president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, aimed a clear swipe at Erdoğan the day before the demonstrations by stating, "The threat which Islamic fundamentalism poses to the country is higher than ever. "[18] Although the post is mainly ceremonial, the Turkish president has the power to veto laws if he holds them to be in violation of the Constitution of Turkey, as well as to veto appointments to the highest positions of the state administration, such as the presidencies of universities and many public institutions. Sezer, a former chief of the Constitutional Court, did so many times during his years in office. [10][19] In a recent poll by Hürriyet, a majority of the participants agreed with the president's assessment. [20]
On April 24, foreign minister Abdullah Gül was announced as the official candidate of Justice and Development Party, by Erdoğan. His candidacy was controversial from the beginning due to his background of two proscribed Islamic political parties, and his statement "We want to change the secular system", in an interview published by the Guardian in 1995. [21] Nevertheless, additional concerns were also present, including the effect of the hijab-style clothing of his spouse on Turkey's image,[22] who previously filed a case against Turkey for the ban in the public buildings. [23]
On 14 April the first protest took place in Tandoğan square in Ankara. The number of people gathering in front of Anıtkabir, the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in Ankara, was cited as ranging from "hundreds of thousands" to 1.5 million people. The first protest was one of the largest that Turkey had seen in years until then. [24] The target of the first protest was the possible presidential candidacy of the then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (the outcome of which will be determined by the Turkish Grand National Assembly (unless the recent modifications on the constitution become ratified on time), in which Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) has a healthy majority). Erdoğan decided not to run for president after the rally. The slogan of the protest was Claim Your Republic (Turkish: Cumhuriyetine Sahip Çık). [5][25] According to the Ministry of the General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces, who administer Anıtkabir, 370,000 people visited the monument on that day,[26] but eyewitness accounts from those who participated say that at least twice that amount was not able to enter the crowded grounds (see photo). Police announcements gave conflicting numbers ranging from about 70,000 to 150,000 participants which was criticized among police officials themselves stating "such announcements hurt the credibility of the department. "[27] CNN Türk spoke of more than 650,000 at the meeting. [28]
The demonstrators had different motives, including the suspicion that Erdoğan, who is thought to be attached to political Islam, will alter the secular state. Erdoğan's government denies having an Islamic agenda, but according to CNN, some critics argue that the government is inching the country towards increased religious rule. [3] Erdoğan has had run-ins with the law in the past: He was tried and convicted for "inciting religious hatred" and had consequently served a four-month jail term in 2000 while he was the Mayor of Istanbul, Turkey's most populous city. [29] According to the Guardian Unlimited, the pro-Islamic prime minister's party has been eroding secularists' longtime grip on power. [16]
The protest was initiated by the "Atatürk Thought Association" (Turkish: Atatürkçü Düşünce Derneği) and supported by around 300 non-governmental organizations in Turkey. First some 60,000 people who travelled from all over Turkey by bus arrived to the protest in the early hours of Saturday, 14 April. People travelled by train and the residents of Ankara joined the protest overfilling Tandoğan Square and the nearby streets two hours before the official beginning. Among the protesters were also leaders of the opposition parties, Deniz Baykal (CHP), Zeki Sezer (DSP) and some professors of various universities wearing academic regalia. Protesters, waving the Turkish flag and carrying banners depicting Atatürk, chanted "Turkey is secular and will remain secular" (Turkish: Türkiye laiktir laik kalacak) and "We don't want an imam as president!" (Turkish: İmam cumhurbaşkanı istemiyoruz). The demonstration in downtown Ankara ended at 13:00 local time (10:00 GMT). Afterwards, the crowd marched to the Anıtkabir to pay their respect to the founder of the republic. [4]
During the demonstrations, flight above Tandoğan Square and Anıtkabir was banned. Twelve ambulances and eleven police APCs were kept at standby in the surrounding streets. [5] A contingent of 10,000 police officers watched over the crowd,[10] but the demonstration ended peacefully. [4]
Although the demonstrations received international media attention,[30] all but one (Kanal Türk) of the local networks gave the demonstrations very little coverage. Habertürk director Melih Meriç said the lack of local coverage is because of political pressure. [31]
On 16 April in an interview en route to Germany on board the prime minister's jet, Erdoğan said that the demonstration would not affect his decisions (at the time he had not yet decided whether to run).
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Protest_Online Condemnation
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Hospitals barely functioning, famine still looming in Ethiopia’s Tigray region
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UN humanitarians expressed concern on Tuesday at the uncertain situation in Ethiopia's conflict-ravaged Tigray region despite a ceasefire call from the Government, highlighting the ongoing famine-like conditions there and the potential for disease outbreaks. The development follows Monday’s reported entry into regional capital, Mekelle, of forces loyal to the opposition, after nearly eight months of heavy fighting. “All I need is for my wife & baby to be safe. I don’t mind if it’s a girl or a boy,” says Andinet as he paces up and down the corridor outside the delivery room. His wife, Serawit, is in labour and any minute, their baby will be born.#ForEveryChild Healthhttps://t.co/Qb7KGvRbNn In response to the pillaging of video equipment in Mekelle, UN Children’s Fund UNICEF on Monday, issued a statement denouncing those responsible, citing Members of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces. Earlier this month, the agency warned that 140,000 children are acutely malnourished and at risk of dying, unless aid access is forthcoming. “We have seen reports that have come in and UNHCR is extremely worried about the latest developments inside Tigray, particularly in the capital Mekelle”, said Boris Cheshirkov, spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). “Although we are thankful that our staff are all safe and accounted for, we are concerned about the lack of communication, as both electrical power and phone networks are not functioning.” This made it “even more difficult for our staff to work and deliver humanitarian assistance”, Mr. Cheshirkov explained. “We call for calm and restraint and appeal to all parties to the conflict to abide by international law to protect civilians, including people who have been displaced and to ensure that humanitarian workers can continue to exercise their duties and reach as many people as they can…in need of vital assistance right now.” Echoing those concerns, World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said that the UN agency was “taking measures to reinforce the security and wellbeing of our staff, but at the same time we are continuing to deliver activities where it is possible to do so”. This includes camps for internally displaced people, access to essential health care and increasing the number of mobile health clinics operating in hard-to-access communities. “We are obviously concerned about (the) potential for cholera, measles and malaria outbreaks in the region”, the WHO spokesperson said. “In addition, the Tigray region is also located in the meningitis belt and it is at risk of yellow fever outbreaks.” After eight months of conflict between Ethiopian Government troops and those loyal to the dominant regional force, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), hospitals “are barely functioning”, people continue to be displaced and famine is “looming”, Mr. Jasarevic insisted. There is also a serious danger of communicable and vaccine-preventable diseases spreading owing to a lack of food, clean water, safe shelter and access to health care. This risk is “very real”, the WHO official said. “All these factors combine - are literally a recipe - for larger epidemics.” Three employees of the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) agency have been killed by unknown attackers in the restive Tigray region of Ethiopia, drawing swift condemnation from UN Secretary-General António Guterres who said on Saturday he was “deeply shocked” by the murders. The impact of conflicts old and new, climate shocks and COVID-19, in addition to a lack of funding, have left millions more on the verge of famine than six months ago, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday.
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Famine
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Ford Hunger March
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The Ford Hunger March, sometimes called the Ford Massacre, was a demonstration on March 7, 1932 in the United States by unemployed auto workers in Detroit, Michigan, which took place during the height of the Great Depression. The march started in Detroit and ended in Dearborn, Michigan, in a confrontation in which four workers were shot to death by the Dearborn Police Department and security guards employed by the Ford Motor Company. More than 60 workers were injured, many by gunshot wounds. Three months later, a fifth worker died of his injuries. The march was supported by the Unemployed Councils, a project of the Communist Party USA. It was an important part of a chain of events that resulted in the unionization of the U.S. auto industry. In the 1920s, prosperity came to the Detroit area, because of the successes of the U.S. auto industry in that decade. Concentrated in the Detroit area, the industry produced 5,337,000 vehicles in 1929, as many individuals bought their first cars. The 1930 U.S. Census reported the U.S. population as 122,775,046 people. (As a point of reference, the U.S. auto industry produced 8,681,000 vehicles in 2008, and the U.S. population was estimated at 304,375,000 that year. Therefore, the U.S. auto industry was producing 50% more vehicles per capita in 1929 than in the early 21st century, when there is more competition from foreign auto makers.) On Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the stock market had crashed, leading to the Great Depression. Vehicle production in the country plummeted. In 1930, production declined to 3,363,000 vehicles. In 1931, production fell to 1,332,000 vehicles, only 25% of the production of two years before. [1]
As a result, unemployment in Detroit skyrocketed, and the wages of those still working were slashed. In 1929, the average annual wage for auto workers was $1639. By 1931, it had fallen 54% to $757. [2] By 1932, there were 400,000 unemployed in Michigan. In 1927, there were 113 suicides in Detroit. That number increased to 568 in 1931. In that year, the welfare allowance was 15 cents per person per day. At the time, neither states nor the federal government provided unemployment insurance or Social Security. A wave of bank closures took the life savings of many unemployed workers and retirees, as every neighborhood bank in Detroit went out of business. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, established by Congress to secure bank deposits and protect people's savings, had not yet been established. By 1932, foreclosures, evictions, repossessions and bankruptcies were commonplace, and the unemployed felt despair. [3]
The Detroit Unemployed Council and the Auto, Aircraft and Vehicle Workers of America called for a march on Monday, March 7, 1932, from Detroit to Dearborn to end at the Ford River Rouge Complex, the company's largest factory. The mayor of Detroit was Frank Murphy, a politician who later became Governor of Michigan. He was later appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Murphy administration decided to allow the march to proceed, although they did not grant a permit. On March 6, William Z. Foster, secretary of the Trade Union Unity League and a leader of the Communist Party, gave a speech in Detroit in preparation for the march. The marchers intended to present 14 demands to Henry Ford, the head of the Ford Motor Company. Among these were demands to rehire the unemployed, provide funds for health care, end racial discrimination in hiring and promotions, provide winter fuel for the unemployed, abolish the use of company spies and private police against workers, and give workers the right to organize unions. [4]
March 7 was a bitterly cold day in Detroit, and a crowd estimated at between 3,000 and 5,000 gathered near the Dearborn city limits, about a mile from the Ford plant. The Detroit Times called it "one of the coldest days of the winter, with a frigid gale whooping out of the northwest". Marchers carried banners reading "Give Us Work", "We Want Bread Not Crumbs", and "Tax the Rich and Feed the Poor". Albert Goetz gave a speech, asking that the marchers avoid violence. The march proceeded peacefully along the streets of Detroit until it reached the Dearborn city limits. There, the Dearborn police attempted to stop the march by firing tear gas into the crowd and began hitting marchers with clubs. One officer fired a gun at the marchers. The unarmed crowd scattered into a field covered with stones, picked them up, and began throwing stones at the police. The angry marchers regrouped and advanced nearly a mile toward the plant. There, two fire engines began spraying cold water onto the marchers from an overpass. The police were joined by Ford security guards and began shooting into the crowd. Marchers Joe York, Coleman Leny and Joe DeBlasio were killed, and at least 22 others were wounded by gunfire. The leaders decided to call off the march at that point and began an orderly retreat. Harry Bennett, head of Ford security, drove up in a car, opened a window, and fired a pistol into the crowd. Immediately, the car was pelted with rocks, and Bennett was injured. He got out of the car and continued firing at the retreating marchers.
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Strike
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Poll tax riots
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The poll tax riots were a series of riots in British towns and cities during protests against the Community Charge (commonly known as the "poll tax"), introduced by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The largest protest occurred in central London on Saturday 31 March 1990, shortly before the tax was due to come into force in England and Wales. The advent of the poll tax was due to an effort to alter the way the tax system was used to fund local government in the UK. The system in place until this time was called "rates" and had been in place in some form from the beginning of the 17th century. [1] The rates system has been described as "a levy on property, which in modern times saw each taxpayer paying a rate based on the estimated rental value of their home". [1]
The Thatcher government had long promised to replace domestic rates, which were unpopular, especially among Conservative voters. They were seen by many as an unfair way of raising revenue for local councils. [2] It was levied on houses rather than people. [2]
The proposed replacement was a flat-rate per capita Community Charge—"a head tax that saw every adult pay a fixed rate amount set by their local authority". [1] The new Charge was widely called a "poll tax" and was introduced in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales a year later. [3] The Charge proved extremely unpopular; while students and the registered unemployed had to pay 20%, some large families occupying relatively small houses saw their charges go up considerably, and the tax was thus accused of saving the rich money and moving the expenses onto the poor. [4]
In November 1989 the All Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation was set up by the Militant tendency. Other groups such as the 3D (Don't Register, Don't Pay, Don't Collect) network provided national coordination for anti-poll tax unions who were not aligned to particular political factions. [5] The All Britain Federation called a demonstration in London for 31 March 1990 which all of the major networks organised for. Three days before the event, organisers realised the march would be larger than 60,000 (the capacity of Trafalgar Square) and asked permission from the MPS and the Department of the Environment to divert the march to Hyde Park. The request was denied[6] on the basis that the policing had been arranged for Trafalgar Square and there was no time to re-plan it. A building site on Trafalgar Square with easily accessible supplies of bricks and scaffolding was left largely unsecured while the police set up their centre of operations on the other side of the square. On 31 March 1990, people began gathering in Kennington Park from noon. Between 180,000 and 250,000 arrived. The police report, a year after the riot, estimated the crowd at 200,000. An abandoned rally by the Labour Party may have contributed to the number of protesters. The march began at Kennington Park at 1:30 pm, moving faster than planned because some of the crowd had forced open the gates of the park, presumably in order to avoid being forced through smaller gates. This split the march over both sides of the road, and protesters continued in much the same way for the rest of the route. By 2:30 pm, Trafalgar Square was nearing its capacity. Unable to continue moving easily into Trafalgar Square, at about 3 pm the march stopped in Whitehall. The police, worried about a surge towards the new security gates of Downing Street, blocked the top and bottom of Whitehall, and lined the pavement refusing to let people leave the road. Additional police units were dispatched to reinforce the officers manning the barrier blocking the Downing Street side of Whitehall. The section of the march which stopped opposite Downing Street reportedly contained veteran anarchists and a group called "Bikers Against The Poll Tax", some of whom became aggravated by reportedly heavy-handed arrests, including one of a man in a wheelchair. [6]
Mounted riot police were brought in behind this immobilised section of the march, in theory to clear the protesters from Whitehall, despite both retreat and advance being blocked by further lines of police. Meanwhile, the tail-end had been diverted at the Parliament Square end of Whitehall, and the anarchists it had attracted were at the head of an unpoliced portion of the march. These people walked to Richmond Terrace, bringing the diverted march into Whitehall, opposite Downing Street and behind the police lines on that side of Whitehall. The protesters at the rear of the stationary group, being faced by mounted police seemingly preparing to charge, sat down on the road for safety. Despite black-clothed and scarf-masked people running through seemingly from behind the police lines and urging them up, they remained seated until physically dragged away and arrested for "obstructing Whitehall". The mounted police then advanced at speed, forcing the Whitehall section of the march to fight its way into Trafalgar Square. From 4 pm, with the rally nearly officially over, contradictory reports began to arise. According to some sources, mounted riot police (officially used in an attempt to clear Whitehall of protesters) charged out of a side street into the crowd in Trafalgar Square. Whether intentional or not, this was interpreted by the crowd as a provocation, fueling anger in the Square where the police had already been pushing sections of crowd back into corners, leaving no way out except through the police. At 4:30 pm, four shielded police riot vans drove into the crowd (a tactic in dealing with mass demonstrations at the time) outside the South African Embassy, attempting to force through to the entrance to Whitehall where police were re-grouping. The crowd attacked the vans with wooden staves and scaffolding poles. Soon after, rioting began to escalate. By 4:30 pm police had closed the main Underground stations in the area and southern exits of Trafalgar Square, making it difficult for people to disperse. Coaches had been parked south of the river, so many marchers tried to move south. At this point, Militant Fed stewards were withdrawn on police orders. Sections of the crowd, including unemployed coal miners, climbed scaffolding and rained debris on the police below. At 5 pm, builders' cabins below the scaffolding caught fire, followed by a room in the South African Embassy on the other side of the Square. The smoke from the fires caused near darkness in the Square and produced a 20-minute lull in rioting. Between 6 and 7 pm, the police opened the southern exits of the Square and slowly moved people out of Trafalgar Square. A large section of the crowd was moved back down Northumberland Avenue and allowed over the River Thames in order to return to their organised transport. Two other sections of demonstrators, now very angry and aggravated, were pushed north into the wealthy shopping streets of West End, which suffered reported theft and vandalism. Published accounts detail shop windows being broken, goods looted, and cars being overturned in Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Street, Regent Street, Charing Cross Road, and Covent Garden.
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Riot
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Kannapolis National Night Out event canceled
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KANNAPOLIS, N.C. — The city of Kannapolis was set to have its annual National Night Out on October 5 to celebrate with free food, live music, children's games, and much more. However, due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, and low vaccination rates in Rowan and Cabarrus counties, the event has been canceled. For the latest breaking news, weather and traffic alerts, download the WCNC Charlotte mobile app. RELATED: All North Carolina counties in the 'red' for high COVID transmission "National Night Out is an annual community-building campaign that promotes a true sense of community and provides a great opportunity to bring police and neighbors together under positive circumstances. The goal of National Night Out is to have police-community partnerships and neighborhood camaraderie to make our neighborhoods safe and caring places to live." a statement released by the City of Kannapolis said. RELATED: NC just hits vaccination milestone, eight months after shots started "Rowan County still has one of the highest test positivity rates in the state," according to the Rowan County webpage on COVID-19 data. The county has a positivity rate of 20%. "Rowan County Public Health cannot emphasize to you enough about the importance of getting tested if you have any symptoms or if you have come in contact with someone that is COVID positive," the webpage explains. Rowan County has seen a total of 23,973 cases and 364 deaths. Cabarrus County has recorded 29,685 cases of COVID-19 with 292 deaths. Most recently, it saw a positivity rate of 12.6%.
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Organization Closed
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Future of COVID-19: A ‘consistent shift of the risk to the young’
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Since Medical News Today published this article, the paper in question has come under scrutiny. The journal in which it appears — PLOS ONE — has issued an “expression of concern.” The journal’s editors explain that “Concerns were raised about the validity of results and conclusions reported in the article and about undisclosed competing interests.” Read more here. Some experts believe that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, will eventually become endemic, finding its place among common cold viruses. A team of researchers from the United States and Norway has published a glimpse into that future based on a model of likely outcomes. The model predicts that COVID-19 will primarily affect the young if there is long-lasting immunity in other age groups or the symptoms become less severe in adults when they acquire the infection. According to senior author Ottar Bjornstad, Ph.D., Professor of Entomology and Biology at Penn State University: “Following infection by SARS-CoV-2, there has been a clear signature of increasingly severe outcomes and fatality with age. Yet, our modeling results suggest that the risk of infection will likely shift to younger children as the adult community becomes immune, either through vaccination or exposure to the virus.” The research appears in Science AdvancesTrusted Source. The researchers’ expectations are in line with what experts have seen before. “Historical records of respiratory diseases indicate that age-incidence patterns during virgin epidemics can be very different from endemic circulation,” says Bjornstad. Bjornstad suggests, as an illustration, the 1889–1890 epidemic, which people often refer to as the Asiatic or Russian flu. In its early days, it killed a million individuals, primarily over the age of 70 years. Bjornstad says the deadly outbreak “may have been caused by the emergence of HCoV-OC43 virus, which is now an endemic, mild, repeat-infecting cold virus affecting mostly children aged 7–12 months old.” “We know of a few respiratory viruses that were introduced into the human population, swept across the globe, and transitioned to endemic circulation, usually with annual wintertime peaks in incidence,” says Harvard’s Associate Professor Yonatan Grad, speaking to the university’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health News. He notes that although the 1918 flu caused by the A/H1N1 virus is a commonly cited example, “there are other more recent examples from influenza: the 1957 flu pandemic caused by an A/H2N2 influenza virus, the 1968 flu pandemic from an A/H3N2 influenza virus, and the 2009 “swine flu” pandemic, from an A/H1N1 influenza virus.” The researchers’ prediction that the disease will affect younger age groups in the future depends on adults developing long-term or permanent immunity to SARS-CoV-2 from vaccinations or prior exposure to the virus. If this does not occur, the primary burden of COVID-19 will remain among older adults. Bjornstad and his colleagues encourage people to get vaccinated as soon as possible since prior exposure to the virus does not reliably promote as robust an immune response. “Empirical evidence from seasonal coronaviruses indicates that prior exposure may only confer short-term immunity to reinfection, allowing recurrent outbreaks,” he says. However, he added that “this prior exposure may prime the immune system to provide some protection against severe disease.” The researchers developed a “realistic age-structured (RAS)” mathematical model as a means of projecting COVID-19’s future history over the short, medium, and long term. The model considers and allows for the modification of a range of variables, including demography, the amount of social interaction, and the duration of immunity that either blocks infection or reduces its severity. “For many infectious respiratory diseases, prevalence in the population surges during a virgin epidemic but then recedes in a diminishing wave pattern, as the spread of the infection unfolds over time toward an endemic equilibrium,” says lead author Ruiyun Li. Some experts have suggested an endemic future for SARS-CoV-2 for a while. Speaking to the National Security Strategy Committee in London in October 2020, the United Kingdom’s chief scientific advisor, Patrick Vallance, said: “I think if you speak with most epidemiologists and most public health workers, they would say today that they believe this disease will become endemic, at least in the short term and most likely in the long term.” “Depending on immunity and demography,” says Li, “our RAS model supports this observed trajectory — it predicts a strikingly different age structure at the start of the COVID-19 epidemic compared to the eventual endemic situation. In a scenario of long-lasting immunity, either permanent or at least 10 years, the young are predicted to have the highest rates of infection as older individuals are protected from new infections by prior infection.” Researchers designed the model to project outcomes in 11 countries according to their differing demographics: China, Japan, South Korea, Spain, the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, United States, Brazil, and South Africa. The eventual progress of the virus varies from country to country. Li says, “Regardless of immunity and mixing, the population-level burden of mortality may differ among countries because of varying demographics.” For example, co-author Prof. Nils Chr. Stenseth says, “Given the marked increase of the infection-fatality ratio with age, countries with older population structures would be expected to have a larger fraction of deaths than those with relatively younger population structures.” Prof. Stenseth offers South Africa as an example. “South Africa — likely due, in part, to its younger population structure — has a lower number of deaths compared to older populations, such as Italy. We found that such ‘death disparities’ are heavily influenced by demographics. However, regardless of demographics, we predict a consistent shift of the risk to the young.” The researchers intend to make their model accessible to health authorities as a powerful and flexible tool that can help them prepare for future developments and better predict the required deployment of interventions. Dr. Bjornstad says, “The mathematical framework we built is flexible and can help in tailoring mitigation strategies for countries worldwide with varying demographics and social mixing patterns, thus providing a critical tool for policy decision-making.” In this Special Feature, Medical News Today looks at whether or not vaccine boosters may improve protection against the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2. In this Special Feature, we examine the issue of COVID-19 vaccine boosters, including why they might be necessary and who might need them most… Vaccines train our immune system to fight future infections. In this feature, we highlight the different types of COVID-19 vaccines and explain how… The Pfizer vaccine for the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 appears to be a safe and effective way to protect against COVID-19. Learn more here. mRNA vaccines deliver information to our cells that allows them to make viral or bacterial proteins. Our immune system reacts to the proteins and… Keep up with the ever-changing world of medical science with new and emerging developments in health. Your privacy is important to us
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Disease Outbreaks
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British Designer Ifeanyi Okwuadi Wins Top Prize at Hyères Fashion Festival
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“It’s 100 percent emotive,” said the designer, whose mother is from Sierra Leone and father from Nigeria. “I think we should all take action against the things that we find horrible in this world.” Each outfit referred to a specific aspect of the protest. There was a trenchcoat inspired by police officers’ uniforms; a sweatshirt with a wide neckline, in reference to protesters being violently evicted, and a patchwork scarf made using surplus Harris tweed and boy scout badges, inspired by artworks the women made when they disbanded the camp. Demonstrating a confident hand, he spliced together the outfits using a variety of fabrics, from silky lining material to wools and technical fabrics, mostly sourced in the U.K. “Britain has such a history that is just so untold,” Okwuadi told WWD, noting that British director Steve McQueen is among those tackling these topics. “He’s trying to retell the history that we have in Britain through film. I’m trying to do it through fashion and design. So I feel like there’s this consciousness that’s happening and filtering today, that’s retelling these stories.” Despite the coronavirus pandemic, an upbeat mood reigned at the event, with participants expressing relief that the festival was back to a full physical edition, after taking place in the absence of most of the fashion jury last year. “I never understood why the jury didn’t come last year, and I was very disappointed they didn’t come. By contrast, I’m very happy, of course, that everyone is here this year and that a lot of industry professionals also made it, even if we’re still missing people from the United States and Asia,” said Jean-Pierre Blanc, the director of the festival. “I think this edition exudes joy and enthusiasm,” he added. “I’m not going to pretend everything’s hunky-dory, but I’m thrilled to see that the people who came are happy to be here.” For the 10 fashion finalists, many of whom graduated from university in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, it was an intense few days, between facing the jury, staging two fashion shows and meeting the press. “It has been quite full-on, but I think we had a good atmosphere between all the designers, so it’s been a great experience,” said Finnish designer Sofia Ilmonen, as she caught up with fellow contestant Mateo Velazquez during a break between interviews. “The fashion industry is really hard to break into, so for us to get this opportunity is amazing, because otherwise it would be quite difficult to reach out to some of the people that we have met,” added Velazquez, the first Colombian designer to reach the final of the competition. Indeed, the wide range of sponsors at the festival guarantees a vast network of contacts for the young contestants, many of whom have yet to sell a collection. The Première Vision Grand Prize comes with a grant of 20,000 euros, and visibility during a Première Vision Paris event. Okwuadi will also be given the opportunity to undertake a project with the specialty ateliers that Chanel controls through its Paraffection subsidiary, a prize valued at up to 20,000 euros. He was singled out from the 10 finalists by a jury that included Ruba Abu-Nimah, executive creative director at Tiffany & Co.; upcycled sneaker designer Helen Kirkum; artist William Farr; stylist Suzanne Koller; Alfredo Canducci, founder of incubator System Preferences; model Sonny Hall; photographer Cho Gi-Seok; musician Steve Lacy; dancer Léo Walk and Tom Van der Borght, who won last year’s Grand Prize at Hyères. Trotter said she was looking for a combination of an original and compelling narrative with a high level of execution. “We’re just coming out of 18 months of a pandemic. For me, where they’re really talking about something very personal to them, and going deep into their roots, I find very interesting,” she explained. And while she values creativity, Trotter has a pragmatic approach to the clothing industry. “In the end, clothes are to be enjoyed, and I think there’s nothing more sustainable than having clothes that you want to wear repeatedly for a long time,” she explained. “That was also a strong criteria for us: What can this person bring to the industry that doesn’t exist today? And do they have a purpose to bring to the industry, other than just a level of creativity?” she added. A look by Elina Silina at the Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography. © Etienne Tordoir/Catwalkpictures/Courtesy of the Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography Latvian knitwear designer Elina Silina was awarded the Chloé Prize, a grant of 20,000 euros created in 2012 by the fashion house, also a sponsor of the festival. Her cobwebby white dress, inspired by a vintage Karl Lagerfeld design for the French label, was made using amber thread, which she said was discovered and patented by Latvian scientists. The Le19M Métiers d’Arts Prize in partnership with Chanel went to Thai designer Rukpong Raimaturapong, who worked with Chanel-owned milliner Maison Michel on wide-brimmed interchangeable hats in the same bright colors as his outfits. Supima, another official partner of the festival, supported the finalists by donating fabrics including velveteen, indigo denim, white denim, jersey, shirting and twill. “I think people really were excited to have that opportunity, because these are premium fabrics that are very hard to get a hold of in smaller quantities,” said Buxton Midyette, vice president of marketing and promotions for Supima, adding that it was stimulating to see young designers using the materials in new and different ways. Looks by Sofia Ilmonen at the Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography. © Etienne Tordoir/Catwalkpictures/Courtesy of the Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography Ilmonen won the inaugural Mercedes-Benz Sustainability Prize, which rewarded the designer that best applied the advice they received during mentoring sessions with Fashion Open Studio, a nonprofit organization campaigning for a more sustainable luxury industry, on sustainable practices. The prize also comes with a grant of 20,000 euros. Ilmonen, who worked for three years at Alexander McQueen, presented colorful modular dresses based on fabric squares that can be assembled with snap buttons, and adjusted with drawstrings. “I think that could be a huge asset for the brand to have that closer connection with the customers, but also them having the freedom to have their own creativity in the garment. On a sustainability aspect, if you do things yourself, that can create that stronger bond between you and your clothes,” she said. Meanwhile, Swiss designer Adeline Rappaz won the public’s vote for her couture-like garments made using upcycled fabrics. Trotter said environmental responsibility has come to be expected from young designers. “Sustainability wasn’t for me a big thing, if I’m frank, because I think it’s almost a given. I didn’t use that as a criteria. I mean, I expected it,” she said. Shoe designer Christian Louboutin, president of the fashion accessories jury, said there was a sustainable component to almost every entry he reviewed. “It’s like a tidal wave and it’s not going anywhere. It’s not a fashion trend. It’s really a very moving social phenomenon: everyone is concerned about sustainability and our planet,” he remarked. The main accessories award went to jeweler Capucine Huguet, while Yann Tosser-Roussey won the Hermès fashion accessories prize for his leather glove design. Louboutin said he was struck by the singular approach of the contestants. “The most important thing is really the creative mind, and the point is not to judge people on whether they’re capable of having a terrific commercial career,” he said. “I think that when you’re starting out, you have to remain completely free, and that’s what you communicate to other people.” In parallel with exhibitions, which will remain open to the public until Nov. 28, the festival also included fashion shows, film screenings, performances, book signings and round tables on topics like sustainable development and the challenges of fashion in Europe. The latter brought together Pascal Morand, executive president of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, French fashion’s governing body, with his Italian counterpart Carlo Capasa, chairman of the Camera della Moda, and leading industry executives, who all agreed on the need to present a united European front in an increasingly competitive environment. The Hyères festival has served as a springboard for designers including Paco Rabanne’s Julien Dossena; Viktor & Rolf’s Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren; Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello, and Rushemy Botter and Lisi Herrebrugh, the founders of men’s wear label Botter, who were named artistic directors at Nina Ricci in the wake of their 2018 win. Blanc said he hoped the fashion industry would remain open to welcoming young talents, despite growing commercial pressures. “I hope that we will keep this openness and the pleasure that we feel here in mingling, and above all, no self-segregation,” he said.
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Awards ceremony
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2000 Kaduna riots
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The 2000 Kaduna riots were religious riots in Kaduna involving Christians and Muslims over the introduction of sharia law in Kaduna State, Nigeria. [1] It is unclear how many people were killed in the fighting between Muslims and Christians, that lasted with peaceful intervals from 21 February until 23 May 2000; estimates vary from 1,000 to 5,000 deaths. When in February 2000, the governor of Kaduna announced the introduction of sharia to Kaduna State, of which non-Muslims form almost half of the population,[1] the Kaduna branch of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) organised a public protest against it in Kaduna city. [2] Muslim youths then clashed with them and the situation spiraled out of control, with massive violence and destruction on both sides. [2] The violence happened in two main waves (sometimes referred to as "Sharia 1" and "Sharia 2"): a first wave from 21 to 25 February, with further killings in March, followed by a second wave from 22 to 23 May. [2] The initial violence left more than 1,000 people dead;[1][3] a judicial commission set up by the Kaduna state government reported the official death toll to be 1,295. [2] However, Human Rights Watch estimated the total number fatalities, including those from March and May and many from February the commission had not counted, to be much higher, somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000. [2] Several media reported a number of about or more than 2,000 deaths (and 2 to 300 deaths in May). [4][5] Eventually, the army interfered to end the bloody clashes when it became clear the police could not control them. [6]
These became the first so-called "Sharia clashes",[1] the start of the religious riots phase of the Sharia Conflict (1999–present).
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Riot
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the Trump Administration declared to leave INF Treaty
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As was first threatened back in October, the Trump Administration announced today that the United States was renouncing the thirty-two-year-old Reagan Era Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty due to alleged Russian violations of the treaty: WASHINGTON — The United States is suspending one of the last major nuclear arms control treaties with Russia after heated conversations between the two powers recently failed to resolve a long-running accusation that Moscow is violating the Reagan-era treaty. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the decision on Friday as the Trump administration maintained that the Russian government has been unwilling to admit that a missile it has deployed near European borders violates the terms of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Mr. Pompeo and his deputies have insisted that Moscow destroy the missile. Instead, the government of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia counteraccused the United States of violating the treaty’s terms because of the way in which it has deployed launchers for antiballistic missile systems in Europe. “Countries must be held accountable when they break the rules,” Mr. Pompeo told journalists at the State Department. With the treaty on its last legs, the question is whether Mr. Pompeo’s announcement will result in a flurry of last-minute negotiations with Moscow — which seems unlikely — or whether it will accelerate the Cold War-like behavior among the United States, Russia and China. Complicating that question is the American intelligence agencies’ warning this week that Russia and China are “more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s.” The fate of the treaty has quickly become a test of the continuing struggle inside the Trump administration, and with its allies, over how to handle an increasingly aggressive Russia. Mr. Trump campaigned on remaking Washington’s relationship with Moscow; the open investigation by the Justice Department’s special counsel is, at its core, about whether he and his campaign aides promised to relieve sanctions and other impediments to Russia in return for financial or electoral benefits from Mr. Putin’s government. But Mr. Trump has surrounded himself in the White House with hawkish advisers, including John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, who has been a major critic of treaties that he believes impinge the United States’ ability to counter new or rising foreign threats. The decision to leave the nuclear arms treaty took American allies by surprise when word of the decision first leaked out in October and was quickly confirmed by Mr. Trump. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the military alliance that was created to counter the Soviet threat 70 years ago, acknowledged that Russia had violated the I.N.F. treaty and called on Moscow in December “to return urgently to full and verifiable compliance.” But the alliance stopped short of agreeing that the United States should withdraw, declaring then that the “allies are firmly committed to the preservation of effective international arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation.” The announcement by Mr. Pompeo came just ahead of the expiration, on Saturday, of a 60-day deadline he gave Moscow to come into compliance with the treaty. He had no expectation that the Russians would heed his warning. With this announcement, the clock begins on a six-month period that will likely lead to the complete American withdrawal from the treaty, although the announcement does mean that we would be free to deploy or test weapons that arguably fall within the provisions of the treaty. As things stand, though, there are no weapons on our arsenal that could be deployed in such a quick manner, and nothing in the pipeline that would lead to such a deployment. Even if there were, though, it’s not at all clear that we would be able to get the necessary permission from any of our European allies to deploy such missiles on their territory. As it was, the deployment of the Pershing II missile in Europe during the Cold War was a controversial one that caused real domestic political trouble for governments in West Germany and Great Britain at the time, and that was during a particularly tense time during what turned out to be the final stages of the Cold War. This time around, the eagerness of governments or voters in those nations to allow nuclear missiles to be deployed on their territory is likely an even bigger issue and a bigger political headache for national leaders of those nations, which are already dealing with difficult domestic political situations as it is. Therefore, it’s difficult to see what advantage the United States gains from withdrawing from the treaty. Daniel Larison comments: Giving up on the INF Treaty is one of the biggest blunders that Trump has made as president, and it could prove to be one of his costliest mistakes. While there is still a period of six months for the president to reverse course, there is very little chance that will happen. Bolton has wanted the INF Treaty gone for decades, and now he is in a position to ensure that it won’t survive. The president cites Russian violations of the treaty to justify this decision, but this is an excuse rather than a real reason to tear up a major arms control agreement. James Acton notes that the U.S. has abandoned other successful agreements when the other parties were complying with them, and that makes it hard to believe that complaints about violations in this case are the real reason for leaving When a treaty has worked this well and has been as good for U.S. and allied security as this treaty has been, it is absurd to throw it all away when it can still be salvaged. The administration made the bare minimum of effort to resolve outstanding disputes with Russia, and they are practically jumping at the chance to kill the treaty. Leaving this treaty bodes very ill for the survival of New START, which expires in two years, and once both treaties are dead there will be nothing left to constrain the growth of the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. Furthermore, as Naval War College Professor Tom Nichols argued in October when this idea was first floated, withdrawing from the treaty is a gift to Russia: The chief argument now for withdrawing from the INF Treaty is that the Russians are violating it. This is undeniable. The Russians are in fact testing weapons at prohibited ranges in direct violation of the treaty. They are doing this, however, not because they are strong, but because they are weak. The Russians, ironically, are now in the position NATO was in during the Cold War, a conventionally inferior power whose only equalizer is nuclear weapons. Unlike NATO, however, the Russians are not in a defensive position, but rather remain a revisionist power bent on threatening their neighbors. They are conspicuously violating the treaty as an attempt to intimidate the Europeans by raising the specter of a regional nuclear war if Russia does not get its way in the event of a conflict. This is why scrapping the INF Treaty plays right into the favored Russian scenario, in which the burden of nuclear escalation would rest, once again, upon NATO. Right now, Russian strategy in Europe is likely centered on seizing a small piece of NATO territory, sitting on it for an extended period to prove that Article V is a sham and then threatening tactical nuclear use if NATO tries to drive them out. Proponents of re-nuclearizing the theater would argue that this is precisely why the United States must have a symmetrically configured theater deterrent, so that any Russian threat could be balanced with a corresponding American threat. (…) That would be a better argument if it were still 1985. The problem for these nuclear enthusiasts—one they omit by selective memory or poor strategic judgment—is that there is no longer a central front between NATO and Russia on which such exchanges would take place. NATO’s only choices (as Russia knows) would be to respond with nuclear use on our own allies or on Russian territory, which would raise the escalatory danger far beyond whatever was at stake in a small, localized conflict. The Americans would blink, Russia’s point would be made, and NATO would eventually dissolve. The better answer is to close off any such option to the Russians by bolstering NATO’s conventional capabilities, and thus warn the Russians that even if they win, they lose. They might be able to muster a locally superior force and take territory, but they cannot defend it. They will inevitably be driven out, and then the burden of escalation will fall upon them, not us, which is exactly how it should be. If they invade, they will be defeated. If they escalate, they will be destroyed—and by choices they, not we, will make. (…) A more confident America would consult with its allies and drag the Russians back to the negotiating table for the dull, necessary work of showing that NATO cannot be panicked into responding to Russian antics by scraping entire treaties. (We would also avoid bumbling into a trap where the Russians could escape strategic limits by reclassifying their long-range weapons as intermediate-range.) The United States and NATO won the Cold War by constancy and perseverance, and they should not now allow themselves to be stampeded by insecurity and vanity into taking the self-defeating and strategically incoherent path the Trump administration is now considering. For several years now, dating back to before President Trump took office, the United States has asserted that Russia is violating at least the spirit of the INF Treaty with respect to its deployment of missiles in western Russia. Instead of withdrawing from the treaty, though, previous Administrations made the decision to stay in the treaty and work within its grievance procedures in an effort to resolve the dispute. Additionally, to the extent there were allegations of violations, those allegations were not aired publicly in the hope that the matter could be resolved without doing so. One of the reasons for such a decision is the idea that withdrawing from one of the landmark Cold War-era treaties would send the wrong signal not only to Russia but also to other nuclear powers that might be tempted to increase their own development of shorter-range missiles, which are especially dangerous because their shorter flight time makes the prospect of a mistake or misinterpretation far more likely. Trump’s decision to reverse that policy opens up the prospect of a renewed arms race that would not benefit anyone Last year, though, the Joint Chiefs of Staff put the issue on the public table when they alleged that the recent test of a ground-based cruise missile violates the treaty at least in spirit. More recently, intelligence reports that were also made public have claimed that Russia’s newest effort to develop a cruise missile that would travel at hypersonic speeds would violate the treaty. It’s worth noting, though, that these systems have only been tested. They have not been formally deployed, and it is by no means clear that the development of these systems has been sufficiently successful to permit deployment. Given that, the decision to withdraw from the treaty is premature at best and also mistaken since it precludes us from having any legal basis for calling the Russians back to the table In addition to the alleged Russian violations of the treaty, the Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw from the treaty is apparently also aimed at China, which is not bound by the treaty and has a fairly good sized arsenal of short and intermediate range missiles with nuclear payloads capable of hitting Russia as well as American allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Australia. However, it’s unclear what that has to do with a treaty that has been primarily successful at keeping nuclear weapons out of the European theater for more than three decades now. This is especially true given the fact that the U.S. possesses several options in countering the Chinese threat, including sea-launched missiles that are not covered by the terms of the treaty at all. While Russia’s actions are concerning, they are moves that the United States can easily compensate for while still staying within the boundaries of the treaty. The better decision would be to utilize the provisions of the treaty itself to form the basis for a strong negotiating position that would either lead to an expansion of the treaty to deal with the threat posed by ground-launched cruise missiles or result in a much-needed new nuclear arms reduction treaty, something that the current Trump foreign policy doesn’t seem to favor at all. The same is largely true regarding the threats allegedly posed by China, much of which can be addressed while still staying within the boundaries of the treaty. For all of these reasons, this decision to scrap a treaty that has worked for the past three decades seems to be, at the very least, foolish and, at the very worst, highly dangerous. One can only assume this is what Putin demanded of his servant during their most recent un-recorded, one-on-one, no Americans present meeting at the G-20. Just amazing. He’s walking away from a treaty that St. Ronnie created and Republicans are apparently fine with that. What’s left before we call it treason? This seems like a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, as I don’t see the use of being in a bilateral treaty the other party is wholesale ignoring. As things stand, though, there are no weapons on our arsenal that could be deployed in such a quick manner, and nothing in the pipeline that would lead to such a deployment. That alone would be reason enough not to withdraw from the treaty, even if there was no single additional reason. It’s a truism that no treaty remains intact when it begins to work against the interests of the stronger signatory. It takes a very clueless brand of moron to withdraw from one where it’s the weaker signatory who benefits most from withdrawal. I imagine Dennison thinks he needs to look tough on Russia, so he’ll hand them an advantage that makes them more dangerous. That’s about all he’s good at, fucking America up. Obviously this is being done at Putin’s insistence.
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Withdraw from an Organization
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FBI searching for suspect in Bonham bank robbery
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The FBI is searching for a suspect in a Bonham bank robbery that happened Friday morning. "That's scary for this community because you know, it's such a small community you don't know," said Frances Austin, who planned to go to the ATM at CapTex Bank off Highway 78 around 8 Friday morning. "But decided not to, so I think the good Lord was saying hey, don't go there right now," she said. She ended up going later, but by then, it was blocked off by police. "Cause I had my turn signal on to turn in here and then it was all blocked off so I just kept on going," Austin said. Around 7:40 a.m. Friday, Bonham police say a man followed a teller inside the back of the bank when she was going into work. Police said he told her to unlock the safe, then told her and two other tellers to give him their cellphones and go into the bathroom, which he locked by taping a chair to the door handle. They told officers they never saw a weapon. Federal, state and local investigators were on scene for hours after it happened. For customers like Gary McCain, it was a setback on the deadline day to pay property taxes. He wanted to make sure he had enough money. "I was going to transfer some from my savings account. Couldn't do it. There were police cars everywhere," McCain said. So he came back in the afternoon, but the bank was closed for the day. McCain said he'll just do the transfer online. "Geez, here I am. I hope I have enough money to cover the taxes," McCain said. Police said the man got away with cash, though they haven't said how much. He is believed to be driving a light-colored sedan. Officers say the suspect is a white male who was wearing camouflage and gloves. Police said the tellers were trapped in the bathroom until another employee came, and they screamed for her to leave saying they'd been robbed. Officers eventually got them out. The FBI Sherman office is leading the investigation. A $5,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the suspect's arrest. Anyone with information is asked to call the Bonham Police Department at 903-583-2141.
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Bank Robbery
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Nikki Haley announced US’ withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced the US’ withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday. The decision to leave the international body responsible for promoting and protecting human rights around the world, according to a US State Department official, was due in part to the administration's belief that the council “fails to address critical situations for political reasons — and undermines its own credibility," The Independent reports. Take Action: Sign The Petition To Stand For US Foreign Assistance Ambassador Haley said that the US had made clear a year ago that they would withdraw if they did not see progress within the council, which she has accused of failing to hold rights abusers to account and bias against Israel, a US ally. "For too long, the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers, and a cesspool of political bias,” Haley said in a speech at the State Department. "The world's most inhumane regimes continue to escape its scrutiny, and the council continues politicizing scapegoating of countries with positive human rights records in an attempt to distract from the abusers in its ranks." Haley pointed to the massive abuses of rights in Venezuela, Iran, and the Democratic Republic of Congo — all of which are council members. US withdrawal from the council has been widely criticized by rights groups and activists. UN spokesman for the Secretary-General Stéphane Dujarric responded to the announcement, saying, “The Secretary-General would have much preferred for the United States to remain in the Human Rights Council. The UN's Human Rights architecture plays a very important role in the promotion and protection of human rights worldwide.” The US is the first serving member to voluntarily leave the UN Human Rights Council, bringing the total number of members on the council down to 46 countries. Since the creation of the council in 2006, Libya has been the only country to leave the council after being voted out for violence against protesters during the Arab Spring, which eventually led to the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. Haley’s withdrawal announcement comes just after the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, condemned the forcible separation of approximately 2,000 children from their families at the US-Mexico border on Monday. “The thought that any State would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable,” he said. Read More: World Political and Religious Leaders Condemn US Policy of Separating Migrant Kids Bloomberg reported the withdrawal from the Human Rights Council was expected after the appointment of John Bolton as the National Security Adviser, who opposed the creation of the council as US Ambassador to the UN in 2006. And last year, Ambassador Haley accused the council of a “relentless, pathological campaign” against Israel — but also insisted that “America does not seek to leave the Human Rights Council.” Since the council’s creation, seven of 28 investigations have revolved around Israel, including the 2010 Israeli attack on a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian assistance, which resulted in the killing of 10 Turkish activists. The council reported that the interception of the ships was illegal and accused Israel of violations of the Geneva Conventions. Global Citizen supports the Global Goals and believes that peace, justice, and strong institutions are necessary for promoting peaceful and inclusive societies. Take action here and sign the petition to stand for US foreign assistance. Update Wednesday, June 20, 11:30 a.m. ET: This post has been updated to reflect Haley's official announcement of the withdrawal. The US is the only country not to have signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. France was the first country in Western Europe to pass a burqa ban. The Pros & Cons of the UN Human Rights Council. "It's both puzzling and disconcerting to people who care about human rights worldwide." The US is the only country not to have signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. France was the first country in Western Europe to pass a burqa ban. The Pros & Cons of the UN Human Rights Council. "It's both puzzling and disconcerting to people who care about human rights worldwide." The US is the only country not to have signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
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Withdraw from an Organization
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Marine debris on north Australian beaches doubles in a decade; foreign fishers may be to blame, researchers say
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Marine debris on north Australian beaches doubles in a decade; foreign fishers may be to blame, researchers say
Trash from the sea washing up on Arnhem Land's once-pristine beaches has doubled in the last decade.
Researchers say there is up to three tonnes of marine debris per kilometre along 11 monitored beaches in northern Australia, and that much of it is related to increasing foreign fishing activity, some of it illegal.
In June, the ABC spoke with residents of Cape Arnhem, near Nhulunbuy, who detailed the level of rubbish that was washing up on local beaches.
Dr Karen Edyvane is a marine debris expert from the Australian National University's North Australia Research Unit, and has been monitoring Top End beaches for 12 years.
She told ABC Radio Darwin on Tuesday that they are recording "extraordinary" amounts of rubbish.
"North Australian shores have recorded some of the highest levels of marine debris — particularly fishing-related debris — not only in Australia but the world," she said.
A diver who filmed a "slick" of plastic in Indonesian waters says he's never seen anything on this scale of ocean pollution.
Dr Edyvane said it is currently the worst it has ever been.
Local Indigenous ranger groups and conservation volunteers have been working with researchers for almost two decades to research and monitor 11 beach sites for marine debris, and they have found that Cape Arnhem is registering the highest volume of rubbish.
"What has been recorded, particularly last year, is twice the amount of litter — debris — than we were recording 10 years ago," Dr Edyvane said.
The bulk of debris was fishing material, she found.
"It's not just the fishing nets and the buoys and the baits and the lures and so forth, but also the fact that when you're on a boat … for weeks at a time you also need to eat, need to shampoo," she said.
"Many of the fishermen smoke and use lighters, and many of them wear thongs, and we see a lot of thongs."
The situation is so bad at Cape Arnhem because the dry season's southeast trade winds and currents move the debris onto south-easterly facing beaches.
North-east Arnhem Land resident Blue Douglas painted a vivid picture of the debris he found on a once-pristine beach:
"The beach was literally littered with plastic baskets, cigarette lighters, bottles in particular — shampoo bottles, oil bottles — and the sad thing is about a lot of these things, when you pick them up, they've obviously been punctured in some way to ensure that when they're thrown off the side of the boat they sink," he said.
"A lot of the oil bottles, the caps, there's been holes punctured in them, the shampoo bottles have had a slice put through the centre of them.
"There were empty steel gas cylinders — which I've never seen in past years — which surprised me.
"Bottle tops, squid lures, bits of net, rope, you could go on for an hour just describing what was there."
Although the finger has previously been pointed at Indonesia, Dr Edyvane said researchers had not yet been able to establish a clear oceanographic link between debris recorded off Bali the western parts of Indonesia and the rubbish washing up in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
A remote and uninhabited island wilderness in the South Pacific is literally a garbage dump and these photos prove it.
But she said the Cape Arnhem area was adjacent to some of the largest fisheries in south-east Asia, nearly all of them were located in the Arafura Sea, "intimately connected" with the Gulf.
The Arafura Sea is the only part of Indonesian seas where trawling is permitted, she said.
"It's a global hotspot for illegal fishing and that illegal fishing activity," Dr Edyvane said.
"In the Arafura Sea in Indonesian waters, industrial-scale fishing has doubled in the last 10 years.
"And when we look at our foreign fishing vessel sightings we get [from authorities], we know that the sightings of [foreign] fishermen on the border of Australia has [quadrupled] in that time, too."
She said that in 2000, authorities were sighting up to 9,000 foreign fishing vessels in Australia's border regions, whereas in 2012 it was close to 37,000.
She said, however, that it was difficult to pinpoint how much of the marine debris related to illegal foreign fishing, but that it was "likely to be substantial".
The marine debris is having a major impact on marine wildlife as well as affecting it when plastics were broken down and entered the food chain, Dr Edyvane said.
"Along the north Australian coastline we have some of the most globally significant populations of marine megafauna, particularly turtles, and they're the ones affected by driftnets and derelict fishing nets," she said.
She quoted a CSIRO study which found that in the five years between 2005-2010, it was estimated that up to 15,000 turtles had been entangled by up to 9,000 ghost nets.
"That's a lot of turtles potentially caught and drowned in those nets, huge impact," she said.
Dr Edyvane said Australia and Indonesia were working together to fight illegal fishing, and she urged consumers to buy sustainably sourced food to encourage supermarkets and MPs to put Australian fisheries at the forefront.
"Australia fisheries are well regulated and have very good environmental track records," she said.
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Environment Pollution
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China's state economic planner said that it decided to "indefinitely suspend" all activities under the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue
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China's state economic planner said that it decided to "indefinitely suspend" all activities under the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue. China halted a high-level economic dialogue with Australia on Thursday (May 6) amid already strained ties, in a symbolic move to show its displeasure with Canberra for scrapping two Belt and Road deals. Australia this week also signalled that it will review a controversial lease of Darwin’s port to a Chinese-owned company. A statement by China’s economic planner said it was suspending all activities under the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue because of the Australian government’s “current attitude” towards bilateral cooperation. The two sides have not held a meeting under this framework since 2017, when they signed an agreement to cooperate on investment and infrastructure projects in third countries, including for the Belt and Road Initiative. The first meeting was held in 2014. In its short statement, the National Development and Reform Commission said some Australian officials had “launched a series of measures to disrupt the normal exchanges and cooperation between China and Australia out of Cold War mindset and ideological discrimination”. It did not say what these measures were. Foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular briefing later that Australia had “disregarded China’s solemn position and repeated representations, and abused the ‘national security’ reason to restrict and suppress China-Australia cooperation projects”. He added: “China has to make the necessary and proper response, and Australia must bear all responsibilities for this.” But China’s move was seen as less significant than its curbs and sanctions in the past year on some A$20 billion (S$21 billion) worth of Australian exports. Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan expressed disappointment but said Canberra hoped the dialogue can be revived. “We remain open to holding the dialogue and engaging at the ministerial level,” he said in a statement. Ties between the two countries have been strained since Australia blocked Chinese tech firm Huawei from its 5G network in 2018. They worsened last year when Canberra called for an independent inquiry into the origins of the Covid-19 outbreak, triggering trade sanctions from Beijing on Australian wine, coal and barley in retaliation. Last month, Canberra tore up the two Belt and Road agreements signed between China and Victoria state, saying it was “inconsistent with Australia’s foreign policy”. The move drew a rebuke from the Chinese embassy as “unreasonable and provocative”. The dialogue’s suspension was expected because of the scrapping of the deals and was meant to send a “strong diplomatic signal” to Canberra, said Ms Yun Jiang, who researches China-Australia ties at the Australian National University. “But there has been a diplomatic freeze for two years now, so formal ministerial-level dialogue has not happened as scheduled for a while, even before this suspension. This suspension is therefore largely symbolic,” said Ms Jiang, who is also managing editor of The China Story, a blog on China issues. Trade and investment between the two countries can still take place in the absence of dialogue. “But there could be more economic actions from China against Australia after this,” she said. Some analysts noted that China had suspended – rather than cancelled – the dialogue and had not moved to limit its massive purchases of Australian iron ore.
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Tear Up Agreement
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Brexit is finally official as Britain leaves the European Union
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With little fuss and not much fanfare, Britain left the European Union on Friday after 47 years of membership, taking a leap into the unknown in a historic blow to the bloc. The UK’s departure became official at 11 p.m., midnight in Brussels, where the EU is headquartered. Thousands of enthusiastic Brexit supporters gathered outside Britain’s Parliament cheered as the hour struck. They had been hoping for this moment since Britain’s 52-48 percent vote in June 2016 to walk away from the club it had joined in 1973. Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Britain’s departure “a moment of real national renewal and change.” But many Britons mourned the loss of their EU identity, and some marked the passing with tearful vigils. There was also sadness in Brussels as British flags were quietly removed from the bloc’s many buildings. Whether Brexit makes Britain a proud nation that has reclaimed its sovereignty, or a diminished presence in Europe and the world, will be debated for years to come. While Britain’s exit is a historic moment, it only marks the end of the first stage of the Brexit saga. When Britons wake up on Saturday, they will notice very little change. The UK and the EU have given themselves an 11-month “transition period” — in which the UK will continue to follow the bloc’s rules to strike new agreements on trade, security and a host of other areas. The now 27-member EU will have to bounce back from one of the biggest setbacks in its 62-year history to confront an ever more complicated world as its former member becomes a competitor, just across the English Channel. French President Emmanuel Macron called Brexit a “historic alarm signal” that should force the EU to improve itself. “It’s a sad day, let’s not hide it,” he said in a televised address. “But it is a day that must also lead us to do things differently.” He insisted that European citizens need a united Europe “more than ever,” to defend their interests in the face of China and the United States, to cope with climate change and migration and technological upheaval. In the many EU buildings of Brussels on Friday, British flags were quietly lowered, folded and taken away. This is the first time a country has left the EU, and many in the bloc rued the day. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen lamented that “as the sun rises tomorrow a new chapter for our union of 27 will start.” But she warned Brexit day would mark a major loss for the UK and said the island nation was heading for a lonelier existence. “Strength does not lie in splendid isolation, but in our unique union,” she said. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted post-Brexit Britain would be “simultaneously a great European power and truly global in our range and ambitions.” “We want this to be the beginning of a new era of friendly cooperation between the EU and an energetic Britain,” Johnson said in a pre-recorded address to the country broadcast an hour before Britain’s exit. In a break with usual practice, independent media outlets were not allowed to film Johnson’s speech, which the government recorded Thursday at 10 Downing St. Johnson won an election victory in December with a dual promise to “get Brexit done” and deliver improved jobs, infrastructure, and services for Britain’s most deprived areas, where support for leaving the EU is strongest. On Friday, he symbolically held a Cabinet meeting in the pro-Brexit town of Sunderland in northeast England, rather than in London. Johnson is a Brexit enthusiast, but he knows many Britons aren’t, and his Conservative government aimed to mark the moment with quiet dignity. Red, white and blue lights illuminated government buildings and a countdown clock projected onto the prime minister’s Downing Street residence. There was no such restraint in nearby Parliament Square, where arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage gathered a crowd of several thousand, who belted out the patriotic song “Land of Hope and Glory” as they awaited a moment that even Farage sometimes doubted would ever come. Londoner Donna Jones said she had come to “be part of history.” “It doesn’t mean we’re anti-Europe, it just means we want to be self-sufficient in a certain way,” she said. But Britons who cherished their membership in the bloc and the freedom it bought to live anywhere across of 28 countries were mourning. “Many of us want to just mark our sadness in public,” said Ann Jones, who joined dozens of other remainers on a march to the EU’s mission in London. “And we don’t want trouble, we just want to say, well you know, we didn’t want this.” Britain’s journey to Brexit has been long, rocky and far from over. The UK was never a wholehearted EU member, but actually leaving the bloc was long considered a fringe idea. It gradually gained strength within the Conservative Party, which has a wing of fierce “Euroskeptics” opponents of EU membership. Former Prime Minister David Cameron eventually agreed to hold a referendum, saying he wanted to settle the issue once and for all. It hasn’t worked out that way. Since the 2016 vote, the UK has held fractious negotiations with the EU that finally, late last year, secured a deal on divorce terms. But Britain is leaving the bloc arguably as divided as it was on referendum day. By and large, Britain’s big cities voted to stay in the EU, while small towns voted to leave. England and Wales backed Brexit, while Northern Ireland and Scotland voted to remain. Candlelit vigils were held in several Scottish cities, government buildings in Edinburgh were lit up in the EU’s blue and yellow colors, and the bloc’s flag continued to fly outside the Scottish Parliament. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Brexit “will be a moment of profound sadness for many of us across the UK.” “And here in Scotland, given that it is happening against the will of the vast majority of us, that sadness will be tinged with anger,” she said in a speech in Edinburgh. Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party government is demanding the right to hold a referendum on independence from the UK, something Johnson refuses to grant. London, which is home to more than 1 million EU citizens, also voted by a wide margin to stay in the bloc. Mayor Sadiq Khan said he was “heartbroken” about Brexit. But he insisted London would remain that welcomed all, regardless of “the color of your skin, the color of your flag, the color of your passport.” Negotiations between Britain and the EU on their new relationship are due to start in earnest in March, and the early signs are not encouraging. The EU says Britain can’t have full access to the EU’s single market unless it follows the bloc’s rules, but Britain insists it will not agree to follow an EU rule book in return for unfettered trade. With Johnson adamant he won’t extend the transition period beyond Dec. 31, months of uncertainty and acrimony lie ahead. In the English port of Dover, just 20 miles across the Channel from France, retiree Philip Barry said he was confident it would all be worth it. “My expectation is that there may be a little bump or two in the road but in the end it will even out,” he said. “Somebody once said: short-term pain but long-term gain
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Withdraw from an Organization
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Lunar Eclipse 2021: Date, Timings and everything else you need to know
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2021 is about to witness its last lunar eclipse in November and as usual, it's going to be a treat for astrologers, astronomers, stargazers, etc. The lunar eclipse will take place on November 19 and might only be visible in a few parts of Northeastern India and that too for a short span of time. Some are also saying that this might be a partial lunar eclipse. The stated time for its occurrence is around 11:34 am on Friday and it will end at 5:33 pm. The moonrise will be visible from extreme north-eastern parts of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam. This will be the second and the last lunar eclipse to take place this year and will also be seen in the US, Northern Europe, East Asia, Australia and the Pacific Ocean region. For the unversed, the lunar eclipse occurs on a full moon day when the Earth comes in between the Sun and the Moon and when all the three objects are aligned. A partial lunar eclipse happens when the Earth moves between the Sun and the Full Moon, but they are not precisely aligned. Only part of the Moon's visible surface moves into the dark part of the Earth's shadow.
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New wonders in nature
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FBI and Loxley Police arrest bank robbery suspect in Silverhill
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Loxley police and the FBI arrest a bank robbery suspect Thursday morning June 13th. David Gregory Long has been charged with robbery 1st for the bank robbery that occurred at the United Bank on Highway 59 on Wednesday, April 17th. MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) -- Mobile Police arrested a UPS driver charged with causing a crash that killed a one-year-old boy and his mother. Tillman's Corner, Ala. (WALA)-- A big scare at the Alabama Pecan Festival in Tillman's Corner, leaving a lot of people shaken up. A child rushed to the hospital after falling off a carnival ride. MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) – Mobile County prosecutors on Thursday upgraded charges against a woman accused of shooting four people at a bowling alley this week, while the county’s top prosecutor blasted a jailhouse “revolving door.” MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) – A jury deliberated for about an hour Wednesday before finding an accused murderer not guilty. MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) -- Mobile Police said there was not a shooting at the Greater Gulf State Fair on Saturday night. LAS VEGAS (FOX5) -- At a Spring Valley intersection on Wednesday night, candles and balloons were on display to honor 23-year-old Tina Tintor. MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) -- The Mobile Police Department is investigating three shootings that happened in broad daylight on the same day. MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) -- A late night, high speed chase down Interstate 65 on Wednesday around 11 p.m. was caught on camera and police say two kids were in the backseat the whole time. MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) -- Mobile Police arrested Christin Edwards Wednesday afternoon. She's charged with four felony counts of second-degree assault. SARALAND, Ala. (WALA) -- Saraland Police said a stop on Interstate 65 led to them discovering eight pounds of marijuana hidden in the car. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup.
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Bank Robbery
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Valley Fire
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The Valley Fire was a wildfire during the 2015 California wildfire season that started on September 12 in Lake County, California. [1] It began shortly after 1:00 pm near Cobb with multiple reports of a small brush fire near the intersection of High Valley and Bottlerock Roads. It quickly spread and by 6:30 PM PDT, it had burned more than 10,000 acres (40 km2). [4] By Sunday, the thirteenth of September, the fire had reached 50,000 acres (202 km2) and had destroyed much of Cobb, Middletown, Whispering Pines, and parts in the south end of Hidden Valley Lake. [5] The fire ultimately spread to 76,067 acres (308 km2), killed four people and destroyed nearly 2,000 buildings,[1][6][7][8] before it was fully contained on October 15, 2015,[1] causing at least $921 million (2015 USD) in insured property damage. [2] At the time, the fire was the third-most destructive fire in California history, based on the total structures burned,[9][10] but the Camp Fire (2018) and the North Complex fire in 2020, exceeded that total. The fire quickly spread into Middletown and Hidden Valley, threatening northern Sonoma County around The Geysers, and northern Napa County, approaching Pope Valley and Angwin. [11]
In the first few hours of the fire, four CAL FIRE firefighters from the Boggs Mountain helitack crew suffered second-degree burns while engaging in initial attack on the fire. They were airlifted to the UC Davis Medical Center for treatment, where they were listed in stable condition. [12][13]
On September 12, mandatory evacuation orders were issued for Cobb, Middletown, Loch Lomond, Harbin Hot Springs, Hidden Valley Lake, the Clearlake Riviera, Riviera West, and Soda Bay communities of unincorporated parts of Kelseyville, Pope Valley and Angwin. [4] Evacuation centers were established in the town of Kelseyville to the northwest and Calistoga to the southeast. [1]
This area is home to at least 10,000 residents. [13] By midnight of the first day, scores of homes and businesses had been destroyed in Middletown, along with at least 50 homes in Cobb as well as the entire Hoberg’s Resort, an historic retreat built in the 1880s. The resort community of Harbin Hot Springs was also destroyed. On September 13, officials from Cal Fire confirmed that more than 1000 homes had been destroyed. [14]
On October 15, 2015, the Valley Fire was fully contained, at 76,076 acres (307.87 km2). [1]
The remains of one woman killed in the fire in Anderson Springs were found on September 13. On September 17, remains of two bodies were found in Anderson Springs and Hidden Valley Lake. [8]
On September 23, Lake County deputies found human remains that belonged to a missing Cobb resident. It was confirmed to be the fourth fatality resulting from the fire. [6]
The fire destroyed 1,955 structures, including 1,322 homes, 27 apartment buildings and 73 businesses. An additional 93 buildings were damaged. [1]
The Mendocino County Health and Human Services Agency, in coordination with the American Red Cross, opened a shelter on September 13 at the Redwood Empire Fairgrounds in Ukiah to offer medical and mental health assistance, and meals to evacuees. It closed on September 18. [15]
Multiple people were arrested for looting or attempting to loot from evacuated or abandoned homes as a result of the fire. On September 14, a man posing as a California Highway Patrol officer was arrested in Whispering Pines on suspicion of removing an artifact of archaeological interest. [16] On September 17, three people were arrested by Lake County Sheriff's Deputies for attempting to loot from homes in Hidden Valley Lake. They were allegedly in possession of burglary tools and an unregistered firearm. [17]
On September 18, the California National Guard came to Lake County to assist the county's law enforcement with the task of protecting evacuated communities from looters and trespassers. About 50 National Guard military police teams were set to arrive on September 19. [18]
In November 2015, a concert with country musicians Diamond Rio and Joe Diffie, and Ukiah country singer-songwriter McKenna Faith was held at the SOMO Village Event Center in Rohnert Park to raise money for Valley Fire victims. [19]
A Cal Fire investigation pointed to faulty wiring of a hot tub installation as the cause of the fire. [3]
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Fire
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Swarms of grasshoppers predicted to plague the West this year
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Swarms of grasshoppers predicted to plague the West this year
Updated: Jan. 10, 2019, 8:16 p.m. |
Published: May. 11, 2010, 12:17 a.m.
View full size Jamie Francis/The OregonianHarney County, with its wide open spaces, is vulnerable this year to an outbreak of grasshoppers. Some species can eat their body weight daily in vegetation. This is a field along U.S. 20 near Burns.
LA GRANDE -- A storm of 2-inch-long grasshoppers swept across
in southeastern Oregon's high desert last summer -- turning roads slippery, crunchy and "kind of gross" on their way to devouring 7,000 acres of grass intended as spring forage for the cattle
View full size Benjamin Brink/The OregonianThe clear-winged grasshopper, Camnula pellucida, is the pest that plagues Oregon.
.
"Most people slowed down out of curiosity and awe" as clouds of grasshoppers carpeted Oregon 205 that passes through Roaring Springs, said ranch resident Elaine Davies.
The onslaught may be a mere prelude to a grasshopper invasion of near-mythic proportions predicted this summer in
Harney County
and across the American West.
Hungry grasshoppers are starting to hatch in Arizona and New Mexico and could make 2010 the worst grasshopper year since the mid-1980s -- consuming huge swaths of grasslands and crops, said U.S. Department of Agriculture expert Charles Brown. The anticipated glut results from natural population cycles and widespread drought conditions that grasshoppers thrive under.
Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska and the Dakotas are forecast to feel the brunt, with lesser clouds of grasshoppers expected across Oregon, Washington, Texas, Utah, Colorado and Nevada
, said Brown, who oversees the USDA's national grasshopper suppression program.
Of several hundred types of grasshoppers, ranchers and farmers throughout the West are likely to encounter up to 15 hungry "pest species" this summer, he said. In Oregon, a clear-winged grasshopper called
Camnula pellucida and possibly a flightless variety called the Mormon cricket
are the culprits.
Grasshoppers munched their way across tens of thousands of acres of Harney County in 2009, and this summer's devastation could double to 140,000 acres in the county, entomologists said. Grasshopper activity probably will be centered on and around the million-acre-plus Roaring Springs Ranch south of Frenchglen,
Malheur National Wildlife Refuge
.
Outbreaks also are possible in drought-stricken Klamath and Lake counties this summer or next year, said entomologist Helmuth Rogg of the Oregon Department of Agriculture in Salem.
The hatch will spread into Oregon and other northern states in the coming weeks as chilly spring temperatures give way to warmer weather. Grasshopper egg beds typically occupy dry, south-facing slopes just far enough underground to escape fast-moving range fires, biologists say.
The grasshopper plague probably will hit its stride in August as summertime heat parches Western croplands and open ranges. Grasshoppers often consume their own weight in forage and crops in a day. Eight grasshoppers per square yard are enough to cause economic damage, Rogg said.
"They are the lawnmower of the prairie," he said. "The biggest biomass consumers on the North American prairie are grasshoppers -- not cattle, not bison, not antelope."
The pests can reduce rangeland forage by 80 percent in areas as large as 2,000 square miles, Brown said.
The most effective control is the pesticide Dimilin , a growth regulator that kills young grasshoppers just after the hatch, he said.
Richard Cockle/The OregonianForeman Stacy Davies (right), shown here on the Roaring Springs Ranch in 2008, says grasshoppers last year mowed down 7,000 acres of grass intended for spring forage. Without swift action this year, Davies says “many times more grasshoppers” will munch their way across the ranch. He believes 20,000 acres of forage hang in the balance that he needs for the ranch’s 6,000 cow-calf pairs.
The federal government will pay all costs for pesticide applications on federal lands, 50 percent on state lands and a third on privately owned lands. Some landowners, including the owners of Roaring Springs, opt to pay the costs themselves.
"When it comes time to cost-share, there is too much red tape for me," said Roaring Springs foreman Stacy Davies.
He and a crew of buckaroos will begin searching for egg beds on horseback, ATVs and on foot as soon as the ranch gets some warmer weather, he said. Roaring Springs' elevation is at 4,600 feet and the mercury tumbled into the low 20s several times in the past week, he said.
Treating the ranch's egg beds with Dimilin probably will cost $4,000 and save 20,000 acres of grass, Davies said. That works better than battling clouds of mature hoppers later in the season with Malathion, a less environmentally friendly pesticide, that could cost $25,000 and leave the grass at greater risk, he said.
Successful Dimilin treatments in Oregon reduced the grasshopper infestation from 1 million acres in 2008 to 150,000 acres last year, Rogg said.
"All the other states went the other way" -- and watched grasshopper populations multiply because they didn't find and treat egg beds, he said. "They are all going to look forward to big outbreaks."
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Insect Disaster
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Western Sydney residents complain at 'rotten egg' smell from recycling facility
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Hundreds of residents across two suburbs have complained about a constant smell of rotten eggs coming from a Western Sydney recycling facility.
The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) received at least 300 complaints in April from residents of Minchinbury and Eastern Creek, 38 kilometres west of the CBD, about an overwhelming odour.
Some homeowners said the smell made them gag, forced them to keep windows and doors closed, and affected their daily lives.
Romona Kraissa of Barossa Drive, Minchinbury, said she stopped entertaining outdoors at night when the smell was strongest.
"We close all our windows and doors because it makes me feel sick as though I want to vomit," she said.
"We host a lot of entertainment, but (neighbours) don't come over at night anymore because of that reason."
Minchinbury resident Rajesh Kumar, 70, said the smell was often so bad he had to stay indoors.
"Sometimes you want to do the lawn, but as soon as there's a smell I come inside," he said.
His two grandchildren live next door.
"They can't go out and play, they have to stay in the backyard," he said.
"And if they can still smell they go inside, they don't play."
The smell prevented Lena Tupe from visiting her mother's home on McFarlane Drive because she said it caused her headaches and made her eyes sting.
"I try not to come here as much," she said.
"I get really sick when I'm here because of the smell.
"I've never smelt a dead body before, but I think it's close."
The EPA began a month-long investigation by surveying residents and carrying out inspections.
The authority recently concluded that a Bingo Industries (registered as Dial-a-Dump) recycling facility at Eastern Creek was responsible.
The facility handles waste from construction sites and commercial and industrial sources.
The environmental regulator said the gas hydrogen sulphide — colloquially known as "rotten egg gas" — was forming in the facility's landfill.
"Two issues were identified with their wastewater management system ... a cracked pipe and broken vent," an EPA spokesperson said.
Despite the fact hundreds of residents were affected for several weeks, the facility was ordered to pay a $577 administration fee.
Bingo Industries was also instructed to make a series of changes, including reducing the size of its landfill, covering waste and burying it under clean soil.
Bingo Industries said the smell was exacerbated by heavy rain in late March, and temperature inversions that trap smells and allow them to travel along light breezes.
"We can only assure the community that we are doing everything we can to fix the problem and significant improvements have already been made," Chris Gordon, general manager of Bingo Industries said.
The business was investigating ways to safely seal the leaks and manage the gas, he said. Hydrated lime was being sprayed on the affected area to soften the odour.
The EPA spokesperson said: "We don't want communities impacted by odours and unable to enjoy their homes and gardens so we are taking a range of actions to provide relief to residents as a top priority."
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Environment Pollution
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2020 Kyrgyzstani protests
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Government of Kyrgyzstan
Almazbek Atambayev
Adakhan Madumarov
The 2020 Kyrgyzstani protests (or Kyrgyz Revolution of 2020) began on 5 October 2020 in response to the recent parliamentary election that was perceived by protestors as unfair, with allegations of vote rigging. [7][8] The results of the election were annulled on 6 October 2020. [9] On 12 October 2020, President Jeenbekov announced a state of emergency in the capital city of Bishkek,[10] which was approved by Parliament the following day. [11] Jeenbekov resigned on 15 October 2020. [12]
Kyrgyzstan had faced two revolutions during the early 21st century, including the Tulip Revolution in 2005 and the Kyrgyz Revolution of 2010. [13] In August 2020, Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jeenbekov indicated that the parliamentary elections would not be postponed despite the coronavirus pandemic. [14] During the elections, several parties were accused of buying votes. [15] Several journalists also reported that they had been harassed or attacked. [16] Out of the parties that made it into parliament, only United Kyrgyzstan consistently opposes the incumbent government led by Jeenbekov. [17]
Political analysts have tied the 2020 protests to a socio-economic divide between Kyrgyzstan's agrarian south and more-developed north. Of the initial election results, 100 of the 120 seats were filled by southerners who supported Jeenbekov. [18]
The protests began on 5 October 2020, with a crowd of 1,000 people,[7] that grew to at least 5,000 people by evening in Bishkek (the capital of Kyrgyzstan) in protest against results and allegations of vote-buying in the October 2020 parliamentary election. [8] After nightfall, following a police operation to clear the Ala-Too Square of protesters with tear gas and water cannons, protesters allegedly attacked police officers with rocks and injured two of them. [19][20] Former President Almazbek Atambayev was freed from prison. [21]
In the early morning of 6 October 2020, the protesters reclaimed control of the Ala-Too Square in central Bishkek. [22] They also managed to seize the White House and Supreme Council buildings nearby, throwing paper from windows and setting them on fire,[4] also entering the President's offices. A protestor died and 590 others were injured. [23]
On 6 October, following the protests, the electoral authorities in the country annulled the results of the parliamentary elections. [9] Central Election Commission member Gulnara Jurabaeva also revealed the commission was considering self-dissolution. [24]
In the meantime, opposition groups claimed to be in power after seizing government buildings in the capital, in which several provincial governors have reportedly resigned. [4] President Sooronbay Jeenbekov said that he faced a coup d'état,[4] then he told the BBC, that he was "ready to give the responsibility to strong leaders". [25]
Protestors freed former president Almazbek Atambayev and opposition politician Sadyr Japarov from prison. [3][26]
Likely due to pressure from the protest, Prime Minister Kubatbek Boronov resigned, citing parliamentary deputy Myktybek Abdyldayev as the new speaker. [27]
Opposition parties were unsuccessful at forming a new government on Wednesday, 7 October. Following the resignation of Prime Minister Boronov, former lawmaker Sadyr Japarov was appointed to replace him. Opposition parties rejected the legitimacy of Japarov's status and instead put forward their own candidate for prime minister, Tilek Toktogaziyev. Japarov claimed that he was already the "legitimate prime minister" and that he was appointed by "the parliament's majority." Boronov's resignation, however, had yet to be confirmed by President Jeenbekov, and government websites continued to list him as the prime minister on 7 October. [28]
Crowds gathered to protest the nomination of Japarov and demand the resignation of Jeenbekov. According to the Ministry of Healthcare, no fewer than 768 people injured during the protests have been treated by the country's hospitals and clinics as of Wednesday morning. [29] According to Reuters, at least three distinct groups have now attempted to claim leadership. [30]
Meanwhile, Kyrgyz parliamentarians launched impeachment procedures against Jeenbekov, according to a parliamentarian from the opposition party Ata-Meken, Kanybek Imanaliev. [31]
Jeenbekov declared a state of emergency, ordering troops to deploy in Bishkek. The declaration imposes a 12-hour curfew until October 21. [32] Gunfire was heard during violent clashes in Bishkek that broke out after Jeenbekov's declaration. [33] Jeenbekov formally accepted Boronov's resignation. [34]
Kyrgyzstani special forces detained former President Almazbek Atambayev in a raid on his compound. [35] Former Member of Parliament Sadyr Japarov, who was freed from prison on October 5 by protesters, was nominated as interim Prime Minister by Parliament. [36]
A second state of emergency was declared by President Jeenbekov in Bishkek from 12 October to 19 October. [10][37] Opposition parties announced their intentions to oust Jeenbekov; Jeenbekov stated that he would consider resigning, but only after the political crisis is resolved. A curfew was put in place, in effect from 10 pm to 5 am. Convoys of troops from the Kyrgyz military were sent into the capital city to control the situation. [37]
Kanat Isaev was elected as the new Speaker of the Supreme Council, as there were no other candidates seeking the position. [38] Parliament endorsed Jeenbekov's second declaration of a state of emergency, after previously rejecting his first. [11] President Jeenbekov formally rejected the nomination of Sadyr Japarov to the position of Prime Minister. [39]
Sooronbay Jeenbekov resigned as President of Kyrgyzstan in an attempt to end the political unrest, while also stating that he "Calls on Japarov and the other politicians to withdraw their supporters out of the capital of the nation and to return the people of Bishkek to peaceful lives". [40][41] Japarov declared himself as acting president. [12][42][43] Despite the Kyrgyzstan Constitution stating that the speaker of the Supreme Council should succeed the role, Kanatbek Isaev refused to assume office, resulting in Japarov becoming the acting president. [44][45]
On 7 October, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, "As a friendly neighbor and comprehensive strategic partner, China sincerely hopes that all parties in Kyrgyzstan can resolve the issue according to law through dialogue and consultation, and push for stability in Kyrgyzstan as soon as possible. "[46]
On 7 October, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed that Russia is concerned by the political unrest taking place in nearby Kyrgyzstan and hoped for a swift return to stability.
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Protest_Online Condemnation
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1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash
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On 21 January 1968, an aircraft accident (sometimes known as the Thule affair or Thule accident (/ˈtuːli/); Danish: Thuleulykken) involving a United States Air Force (USAF) B-52 bomber occurred near Thule Air Base in the Danish territory of Greenland. The aircraft was carrying four B28FI thermonuclear bombs on a Cold War "Chrome Dome" alert mission over Baffin Bay when a cabin fire forced the crew to abandon the aircraft before they could carry out an emergency landing at Thule Air Base. Six crew members ejected safely, but one who did not have an ejection seat was killed while trying to bail out. The bomber crashed onto sea ice in North Star Bay,[a] Greenland, causing the conventional explosives aboard to detonate and the nuclear payload to rupture and disperse, resulting in radioactive contamination of the area. The United States and Denmark launched an intensive clean-up and recovery operation, but the secondary stage of one of the nuclear weapons could not be accounted for after the operation was completed. USAF Strategic Air Command "Chrome Dome" operations were discontinued immediately after the accident, which highlighted the safety and political risks of the missions. Safety procedures were reviewed, and more stable explosives were developed for use in nuclear weapons. In 1995, a political scandal arose in Denmark after a report revealed the government had given tacit permission for nuclear weapons to be located in Greenland, in contravention of Denmark's 1957 nuclear-free zone policy. Workers involved in the clean-up program campaigned for compensation for radiation-related illnesses they experienced in the years after the accident. In 1960, the USAF Strategic Air Command (SAC) began Operation Chrome Dome, a Cold War airborne alert program devised by General Thomas S. Power to fly nuclear-armed Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bombers to the borders of the Soviet Union. The flights were scheduled to ensure that twelve bombers were aloft at all times. [3][4] These bombers gave SAC offensive capability in the event of a Soviet first strike,[5] and provided a significant Cold War nuclear deterrent. [4] Beginning in 1961, B-52 bombers also secretly flew as part of the "Hard Head" mission (or "Thule Monitor Missions") over Thule Air Base. The objective of "Hard Head" was to maintain constant visual surveillance of the base's strategically important Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS), which provided early warning of Soviet missile launches. [6] If the communication link between North American Aerospace Defense Command and the base was severed, the aircraft crew could determine if the interruption resulted from an attack or a technical failure. [4][7][b] The monitoring mission started when the designated aircraft reached a waypoint at WikiMiniAtlas75°0′N 67°30′W / 75.000°N 67.500°W / 75.000; -67.500 in Baffin Bay and entered a figure-eight holding pattern above the air base at an altitude of 35,000 feet (11,000 m). [6]
In 1966, United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara proposed cutting "Chrome Dome" flights because the BMEWS system was fully operational, the bombers had been made redundant by missiles, and $123 million ($981 million as of 2021) could be saved annually. SAC and the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed the plan, so a compromise was reached whereby a smaller force of four bombers would be on alert each day. Despite the reduced program and the risks highlighted by the 1966 Palomares B-52 crash, SAC continued to dedicate one of the aircraft to monitoring Thule Air Base. This assignment was without the knowledge of civilian authorities in the United States, who SAC determined did not have the "need to know" about specific operational points. [8]
On 21 January 1968, a B-52G Stratofortress, serial number 58-0188, with the callsign "HOBO 28"[9] from the 380th Strategic Bomb Wing at Plattsburgh Air Force Base, New York was assigned the "Hard Head" mission over Thule and nearby Baffin Bay. [10] The bomber crew consisted of five regular crew members, including Captain John Haug, the aircraft commander. Also aboard were a substitute navigator (Captain Curtis R. Criss[11]) and a mandatory third pilot (Major Alfred D'Mario). [12]
Before take-off, D'Mario placed three cloth-covered foam cushions on top of a heating vent under the instructor navigator's seat in the aft section of the lower deck. Shortly after take-off, another cushion was placed under the seat. The flight was uneventful until the scheduled mid-air refueling from a KC-135 Stratotanker, which had to be conducted manually because of an error with the B-52G's autopilot. About one hour after refueling, while the aircraft was circling above its designated area, Captain Haug directed co-pilot Svitenko to take his rest period. His seat was taken by the spare pilot, D'Mario. The crew was uncomfortable because of the cold, although the heater's rheostat was turned up, so D'Mario opened an engine bleed valve to draw additional hot air into the heater from the engine manifold. [6] Because of a heater malfunction, the air barely cooled as it traveled from the engine manifold to the cabin's heating ducts. During the next half-hour, the cabin's temperature became uncomfortably hot,[13] and the stowed cushions ignited. [14] After one crew member reported smelling burning rubber, they looked for a fire. The navigator searched the lower compartment twice before discovering the fire behind a metal box. [9] He attempted to fight it with two fire extinguishers, but could not put it out. [9][15]
At 15:22 EST, about six hours into the flight and 90 miles (140 km) south of Thule Air Base, Haug declared an emergency. He told Thule air traffic control that he had a fire on board and requested permission to perform an emergency landing at the air base. [16] Within five minutes, the aircraft's fire extinguishers were depleted, electrical power was lost and smoke filled the cockpit to the point that the pilots could not read their instruments. [10][17] As the situation worsened, the captain realized he would not be able to land the aircraft and told the crew to prepare to abandon it. They awaited word from D'Mario that they were over land, and when he confirmed that the aircraft was directly over the lights of Thule Air Base, the four crewmen ejected, followed shortly thereafter by Haug and D'Mario. The co-pilot, Leonard Svitenko, who had given up his ejection seat when the spare pilot took over from him, sustained fatal head injuries when he attempted to bail out through one of the lower hatches. [15][18][19]
The pilotless aircraft initially continued north, then turned left through 180° and crashed onto sea ice in North Star Bay at a relatively shallow angle of 20 degrees—about 7.5 miles (12.1 km) west of Thule Air Base—at 15:39 EST. [c] The conventional high explosive (HE) components of four 1.1 megaton[20] B28FI thermonuclear bombs detonated on impact, spreading radioactive material over a large area in a manner similar to a dirty bomb. [21] "Weak links" in the weapon design ensured that a nuclear explosion was not triggered. The extreme heat generated by the burning of 225,000 pounds (102 t) of jet fuel during the five to six hours after the crash melted the ice sheet, causing wreckage and munitions to sink to the ocean floor. Haug and D'Mario parachuted onto the grounds of the air base and made contact with the base commander within ten minutes of each other. They informed him that at least six crew ejected successfully and the aircraft was carrying four nuclear weapons. [11] Off-duty staff were mustered to conduct search and rescue operations for the remaining crew members. Owing to the extreme weather conditions, Arctic darkness, and unnavigable ice, the base relied largely on the Thule representative of the Royal Greenland Trade Department, Ministry of Greenland, Jens Zinglersen, to raise and mount the search using native dog sled teams. [22] Three of the survivors landed within 1.5 miles (2.4 km) of the base and were rescued within two hours. [23][24] For his initial actions and later services, Zinglersen received the Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Medal on 26 February 1968 at the hands of the U.S.
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Air crash
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Minnesota credit unions that split up 81 years ago agree to merge
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SPIRE Credit Union and Midland Co-op Credit Union, which were created when Twin City Oil Co-ops Credit Union split into two organizations in 1940, plan to merge. The $1.8 billion-asset SPIRE, of Falcon Heights, Minnesota, announced Wednesday that members of the $11.4 million-asset MCCU, of Minneapolis, voted 97.25% in favor of combining the two institutions. The merger is set to take effect on Nov. 1. Their predecessor organization, Twin City Oil Co-ops, was founded by Midland Cooperative Oil Association employee Edgar Archer and his peers in 1934. “We are excited to serve and welcome back the Midland Co-op members to the SPIRE family,” Dan Stoltz, SPIRE president and CEO, said in the press release. “Our partnership is a triple win: a win for our employees, a win for our communities, and most of all, a big win for our memberships.” SPIRE recently merged with the $4.2 million-asset Central Hanna Employees Credit Union in Keewatin, Minnesota. Central Hanna employeesr voted 93.7% affirmative and the merger took effect Sept. 1. “We chose to partner with SPIRE for several reasons,” Becky Lindman, president of MCCU, said in the press release. “They are Minnesota-based and a well-known name; offer a full suite of products, services and branch locations for our members; have continually competitive loan rates and dividends; and provide easy and free access to ATMs, as well as drive-ups. Most of all, we chose SPIRE because they care about our members and our legacy.”
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Organization Merge
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United Parcel Service strike of 1997
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The United Parcel Service strike of 1997, led by International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) President Ron Carey, started on August 4, 1997, and involved over 185,000 teamsters (IBT members). [1] The strike effectively shut down United Parcel Service (UPS) operations for 16 days
[2]
and cost UPS hundreds of millions of dollars. [3]
The strike was a victory for the union, resulting in a new contract that increased their wages, secured their existing benefits and gave increased job security. [4]
President Ron Carey had followed in his father's footsteps to become a UPS driver, and Union member. [5] Carey rose to Presidency of the Teamsters Union in the early 1990s, and was heavily supported by Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) President Ken Paff, mainly because of Carey's support of Union Democracy. TDU influence on the IBT was a major factor in the collective bargaining tactics used to negotiate the 1997 UPS Contract: militance, union democracy, and rank-and-file intensive tactics. [6]
An earlier strike against UPS in 1994, which had been the first National strike against UPS, had been unsuccessful and led to the Teamsters being sued by UPS for millions of dollars. [7]
Contracts between UPS and their Union workers were set to be renegotiated in 1997, and general grievances against the company centered around job security, wages, and part-time employee status. [8] Bob Herbert, of The New York Times wrote that the UPS strike "is best seen as the angry fist-waving response of the frustrated American worker, a revolt against the ruthless treatment of workers by so many powerful corporations. [9]
In the 1970s, UPS had begun a process of replacing many full-time workers with part-time employees. [10] In the 1980s, the wages of these part-time workers was cut to just $8 per hour. [11] According to research performed by Teamsters, almost two-in-three workers were classified as part-time, and receiving part-time compensation and benefits. [12] Surveys conducted by Teamster leaders stated that "90 percent of part-timers at UPS ranked the creation of more full-time jobs with full-time pay as a top bargaining priority". [13]
The Bureau of Labor Statistics cites the 1993 UPS injury rate as 14 percent, compared with the industry average 8 percent. [14]
Prior to the 1997 UPS strike, Carey had already organized four successful strike campaigns. [15]
In preparation for the strike, UPS workers who had joined the Teamsters completed questionnaires designed to determine key grievances. Pre-strike rallies were held, and a petition with 100,000 signatures of Teamster members supporting the new contract negotiations and demands was completed. The impending strike also had its own website, as well as a dedicated hot-line for workers to stay connected. Efforts were made to ensure that both part-time and full-time workers' demands were being included, and therefore that they would continue to support each other. The expectation was that many workers would simply cross the picket lines and resume working. [16][17]
After an unsuccessful August 1997 Teamster rally, which had had a poor turn out, and a UPS spokesperson said "They're trying to stage a Broadway production of Les Miserables, and what we're seeing is a high school production of Annie Get Your Gun". [18] Teamsters rejected UPS's final offer on August 2, 1997. [19]
The strike began August 4, 1997, and was the largest strike in terms of striking workers that the country had seen thus far. [20] Almost 100 percent of UPS workers who were members of the Teamster Union were involved in the strike. [21] During the strike, UPS losses were over $600 million. [22]
Carey said regarding the strike, "People will be celebrating our victory over corporate greed. This fight with UPS shows what working people can accomplish when they all stick together. The UPS workers stood up to throw away worker approach and the nation's working people stood behind us. And now we're going to go out there to other workers who want to fight for that great American dream. "[23]
During the strike, the Teamster Union had paid out around $10 million to workers manning the picket lines. [24]
After 15 days, the Teamsters and UPS came to a five-year contract agreement that ended the strike. In addition, the starting pay rate of $8 per hour for part-timers was to be raised by 50 cents, while drivers were to make an additional $3.10 on top of their average $19.95 hourly rate, and part-time workers would be granted an additional $4.10 hourly. [25]
The way in which the union was structured meant that all Teamsters would receive synonymous benefits, regardless of what company they actually worked for. These benefits were controlled by the Teamsters multi-employer pension fund. UPS wanted to back out of the plan, and offer their workers a new pension plan that UPS would control. [26]
Ultimately, UPS agreed to keep their workers in the Union benefits plan. [27][28]
In addition, UPS agreed that they would now be required to discuss any future package weight limit increases with the Teamsters. [29]
To further address the issue of the unavailability of full-time positions, UPS agreed to stop subcontracting, with the exception of peak times and to create 10,000 full-time jobs from part-time positions[30]
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Strike
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El Paso County Sheriff’s Office investigate police involved shooting in Colorado Springs
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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO)-- An officer involved shooting in Colorado Springs began with an armed burglary. Colorado Springs Police tell us a male suspect was armed with a knife. At least one officer fired a shot, killing the suspect. People inside the home alerted police of the burglary, they are safe and uninjured.
The Colorado Springs Police Department has confirmed police are involved in a shooting off the 1700 blk of Herd St. on the southeast side of Colorado Springs. There was a heavy police presence at Union and Monterey, not far from Memorial Park.
PIO Sokolik is on scene of an Officer Involved shooting in the 1700 block of Herd St. Media staging will be at Monterey Rd and St. Paul Rd. PIO will be making a statement at staging in approximately 30 min
— Colorado Springs Police Department (@CSPDPIO) December 8, 2021
The scene was encircled with yellow police tape, but the circumstances surrounding the shooting are not clear at the writing of this article. The El Paso County Sheriff's Office will take over the investigation, according to Twitter.
EPSO will be the lead investigating agency in this Officer Involved Shooting (OIS) which occurred in the 1700 block of Herd Street. Media Staging at Monterey Road and St. Paul Road. https://t.co/5YgF3Cj1Lr pic.twitter.com/D5t5zfhsSl
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Famous Person - Commit Crime - Investigate
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On Monday, a flock of half a dozen racing pigeons were set loose from a rooftop in Brick Lane by pigeon fancier, Brian Woodhouse, with one strapped with a pollution sensor to its back and one with a GPS tracker
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Flock of racing pigeons equipped with pollution sensor and Twitter account take to the skies in bid to raise awareness of capital’s illegally dirty air Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.52 GMT
They’ve been driven from Trafalgar square for being a nuisance, derided as rats with wings and maligned as a risk to public health.
But now pigeons could play a small part in helping Londoners overcome one of the capital’s biggest health problems – its illegal levels of air pollution blamed for thousands of deaths a year.
On Monday, a flock of half a dozen racing pigeons were set loose from a rooftop in Brick Lane by pigeon fancier, Brian Woodhouse, with one strapped with a pollution sensor to its back and one with a GPS tracker. But while the 25g sensor records the nitrogen dioxide produced by the city’s diesel cars, buses, and trucks and tweets it at anyone who asks for a reading, its real purpose – and the use of the pigeons – is to raise awareness.
“It is a scandal. It is a health and environmental scandal for humans – and pigeons. We’re making the invisible visible,” said Pierre Duquesnoy, who won a London Design Festival award for the idea last year. “Most of the time when we talk about pollution people think about Beijing or other places, but there are some days in the year when pollution was higher and more toxic in London than Beijing, that’s the reality.”
He said he was inspired by the use of pigeons in the first and second world wars to deliver information and save lives, but they were also a practical way of taking mobile air quality readings and beating London’s congested roads. They fly relatively low, at 100-150ft, and fast, at speeds up to 80mph.
“There’s something about taking what is seen as a flying rat and reversing that into something quite positive,” said Duquesnoy, who is creative director at marketing agency DigitasLBI. Gary Fuller, an air quality expert at King’s College London, said it was the first time he had heard of urban animals being put to such use.
“It’s great that unemployed pigeons from Trafalgar Square are being put to work. Around 15 years ago tests were done on around 150 stray dogs in Mexico City, showing the ways in which air pollution was affecting lungs and heart health. But this is the first time that I’ve heard of urban wild animals being used to carry sensors to give us a picture of the air pollution over our heads.”
The release of the pigeons for three days this week, dubbed the Pigeon Air Patrol, came as moderate to high pollution affected much of the city, with Battersea recording ‘very high’, the top of the scale.
Elsewhere in the UK, Stockton-on-tees and Middlesbrough recorded high pollution readings and the forecast is for moderate and possibly high pollution in urban areas in northern England and Scotland on Tuesday. Other areas will have low pollution levels.
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Environment Pollution
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Freddie Lee McRae committed a series of robberies in 2018 and 2019
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ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A Washington, D.C. man was sentenced today to 21 years in prison in connection with a series of armed robberies that he conducted at multiple banks and a retail store in northern Virginia in 2018 and 2019. According to court documents, Freddie Lee McRae, 35, committed a series of robberies in 2018 and 2019. On November 13, 2018, McRae robbed a Wells Fargo bank branch located in Alexandria. McRae handed a teller a note that demanded money, indicated he had a firearm, and threatened to “[k]ill [a]ll [b]ankers” if the teller did not comply. McRae pointed a firearm at two tellers before fleeing with approximately $8,750 in cash. “This case involved a chilling armed robbery spree during which innocent community members were threatened with serious injury or death if they did not comply with repeated demands for money,” said Raj Parekh, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. “We are thankful to our law enforcement partners for their thorough investigation across multiple jurisdictions to bring the defendant to justice, including apprehending him after he jumped out of a moving vehicle prior to it crashing and sinking into the Potomac River.” “The FBI, along with our partners at every level of law enforcement, are committed to protecting the public from the most egregious and violent criminals who terrorize the community,” said James A. Dawson, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office Criminal Division. “Today’s significant sentence demonstrates the seriousness and threat McRae posed to businesses and people in our community. The sentence is the result of teamwork among our partners to hold him accountable and prevent future violence.” On December 10, 2018, McRae robbed a Burke & Herbert bank branch located in Alexandria. McRae approached a teller, who asked if he wanted to make a deposit. McRae responded, “gimmie your money,” before lifting up his shirt and pulling a pistol from his waistband, which he pointed at the teller. As the teller gathered money, McRae racked the slide on the pistol and demanded all large bills. McRae fled with approximately $1,366 in cash. On April 21, 2019, McRae robbed the Legend Kicks & Apparel store located in Arlington. McRae brandished a pistol and demanded that two store employees empty their pockets, which they did. McRae then ordered the employees to lie on the floor before taking approximately $2,160 in cash that belonged to the store. McRae fled the store on foot and the area by vehicle. When a law enforcement officer tried to pull over the vehicle, McRae stopped only briefly before leading law enforcement officers on a vehicle pursuit on the George Washington Memorial Parkway. McRae ultimately jumped out of his moving vehicle prior to it crashing and sinking into the Potomac River. McRae tried to flee law enforcement by jumping into the river, but officers pulled him out and placed him under arrest. As part of his guilty plea, McRae also admitted to robbing a Bank of America branch in Springfield on October 27, 2018; a BB&T branch located in Alexandria on December 20, 2018; and a Capital One branch located in Bowie, Maryland, on January 2, 2019. McRae further admitted to attempting to rob a Capital One branch located in Arlington on February 11, 2019, and to obstructing justice following his apprehension. The bank robberies that McRae admitted to committing were investigated by the FBI as part of the “Beltway Bank Bandit” series. Raj Parekh, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; James A. Dawson, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office Criminal Division; Acting Chief Andy Penn, Arlington County Chief of Police; Michael L. Brown, Alexandria Chief of Police; and David M. Rohrer, Fairfax County Interim Chief of Police and Deputy County Executive for Public Safety, made the announcement after sentencing by U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema. This case was investigated by the FBI Washington Field Office’s Northern Virginia Violent Crime Safe Streets Task Force, which is composed of FBI Special Agents and Task Force Officers from northern Virginia law enforcement agencies. Significant investigative assistance in this case was provided by the Arlington County Police and the Fairfax County Police. The task force is charged with identifying, investigating, and disrupting the most egregious and violent criminal actors within northern Virginia. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Natasha Smalky and Alexander E. Blanchard prosecuted the case. A copy of this press release is located on the website of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Related court documents and information are located on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia or on PACER by searching for Case No. 1:19-cr-268.
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Bank Robbery
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2008 Women's European Union Amateur Boxing Championships
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Coordinates: 53°23′5″N 2°55′52.4″W / 53.38472°N 2.931222°W / 53.38472; -2.931222
The 2008 Women's European Union Amateur Boxing Championships were held in the Greenbank Sports Academy[1] in Liverpool, England from August 4 to 8. This was the 3rd edition of this annual competition, and was organised by the European governing body for amateur boxing, EABA. 80 fighters representing 17 federations competed in 13 weight divisions. Turkey returned to top spot on the medals table with 4 gold and 4 bronze medals. [2][3] Host country England won her first gold medals in these competitions, as did Ireland in the person of 60 kg World Champion Katie Taylor. [4]
Carmela Chiacchio
Gülseda Başıbütün
Debbie Rogers
Emek Yılmaz
Pinar Yilmaz
Nagehan Gul
Anastasia Cousins
Larisa Rosu
Lotte Lien
Nikolina Orlović
Beata Leśnik
Sarah Alderman
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Sports Competition
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1942 Betteshanger miners' strike
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The 1942 Betteshanger Miners' Strike took place in January 1942 at the Betteshanger colliery in Kent, England. The strike had its origins in a switch to a new coalface, No. 2. This face was much narrower and harder to work than the previous face and outputs were reduced. The miners proved unable to meet management production quotas and the mine owners refused to pay the previously agreed minimum daily wage, alleging deliberate slow working. An arbitrator called in to review the dispute ruled that the quotas were achievable. The miners disagreed and went on strike from 9 January. Under wartime regulations, Order 1305, striking was illegal unless the matter had been referred to the Ministry of Labour and National Service for settlement. Prosecutions were made against the strikers; three union officials were imprisoned and 1,085 men fined. The prosecutions hardened the strikers' attitudes and after the strike entered its third week the government began negotiations. A settlement was reached to reinstate the minimum wage and for the men to return to work on 29 January. The imprisoned men received a royal pardon on 2 February and the fines were remitted in July 1943. In order to maintain production outputs during the Second World War the British government passed the Conditions of Employment and National Arbitration Order 1940, commonly referred to as Order 1305. [1] This made it an offence for workers to go on strike unless the Ministry of Labour and National Service failed to refer a labour dispute for settlement by a National Arbitration Tribunal within 21 days. The order had the support of the ministry's National Joint Consultative Committee which included representation from the British Employers' Confederation and the Trades Union Congress. [2]:29
Betteshanger was the largest colliery in the Kent Coalfield, employing thousands of miners working a seam some 1,500 feet (460 m) below ground level. The mine had a reputation for militancy as many of the miners who took up jobs there after its opening in 1927 had been blacklisted from mines in other parts of the country for their actions during the 1926 general strike. The miners had held a strike in 1938 over the treatment of young employees at the colliery. [3]
The 1942 strike had its origins in a decision by the mineowners to open up a new coalface, known as No. 2 Face, in November 1941. It proved difficult to achieve the mine manager's output quota of 4 long tons (4.1 t) per day from the new coalface. The management claimed this was because the miners were deliberately working slowly but the miners claimed it was because of difficult working conditions. [2]:33 The coal seam at No. 2 Face was unusually variable and working conditions there changed on a weekly basis. [3] The miners claimed that at times the seam was as little as 2 feet (0.61 m) high, requiring the men to work on their knees in a confined space. [2]:34 There were also complaints about air quality and faulty equipment, which the miners claimed cost an hour each shift to repair. [2]:35 The miners alleged that the management had started work on the difficult No.2 Face to allow the more productive and easier to work Eastern Face to be closed off. This was allegedly to save the Eastern Face for exploitation after the war, when government subsidies would be withdrawn. [2]:37–38
The mine managers refused to accept the arguments put forward by the miners and took action; instead of paying the minimum wage, which had been set by agreements dating to 1933, the management stated they would only pay a piecework rate for the coal actually produced. [2]:33 The miners' union disputed this but failed to make progress and the union branch president and secretary both resigned over the matter. The Board of Trade's Department of Mines agreed to arbitrate in the dispute and sent Sir Charles Doughty to decide on the matter. [2]:35 Doughty was a veteran arbitrator and solicitor with experience in coal mining, though only in the north-west of England. [2]:36 Doughty ruled, on 19 December, that the 4-ton target for No.2 Face was achievable and that the rate per ton paid by the mine was generous. He did recommend that an additional bonus of 1 shilling 1 pence (£0.05) be paid for coal produced from No. 2 Face in recognition of the difficult working conditions. [2]:35
The colliery management implemented the wage reductions on 8 January and, after discovering this, the miners commenced strike action the following morning. [2]:33:36 Bornstein (1986) records that 1,600 miners went on strike while Mak (2015) states there were 2,000, and this did not include the workers on the surface who were prevented from working due to the cessation of the coal supply. [4][2]:36 The strike attracted some attention, strikers were interviewed by the social research organisation Mass-Observation, and there was much press coverage, most of which was unfavourable and described the miners as unpatriotic for striking during a time of total war. [2]:32:41 The miners disputed the press claims and noted that they had continued to work the mine during air raids, including one that hit the colliery buildings, and that 250 miners had joined the Home Guard and continued to report for duty throughout the strike. [2]:45:46
It was decided to instigate prosecutions against the striking miners, though Minister of Labour and National Service Ernest Bevin advised against this. [5] One legal issue was that Order 1305 had been drafted in haste and was vaguely worded. There was concern that some miners may not have been aware that it was illegal to strike and the Department of Mines sent officers to explain this to the miners. [2]:50 The strike continued and a trial was held at Canterbury on 23 January. [2]:51 The miners held a procession to the court accompanied by bands and crowds of women and children. [5] The miners particularly feared a prison sentence which would prevent them from finding work at other mines. [2]:54
The three union branch leaders involved in the strike faced civil charges for breach of contract as well as criminal charges under Order 1305 and under regulation 58AA of the Defence Regulations. [2]:51 The civil prosecution proceeded first and the prosecution set out its case focusing on the alleged unpatriotic conduct of the miners. The prosecution then withdrew the charges, which prevented the defendants from responding to the allegations. [2]:43–44 The criminal case focused on the legal question of whether the miners had given the required 21 days' notice to the ministry for arbitration and not on the rights and wrongs of the pay dispute. [2]:51 The defendants were found guilty.
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Strike
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Ashford explosion: Seven in hospital after Kent blast that destroyed home
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Police are attempting to establish whether anyone is missing following an explosion which ‘blew off’ the front of a house in Ashford , Kent.
Emergency services were called to the scene to help rescue those who were trapped inside the burning building, with police saying they were “working to establish if anyone else is unaccounted for”.
Neighbours in Ashford said that the front of the house was “completely gone” following a “loud bang”, which was heard just before 8am on Tuesday.
Firefighters were called to Mill View in Willesborough at 7:57am on Tuesday, with four fire engines arriving at the scene.
Members of the public are being asked to avoid the area, and those living locally have been advised to keep their windows shut.
A woman who lives near to where the explosion happened said she saw people “moving and getting up after ambulance treatment”, the Daily Mirror reported.
The South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb) said that ambulance crews were in attendance along with a Hazardous Area Response Team and the air ambulance service.
A spokesperson said: “Two patients have been taken to hospital in London with serious injuries. A further five patients have been taken to William Harvey Hospital in Ashford with injuries thought to be less serious.”
“We remain at the scene in support of our emergency service colleagues,” they added.
Neighbours took to social media to describe the events with one tweeting: “Huge gas explosion on my road, front of the house is completely gone.”
Another neighbour posted on Facebook: “It’s one house, houses to either side have some fire damage now too. Everyone okay as far as I know – emergency services at scene. All evacuated. Debris everywhere. People in the house also evacuated and were seen moving and getting up after ambulance treatment but their condition not confirmed yet.”
Someone else wrote on Facebook: “Did anyone else feel their house shake at 8am? Am in Willesborough and now the smell of burning in the air and sirens racing down Hythe Road. What is happening?”
Others living in over half a mile away reported feeling their homes shake, meanwhile a woman who lives more than a mile from Willesborough told Facebook that she had heard an explosion.
Locals have been speculating that it could have been caused to a gas explosion, with a team of gas engineers reportedly spotted at the scene. As yet, however, no official cause of the explosion has been given.
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Gas explosion
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Ryegate explosion Friday night leaves two residents dead
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and last updated 2021-03-09 08:44:18-05
RYEGATE — An explosion Friday night took the lives of two Ryegate residents at their home at 105 Third Ave. W.
The victims, Curtis Allen Ronning and Christine Marie Debuff, were the owners of the Ryegate Bar and Café.
Golden Valley County Undersheriff Mark Olson said Monday that Debuff and Ronning were in Billings prior to the explosion to pick up groceries for their café. When they returned home, they smelled gas and attempted to shut off the gas valves and open all the windows in the mobile home.
After attempting to air out their home, Olson said they went to their bar and café, and, according to people at the bar, Ronning had mentioned that his home smelled like gas or propane.
Shortly after the two returned home, it exploded.
Q2 News / Mitch Lagge
A mobile home in Ryegate at 105 3rd Ave. W. after a propane explosion demolished the residence and killed two people.
“I’m speculating that it was probably a time period of maybe a half-hour that they went home and closed the house up. There was a buildup of gas. We don’t know what transpired at that point. Whether the gas was underneath the trailer and didn’t vent when he had opened the house up, or the leak was so severe that when he did close the house up something came on,” said Olson.
The explosion was heard around Ryegate and by a rancher five miles north of town, Olson said. Debris was scattered around town, but no other injuries were reported as a result of the blast, Olson said.
Olson said that a furnace or another source could have ignited the gas, causing the explosion.
Two nearby residents who noticed the explosion attempted to rescue Ronning and DeBuff but were unsuccessful. One of the men received second-degree burns to his hand and a severe laceration as the roof fell while he was inside. The other man received second-degree burns as well. Both had to be pulled from the home and were taken to St. Vincent Healthcare in Billings. They have since been released.
Q2 News / Mitch Lagge
The Ryegate Bar and Cafe is closed until further notice after its owners died in a propane gas explosion at their home.
Olson said the bottom line is that people should always contact 9-1-1 and leave the home if they ever smell gas.
“This was a tragedy here. The community will certainly miss them,” said Olson.
Olson said the cafe was recently purchased in 2019 and had managed to survive through pandemic-related shut downs. Business at the cafe had just started to pick back up, he said.
"They'll be sorely missed. All hopes are that the Ryegate Bar and Cafe can reopen. We'll see what happens with that. Currently, with licensing issues and such being that the owners are deceased, my understanding is that they are working with the state to see how they would go about getting it reopen," Olson said.
The fire is still under investigation by state fire marshals and the ATF. Olson said local crews responded within 10 minutes to put out the fire. Responding agencies include Golden Valley County Sheriff's Department, Ryegate Volunteer Fire Department and Lavina Volunteer fire department.
Olson said he's been communicating with Montana Disaster and Emergency Services to start writing a grant to purchase gas detectors for the residents of Golden Valley County.
"Some people just can't afford it. Those detectors are expensive, I think they're $60 or better and people have to buy groceries and they're going to buy groceries rather than putting money towards that, even though it is vitally important," Olson said.
Q2 News / Mitch Lagge
A sign hangs on the door of the Ryegate Cafe, informing people the business is closed, after the cafe's owners died in a gas explosion in their home.
Copyright 2021 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Gas explosion
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Pele 'Recovering Well' After Surgery: Daughter
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She however did not comment on local media reports saying the 80-year-old Edson Arantes do Nascimento is back in intensive care. Pele won the 1958, 1962 and 1970 World Cups, and remains Brazil's all-time leading scorer with 77 goals in 92 matches. | Courtesy: Twitter (@Pele) Pele 'Recovering Well' After Surgery: Daughter Brazilian soccer great Pele “took a little step back” in his recovery from surgery to remove a tumor from his colon, his daughter Kely Nascimento said, but he is “recovering well” at a Sao Paulo hospital. She did not comment on local media reports saying the 80-year-old Edson Arantes do Nascimento is back in intensive care. Kely Nascimento posted a picture with her father on Instagram which she said she had just taken in his room at the Albert Einstein hospital. “He is recovering well and within normal range. Promise!” Kely Nascimento said. “The normal recovery scenario for a man of his age after an operation like this is sometimes two steps forward and one step back. Yesterday he was tired and took a little step back.”
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Famous Person - Recovered
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‘The next pandemic’: drought is a hidden global crisis, UN says
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Countries urged to take urgent action on managing water and land and tackling the climate emergency Last modified on Wed 25 Aug 2021 14.43 BST Drought is a hidden global crisis that risks becoming “the next pandemic” if countries do not take urgent action on water and land management and tackling the climate emergency, the UN has said. At least 1.5 billion people have been directly affected by drought this century, and the economic cost over roughly that time has been estimated at $124bn (£89bn). The true cost is likely to be many times higher because such estimates do not include much of the impact in developing countries, according to a report published on Thursday. Mami Mizutori, the UN secretary general’s special representative for disaster risk reduction, said: “Drought is on the verge of becoming the next pandemic and there is no vaccine to cure it. Most of the world will be living with water stress in the next few years. Demand will outstrip supply during certain periods. Drought is a major factor in land degradation and the decline of yields for major crops.” She said many people had an image of drought as affecting desert regions in Africa, but that this was not the case. Drought is now widespread, and by the end of the century all but a handful of countries will experience it in some form, according to the report. “People have been living with drought for 5,000 years, but what we are seeing now is very different,” Mizutori said. “Human activities are exacerbating drought and increasing the impact”, threatening to derail progress on lifting people from poverty. Developed countries have not been immune. The US, Australia and southern Europe have experienced drought in recent years. Drought costs more than $6bn a year in direct impacts in the US, and about €9bn (£7.7bn) in the EU, but these are also likely to be severe underestimates. Population growth is also exposing more people in many regions to the impacts of drought, the report says. Drought also goes beyond agriculture,said Roger Pulwarty, a senior scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a co-author of the report. He pointed to the Danube in Europe, where recurring drought in recent years has affected transport, tourism, industry and energy generation. “We need to have a modernised view of drought,” he said. “We need to look at how to manage resources such as rivers and large watersheds.” Changing rainfall patterns as a result of climate breakdown are a key driver of drought, but the report also identifies the inefficient use of water resources and the degradation of land under intensive agriculture and poor farming practices as playing a role. Deforestation, the overuse of fertilisers and pesticides, overgrazing and over-extraction of water for farming are also major problems, it says. Mizutori called for governments to take action to help prevent drought by reforming and regulating how water is extracted, stored and used, and how land is managed. She said early warning systems could do much to help people in danger, and that advanced weather forecasting techniques were now available. She said working with local people was essential, because local and indigenous knowledge could help to inform where and how to store water and how to predict the impacts of dry periods. The report, entitled Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction: Special Report on Drought 2021, was published on Thursday, and will feed into discussions at vital UN climate talksk known as Cop26, which are scheduled to take place in Glasgow in November.
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Droughts
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2016 Christchurch earthquake
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The 2016 Kaikoura earthquake was a magnitude 7.8 (Mw) earthquake in the South Island of New Zealand that occurred two minutes after midnight on 14 November 2016 NZDT (11:02 on 13 November UTC). [2] Ruptures occurred on multiple faults and the earthquake has been described as the "most complex earthquake ever studied". [8]
The earthquake started at about 15 kilometres (9 mi) north-east of Culverden and 60 kilometres (37 mi) south-west of the tourist town of Kaikōura and at a depth of approximately 15 kilometres (9 mi). [3][9][10] The complex sequence of ruptures lasted for about two minutes. [1] The cumulative magnitude of the ruptures was 7.8, with the largest amount of that energy released far to the north of the epicentre. [11]
Over $1.8 billion in insurance claims were received. [12] There were two deaths, in Kaikōura and Mount Lyford. [6][13]
A complex sequence of ruptures with a combined magnitude of 7.8 started at 00:02:56 NZDT on 14 November 2016 and lasted approximately two minutes. [1] The hypocentre (the point where the ruptures started) was at a depth of 15 kilometres (9 mi). The epicentre (the point on the Earth's surface above the hypocentre) was 15 kilometres (9 mi) north-east of Culverden and 95 km (59 mi) from Christchurch. [3][13][14] From the hypocentre, ruptures ripped northwards at a speed of 2 km per second, over a distance of up to 200 km (124 mi). The largest amount of energy released did not occur at the epicentre, rather 100 km (62 mi) to the north near Seddon. [15] Initial field surveys indicated ruptures on at least six faults,[15][16] while more detailed studies confirmed ruptures on twenty-five faults. [17] This is considered a world record for the greatest number of faults to rupture in a single earthquake event. [18][19]
The earthquake was assessed as the 'most complex earthquake ever studied' and prompted the reassessment of a number of assumptions about earthquake processes. [8]
There was motion on the Kekerengu Fault of up to 10 m (33 ft), movement on the Hundalee Fault, a newly identified fault in Waipapa Bay, as well as minor motion on the Seaward segment of the Hope Fault,[20] and rupture on the Humps Fault and in the Emu Plains area. [16] The offshore continuation of the Kekerengu Fault to the north east, known as the Needles Fault, ruptured as well. NIWA marine geologist Dr Philip Barnes said the length of the Kekerengu–Needles Fault rupture may extend for about 70 km (43 mi), consisting of 36 km (22 mi) on land and 34 km (21 mi) under the sea. [21]
Cape Campbell, at the north-eastern tip of the South Island, moved to the north-northeast by more than two metres – putting it that much closer to the North Island – and rose almost one metre. Kaikōura moved to the northeast by nearly one metre, and rose seventy centimetres. The east coast of the North Island moved west by up to five centimetres, and the Wellington region moved two to six centimetres to the north. Christchurch moved two centimetres to the south. [15]
The tsunami that followed the Kaikōura earthquake reached a peak height of about 7 metres. The tsunami was found to be highest at Goose Bay, with data indicating a maximum run-up height above tide level at the time of the tsunami of 6.9 m ± 0.3 m. At Oaro, the height was 5.3 m ± 0.3 m. Marine and freshwater flora and fauna were later found scattered across the Oaro River flood plain, extending 250 metres (820 ft) inland from the high tide mark on the day of the survey. [22]
Immediately after the earthquake, the tide level at the Kaikōura tide gauge started dropping. Over 25 minutes, it dropped about 2.5 m, a classic warning sign of a tsunami. During the next 15 minutes, the water level rose from its lowest level by about 4 m. That was followed by a series of waves over several hours. The water level at the Kaikōura gauge rose 2.5 m higher than it would have been. This was made up of a 1.5 m rise measured on the gauge, and a rise of about 1 m of the gauge itself, as the seabed and surrounding land rose by that amount. Some other tide gauges that recorded the tsunami were in Wellington Harbour, Castlepoint, Christchurch, and the Chatham Islands. [22]
A tsunami estimated at five metres high struck the north-facing Little Pigeon Bay on Banks Peninsula. [23] The bay contained only one building, an unoccupied holiday house that was pushed off its foundations and heavily damaged. [24] In neighbouring Pigeon Bay, the tsunami was observed at about 2 am but caused no damage. [23]
Two people died in the earthquake. A man was crushed and died when the historic Elms Farm homestead near Kaikōura collapsed. Two other people were rescued from the rubble of the house, including the man's 100-year-old mother. [25] A woman died in a log house that was damaged at Mount Lyford. Early reports said her cause of death was a heart attack, but an autopsy later indicated it was a head injury suffered during the earthquake. [26]
Many major roads were closed in the South Island because of slips and damage to bridges, including State Highway 1 between Picton and Waipara, and State Highway 7 between Waipara and Springs Junction (SH 65 turnoff). Most roads were cleared within 24 hours, but SH 1 between Seddon and Cheviot via Kaikōura and the Inland Kaikoura Road remained closed. [27] The closure of SH1, the Inland Kaikoura Road and the Main North Line railway effectively cut off all land routes into Kaikōura. [28][29]
As of the morning of 19 November, Kaikōura remained cut off by road due to landslides, damaged bridges and infrastructure, road subsidence, and the risk of falling debris. [30] The NZ Transport Agency said that State Highway 1 would take months to repair, while repairs to the rail line, a key freight connection between Wellington and Christchurch, were likely to take more than a year. [31] Parts of the diversion route via State Highways 63, 6, 65 and 7 were experiencing four times their usual traffic volume. [32]
Mains water supply was mostly restored to Kaikōura township by 19 November, but supply was in a "fragile state" and conservation was necessary. The sewage system was "severely damaged" and unusable. [33]
On 30 November 2016, the Inland Kaikoura Road, redesignated "Kaikoura Emergency Access Road", was reopened to civilian drivers holding a permit and for restricted times of the day. Twenty-five crews had worked to clear 50 landslips on that highway alone. [34] It reopened unrestricted to all traffic on 19 December 2016. State Highway 1 south of Kaikōura reopened two days later on 21 December 2016, albeit only during daylight hours.
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Earthquakes
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2020 Bath shipbuilders strike
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The 2020 Bath shipbuilders strike was a labor strike involving shipbuilders at Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, United States. The strike, which started June 22, involved 4,300 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. The strike ended on August 23 with the approval of a new labor contract. Bath Iron Works (BIW) is a major shipyard and among the largest shipbuilders for the United States Navy. [1] The shipyard, located in Bath, Maine, is a major employer for the region, with approximately 6,800 workers, of whom approximately 4,300 are members of Local S6 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM). [1][2]
In 2020, labor contract discussions between the union and company stalled as neither side could come to an agreement on the terms of the contract. The three-year contract proposed by the company would have included a 3% pay raise each year, but according to the union, there were over a dozen concessions that they took issue with. [3] Primarily, union members took issue with changes in seniority and policy regarding the hiring of subcontractors. [4] Previous efforts by the company to bring temporary workers to the shipyard were blocked by the union in 2015. [5] On June 21, union members held a vote to approve a strike beginning at midnight, with 87% of the votes being to approve the strike. [1][6][4] The strike is taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has negatively affected operations at the shipyard,[2] with production behind schedule by six months. [4] The last time the union held a strike was in 2000, with the strike lasting 55 days. [4]
Following the announcement of a strike on June 21, about a dozen union members left the union hall waving signs and cheering for the strike. [4] Shortly after the announcement of the strike, Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Research, Development and Acquisition) James Geurtz said, “my expectation is both sides will work aggressively and with a sense of urgency so we can get these programs [exected].”[5] U.S. Representative Jared Golden and Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden both expressed their support for the strikers. [7]
On June 22, about 1,000 strikers picketed in front of the shipyard, with plans for smaller groups of people to continue picketing in four-hour blocks. [8] Several shipyard workers from two other unions that were not on strike showed solidarity with the strikers by taking lunch breaks and vacation time. [8] To help alleviate financial difficulties caused by the strike, union members will receive $150 per week from a union fund. [8] Police reported 30 overnight noise complaints stemming from supporters honking their car horns to show support for the strike. [9]
In early July, BIW announced that they would be hiring additional subcontractors to avoid falling further behind schedule with their projects. [10] On July 7, the company began to temporarily lay off workers from non-striking union Local S7, citing a lack of work caused by the strike. [11] That same week, union representatives from Local S6 began to meet with a Federal mediator, with company representatives expected to meet with the mediators the following week. [12][13] On July 21, Local S6 President Chris Wiers criticized the company for hiring out-of-state contractors from several Southern states that were experiencing an increase in COVID-19 cases, such as Alabama and Mississippi. He alleged that this could lead to higher cases of infection in Bath and argued that BIW should "provide proof of testing with negative results for all out of state subcontractors immediately.”[14] On July 25, President Robert Martinez Jr. of the IAM spoke to strikers outside the union hall, calling for strikers to remain strong and calling the strike "the largest strike in the United States of America right now.”[15] On August 3, union and company representatives held their first meeting since June, where they agreed to points relating to company holidays and merit pay. [16] On August 8, it was announced that the union and company had reached a tentative agreement to end the strike, with union members slated to vote on the agreement between August 21 and August 23. [17] The 3-year labor contract was officially approved by union members on August 23, officially ending the strike, with union members returning to work the following day. [18][19]
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Strike
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From Virender Sehwag to Shahid Afridi: Look at cricketers who have married their cousins or relatives
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Pakistan cricket captain Babar Azam recently got engaged to his cousin sister and sources said the batsman is set to tie knot in 2022. Pakistan cricket captain Babar Azam recently got engaged to his cousin sister and according to sources the stylish middle-order batsman is set to tie the knot in 2022. It is to be noted that this is not the first time that a cricketer will marry his cousin sister or relative as there are many players who have earlier got married to their cousin sisters or relatives. Let’s take a look at cricketers who have married their cousin sisters or relative. 1. Virender Sehwag-Aarti Ahlawat Former India opener has got married to Aarti Ahlawat in 2004 but many of you do not know that Aarti is the daughter of Sehwag's relative, Sehwag and Aarti decided to tie the knot after dating each other for three years. 2. Shahid Afridi-Nadia Former Pakistan skipper Afridi is married to Nadia, who is his maternal uncle’s daughter. Afridi and Nadia tied the knot on October 22, 2000 and the couple is blessed with five daughters. 3. Saeed Anwar–Lubna Former Pakistan opener Saeed Anwar got married to his cousin sister Lubna in 1996. The swahbuckling left-handed batsman took international retirement after the 2003 World Cup. 4. Mustafizur Rahman–Samia Parvin Star Bangladesh pacer Mustafizur Rahman got hitched to his maternal cousin Samia Parvin after the 2019 World Cup. She is a psychology student at Dhaka University. 5. Mosaddek Hossain–Sharmin Samira Usha Bangladesh cricketer Mosaddek Hossain tied the knot with his cousin Sharmin Samira in 2012 when he was only 16.
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Famous Person - Marriage
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2009 Leeds refuse workers strike
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The 2009 Leeds refuse workers strike was an eleven-week industrial dispute in City of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England between Leeds City Council and the city's binmen. [1]
The strike began on 7 September 2009[2] and was over the city council's plans to equalise the pay of men and women, which some workers argued would see considerable reductions in their wages. On 27 October 2009, with the strike having lasted for eight weeks, the council began advertising for new refuse workers. The council said it was advertising for staff in order to meet its target of a fortnightly black bin collection. [3]
In November 2009 Leeds City Council put fresh proposals to union members which would see 20 staff getting a pay cut, but most workers receiving small increases. At a secret ballot of about 600 union members on Monday 23 November, 79% voted in favour of the proposals and refuse workers returned to work on the morning of Wednesday 25 November. [4] The first bin collections took place the following day.
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Strike
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Emails describe build-up of safety concerns, illegal activity before Civic Center Park closure
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The park formally closed on Sept. 15 with an assist from Colorado State Patrol, which worked with the city to clear the property. Additionally, Colorado's director of the Division of Capital Assets, Rick Lee, said in an email that the state would not allow charitable food functions at the state-owned Lincoln Veterans Memorial Park across the street from Civic Center. "In order to assist Denver, we will not be permitting charitable food functions in the park as well. We have not had any requests to date but that may change now that Civic Center will be closed," Richard Lee wrote in an email on Sept. 3. A spokesman for that agency said on Thursday that only one charitable organization requested a permit to distribute food, but did not move forward because they did not want to pay a permit fee. At least one local organization expressed worry that people experiencing homelessness might move even further away from the park than simply across the street. Five days prior to the announcement of the park's closure, the communications director of the Denver Art Museum wrote to the mayor's office about an event next month. "If this is indeed planned to take place, wanted to see who the correct person would be to get information on what the plans were for how to address the migration that would follow. We'll have media from around the country at the museum on October 13, and wanted to be sure we understood the plans as they are confirmed so we can do whatever we can to prepare,” Kristy Bassuener wrote. The museum said Thursday that it was concerned for the health and safety of staff and guests. As the city works to rehabilitate the park, an email from Lee indicates Denver wanted to explore a more permanent measure to guard Civic Center Park, potentially spending $350,000 to explore a wrought iron fence. Gilmore told 9NEWS on Thursday that is not happening but Denver has discussed adding fencing around certain historical parts of the park, like the theater. The parks department is going to add 11 full time maintenance crews. Eight new park rangers will also be monitoring Civic Center when it eventually reopens. The closure is expected to last at least 60 days. While another email strongly encouraged the Denver Downtown Partnership to move or relocate the 9NEWS Parade of Lights on Dec. 4, the partnership said Thursday that the event should go on as planned. Sharon Alton, who is responsible for the parade for the Downtown Denver Partnership, said there will be no grandstands for the parade, but that's related to COVID-19.
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Organization Closed
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Enhanced infrastructure plan is the best way to go
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Joe Biden Sinema doubles down on filibuster, in setback for rules change talks Overnight Energy & Environment — Senate panel backs drilling fee hike Overnight Defense & National Security — Senate passes sweeping defense bill MORE ’s economic efforts are paying off big time and he deserves credit for resuscitating the failed Trump economy. Through August, the new administration has created about 4 million new jobs after millions of them were lost under his predecessor. Cash-strapped working families needed a big boost, and the Child Tax Credit in the American Rescue Plan pumped much-needed financial aid to hard-working families with vulnerable children. But so much more needs to be done. Passage of the big and bold Build Back Better bill would continue and even extend the recovery that’s already started. ADVERTISEMENT There are two proposals before Congress. The basic package is the unimaginative choice. It contains money for transportation and electronic infrastructure. This proposal is good but not good enough to fundamentally reform and revitalize the economy. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act costs $1.2 trillion spread over 10 years. But only half of that amount is new spending, which is hardly enough to tackle the massive problems facing the economy. The bold Build Back Better plan would cost $3.5 trillion over the same time frame. The basic proposal is good but, as I mentioned, it’s not good enough to fundamentally reform and revitalize the economy. It is supported by Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Clyburn to Democrats itching for leadership role: 'If you want my seat, come get it' Omar allies dig in on calls for Boebert punishment House to vote next week on Islamophobia bill, holding Meadows in contempt MORE (D-N.Y.). This reconciliation bill has no GOP backers and would require the support of just about every House Democrat and all 50 Democrats in the Senate. The visionary premium proposal has money to fund improvements to the economy with infrastructure along with funding for universal preschool education, free community college tuition and child care. These programs are as vital to the economic health and wellbeing of our great nation as basic brick and building projects. A national poll conducted last month for USA Today indicated that most Americans support both packages. Since there’s public support, why not go for the gold instead of settling for the bronze medal. The premium package has the potential to have the most profound positive potential. The lion’s share of the funding for the larger program would come out of the pockets of the millionaires and billionaires who reaped the ripe harvest of the insidious tax cuts under Donald Trump Donald Trump Warren backs expanding the Supreme Court Trump allies urge McCarthy to remove Kinzinger, Cheney from House GOP conference Agency managing Trump's DC hotel lease failed to probe ethical conflicts: report MORE . The Trump tax law exacerbated income inequality and increased the federal budget deficit. Three-fifths of the benefits from the Trump tax cuts went to people in the top fifth of the income scale. In the first two years after the new tax law, federal tax revenues declined by a third. The premium package would right a wrong by benefitting middle-class families. The big package is also an aggressive progressive approach to fighting the problem of climate change. The Build Back Better plan would be a significant step forward to ward off the ravages of an increasingly dangerous environment that have already caused disasters from forest fires to fierce flooding. We are all familiar with the political palette. Democrats are the blue team while the GOP wears red uniforms. The two infrastructure proposals also come with color codes. The background for the small package is a dull battleship grey while the color scheme for the big package is vibrant emerald green. Green symbolizes the color of the money from big corporations and wealthy Americans that would fund the ambitious program. It also represents the urgent need to reboot our economy into a big clean energy machine. The low-cost option is sturdy and dependable while the pricier proposal is visionary and dynamic. The basic infrastructure funding proposal is necessary but not a sufficient step to meet the challenges that we face in the future. While threats to the U.S. multiplied and mutated, America slept. This enhanced proposal ends the whistling past the graveyard mentality that has frozen American politics in place for decades while climate change and income inequality became major threats to our survival The smaller package is too skimpy to meet the obstacles that the U.S. States faces through the 21st century. The enhanced package confronts the dangers that ominously lurk down that line. We live in troubled times, and America has been slow to react to the existential challenges it faces this century including climate change and income inequality. The times require bold action to catch up. America has not moved on with the times and it’s time to be bold instead of cautious. Brad Bannon is a Democratic pollster and CEO of Bannon Communications Research. His podcast, Deadline D.C. with Brad Bannon, airs on Periscope TV and the Progressive Voices Network. His
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Financial Aid
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2010 Salta earthquake
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The 1948 Salta earthquake took place in the Argentinian province of Salta on 25 August at 03:09:28 local time The shock was 7.0 on the moment magnitude scale and had a maximum Mercalli Intensity of IX (Violent). Property damage and casualties occurred in several towns in the east and southeast of Salta, and also in northern Tucumán and Jujuy, affecting the capitals of both. It was the last major earthquake recorded in the Argentine Northwest until the 2010 Salta earthquake.
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Earthquakes
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FBI Detroit creates tip line for reporting corruption amid growing investigation
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The Detroit branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a public corruption reporting email Wednesday as an FBI corruption investigation in the city continues to widen. All suspicions reported through the email go directly to FBI special agents.
The email is: MichiganCorruption@fbi.gov.
“Most public officials are committed to serving their communities with integrity. Unfortunately, we continue to see elected and appointed officials across the state of Michigan who use their positions for personal gain,” FBI Detroit Special Agent in Charge Timothy Waters said in a news release. “The FBI has a solemn responsibility to investigate allegations of public corruption, and we are asking the public’s help to identify those officials who are abusing their positions and the public’s trust.”
According to the FBI, public corruption occurs when government employees at any level "conduct an official act for money, goods or services." This can play out in a variety of ways, ranging from bribery to not enforcing local regulations.
It can also look like employees taking something of public value for their own personal gain.
This tip line comes as the FBI continues its ever-growing investigation of corruption in metro Detroit. On Wednesday, two Detroit police officers were charged with public corruption related to towing. Recently, three City Council members and a confidential FBI source were investigated .
In late September, former Councilman Andre Spivey pleaded guilty to taking bribes totaling $35,900 in exchange for his help with the city’s towing regulations.
Spivey’s case is the first charged as part of the federal investigation, called Operation Northern Hook.
The FBI said public tips are often critical to its investigations and, in this case, crucial to upholding democracy.
More: Detroiters protest Stellantis Mack plant after state issues new emissions violation notice
Anyone with information about public corruption anywhere in Michigan should report it directly to FBI Detroit special agents and analysts at MichiganCorruption@fbi.gov. If you prefer to do so anonymously, you can call the FBI at 800-CALL-FBI or submit tips online at tips.fbi.gov.
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Famous Person - Commit Crime - Investigate
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Olympics-Cycling-China break world record in women's team sprint
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IZU, Japan, Aug 2 (Reuters) - China’s women broke their own team sprint world record with a time of 31.804 seconds to beat Lithuania in the first round at the Olympics on Monday.
The Chinese pair of Bao Shanju and Zhong Tianshi bettered the 32.034 mark set by Zhong and Gong Jinjie at the 2015 world championships.
Gong and Zhong won the Olympic title in Rio five years ago -- the first and only gold for China in a cycling event.
Up next for China are Germany’s Lea Friedrich and Emma Hinze, who defeated Ukraine in the first round.
Reporting by Hardik Vyas in Bengaluru, editing by Ed Osmond
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Trending Stories
All quotes delayed a minimum of 15 minutes. See here for a complete list of exchanges and delays.
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Break historical records
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Aviastar-TU Flight 1906 crash
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Aviastar-TU Airlines Flight 1906 was a Tupolev Tu-204 that crash-landed while attempting to land at Domodedovo airport, Moscow, Russia, in heavy fog on 22 March 2010. The aircraft of Aviastar-TU Airlines was on a ferry flight from Hurghada International Airport, Egypt to Domodedovo. There were no passengers on board and all eight crew survived the accident; four crew members were seriously injured and taken to a hospital, while others suffered minor injuries. The accident was the first hull loss of a Tu-204 and the first hull loss for Aviastar-SP. Investigators determined the cause of the accident to be failure of the autopilot system and poor cockpit crew performance. Aviastar-TU Airlines Flight 1906 was a ferry flight with only eight crew on board the aircraft. [1] At 02:34 local time (23:34 on 21 March UTC),[2] the plane crash-landed about 1450 meters short of runway 14R at Domodedovo airport while attempting to land at night in fog and poor visibility. [3] The METAR for the airport at the time indicated wind direction 160° at 3 metres per second (5.8 kn) and visibility 100 metres (330 ft). [2][4]
When the aircraft was on final, the pilots received several warnings from ATC that they were 1000–2000 meters to the left of the landing course, followed by another warning that they were too low. The pilots were confused about their location and were trying to figure it out based on reports from ATC, the flight computer and a portable GPS device. According to the final investigation report, they also ignored automatic altitude readouts that started at 60 m above ground level and continued every 10 m. Nine seconds before the impact, the pilot contacted ATC to ask if they were off course, still concentrated on aligning the aircraft with the runway and not on its altitude. The pilots made no effort to stop the descent. The aircraft crash-landed in a birch forest at 23:35 local time, its left wing broke off, and the hull broke into two. There was no fire. Fire services arrived 30 minutes later. All crew members except the flight engineer who was seriously injured, escaped the crashed plane on their own. They could not immediately explain the reason of the crash, saying that it happened too fast. One of the crew members (purser) reached the nearby highway and stopped a car which took her to a hospital. Three other crew members also reached the highway and waited there for an ambulance. The two pilots suffered serious fractures and concussions; two others were taken to hospital where they were described as being in a satisfactory condition. The four remaining crew members were treated for minor injuries in Domodedovo's medical center. [1] The accident resulted in the first hull loss of a Tupolev Tu-204 and the first hull loss for Aviastar-TU. [5]
The accident aircraft was Tupolev Tu-204-100, msn 1450741364011, registration RA-64011. The aircraft first flew as RA-64011 on 25 March 1993. On 3 September 1993 it entered service with Vnukovo Airlines. In January 2001, it was sold to Sibir Airlines. Before the crash, the aircraft was involved in two accidents. On 14 January 2002, the aircraft was flying from Frankfurt to Novosibirsk when it had to be diverted to Omsk due to poor weather at the destination. On approach, pilots reported fuel supply problems, followed by a flameout of both engines. The aircraft glided and landed on the runway, overran the runway and collided with the lights after the runway threshold. There were no injuries. The aircraft was repaired and continued service. [6] From August 2006 the aircraft was leased to various Russian airlines – Red Wings Airlines, Aviastar-TU, Interavia Airlines and then Aviastar-TU again. [5]
On 21 March 2010, one day before the crash, the aircraft was flying from Moscow to Hurghada with 210 passengers on board when it had to return to Moscow due to smoke in the cockpit. The accident was caused by a faulty heater in the cockpit, which was promptly repaired. Despite the adverse weather, Russian federal air transport service Rosaviatsia says the aircraft conducted a normal approach and "the crew did not report any failures, malfunctions, or the intention to make an emergency landing. "[3] Russia's top investigator said on 22 March that the emergency landing may have been caused by an infringement of safety rules. [1] The method the crew used to navigate the aircraft is a particular avenue of the investigation into the accident. [7]
Rosaviatsia says the flight recorders have been recovered and sent to the Interstate Aviation Committee (Russian: Межгосударственный авиационный комитет (МАК)) for analysis. Pending investigation, the airline – Aviastar-TU – was banned from carrying passengers with immediate effect, and its operations were investigated. [3] Preliminary analysis of flight data has shown that the aircraft was not damaged in the air by any fire or explosion, and both engines operated until the impact. [8] According to the chief of the Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency Alexander Neradko the "human factor" is the likely reason behind the crash. [9]
On 30 March 2010, it was reported that the aircraft had 9 tonnes of fuel on board at the time of the crash. On approach to Domodedovo, the autopilot system failed as the aircraft descended through 4,200 metres (13,800 ft). The crew then flew the aircraft manually, and did not communicate the failure of the autoflight system to Air Traffic Control. [10]
Two months before the crash, the captain was disciplined for a minor violation (accidentally operating spoilers in flight during approach with flaps down). On 7 September 2010, the МАК released their final report into the accident. Some of their findings are:
The report states the following reason of the crash:[10][11]
The cause of the incident with Tu-204-100 registered RA-64011 during the approach for landing in weather conditions that did not meet the minima permitted for this aircraft type and with fully operational equipment was failure to make a go-around decision and continued descent despite no visual contact with the ground, which has caused an impact with trees and ground in a controlled flight into terrain. The report listed the following contributing factors:
In March 2011, both pilots (Aleksandr Kosyakov and Aleksey Mikhailovsky) were sentenced to one-year suspended prison term. [12]
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Air crash
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2009 Gabonese Eurocopter AS 532 crash
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The 2009 Gabonese helicopter crash occurred in the Atlantic Ocean off Gabon at 8:08 p.m. on January 17, 2009. Ten soldiers were in the Eurocopter AS 532 when it crashed,[1] leaving eight military personnel dead. [2][3] Three soldiers initially survived the French military helicopter crash which occurred shortly after take-off from the amphibious assault ship FS Foudre. One of the rescued soldiers died from injuries at Libreville Hospital. [4] The helicopter came down off the coastal city of Nyonie between Port-Gentil and Libreville during a joint exercise with Gabonese troops. [3] The cause of the crash is not known. [5][needs update]
French President Nicolas Sarkozy immediately ordered his Minister of Defence, Hervé Morin, to fly to Gabon to oversee the rescue mission. [6] Morin visited friends and relatives of the missing at Camp De Gaulle. [7]
After the crash, FS Foudre was the first ship at the scene, and picked up some of the injured. [3] Two helicopters, several ships, as well as underwater robots were sent by the French oil company Total S.A. to assist with rescue efforts. [3][7] On January 18, the wreckage of the helicopter was discovered 35 metres (115 ft) underwater. [2] Gabon Interior Minister Andre Mba Obame said, "Gabon is doing all that it can to help with the search. "[7][needs update]
France has maintained a military base in Gabon since its independence in 1960. The French military regularly conducts military exercises with the Gabonese army. French presence is known to have reduced tensions among various groups that operate in the three small islands of Gabon. These islands are rich in oil reserves found in surrounding off-shore waters. Islands are claimed by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. [8]
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Air crash
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2019–2020 clerical protests in Montenegro
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In late December 2019, a wave of protests started against the newly adopted controversial law "Law on Freedom of Religion or Belief and the Legal Status of Religious Communities" which effectively transferred ownership of church buildings and estates built before 1918 (when the Montenegrin state was abolished and united with Kingdom of Serbia)[7] from the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro to the Montenegrin state. The Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro, which owned 66 mainly medieval monasteries, dozens of churches and other real estate there, insisted the state wants to impound its assets, while Pro-Western Montenegro's president Milo Đukanović, has accused the Serbian church of promoting pro-Serb policies that are aimed at undermining Montenegrin statehood. [8][9]
Montenegro has experienced less religious conflict than the other former Yugoslavian states, and has historically had a high degree of religious tolerance and diversity. There is, however, an outstanding dispute between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, as both churches lay claim to the country's many Orthodox religious sites and dispute each other's legitimacy. Churches disputed over control of the 750 Orthodox religious sites in the country. Both groups claim to be the "true" Orthodox Church of Montenegro, and hold religious ceremonies separately. Police forces have provided security for such events. This dispute dates back to the original establishment of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church as a separate entity in 1993. Since 2011, members of both churches have been barred from celebrating the transfiguration of Christ at the Church of Christ in Ivanova Korita village near the historical capital of Cetinje. [10]
According to the 2017 survey conducted by the Council of Europe in cooperation with the Office of the state ombudsman, 45% of respondents reported having experienced religious discrimination and perception of discrimination were highest by a significant margin among Serbian Orthodox Church members. [11][12] In May 2019, the Venice Commission positively evaluated the proposed draft of the Law on Freedom of Religion, but recognized the articles 62 and 63, related to the church property, as substantive issues and one of the most controversial points. [13][14] They stated that the state may in certain conditions use property, but that it must provide the right to property of religious communities. [14]
At the eight Congress of the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro (DPS) in October 2019, a new political program of the party was adopted, stating that one of the main program goals of the party in the coming period is the "renewal" of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, which is currently unrecognized by other Eastern Orthodox churches, announcing the adoption of a new law on the status of religious communities. [15]
On December 24, the legislative committee of Montenegro’s parliament endorsed a draft Law on Freedom of Religion or Belief and the Legal Status of Religious Communities, the last hurdle before the legislation is debated by lawmakers over fierce objections from the Serbian Orthodox Church. Hundreds of Serb priests and monks protested in front of parliament before the committee session demanding the bill’s withdrawal. After the protest, the priests celebrated a liturgy at the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ, Podgorica and signed a statement pledging to defend the church. [16] Ahead of a vote on the draft Law on Religious Freedoms, expected later on Thursday or on Friday of the same week, Serbian Orthodox clergy and believers held a service on a packed bridge near parliament, watched by police who had sealed off city center roads and approaches to the government building. [8]
In late December 2019, the newly proclaimed Law, parked a series of massive protests and road blockages[17][18] which continued to February 2020. [19] Eighteen members of the parliament (opposition Democratic Front MPs) were arrested prior to the voting and charged with violently disrupting the vote. [20] Some Serb Orthodox clerics were attacked by police[21] and a number of journalists, opposition activists and protesting citizens were arrested. [22][23]
On 29 December 2019 Episcopal Council of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro excommunicated President of Montenegro Đukanović and Government coalition MPs and officials for passing religious law. [24]
Demonstrations continued into January, February and March 2020 as peaceful protest walks, mostly organised by the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral of the Serbian Orthodox Church in most of Montenegrin municipalities. As time went on a considerable percentage of Montenegro's population took to streets opposing the law. During February peaceful public gatherings reached over 70,000 attendees in Podgorica alone and they are increasingly described as the most massive public gatherings in history of Montenegro. During peaceful protests in early 2020, more cases of police abuse of office and violence against protesting citizens and political activists were reported, several opposition activists and journalists were also arrested. [25]
European External Action Service (EEAS) pointed at fair reporting but also propaganda, disinformation and fake news in the media reports on the riots and the political crisis in Montenegro, which reached its peaks in the first week of January 2020. EEAS reported that sources of the false reporting included media which were based in Serbia (some of them state-owned), Russian-owned in Serbian language media Sputnik and some Montenegro-based news portals. [26][27] In March 2020 all protests have been paused by the Serbian Orthodox Church due to COVID-19 pandemic in Montenegro. [28]
Amid the 12 May protest in Niksic a correspondent journalist of Serbia-based Vecernje Novosti was arrested and his eyes were pepper sprayed while he reporting from the protest, journalist was released after three hours, but the material he had filmed was deleted by the police, which many media, NGOs and the OSCE mission characterized as another attack on media freedoms in Montenegro. Both the Associations of Journalists of Montenegro and Serbia condemned the arrest. [29]
On 13 May Bishop of Budimlja and Nikšić Joanikije Mićović and several other priests were arrested on charges of alleged organisation of a religious protest rally in Nikšić, although public gatherings were forbidden in the country due to the coronavirus pandemic. [30]
The police responded violently towards the peaceful protesters, with several police crackdowns taking place, resulting in beatings and arrests[31] which were highly criticised by other governments of Europe. Serbian authorities has repeatedly demanded release of bishop Joanikije, as well the other arrested Serb Orthodox clerics. During the next few days, the protests continued throughout the country, a couple of thousand remaining protesting citizens demanded the release of the arrested eparchy priests from detention, with more cases of police brutality reported. [32] On 16 May the Bishop of Budimlja and Niksić, Joanikije, along with other arrested clerics, were released after 72 hours passed from the processing, in accordance with the law, although a formal lawsuit was created against Joanikije and other arrested clerics, and is, as of the 16th of May, pending. [33]
The mass protests resumed in June, but after a few weeks, the Montenegrin government reintroduced a ban on public and religious gatherings due to a new wave of COVID-19 virus spread, so the protests were stopped again. Many have labeled the government's move as political, to stem protests against the enactment of a religion law, during the August 2020 parliamentary election campaign in the country. [34]
Even if public gatherings were banned, citizens organized several anti-government and pro-church protest walks during July and August, as well as protest car rallies, protesting against the law on religious communities and the DPS-led government. [35]
Montenegrin government and ruling Democratic Party of Socialists officials, including president Milo Đukanović and members of the current Cabinet of Montenegro blamed the Belgrade-based media and Government of Serbia for the current political crisis, destabilization and unrest across the country, claiming that the ongoing Church protests actually are not against the disputed law but against Montenegrin statehood and independence. Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro categorically rejects that allegations. [36] President Milo Đukanović called the protesting citizens "a lunatic movement". [37]
Foreign Minister of Serbia Ivica Dačić said the Montenegrin government should discuss the controversial Religious Law with its citizens and called on Serbian citizens of Montenegrin descent to publicly state their views on the recent developments in Montenegro, saying that people who support Montenegrin Government should have their Serbian citizenship reviewed. [38]
Following mass protests by Serbian Orthodox Church and ethnic Serbs in Montenegro agitation against the law has spread to neighbouring Serbia. On 2 January 2020, several thousand fans of the Red Star Belgrade marched to the Montenegrin embassy in Belgrade to support the protests in Montenegro against the law, setting off fireworks that partially burned the flag of Montenegro outside the embassy building. Several Serbian far-right organisations also joined the rally. Although the event was announced, the embassy was allegedly left unguarded by the Serbian police, with only undercover security units present, which sparked criticism from Montenegro. [39][40] President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić denied these claims and stated that the embassy was well-guarded[41] and Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the vandalism and stated that the Montenegrin government is trying to shift the blame for ongoing crisis on Serbia. [42]
Peaceful protest against the controversial Religious Law took place in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Kragujevac, and a number of other cities and towns in Serbia. [43][44]
Hip-hop collective Beogradski sindikat released a song about the ongoing protest. When attempting to enter Montenegro they were not allowed entrance, and another group member was deported from Podgorica Airport without any official explanation.
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Protest_Online Condemnation
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Afghan athlete Ghulam Murtaza Saleh won a taekwondo gold medal after six victories in Pakistan’s G-1 Taekwondo Championship 2021.
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Afghan athlete Ghulam Murtaza Saleh won a taekwondo gold medal after six victories in Pakistan’s G-1 Taekwondo Championship 2021.
Saleh defeated four of his Pakistani rivals, one Albanian and an Egyptian athlete to earn the gold medal in the competition.
After his second victory Saleh continued with injuries to his leg and succeeded in winning the top prize.
The Pakistan’s G-1 Taekwondo championship was attended by representatives from 15 countries with a total of 422 athletes.
Pakistan’s taekwondo federation hosted this championship in Islamabad city.
The Pakistan’s G-1 Taekwondo championship was attended by representatives from 15 countries with a total of 422 athletes.
Afghan athlete Ghulam Murtaza Saleh won a taekwondo gold medal after six victories in Pakistan’s G-1 Taekwondo Championship 2021.
Saleh defeated four of his Pakistani rivals, one Albanian and an Egyptian athlete to earn the gold medal in the competition.
After his second victory Saleh continued with injuries to his leg and succeeded in winning the top prize.
The Pakistan’s G-1 Taekwondo championship was attended by representatives from 15 countries with a total of 422 athletes.
Pakistan’s taekwondo federation hosted this championship in Islamabad city.
Meanwhile, Kabul residents believe that people are suffering from so many problems in Kabul and electricity’s shortage will increase the…
Herat and Ghor are two provinces in western Afghanistan where girls are allowed to attend secondary and high school.
The talks appeared to yield no immediate outcomes, but gave the two leaders opportunity to nudge their relations away from icy…
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Awards ceremony
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2004 Redfern riots
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The 2004 Redfern riots took place on the evening of Sunday the 15th February 2004, in the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern, New South Wales, and were sparked by the death of 17 Year old Thomas Hickey, also known as TJ Hickey resulting from a bike accident in Waterloo on the 14th February 2004. The circumstances surrounding Thomas "T.J." Hickey's death are disputed. On the morning of Saturday 14 February 2004, the 17-year-old Aboriginal Australian boy was riding his bicycle downhill while a police vehicle was patrolling the nearby area. According to New South Wales Police, he collided with a protruding gutter and was flung into the air and impaled on a 1.2-metre (3 ft 11 in) high fence outside a block of units off Phillip Street, Waterloo, causing penetrating injuries of the neck and chest. [2] Police officers at the scene administered first aid until New South Wales Ambulance officers arrived. Hickey died with his family by his side early on 15 February 2004. A large proportion of the inquest centered on whether police were "pursuing" Hickey, or "following" him. At the conclusion of the coronial inquest, NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney was interviewed on ABC Radio and gave this explanation of the distinction: "I think if you were to ask the person on the street the definition between, and not a Concise Oxford Dictionary definition, but if you were to ask somebody their interpretation of being followed and being pursued I think they are two distinct and clear actions. Being followed, I think, in the ordinary layman's mind, creates a particular picture. Being pursued by police creates a completely different picture and clearly there was no evidence that Mr Hickey was being pursued in the normal definition of that word". Moroney supported the driver of the police truck, Senior Constable Michael Hollingsworth, in his refusal to give evidence. Both maintained this was a "normal civilian right". [3]
According to police, they arrived at the scene quickly with Constables Hollingsworth and Reynolds arriving a few minutes after the first police vehicle. Thomas was hanging by his shirt and was not seen to be impaled but in a serious condition. Police immediately rendered first aid and were unable to save him as "the injury was probably non-survivable". [2] At no time was Police Rescue or NSW Ambulance called off from attending. Evidence exists of Hollingsworth making numerous calls for the ETA of ambulance paramedics. When ambulance officers arrived, Hollingsworth and Reynolds Helped move Thomas into the Ambulance. A female cousin of Hickey made herself known to Hollingsworth and accompanied both Hollingsworth and Reynolds in the police truck when they left the scene, escorting the ambulance to the Children's Hospital at Randwick[2]
. Upon arrival at the hospital, Hollingsworth and Reynolds waited at the accident and emergency department. Some time later Hollingsworth and Reynolds, still at the hospital waiting for TJ's family, were ordered away by a hospital social worker, possibly because Hollingsworth was covered in blood and might have upset the family and members of the public. There was an outstanding arrest warrant in Hickey's name, but police have consistently maintained that the patrol car was searching for a different individual, wanted in connection with a violent bag snatch at Redfern railway station earlier the same day. There was no evidence of a pursuit with Hollingsowrth and Reynolds being the second Police vehicle(caged truck) to attend the scene. [4]
The Hickey family and supporters dispute this version of events, claiming that witnesses saw Hickey's bike clipped by the police car, thus propelling him onto the fence. This claim was not supported by the testimony of two Aboriginal Liaison Officers to a NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into the death,[5] though neither of the officers were present at the scene. (One of the officers was later convicted of murder and arson, an act for which he had blamed police. )[6]
Despite calls to re-open the coronial inquest, the New South Wales government has as of 2020[update] refused to do so. [7]
An appeal to the United Nations Human rights commission by lawyers acting for the Hickey Family to investigate the death and any racial motivation concluded the death to be an accident. [citation needed]
On the evening of 15 February, Aboriginal and non-Indigenous youths and adults, most of them from The Block, the Waterloo estate and other inner city housing precincts gathered at Eveleigh Street quickly after the word of the death spread. Persons were seen preparing petrol bombs and stockpiling bricks, resulting in police closing the Eveleigh Street entrance to the station, which turned the crowd violent and they began to throw bottles, bricks, live fireworks and Molotov cocktails. The violence escalated into a full-scale riot around the Block, during which Redfern railway station was briefly alight, suffering superficial damage. The riot continued into the early morning, until police used fire brigade water hoses to disperse the crowd. Total damages included a torched car and 40 injured police officers. A memorial service was held on 19 February 2004 in Redfern, and in Walgett, New South Wales (Hickey's hometown), on 22 February 2004. [8]
In 2005, the University of Technology Sydney's students' association donated a plaque with TJ's portrait, with an inscription that read: "On the 14th February, 2004, TJ Hickey, aged 17, was impaled upon the metal fence above, arising from a police pursuit. The young man died as a result of his wounds the next day. In our hearts you will stay TJ." Local police, the NSW government and the Department of Housing have refused to allow the plaque to be placed on the wall below the fence where Hickey was impaled unless the words "police pursuit" were changed to "tragic accident", which the family has refused to do. [9]
In 2007, the New South Wales Police were fined $100,000 after the NSW Industrial Relations Commission found it had failed to ensure the health, safety and welfare at work of its employees under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. [10]
The 2013 film Around the Block focuses partly on the riots. [citation needed]
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Riot
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Invergowrie rail accident
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The Invergowrie rail accident happened at Invergowrie, Scotland on 22 October 1979. The accident killed 5 people and injured 51 others. The 08:44 passenger service from Glasgow Queen Street to Dundee, despite running late and experiencing technical difficulties, left Invergowrie station without incident. However, the brake on the leading bogie of locomotive 25083 was binding, although the driver carried on as Dundee was only a few miles away. [1] As the train was running along Invergowrie Bay a traction motor caught fire and the train (with five carriages) was stopped. Approximately ten minutes later, the stationary train was run into at around 60 mph (100 km/h) by the seven-coach 09:35 express from Glasgow to Aberdeen hauled by locomotive 47208. The impact threw the last four coaches of the Dundee train over the sea wall. The last two broke away completely and ended up in the Firth of Tay; fortunately, the tide was out. The class 47 loco was subsequently scrapped due to damage. Both passengers in the rear carriage and the driver and secondman of the Aberdeen train were killed instantly. A further passenger died later and a total of 51 people were injured. [2]
It was reported the next day that the dead included engine drivers Robert Duncan and William Hume. Robert Duncan was 60 years old, lived in Tayport and was a church elder and a special constable. He had a 19-year-old son. His widow stated that Driver Duncan had worked for British Rail since he was 16. William Hume was a trainee driver aged 20 and resided in Fintry, Dundee. He had only worked for British Rail for four months. [3] Both were in the cab of the Glasgow to Aberdeen train. [4] The other two immediate fatalities were passengers Dr James Preston, a community health officer aged 65, and Mr Kazimierz Jedrelejezyk, a Polish marine engineer. [4] The fifth death was that of passenger Mrs May Morrison who died in hospital as a result of injuries she had sustained in the crash. [5]
The signalman at Longforgan signal box stated that he put the mechanical starting signal correctly back to Danger behind the Dundee train. Around ten minutes later, the Aberdeen train arrived at his box and drew up to the Home signal, which was then cleared for it. The train continued to move slowly towards the Starting signal but, after a few moments, began to accelerate. It passed the Starting signal which, as far as the signalman could see, was still at Danger. He went down onto the track and saw that the arm of the Starting signal was slightly raised; about 4°. [1] Subsequent investigations showed that it was possible for the arm to have been raised roughly 8°. [2]
The guard of the Aberdeen train said that he had looked out of the window of the rear coach at Longforgan as the train picked up speed. He saw the starting signal giving "a poor off" (in other words, somewhere between the "on" and "off" positions), estimating that it was raised 7.4°[1], but assumed that it had already been put back to Danger after the locomotive had passed it and perhaps had not quite returned to the horizontal position. It is not clear if the guard could have seen the starting signal exactly as the driver would have seen it. The subsequent public inquiry found that the guard was not to blame. [2]
Why the driver passed the signal remained a mystery. The inquiry speculated that he may have been looking back towards the signal box, or checking that the train was clear of the level crossing. As he then looked up towards the signal he might have concluded that it had moved since he had last seen it and that it had, therefore, been cleared by the signalman. [2] From a position below the signal and fairly close to it, he may also have overestimated the angle of the arm. Various operating staff who saw the signal before and after the accident also gave evidence that the arm was not properly horizontal, including some who said that the degree of elevation appeared to increase as they got closer to it. It was later found that the signal post bracket was badly bent. The bracket may have been struck by a chain hanging from a wagon, or perhaps by engineers' machinery working on the lineside. [2]
In addition, the signalling at Longforgan was basic and lacking in many safety features. The Starting signal had no AWS that would have warned the driver of the Aberdeen train, nor was there an adjuster for the pull wire. There was also no repeater in the signal box, nor was a detonator placer provided. [1]
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Train collisions
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Nearly 10,000 new COVID-19 cases reported by Ohio schools this week
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by: Ben Orner Posted: Sep 24, 2021 / 12:53 PM EDT Updated: Sep 24, 2021 / 12:54 PM EDT Gov. DeWine announces student vaccine incentives, continues push for masks by: Ben Orner Posted: Sep 24, 2021 / 12:53 PM EDT Updated: Sep 24, 2021 / 12:54 PM EDT COLUMBUS (WCMH) – Ohio’s K-12 schools reported 9,827 new coronavirus cases among students and staff members this week, pushing the total just over a month into the school year near 40,000. Schools have reported 38,244 cases this year, and Thursday’s 9,827 cases is close to last week’s 10,682. Cases reported to the Ohio Department of Health reflect the week ending the previous Sunday. Schools report cases among students and staff to ODH on Tuesdays, reflecting the week ending on the previous Sunday. ODH releases numbers on Thursdays at 2 p.m. Case criteria ODH reports “new” and “cumulative” cases. Cases only move over to “cumulative” once the person is no longer COVID-positive. NBC4’s count of new cases every week reflects the change in “cumulative” cases. More info 1,301 (47%) of 2,767 schools, districts, private schools, vocational schools, preschools and other non-college institutions that the state tracks have reported cases this fall. That’s 89 more schools than last week. The median number of cases among schools with at least one infection is 10 cases, while the median number for school districts is 33 cases. 32,466 (85%) of Ohio’s school cases are students and 5,778 (15%) are staff members, which include teachers, administrators, coaches and support staff. Last school year, students were roughly 2 in 3 cases, and staff were 1 in 3. Cincinnati Public Schools, a district of more than 34,000 students, leads the state in cases with 663, well above second-place Toledo City Schools at 435. Four Columbus area school districts are in the top eight. Gov. Mike DeWine on Thursday said 61% of Ohio’s public school students are in a district that requires mask wearing, nearly double what it was three weeks ago (about 31%). Ohio continues to “make progress” in that area, he said, but case numbers are “shocking.” “Since Aug. 15, there have been over 42,000 confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19 among school age kids in Ohio, ages 5-17,” the governor told reporters. “The 27 days with the highest number of cases per day throughout our entire pandemic for children 5-17 have been since school began this year." DeWine has said he would like to take executive action to require masks in schools, but a state law passed this summer after overriding DeWine’s veto – Senate Bill 22 – stripped that power from the governor and gave it to the state legislature. The governor did take action on Thursday, though, announcing a vaccine incentive program for students, similar to May’s Vax-A-Million lottery. The Vax-to-School program will offer 55 scholarships – five worth $100,000 and 50 worth $10,000 – to any vaccinated Ohioan aged 12-25 to cover costs of any higher education. That includes college, technical school, job training and postgraduate study. More details on these drawings will be announced next week. ODH data DeWine referenced Thursday show the youngest age groups are the least vaccinated, including fewer than 39% of Ohioans aged 12-15 and less than 50% of those 16-29. “It’s worth it,” the governor said of the Vax-to-School program. “We’ve got to throw the football. We’ve got to try to make something happen. We’ve got to move our numbers up.”
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Disease Outbreaks
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Highland man who failed to complete community payback order for hitting woman on the face lucky not to receive prison sentence, Inverness Sheriff Court hears
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AN Inverness man who failed to complete a 150-hour community payback order for attacking his partner has been instructed to do 180 hours of unpaid work. The order imposed on Reece MacLeod (26), of St John’s Avenue, Inverness in March was revoked at Inverness Sheriff Court and replaced it with a new one. Sheriff Ian Cruickshank gave MacLeod a stiff warning that he was fortunate not to receive a lengthy prison sentence for breaching the old order. He told MacLeod that a review of his progress would be carried out in four months’ time. MacLeod admitted assaulting the woman on December 5, 2019 by slapping her on the face and pushing her over a couch in Birchwood Court, Inverness. Fiscal depute Martina Eastwood told the court at an earlier hearing that the pair had been smoking substances when an argument broke out.
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Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence
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Marriages of celebrities
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The lack of interaction between Hong Kong actor Vincent Wong and his wife, actress Yoyo Chen, at the TVB Anniversary Awards has added more fuel to speculation that their marriage is on the rocks. Wong, 37, was crowned Best Actor for his role as a blind lawyer in the legal drama Legal Mavericks 2020 on Sunday (Jan 10), but his wife was expressionless when the camera panned to her while he was thanking her on stage. Chen, 39, gave Wong a quick hug when all the actors went on stage later, but she declined to take a photo with him backstage and told the Hong Kong media that she was "distracted" during his acceptance speech. The actress, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress on Sunday, returned home without her husband. Her good friend, actress Priscilla Wong and Wong's husband, actor Edwin Siu, gave her a lift. Meanwhile, Vincent Wong was seen outside TVB City celebrating his win with close to 20 fans and taking photos with them. Both Chen and Wong also made no mention of each other on their subsequent posts on social media. Chen's expressionless moment trended in Hong Kong after the ceremony. Some netizens said that was the "most exciting" moment on Sunday night and that she was the "real best actress" on Sunday, while others praised her for her magnanimity in congratulating her husband. Hong Kong actor Chapman To parodied the moment by posting a photo of him expressionless on social media. Wong and Chen married in 2011 and they have an eight-year-old daughter. However, there have been several rumours in recent years, with Wong linked to actresses such as Fala Chen, Jacqueline Wong and Kaman Kong. He was recently linked to actress Sisley Choi, his co-star in Legal Mavericks 2020 who won Best Actress on Sunday. They have both denied the rumour.
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Famous Person - Marriage
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February 2001 El Salvador earthquake
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The February 2001 El Salvador earthquake occurred with a moment magnitude of 6.6 on 13 February at 14:22:05 UTC. The epicentre was 15 miles (30 km) E of San Salvador, El Salvador. At least 315 people were killed, 3,399 were injured, and extensive damage affected the area. Another 16,752 homes were damaged and 44,759 destroyed. [2] The most severe damage occurred in the San Juan Tepezontes-San Vicente-Cojutepeque area, though it was felt throughout the country and in neighboring Guatemala and Honduras. Landslides occurred in many areas of El Salvador. El Salvador lies above the convergent boundary where oceanic crust of the Cocos Plate is being subducted beneath the Caribbean Plate at rate of about 72 mm per year along the Middle America Trench. This boundary is associated with earthquakes resulting from movement on the plate interface itself, such as the Mw 7.7 1992 Nicaragua earthquake, and from faulting within both the overriding Caribbean Plate associated with the active volcanic belt, such as the destructive 1936 San Salvador earthquake, and the subducting Cocos Plate, such as the 1982 El Salvador earthquake.
The focal mechanism and depth of the earthquake are consistent with shallow strike-slip faulting in the Caribbean Plate, along the line of the active volcanic belt. The fault trend is confirmed by the distribution of aftershocks. Despite its magnitude and shallow focus, there are no indications of surface rupture for this earthquake. [4]
The earthquake occurred almost exactly a month after the major earthquake in January that affected the same area of the country. It remains unclear whether or not the two events are related in any way. Some previous earthquakes that were associated with the subduction zone were followed within a few years by shallow events. Examples include shallow earthquakes in 1917 and 1919 following a subduction event in 1915, and the shallow earthquake in 1936 following a subduction event in 1932. [4]
The January earthquake had already caused considerable damage to buildings and left many people homeless. It had also triggered many landslides that were highly destructive. The February earthquake reactivated some of these landslides but also triggered new ones. [4] 275,013 people were affected by the February earthquake of whom 315 died and a further 3,399 were injured. The majority of the casualties were in the departments of Cuscatlán (165 dead, 1,372 injured), San Vicente (87 dead, 1,220 injured) and La Paz (58 dead, 806 injured). A total of 44,750 houses were destroyed and a further 16,752 houses, 83 public buildings, 111 schools, 97 churches 5 hospitals and 36 other health facilities were damaged. [2]
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Earthquakes
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Southall: Two people killed in shop gas explosion
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Two people have been killed in a suspected gas explosion at a shop in west London, firefighters have said.
The blast happened in a hair salon and mobile phone shop on King Street, Southall, just after 06:30 BST.
Four adults and a child are known to have been rescued by the London Fire Brigade (LFB).
Earlier, the Metropolitan Police said one man was found injured. The blast is not being treated as suspicious, the force said.
Image source, Google
Image caption,
The explosion has damaged the Dr Phone shop and the Chandla Hair Salon on King Street
Station Commander Paul Morgan said: "Our crews continue to search the property using specialist equipment including the use of urban search-and-rescue dogs.
"We can confirm that sadly two people have died at the scene.
"The explosion caused substantial damage to the shop and structural damage throughout.
"It is a painstaking and protracted incident with firefighters working systematically to stabilise the building and search for people involved."
Image source, PA Media
Image caption,
London Fire Brigade sent about 40 firefighters to the scene
LFB said search and rescue operations have finished for the evening and will restart in the morning.
Jatinder Sing, the owner of Dr Phone, said he was in "total shock" when he received a call about the blast.
'Lost everything'
The 36-year-old said: "They have closed off everything. It seems like an explosion of a gas cylinder and there is a flat upstairs and my shop is downstairs.
"I was shocked because my shop looks totally dead, finished and the same with the barber.
"I can't see anything from where I am standing apart from the the shutter and the main door, which is all trashed.
"I have lost my everything. We were struggling from the coronavirus period as well - too much stock in the shop and no sales for a long time so I don't know how we will survive."
Image source, PA Media
Image caption,
Rescuers are involved in a "complex" search for anyone who might still be inside the collapsed building
Resident Nurmila Hamid who lives nearby said she felt the blast as she was getting her children ready for school.
The 38-year-old said: "The house shook, and I turned to my husband and said 'what is that?'
"And he said, 'It's a blast' and he went to look after taking the children to school - he said it was at a phone shop."
Mohammad Rafiq, 78, who lives two streets away, said he and his 76-year-old wife felt "shocked" and "scared" when the noise from the King Street blast woke them at their home.
He said: "I heard it in the morning - it woke me up, it was scary. It sounded like a very dangerous blast so I was scared.
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Gas explosion
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1877 U.S. Patent Office fire
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The Patent Office fire of 1877 was the second of two major fires of the U.S. Patent Office. It occurred in the 1864 Patent Office Building of Washington, D.C., on September 24, 1877. The building was constructed to be fireproof, but many of its contents were not. About 80,000 models and 600,000 copy drawings were burned to some degree. No patents were completely lost, however (unlike the situation with the first Patent Office fire), and the Patent Office was soon reopened for recordings. On July 4, 1836, the Patent Office became its own organization within the Department of State under the Patent Act of 1836. Henry Leavitt Ellsworth became its first commissioner. He started construction of a new fire-proof building, after the previous building had burned down in a disastrous fire. Architect Robert Mills was given instructions by Congress to design the building using fireproof construction material. [1] Mills used masonry vaulted ceilings that spanned the interior spaces for an open floor plan, cement plastered walls, and cantilevered stone staircases from floor level to floor level. [1] Construction of the building was finished in 1864. [2]
The Patent Office fire started at about 11 am on September 24, 1877. It was reported in the newspaper that the fire started in the room that held the patent models. [3] There was a considerable amount of flammable material in that area. Spontaneous combustion of patented chemicals has been given as one of the theories for the start of the fire. [4] Another theory was that a lens might have caught the sun's rays and focused them on a combustible object. Others claim that it was an unseasonably cold morning, and that a fire started by some copyists in their office grate emitted sparks that fell onto the roof and caught a wooden gutter screen on fire. The roof was constructed of wood, which led to a rapid ignition and a fast-moving disastrous building fire. [3] The fire burned part of the upper portions of the north wing and the west wing, consuming half the building. [5]
The Evening Star reported that the spectacle of the building going up in flames became extraordinarily shocking to the spectators as it turned into a calamity. Despite the fire-proof construction efforts the fire consumed the building and devoured some 87,000 patent models with their associated documents. Some of the important artifacts were saved, however, due to the extraordinary efforts of the Patent Office staff and some valiant firemen. [6]
This second Patent Office fire was even more destructive than the first fire in 1836 at Blodget's Hotel. According to the person in charge of the models, about 87,000 models were burned to one degree or another and some 600,000 photo-lithographic drawings were damaged by fire and or ruined by water. [7] Although the building may have been considered fire-proof, the contents were not. An early part of the conflagration was a storage room used for rejected and postponed models. [8] There were 37,000 postponed application models and 12,000 rejected cases, making the total damage tally around 136,000 patent models (of one type or another). The monumental building cost almost $3,000,000 in nineteenth-century dollars. [9] A source reported the loss due to the fire as over a half a million dollars in value. [10]
The Patent Office could loan out the rejected models to museums and other organizations; however, due to future potential patent infringement they were against such transfers to preserve the integrity of the inventor's idea. These models included metal-working machines, wood-working machines, agricultural implements, carriages, wagons, railroading, mechanical, hydraulic and pneumatic engineering. An example of the original Eli Whitney cotton gin was among the representative models destroyed. In the south and west wings of the Patent Office there were some 100,000 models that were not damaged. Reports of the time show about two-fifths of all the models were damaged either by fire or water. An estimated 200,000 drawings were hastily carried out of the building before they were damaged. [5]
In spite of these great monetary losses (many times those of the first Patent Office fire of 1836), there were no patents totally destroyed in the fire. [11] There were duplicates of the drawings (a lesson learned from the first Patent Office fire in 1836) and it was just a matter of printing them again. [12] Despite the loss of the upper floors and some accumulated trash, the Patent Office was soon reopened. [4]
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Fire
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Thailand’s economy was hit hard by the COVID-19
pandemic last year
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What drives house prices: Lessons from the literature John Duca, John Muellbauer, Anthony Murphy 13 September 2021 Research on house price cycles and their interactions with the economy has burgeoned since the Global Financial Crisis. This column draws five lessons from a recent comprehensive survey. It argues that conventional theories of house price dynamics are misleading. Shifts in credit conditions, together with differences in housing supply response across cities, regions and countries, account for much of the heterogeneity of house price outcomes. Finally, increased demand for space and unprecedented policy interventions together explain the very different house price experience in the pandemic compared with the Global Financial Crisis. Housing is fundamental to the economy, but for too long has remained outside mainstream of academic research. For most households in advanced economies, housing is the largest component of wealth. Since WWII, lending backed by housing collateral has become the dominant share of debt issued by the financial sector (Jordà et al. 2014, 2016). Residential investment, subject to major cyclical swings, is a large component of overall investment. For the US, where housing collateral is strongly linked with consumer spending, Leamer (2015) argues that the housing cycle is the business cycle.1 Our survey paper on housing market dynamics (Duca et al. 2021) includes an analysis of the role of housing in the financial accelerator that drove the Global Financial Crisis. Given their depth and complexity, the interactions between housing and the wider economy affect many intertwined aspects of public policy analysed by the OECD (2021). For example, housing has important implications for job matching and labour markets. Mobility-restricting policies such as high transaction taxes, severe land-use restrictions, or ‘locking’ tenants into non-transferable social housing may trap workers in unemployment or low-productivity jobs. Restrictions, such as those on building height, urban growth boundaries, and other types of zoning can make housing less affordable and promote urban sprawl, with consequences for air pollution and energy use that ultimately conflict with global climate goals. Here, we draw five major lessons from our survey paper on the vast international literature on housing market dynamics. Heterogeneity, trading and search costs, transaction delays, asymmetric information, and credit constraints are rife in housing markets and account for the drawn-out adjustment of prices to shifts in fundamentals.2 The time it takes housing supply to adjust helps explain the longer-term volatility of house prices – the result of the interplay between short- to medium-run bubble builder and longer-term bubble burster dynamics (Abraham and Hendershott 1996). This limits the potential usefulness of including simple housing sub-models in micro-founded representative agent dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (or DGSE) models, such as that of Iacoviello and Neri (2010). Housing economists have long known that house price changes are positively correlated, and that past information on fundamentals forecasts excess returns.3 Among recent studies documenting extrapolative house price expectations in the US, Barberis et al. (2018) show how such expectations by some investors can generate asset price bubbles.4 These are consistent with calibrations from theoretical models with expectations prone to momentum (Glaeser and Nathanson 2017, Piazzesi and Schneider 2016). Extrapolative expectations or other forms of non-fully rational, backward-looking expectations (Gennaioli and Shleifer 2018) play a key role in most empirically plausible narratives of housing booms and busts, including the US subprime boom and bust of the 2000s.5 The simple arbitrage theory – in which the value of a home is merely the discounted present value of future rents – is inappropriate for explaining variation in house prices. The theory is based on perfect arbitrage between rents and house prices, which, under restrictive assumptions, implies that the price-to-rent ratio moves one-for-one with the inverted user cost of housing. This implies that the log price-to-rent ratio equals minus log user cost. The user cost is typically tracked by an after-tax nominal mortgage rate minus a proxy for the expected rate of house price appreciation. Using annualised house price appreciation over the previous four years as an expectations proxy, the user cost (taking into account transactions costs, tax-deductible interest and property taxes and home-owners insurance) grossly exaggerates swings in the US house price-to-rent ratio (Figure 1) when the scales impose a unitary elasticity. But a scaling of 0.15 fits long-run fluctuations in the price-to-rent ratio far better.6 The simple theory is inappropriate for several reasons. One is that owner-occupied properties, which dominate US house price indices, often have more land per occupant than rentals, implying that these property types are far from perfect substitutes (Glaeser and Gyourko 2009). In practice, rents are far ‘stickier’ and less cyclical than house prices. This is so partly because they are less sensitive to highly cyclical land prices. Other factors include differences in the characteristics of renters, and the unobserved costs and benefits of owning versus renting. Large transaction costs, risk aversion, and the volatility of house prices make it hard to arbitrage between renting and buying. Figure 1 The US house price-to-rent ratio violates the unit user cost elasticity of the simple arbitrage model Sources: FHFA, Freddie Mac, BLS, BEA, Federal Reserve Board. Some empirical studies of house price dynamics use a real mortgage interest rate as a proxy for user cost. Figure 2 illustrates such a user cost proxy with similar tax and transactions costs adjustments, representing expected house price appreciation by annual consumer price inflation plus the annual appreciation of real house prices averaged over 50 years (1⅓%). Figure 2 makes it clear that this measure of user costs is inferior to basing expected appreciation on the average of the previous four-year house price appreciation. The second key failure of the simple rent arbitrage relationship stems from its neglect of credit constraints. With a credit constraint, the efficiency condition linking house prices and rents needs to be augmented by the shadow price of the credit constraint (Dougherty and Van Order 1982, Henderson and Ioannides 1983, Meen 1990). Since many lenders use debt service-to-income ratios to allocate mortgage credit, falls in nominal interest rates, unlikely to increase rents, expand credit availability and so increase house prices (Kearl 1979). Figure 2 Alternative user cost measure does not line up with hp/rent ratio Note: Alternative user cost measure uses real mortgage rate and long-run average annual real house price appreciation. Sources: See Figure 1. Confirming the importance of credit conditions, Duca et al. (2016) find that the log of the US house price-to-rent ratio is not cointegrated with the log user cost over 1983-2013. But adding the (highly significant) loan-to-value ratio for first-time home buyers – an important marginal group of buyers, with many facing credit constraints – as a proxy for the shadow price on the credit constraint achieves cointegration.7 This is consistent with a burgeoning post-crisis literature, such as Mian and Sufi (2018). This literature highlights the need for sound financial regulation (Cesa-Bianchi and Rebucci 2013). To track the credit channel and monetary transmission in econometric policy models, future generations of these models will need to incorporate insights from these research findings. The second major approach to modelling housing house prices – the inverted demand approach – implies that valuation cycles are driven by several factors. These include user costs, income, credit constraints, and supply conditions. Here, the demand function is inverted to obtain house prices as a function of the given housing stock and the demand drivers.8 For a fuller model, a second equation for residential investment is needed to explain variations in the housing stock. The responsiveness of such investment to house prices varies with the severity of land supply constraints. But implementing this approach can be hampered by the unavailability of good housing stock data. The price-to-rent approach also needs good data, but on market rents. When modified to allow for credit constraints, non-rational house price expectations, and imperfect substitution between multi-family and detached owner-occupied housing, this approach also needs a second equation, namely for rents. Such an equation needs to take into account the supply-demand balance in housing markets and should not assume that rents are exogenous to housing markets.9 Across US metros, house price bubbles are more frequent and larger in more supply inelastic areas (Glaeser et al. 2008).10 Glaeser et al. (2008) and other studies find that differences in supply elasticities arise mainly from variations in the availability of land, rather than in construction costs. Using Saiz’s (2010) supply elasticity estimates (and work by Oikarinen et al. (2018) for cross-sectional dependence), it is found that the income elasticity of house prices is higher, and that the duration and size of bubbles is larger in metros with less elastic land supply. Figure 3 House price-to-rent ratios vary across countries and over time Source: OECD At the national level, differences in credit availability (Cerutti et al. 2017) and in housing supply are also linked to house prices. Among the six nations in Figure 3, Cavalleri, et al. (2019) rank the US as having the most price elastic supply of housing,11 with lower elasticities in France, Germany, and the UK. Over the past half century, the UK saw the strongest house price-to-rent rise stemming from strong demand (liberalised credit plus strong income and population growth) pushing up against inelastic supply (Hilber and Vermeulen 2016). France, with partly-liberalised markets, had the next highest price rise, with less elastic supply to limit prices than Spain (which had the third highest rise) and then the US. At the bottom are Germany and Japan, where credit was not liberalised and population growth was low (though valuations have risen in Germany, which has benefitted from the euro area recovery from the Global Financial Crisis). More research is needed to better integrate expectations formation and heterogeneity into models, to account for cross-sectional dependence and time variation, and to address important gaps in data. Nevertheless, the recent literature has lessons for the future and for the impact of the pandemic on housing markets. House prices behaved differently in the Covid-19 recession than in prior downturns for several reasons. The initial shocks differed, the financial system was better capitalised, and most households were not overly indebted (especially in contrast to the US Great Recession). There was a very quick and broad set of economic policy responses. Relevant for housing were the (a) use of unconventional and conventional monetary policy to lower long-term interest rates; (b) imposition of moratoria on foreclosures/home repossessions and renter evictions; (c) aggressive modification of mortgages to prevent defaults; and (d) large transfer payments to households, the unemployed and furloughed workers coupled with significant credit support to firms, and (in some countries) employment subsidies that buttressed household income. These actions prevented a long recession and a financial crisis. Consequently, and in contrast to the Global Financial Crisis, house prices rose sharply in some countries, such as the US, the UK, France, and Germany (see Figure 3).12 Lower interest rates and a Covid-related relative rise in the demand for detached housing (and space in general) initially boosted house prices.13 On the supply side, lockdowns, pandemic related supply chain disruptions, and labour shortages reduced the supply of new housing. The effects on house prices via the user cost were plausibly amplified by households’ tendency to form extrapolative expectations of house prices. But the substantial re-regulation of mortgage lending in advanced countries (such as the Dodd-Frank Act in the US) has likely limited the role for shifts in credit standards in fuelling the recent surge in prices. Our careful review of recent research cautions against focusing too much on the role of real interest rates driving house price booms and busts to the exclusion of other key factors discussed above.14 In this regard, looking beyond the pandemic, a key lesson is that housing policy needs to be holistic to address the lack of housing affordability that many nations and regions face (see OECD 2021). Authors’ note: The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas or the Federal Reserve System. Aastveit, K, B Albuquerque and A K Anundsen (2020), “The Declining Elasticity of US Housing Supply”, VoxEU.org, 25 February. Abraham, J M and P H Hendershott (1996), “Bubbles in Metropolitan Housing Markets”, Journal of Housing Research 7(2): 191-207. Anundsen, A K and C Heebøll (2016), “Supply Restrictions, Subprime Lending and Regional US House Prices”, Journal of Housing Economics 31(1): 54-72. Armona, L, A Fuester and B Zafar (2019), “Home Price Expectations and Behaviour: Evidence from a Randomized Information Experiment”, Review of Economic Studies 86(4): 1371-1410. Barberis, N, R Greenwood, L Jin and A Shleifer (2018), “Extrapolations and Bubbles”, Journal of Financial Economics 129(2): 203-227. Capozza, D R and P J Seguin (1996), “Expectations, Efficiency, and Euphoria in the Housing Market”, Regional Science and Urban Economics 26(3–4): 369-386. Case K E and R J Shiller (1989), “The Efficiency of the Market for Single-Family Homes”, American Economic Review 79(1): 125-137. Case, K E and R J Shiller (1990), “Forecasting Prices and Excess Returns in the Housing Market”, Real Estate Economics 18(3): 253-273. Case, K E, R J Shiller and A K Thompson (2012), “What Have They Been Thinking? Homebuyer Behavior in Hot and Cold Markets”, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 43(2): 265-298. Cavalleri, M C, B Cournède and E Özsöğüt. (2019), “How Responsive are Housing Markets in the OECD? National Level Estimates”, OECD Working Paper 1590. Cerutti, E, J Dagher and G Dell’Ariccia (2017), “Housing Finance and Real Estate Booms: A Cross-Country Perspective”, Journal of Housing Economics 38: 1-13. Cesa-Bianchi, A and A Rebucci (2013), “Is the Federal Reserve Breeding the Next Financial Crisis?”, VoxEU.org, 11 April. Clayton, J (1997), “Are Housing Price Cycles Driven by Irrational Expectations?”, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics 14 (3): 341-363. DeFusco, A A, C G Nathanson and E Zwick (2017), “Speculative Dynamics of Prices and Volume”, NBER working paper 23449. De Stefani, A (2020), “House Price History, Biased Expectations and Credit Cycles”, Real Estate Economics, June: 1– 29. Dougherty, A and R Van Order (1982), “Inflation, Housing Costs, and the Consumer Price Index”, American Economic Review 72(1): 154-164. Duca, J V, M Hoesli and J Montezuma (forthcoming), “The Resilience and Realignment of House Prices in the Era of COVID-19”, Journal of European Real Estate Research. Duca, J V, J Muellbauer and A Murphy (2016), “How Mortgage Finance Reform Could Affect Housing”, American Economic Review 106(5): 620-624. Duca, J V, J Muellbauer and A Murphy (2021), “What Drives House Price Cycles? International Experience and Policy Issues”, Journal of Economic Literature 59(3): 773-864. Gennaioli, N and A Shleifer (2018), A Crisis of Beliefs: Investor Psychology and Financial Fragility, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Glaeser, E L and J Gyourko (2009), “Arbitrage in Housing Markets”, in E L Glaeser and J M Quigley (eds) Housing Markets and the Economy: Risk, Regulation, and Policy, Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Glaeser, E L (2013), “A Nation of Gamblers: Real Estate Speculation and American History”, American Economic Review 103(3): 1-42. Glaeser, E L, J Gyourko and A Saiz (2008), “Housing Supply and Housing Bubbles”, Journal of Urban Economics 64 (2): 198–217. Glaeser, E L and C G Nathanson (2017), “An Extrapolative Model of House Price Dynamics,” Journal of Financial Economics 126(1): 147-170. Gupta, A, J Peeters, V Mittal and S Van Nieuwerburgh (2021), “Flattening the Curve: Pandemic-Induced Revaluation of Urban Real Estate”, VoxEU.org, 11 February. Hamilton, B W and R M Schwab (1985), “Expected Appreciation in Urban Housing Markets”, Journal of Urban Economics 18(1): 103-118. Henderson, J V and Y Ioannides (1983), “A Model of Housing Tenure Choice”, American Economic Review 73(1): 98-113. Hilber, C and W Vermeulen (2016), “Regulation is to Blame for England’s Surging House Prices”, VoxEU.org, 10 April. Iacoviello, M and S Neri (2010), “Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from an Estimated DSGE Model”, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 2(2): 125-164. IMF, Financial Stability Board and Bank for International Settlements (2016), Elements of Effective Macroprudential Policies: Lessons from International Experience, Washington, DC: IMF. Jordà, Ò, M Schularick and A M Taylor (2014), “The Great Mortgaging”, VoxEU.org, 12 October. Jordà, Ò, M Schularick and A M Taylor (2016. “The Great Mortgaging: Housing Finance, Crises and Business Cycles”, Economic Policy 31(85): 107-152. Leamer, E E (2015), “Housing Really Is the Business Cycle: What Survives the Lessons of 2008– 09?”, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 47(S1): 43-50. Meen G P (1990), “The Removal of Mortgage Market Constraints and the Implications for Econometric Modelling of UK House Prices”, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 52(1): 1-23. Meese, R and N Wallace (1994), “Testing the Present Value Relation for Housing Prices: Should I Leave My House in San Francisco?”, Journal of Urban Economics 35(3): 245-266. Mian, A R and A Sufi (2011), “House Prices, Home Equity–Based Borrowing, and the U.S. Household Leverage Crisis”, American Economic Review 101(5): 2132-2156. Mian, A R and A Sufi (2018), “Credit Supply and Housing Speculation”, VoxEU.org, 19 August. Mian, A R, A Sufi and E Verner (2017), “Household Debt and Business Cycles Worldwide”, Quarterly Journal of Economics 132(4): 1755-1817.
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Financial Crisis
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Phu Rieng Do
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Phú Riềng Đỏ or the Red Phú Riềng was a communist-instigated strike that took place in Michelin's Thuân-Loï rubber plantation near Phú Riềng in the Biên Hòa Province[1] of Cochinchina on 4 February[2] 1930. Most of the plantation labourers were peasants from Tonkin and Annam driven by poverty to seek livelihood in southern Vietnam. Working and living conditions on the plantations, however, were harsh and this situation was capitalised by the communists to launch the strike. Although the strike lasted only about a week, the unfolding of events at Phú Riềng Đỏ was significant as it served as a harbinger for important tactical and strategic considerations for other communist-led uprisings that followed later in the year. Hence, while the communists may not seem to have achieved much from Phú Riềng Đỏ, it actually offered them some valuable first lessons in their anti-colonial struggle. Rubber production began in Cochinchina after 1907 when the French wanted a share of the profits that rubber brought to British Malaya. The colonial government encouraged investment from metropolitan France by granting large tracts of land to cultivate rubber on an industrial scale. [3] Soon, both labour and infrastructure were harnessed in earnest as the virgin rainforests in eastern Cochinchina, the highly fertile 'red lands', were cleared for rubber plantations. [4]
In fact by 1921, about 29,000 hectares of Cochinchinese land had turned into rubber plantations, and Biên Hòa, where Phu Rieng Do took place, was one of the most heavily cultivated provinces. [5] French colonial earnings from rubber export were given a further boost with the implementation of the Stevenson Plan in 1922, which mandated the reduction of rubber production from the British colonies of Malaya and Ceylon "precisely at the time when the astronomical growth of automobile production created upward pressure on demand. "[6] Consequently, in the whole of Indochina, 90,225 hectares of land had already been cleared for rubber plantations by 1929. [7]
Rubber cultivation was practised by both French and native Vietnamese planters. However, each had a very different experience of “heveaculture”, with the French plantations being much larger and having more access to resources from the colonial government and to cultivation techniques. [8] Even so, the working conditions on these large French plantations were not conducive. On the other hand, smaller Vietnamese plantations invested little to improve their production processes because to them, scientific knowledge and advanced technology was the conduit through which new ideas could be harnessed to modernise Vietnam. In other words, while the French were profit-driven, the Vietnamese put nationalism before production,[9] and the net effect was overall hardship for rubber plantation workers. Rubber was very profitable to both colonial government and large French metropolitan companies given that the latter's combined output was nearly equivalent to the total latex output in Indochina. [10] As a result, the government was very involved in economic activity "[f]rom the control of goods prices and financial or fiscal support... to the policing of worker dissent" to safeguard this very profitable export industry. [11] Hence, while rubber planters and colonial administrators did not always agree on matters relating to the rubber industry, these large European plantations were the main sources of revenue in inter-war Vietnam, and were powerful symbols of the intricate symbiotic relationship between the colonial government and French commercial interests. [12] By the time Phu Rieng Do broke up in 1930, the largest rubber plantations had formed the Section autonome de l'Union des planteurs de Caoutchouc de l'Indochine (Indochina Rubber Planters' Union)[13] to further their interests. Given their close relationship, one area of cooperation between government and planter was in labour procurement. With the increase in rubber demand after the First World War, large European plantations began to expand from their original sites of an arc 300 km long and about 40 km wide southeast to northwest of Saigon, to areas further north. [14] This expansion depleted local labour supplies and resulted in a severe labour shortage by mid-1920s. [15] In response, the director of labour recruitment, Herve Bazin, provided thousands of coolies[16] to these large rubber plantations from "the overcrowded villages of the Red River Delta in Tonkin and the coastal lowlands of Annam", swelling the ranks of these poor migrant workers from 3,242 in 1922 to 41,750 in 1928. [17]
What seemed like a simple solution of channelling excess labour to areas of need actually sowed the seeds for Phu Rieng Do as the growth of communism started in northern Vietnam and spread to the south through the many migrant workers employed by rubber plantations in Cochinchina during the "rubber boom" from 1923 to 1928. [18] One such northern worker was Trần Tử Bình, and he was to play a significant role in the strike. Hence, although the colonial authorities tried to stamp out the danger of communist infiltration in 1929 – 1930 by getting the Sûreté to screen and "to weed out workers deemed politically undesirable and potential trouble-makers",[19] this attempt ultimately failed given the sheer numbers of labourers who were recruited. Moreover, the employment terms – where food, shelter and wage were given in exchange for three years of service – tied these northern labourers to a form indentured labour with its many unstated obligations. [20] In other words, communist or communist-inspired elements who slipped through the screening found ready listeners among these impoverished workers who usually felt compelled to extend their unfavourable contract because the accumulation of debts necessitated their repeated borrowing from moneylenders. [21]
Moreover, it did not help that many of these recruited northerners were driven to destitution in the first place by a money-based capitalist economy. [22] This was an effect of colonialism where cash economy had penetrated the rural economy. Consequently, both land and individual taxes had "to be paid in... solid silver piasters, which peasants often had to acquire solely for this purpose at marked-up rates of exchange from money lenders or landlords. "[23] Hence, these peasants had to resort to borrowing at inflated rates which resulted in many of them being trapped in unending indebtedness. [24]
The new agrarian capitalism also divided society into the haves and the have-nots of land ownership,[25] with the latter having to "sell their labour in order to subsist. "[26] For those peasants who thought they could continue to live off subsistence farming, the aforementioned tax system was actually pulling them deeper into the cash economy. [27] As a result, many smallholders were expropriated while tenants, sharecroppers and wage-labourers were trapped in debts. [28] Given the impoverished socio-economic condition of these peasants, the communists were winning these northerners over to their cause when they went to work in rubber plantations such as the one at Phu Rieng. In the decade prior to the outbreak of Phu Rieng Do, "a small politically conscious laboring [sic] class" had emerged in the 22,000 Vietnamese workers of which 36.8% were found in the modern agricultural sector. [29] This, however, "made up no more than 2 per cent of the population. "[30] In other words, the pool of potential followers of the communist movement was small. Moreover, the communists were also fragmented in their various parties. [31] In early 1930, "party leaders therefore opposed the use of revolutionary violence until the Communist movement could be unified and more fully developed. "[32] As such, the Viet Nam Cong San Dang (VNCSD) or the Communist Party of Vietnam began to strengthen itself through "the establishment of cells in factories, railroad works, mines, plantations, schools and military units. "[33] Popular-based organisations such as self-defence and mutual aid groups were also targeted in order to bring more people into their orbit of influence. [34]
Unsurprisingly then, at Michelin's plantation in Phú Riềng, "the party branch position was to... organize mutual aid associations, sports teams, and arts groups to bring the masses together and to win them over. "[35] In fact, the Lao Dong Cong San or Communist Workers was already preparing for Phu Rieng Do as early as October 1929. [36] To ensure success of the strike, members of this communist cell began to establish "hidden food caches, and making a pact with some of the local tribespeople whereby the latter promised not to serve as strikebreakers for the French. "[37] In reality, however, many of these coolies "had little or no intention of remaining in the position of full-time proletarians" but were instead more eager to return to their homes in northern Vietnam after fulfilling their contracts or having earned enough to pay the obligatory colonial taxes and other debts. [38] This did not hinder the communists from capitalising on the grim day-to-day experience of these coolies whose squalid living quarters "were reportedly littered with communist pamphlets. "[39]
The strike at the sprawling 5,500 hectares Michelin rubber plantation[40] in Phú Riềng took place on 4 February 1930, the sixth day of Tết, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year.
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The visit of Pakistan’s parliamentary delegation headed by National Assembly (NA) Speaker Asad Qaiser to Afghanistan has been postponed
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ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) – The visit of Pakistan’s parliamentary delegation headed by National Assembly (NA) Speaker Asad Qaiser to Afghanistan has been postponed.
The visit has been deferred in the wake of closure of Kabul International Airport due to security reasons.
Earlier on October 23, 2020, a 17-member Afghan parliamentary delegation led by Speaker of the Wolsey Jirga (Afghan Parliament) Mir Rahman Rahmani arrived in Islamabad on the invitation of NA Speaker Asad Qaiser.
During its stay, the Afghan delegation held meetings with Asad Qaiser, President of Islamic Republic of Pakistan Dr. Arif Alvi, Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan, Chairman Senate Sadiq Sanjrani and Foreign Minister of Pakistan Shah Mehmood Qureshi. The delegation also had interactive meeting with the Members of Pakistan- Afghanistan Friendship group in National Assembly and senior government functionaries.
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El Al Flight 432 attack crash
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International incidents
El Al Flight 432, was a Boeing 720-058B (a shortened Boeing 707-120B) that was attacked by a squad of four armed Palestinian militants, members of the Lebanese-based militant organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, while it was preparing for takeoff at the Zurich International Airport in Kloten on February 18, 1969. The plane was on its way from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv via Zurich, and was due to take off at Zurich International Airport. Several of the crew members were injured during the attack, and one later died of his injuries. The plane was severely damaged. A greater disaster was averted when Mordechai Rahamim, an undercover Israeli security agent stationed on the plane, opened fire at the attackers and killed the terrorist leader. [2] Rahamim and the three surviving attackers were arrested and tried by Swiss authorities. The attackers were found guilty and given prison sentences, while Rahamim was acquitted. The terrorist cell ambushed the plane which was preparing for takeoff at the Zurich International Airport in Kloten. During that time the plane had 17 passengers and 11 crew members on board. Leaping out of a vehicle parked near a hangar, two terrorists opened fire with AK-47 assault rifles,[3][4] and another two tossed incendiary grenades as well as dynamite that failed to explode[citation needed]. The cockpit and fuselage were hit, seriously wounding several people including co-pilot Yoram Peres, who died of his wounds a month later. The plane's security guard Mordechai Rahamim, a twenty two year old former soldier in the Israeli elite special forces unit Sayeret Matkal,[5] ran to the cockpit and fired at the attackers from the window with his Beretta .22 pistol,[3][4] and then jumped out of the plane through the rear emergency slide door and continued the shootout with the attackers. During the shootout, Rahamim killed the squad leader[citation needed], and the battle eventually ended when the Swiss security forces arrived at the scene. Rahamim helped the Swiss authorities apprehend the remaining attackers, but was himself arrested, and his weapon confiscated. Damage to the aircraft was estimated at $100,000. [5]
Rahamim was arrested by the Swiss police, along with the members of the terrorist cell. The terrorists were found to be carrying many weapons and explosives as well as leaflets in German which were intended to be used to explain the goals of the operation to the Swiss people, comparing it to William Tell's operations[citation needed]. During an investigation it became clear that the terrorists came to Switzerland from Damascus, and the weapons and explosives were brought to Switzerland through diplomatic mail of an Arab country[citation needed]. During the interrogation Mordechai Rahamim admitted that he worked for Israel's security services. After a month in arrest he was released on bail until the beginning of his trial. Rahamim returned to Israel. On 27 November 1969, the trial of Rahamim and the three terrorists, Mohamed Abu Al-Haija, Ibrahim Tawfik Youssef and Amina Dahbour, began in Winterthur, Switzerland. The state of Israel sent the state prosecutor Gabriel Bach to Switzerland to handle the defense of Rahamim. An indictment was filed against the three terrorists which included deliberate homicide of a person. The indictment against Rahamim included two sections: deliberate homicide of a person due to a serious excitement which occurred as a result of circumstances justifying the excitement, and an illegal action on behalf of a foreign country. During the trial Israel was forced to admit for the first time that security personnel accompany Israeli flights, to prevent hijackings and terrorism from happening in the air. On 23 December 1969 the trial ended. Rahamim was acquitted on charges of killing the terrorist squad leader and three terrorists were sentenced to twelve years imprisonment and hard labor. They were released a year later, in September 1970, following the Dawson's Field hijackings by members of a Palestinian terrorist organization who demanded the release of the imprisoned terrorists. [4][6][7]
Photo of Mordechai Rahamim at his trial
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Chand raat bazaars, shopping malls, public places to remain closed from May 8-16 across Pakistan
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Chand raat bazaars, shopping malls, public places, and recreational spots will all remain closed from May 8-16, the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) said Thursday. The NCOC, in a statement, said: "The current spike of COVID-19 in the country merits effective measures to arrest its further spread with special emphasis on reducing mobility during forthcoming Eid-ul-Fitr." In this regard, it has announced comprehensive “Stay home, stay safe" guidelines for Eid-uI-Fitr-2021 to curb the spread of the virus. The restrictions will be in place from May 8-16. All markets, businesses, and shops will remain closed except essential services, which include: Moreover, the ban on chand raat bazaars extends to mehndi, jewelry/ornaments and clothing stalls, the NCOC said. A complete ban on tourism would also be observed for both locals and foreigners. All tourist resorts, formal and informal picnic spots, public parks, shopping malls will remain shut. All hotels and restaurants around tourist and picnic spots will remain closed. "Travel nodes leading to tourist/picnic spots closed; focus on Murree, Galiyat, Swat-Kalam, Sea View/beaches, and Northern Areas and other tourist destinations," the statement said. Locals, especially people of Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, would be allowed to travel back home, the statement said. A complete ban on inter-provincial, inter-city, and intra-city public transport will be observed except for private vehicles, taxis, rickshaws, with 50% occupancy. "Additional trains to manage extra passenger load till May 7, thereafter normal train operation [will] be resumed. 70% occupancy along with stringent COVID SOPs [should] be ensured," it said. Moreover, Eid-ul-Fitr holidays in Pakistan would be observed from May 10-15, NCOC said. Pakistan's coronavirus positivity ratio jumped to 9.6% today after the country reported over 5,000 new infections in the last 24 hours. According to the official data provided by the NCOC, 5,480 people tested positive for the coronavirus, after 57,013 tests were conducted across the country. The total tally of COVID-19 cases now stands at 815,711, with most cases reported in Punjab. The number of recoveries nationwide has reached 708,193 so far, while the number of active cases in the country stands at 89,838 as of today. A day earlier, Pakistan reported the highest single-day death toll recorded since the pandemic started last year with over 200 new fatalities. The "fake news" claims SSGC specified hours of the day during which gas will be supplied to domestic consumers Nazim Jokhio was held hostage and tortured at warehouse in Jam House, say police Immediately stop airing Noor Mukadam CCTV footage, PEMRA instructs TV channels COVID-19 killed 11 more people in last 24 hours, NCOC data shows Secretary Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education Sukkur announces results of Intermediate Science and Arts groups PDM fighting for the country's survival and it will win in this struggle, PDM chief Fazl says
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Scarlett Johansson marries Colin Jost in 'intimate' ceremony
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Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson has married her fiancé Colin Jost in a low-key ceremony, it has been announced. The wedding took place at the weekend, said Meals on Wheels, a US-based charity for elderly people. The charity said Johannson and Jost had supported their work with vulnerable people during the Covid-19 pandemic. The ceremony was "intimate... with their immediate family and love ones, following Covid-19 safety precautions", Meals on Wheels wrote on Instagram. "Their wedding wish is to help make a difference for vulnerable older adults during this difficult time," the post added, before asking fans to donate to the charity. A representative for Johansson confirmed the news. According to entertainment website TMZ, the couple were married in Palisades, New York. Johansson started dating Jost, a writer and comedian on the sketch show Saturday Night Live, in 2017, after she made a guest appearance in the show's season finale. The couple announced their engagement in May 2019. Johansson is one of the highest-paid actresses in the world - thanks largely to her recurring role as the Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.AdChoicesADVERTISEMENT How do you keep a celebrity wedding secret? The story of a socially distant wedding A virtual wedding on Animal Crossing Last-ditch effort to clinch climate deal Divisions remain over continuing subsidies for fossil fuels and financial help to poorer nations. Steve Bannon charged with contempt of Congress Britney released from 13-year conservatorship
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2010 Tennessee floods
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The May 2010 Tennessee floods were 1,000-year[2] floods in Middle Tennessee, West Tennessee, south-central and western Kentucky and northern Mississippi areas of the United States of America as the result of torrential rains on May 1 and 2, 2010. Floods from these rains affected the area for several days afterwards, resulting in a number of deaths and widespread property damage. [3]
Two-day rain totals in some areas were greater than 19 inches (480 mm). [4] The Cumberland River crested at 51.86 feet (15.81 m) in Nashville, a level not seen since 1937, which was before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood control measures were in place. All-time record crests were observed on the Cumberland River at Clarksville, the Duck River at Centerville and Hurricane Mills, the Buffalo River at Lobelville, the Harpeth River at Kingston Springs and Bellevue, and the Red River at Port Royal. [5]
According to the Memphis Office of the National Weather Service:
A significant weather system brought very heavy rain and severe thunderstorms from Saturday, May 1 through Sunday morning, May 2. A stalled frontal boundary coupled with very moist air streaming northward from the Gulf set the stage for repeated rounds of heavy rainfall. Many locations along the I-40 corridor across western and middle Tennessee reported in excess of 10 to 15 inches, with some locations receiving up to 20 inches according to Doppler radar estimates. [6]
Several rainfall records in the Nashville area were broken during the rain event. 13.57 inches (345 mm) fell during the two-day period of May 1–2, doubling the record of 6.68 inches (170 mm) set in September 1979 during the passage of the remnants of Hurricane Frederic. On May 2 alone, 7.25 inches (184 mm) of rain fell, including 7.20 inches (183 mm) during a 12-hour period and 5.57 inches (141 mm) in a 6-hour period, eclipsing records set on September 13, 1979. The event also set a record for wettest May on record, surpassing the record set in May 1983 with 11.84 inches (301 mm). [5][7]
Heavy rain also affected large portions of Arkansas, northern Mississippi and southern Kentucky. In Arkansas, over 5 inches (130 mm) fell in the Little Rock area, up to 8 inches (200 mm) in West Memphis and over 10 inches (250 mm) in northeastern Arkansas closer to the Mississippi River. Similar amounts were recorded across western and southern Kentucky where over 7 inches (180 mm) fell in the Hopkinsville area and up to 4 inches (100 mm) across the Missouri Bootheel. In addition to the heavy rain, moist air and ample instability contributed to the generation of multiple tornadoes affecting the same areas, which killed five people: four in Mississippi during the early hours of May 2, and one in Arkansas during the evening of April 30. [8][9]
Twenty-one deaths were recorded in Tennessee, including ten in Davidson County, which includes Nashville. [10] Of the ten dead in Davidson County, "four victims were found in their homes, two were in cars and four were outdoors. "[11]
Floods killed six people in northern Mississippi, and four deaths were reported in Kentucky. [12]
Mississippi deaths occurred in the following counties:[13]
At least 30 counties in Tennessee were declared major disaster areas by the federal government, with 52 applying to receive this status. This translates to about 31% of Tennessee being designated a major disaster area. [14]
Almost all schools in the area were closed including Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, some for a week or more. Many roads were damaged by water erosion. Interstate 40 west of Nashville had numerous spots that had been inundated. Repair work on I-40 continued for several months. The first site of major flooding was along Mill Creek in southeastern Davidson County, which was affected by a flash flood on May 1. The creek quickly spilled over its banks, and completely covered Interstate 24 near Antioch, killing one person in a car. A TDOT traffic camera captured footage of a large portable building being swept away from Lighthouse Christian School and coming to rest among the traffic on I-24, which was broadcast live on local television. Another person was killed along Mill Creek while attempting to tube the floodwaters. Flooding on the Cumberland River damaged the Grand Ole Opry House, Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, Opry Mills, Bridgestone Arena[15] (home to NHL team Nashville Predators), and LP Field (home to NFL team Tennessee Titans) with several feet of water. [16]
Grand Ole Opry performances were moved to other venues in the Nashville area, with the Ryman Auditorium serving as the primary venue when available. Other venues hosting the Opry include the War Memorial Auditorium, TPAC's Andrew Jackson Hall, Nashville Municipal Auditorium, Lipscomb University's Allen Arena and the Two Rivers Baptist Church. Both the Ryman and War Memorial Auditoriums were previous homes to the Opry. None of these facilities were affected by the floods. The Grand Ole Opry House reopened to much fanfare on September 28, 2010. The basement flooded in Schermerhorn Symphony Center, causing the destruction of two Steinway grand concert pianos and one organ valued at $2.5 million. [17]
The common areas of the Gaylord Opryland Hotel were destroyed, and parts of the hotel were under 10 feet (3 m) of water at the peak of the floods. [17] It remained closed until November 2010. The studios of WSM radio, located in the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, were also flooded. This forced the station to broadcast from a makeshift studio at its transmitter site in Brentwood for six months. [18] WSM's administrative offices next to the Grand Ole Opry House were also completely destroyed and later demolished, resulting in the loss of several priceless documents from the station's history. Neighboring Opry Mills mall was also inundated, and remained closed until March 29, 2012. Flooding was reported in a mechanical room of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, but the exhibits were not damaged. [17]
The playing field, ground level facilities (such as locker rooms), and service entrance of LP Field were under water. [17]
40 feet (12 m) of water filled the underground parking garage of The Pinnacle at Symphony Place, a 417-foot (127 m) tower in downtown that opened in February 2010, less than three months before the flood. Electric and elevator systems housed in the garage were damaged. [19]
In Belle Meade, a neighborhood of Nashville, the ground floor of St. George's Episcopal Church was flooded. [17]
In the early morning of May 4, flooding at a Nashville Electric Service substation caused power to go out in the center of the city. Among the buildings that lost electricity was the 617-foot (188 m) AT&T Building, the tallest building in Tennessee. Power was not expected to be restored until Friday, May 7.
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Montenegro becomes 192nd member of U.N.
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World
Montenegro becomes 192nd member of U.N.
Montenegro on Wednesday became the 192nd member of the United Nations, a month after it ended its 88-year partnership with Serbia.
Link copied
June 28, 2006, 3:45 PM UTC
/ Source: Reuters
Montenegro on Wednesday became the 192nd member of the United Nations, a month after it ended its 88-year partnership with Serbia that completed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
The U.N. General Assembly of 191 nations admitted the small Balkan country of 650,000 people to the world body. It approved by acclamation a resolution introduced by Austria’s U.N. ambassador, Gerhard Pfanzelter, whose country currently heads the European Union.
Montenegro declared independence from Serbia, a country of 7.5 million people, after a referendum passed by a slim margin on May 21. It declared independence on June 3.
The U.N. seat previously assigned to Serbia and Montenegro is now in Serbia’s hands. The last country to join the United Nations was East Timor in September 2002.
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China Eastern Airlines Flight 5210 crash
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China Eastern Airlines Flight 5210 (CES5210/MU5210), also known as the Baotou Air Disaster, was a flight from Baotou Erliban Airport in Inner Mongolia, China, to Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport, with a planned stopover at Beijing Capital International Airport. On 21 November 2004, just two minutes after takeoff, the Bombardier CRJ-200ER fell from the sky and crashed into a lake in Nanhai Park, next to the airport, killing all 53 people on board and two more on the ground. [1]
An investigation by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) revealed that the plane had not been deiced by the ground crew while it was parked on the tarmac. Ice accumulation on the wings caused the plane to lose its lift, causing the crash. It is the deadliest accident involving a CRJ-100/-200. [1][2]
Flight 5210 was operated by a Bombardier CRJ-200ER, SN 7697, which was powered by two General Electric CF34-3B1 engines, which was delivered in November 2002, two years prior to the crash. At the time of the accident, the plane was still wearing China Yunnan Airlines livery, despite the airline having merged with China Eastern Airlines in 2003. The plane took off at 08:21 local time, 15 minutes ahead of schedule, carrying 47 passengers and six crew members. 10 seconds after taking off, the airplane shook for several seconds and then fell to the ground. The plane skidded through a park and crashed into a house, a park ticketing station, and a port, setting fire to several moored yachts. It then plunged into an icy lake. All 53 people on board and two park employees on the ground were killed in the crash. [1]
President Hu Jintao, who was out of the country at the time of the disaster, ordered an immediate rescue operation. [3] More than 100 firefighters were dispatched to the crash site. Also sent to the disaster site were 250 police officers, 50 park staff, and 20 divers. Rescuers had to break through the ice to retrieve bodies. By the end of the day, crews had recovered 36 bodies from the frozen lake. According to a doctor who worked in a nearby hospital, rescuers had only recovered bodily organs and intestines of victims. [4]
Rescue efforts were hampered by the low temperatures. By the day after the crash, most of the plane had been recovered from the lake. A team of rescue experts from the Ministry of Communications' Maritime Bureau also arrived at the crash site on 22 November. [5] On 24 November, investigators located the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and the flight data recorder (FDR) by the radio pings that the devices emitted. [6][7]
On 23 November, the flight's passenger manifest was released by China Eastern officials. Of the 47 passengers on board, 46 were Chinese. Officials confirmed that only one foreigner was on board, from Indonesia. [8] The flight crew members were identified as Captain Wang Pin (Chinese: 王品), Vice Captain Yang Guang (Chinese: 杨光), and First Officer Yi Qinwei (Chinese: 易沁炜) plus two flight attendants and a security officer. Many witnesses stated that the plane shook for several seconds, and then exploded in midair. According to one witness, a blast occurred at the tail of the plane. Smoke began to pour from the plane before it crashed into the park, becoming a fireball, and then skidded across the park and into the lake. Others claimed that the plane exploded into "flaming fragments" in the air before it crashed. [9]
The crash occurred just three months after the bombing of a Tupolev Tu-154 and a Tupolev Tu-134 over Russia, which killed 90 people. At the time, investigators of the Russian bombings found traces of explosives aboard the two planes. Investigators at the crash of Flight 5120, however, stated that they did not find any evidence of terrorism, according to state-run news agency Xinhua. [9]
The crash was also just one month after Pinnacle Airlines Flight 3701, which also involved a CRJ200, prompting the Civil Aviation Administration of China to ground all CRJ200's for one month, until no technical faults with the aircraft were determined. [10][11]
Weather at the time of the crash was good, although the temperature was below 0 °C (32 °F). A resulting hypothesis that ice particles in the fuel caused the disaster was later disproven. Further investigation revealed that the accident aircraft had been parked overnight at Baotou Airport in cold weather, causing a layer of frost to form on its exterior. The aircraft was also not deiced prior to the flight. During takeoff, the frost contamination severely degraded aerodynamic performance, and as the jet rotated, it entered a stall from which the flight crew was unable to recover. In 2006, 12 China Eastern Airlines employees were found to be responsible for the accident and received administrative punishment. [1]
China Eastern no longer operates the route of the accident. All flights between Baotou and Shanghai are now operated by its subsidiary Shanghai Airlines as Flights 9438 and 9136 (to Pudong). Flight number 5210 was reassigned to a Shantou-Shanghai flight.
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Air Lanka Flight 512 crash
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Air Lanka Flight 512 was an Air Lanka flight from London Gatwick Airport via Zurich and Dubai to Colombo (Bandaranaike International Airport) and Malé, Maldives (Velana International Airport). On 3 May 1986, the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar operating the flight was on the ground in Colombo, about to fly on to Malé, when an explosion ripped the aircraft in two, destroying it. Flight 512 carried mainly French, West German, British and Japanese tourists; 21 people were killed on the aircraft, including 3 British, 2 West German, 3 French, 2 Japanese, 2 Maldivians and 1 Pakistani; 41 people were injured. [1]
Boarding of the flight had been delayed due to the aircraft being damaged during cargo / baggage loading. [2] During boarding, a bomb, hidden in the aircraft's 'Fly Away Kit' (a collection of small spare parts[3]), exploded. [4] The bomb had been timed to detonate mid-flight; the delay likely saved many lives. The Sri Lankan government concluded that the bomb was planted by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to sabotage peace talks between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government. They reported that a search of the aircraft the next day uncovered a parcel containing uniforms with the insignia of the Black Tigers, the suicide wing of LTTE. [1][5]
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India becomes Associate Member State of CERN
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16 JANUARY, 2017
Today, India became an Associate Member of CERN. This follows official notification to CERN that the Government of India has completed its internal approval procedures in respect of the agreement, signed in November 2016, granting that status to the country.
India and CERN signed a Cooperation Agreement in 1991, setting priorities for scientific and technical cooperation, followed by the signature of several Protocols. India’s relationship with the Organization dates back much further, initially through cooperation with the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, whose high-energy physicists have been actively participating in experiments at CERN since the 1960s. They were later joined by scientists from the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore, in the 1990s. These and other institutes built components for the LEP accelerator and the L3, WA93 and WA89 detectors. Their scientists participated in important physics analyses and publications throughout the years.
All these developments paved the way, in 1996, for the Indian AEC (Atomic Energy Commission) to agree to take part in the construction of the LHC, and to contribute to the CMS and ALICE experiments and to the LHC Computing Grid with Tier-2 centres in Mumbai and Kolkata. In recognition of these substantial contributions, India was granted Observer status to the CERN Council in 2002. The success of the DAE-CERN partnership regarding the LHC has also led to cooperation on Novel Accelerator Technologies through DAE’s participation in CERN’s Linac4, SPL and CTF3 projects, and CERN’s contribution to DAE’s programmes. India also participates in the COMPASS, ISOLDE and nTOF experiments.
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Locusts descend on Cameroon's hungry north - ReliefWeb
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Locusts descend on Cameroon's hungry north
Format
Originally published
20 May 2005
YAOUNDE, May 20 (Reuters) - Swarms of locusts have descended on Cameroon's arid Far North province, exacerbating fears of food shortages in a region where low rainfall has already hit crop yields, officials said on Friday.
"Migratory locusts have invaded all the six divisions of the Far North," a statement from Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Clobert Tchatat said. He gave no further details.
Radio reports from the region, which is squeezed between Nigeria to the west and Chad to the east, said locusts darkened the skies and ate any green leaves they could find.
Last year, locusts munched their way across swathes of West Africa in the worst infestation in 15 years. The invasion raised fears of famine in a region where many are subsistence farmers.
Arid, semi-desert Niger and Mauritania were among the hardest hit. On Thursday, the United Nations said drought and the locust infestation had left 3.6 million people in critical need of food aid in Niger.
Cameroon, which stretches from mangrove swamps on the Atlantic Coast to the more arid north by Lake Chad, was not affected by last year's plague.
Tchatat said a light aircraft from the Aerial Pest Control Unit was in the Far North to find out where the locusts came from and where they were reproducing. Some 7,000 litres of pesticides are available in the region to combat the insects.
Tchatat said in March the Far North faced food shortages because of low rainfall coupled with the advancing desert and the destruction of crops by migratory birds and elephants.
Some 2,000 tonnes of cereals have been provided for the local populations.
Millions of hectares of land in West Africa have been sprayed with pesticides to prevent another locust attack. On Tuesday, U.N. officials said West Africa had cut the risk of another plague but warned there was no room for complacency.
Reuters - Thomson Reuters Foundation
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2018 Little Village fire
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On August 26, 2018, a fire began early that morning in Chicago's Mexican-American Little Village neighborhood. The fire killed ten children, including six children under the age of 12. [2] Investigators stated that the fire started in the back of the building in a ground-floor apartment, which was vacant. [2]
The fire is the deadliest residential fire to have occurred in Chicago since 1958. [3] In the aftermath of the fire, multiple violations were found in the apartment where the fire occurred with apartment owner, Merced Gutierrez, appearing in court for the 40 violations found at the site of the fire. On February 22, 2017, a fire broke out in the living room of a vacant first-floor apartment at the rear of the building. [4] No one was injured. [4]
In March 2018, Illinois's Department of Children and Family Services were called investigated a hotline call that one of the sons of the mother who lived at the apartment came to school looking dirty and smelling of marijuana. [5]
The fatal fire started at around 3 a.m. CST on August 26, 2018, at an apartment building at 2200 block of South Sacramento Avenue, about 45 minutes before a witness called 911 at 3:45 a.m. to report flames shooting through the windows of the second-floor rear unit. [4][5] Children, ranging in age from 3 months to 16 years, were at a sleepover at the apartment. [5]
The investigation by the Chicago Fire Department indicated that the fire was the result of a smoldering item in the apartment that morning. [4] Arson and foul play were ruled out. [2][4] No adults were present in the apartment during the fire. [2]
An exact cause to the fire is still undetermined. [5] Eight children died immediately in the fire while two were hospitalized under critical condition at the John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County and died two later. [6]
The 10 children who died in the fire were nine first cousins and a family friend:
Fire officials initially said they did not find any smoke detectors in the second-floor rear unit, but they later said they did find a smoke detector without batteries. [4]
The department had investigated the mother who lived there, predominantly on allegations of inadequate supervision, 21 times since 2004. [5] The complaints were verified in two instances, including one in 2013 when her then-8-year-old son, who had autism, got out of the home and was found wandering in traffic. [5]
Many criticized Illinois' the Department of Children and Family Services as they were previously summoned to the department and disregarded the hazards. [5] In a statement, the department said it tries to be as proactive as possible to prevent neglect when investigating struggling families. [5] In months before the fire, there were 21 complaints against a mother of one of the victims, another complaint was verified in 2015. [5] The mother was cited for endangerment when her 16-year-old daughter used a 7-month-old relative in a stroller to help them with a theft. [5]
A memorial service for six of the children was held on September 1 at noon at Our Lady of Tepeyac Church. [5]
The Chicago Fire Department handed out smoke detectors to the neighborhood while raising awareness of its importance. [8]
Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a statement regarding the fire said: "Our thoughts go out to not only the families of those who perished but to members of the department who pushed as hard as possible to reverse the deadly fate of the eight who are now gone". [9]
Chicago Department of Buildings' Strategic Task Force found 38 violations in the front building, including missing or defective smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, defective light fixtures and armored cable and electrical wiring and plumbing installed without permits. [3] Six more violations were found during a separate inspection of the rear coach house. [3]
The owner of the apartment, 80 year old Merced Gutierrez, was criticized and blamed for the fire for causing many violations at the apartment. [3] As a result of the violations, Gutierrez appeared in court on August 30 and was ordered to no longer rent anyone the apartment. [8] The city will conduct another inspection on December 4 with another hearing on the code violations is set two days later. [8]
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Fire
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Javier Ordóñez protests
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The Javier Ordóñez protests refers to a series of protests and riots in Colombia. The protests started in Bogotá, the country's capital, following the death of Javier Ordóñez while in police custody on 9 September 2020. The unrest has since spread to many cities throughout Colombia. As of 15 September, 13 people have died and over 400 have been injured as part of the protests. [1] In response to the protests, Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo announced a disciplinary hearing for the officers involved in Ordóñez's death and said, "the National Police ask for forgiveness. "[2]
Protests erupted in response to the police killing of Javier Humberto Ordóñez, a 46-year-old Colombian father of two in the neighborhood of Engativá in Bogotá. [3] In a video of the incident which went viral on social media, Ordóñez could be seen "face down on the ground as two officers kneel on him and repeatedly use their stun guns on him. "[4] Ordóñez could be heard saying "enough please, enough, no more, please" and "I am choking." Witnesses to the incident told police to stop repeatedly. [3]
Ordóñez was first transported to a local police station. A friend of his, Juan David Uribe arrived at the station to ask for him and stated, "when I arrived, my friend was practically dead, he was not moving. So I began to yell at police and told them, 'please help him, let's take him to the hospital'." Ordóñez was then transported to a local hospital, where he died shortly after. A family member reported that he had been tasered 12 times and stated "they told us that a person can endure more or less four. "[3]
Local police attempted to justify the incident by saying that he had to be subdued. The video initiated thousands of protesters out to the streets. At least seven people died in the demonstrations and police reportedly took 70 people into custody. 248 people were injured, including 100 police. 5 of the people killed were shot. 58 people received gunshot wounds. [4] Claudia López, mayor of Bogotá, stated that "no one had ordered police to shoot at protesters" even though she admitted that this is what ended up happening. A BBC report stated that "there have been 137 complaints of police brutality in Bogotá this year" and that in November 2019 "tens of thousands of people took to the streets in memory of Dilan Cruz, a student who died after being hit by a projectile fired by riot police during an anti-government protest. "[3]
Protests also occurred in Soacha, Medellín, and Pereira. The death of Ordóñez and the subsequent protests have been compared to the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent George Floyd protests in the United States. [5][6]
On September 9, 2020, various civil and political sectors in Bogotá called for peaceful demonstrations in response to the murder of Javier Ordóñez and the multiple cases of police abuse that preceded him. [7] In relation to these events, demonstrations were also called in capital cities such as Medellín,[8] Barranquilla,[9] Cali,[10] Cúcuta,[11] among others. [12] These peaceful demonstrations were accompanied by acts of vandalism that provoked the response of the National Police, questioned for, allegedly, having caused, throughout the country, injuries and the death of both protesters and passers-by. The presence of the Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron (ESMAD), a special unit of the Directorate of Citizen Security (DISEC) of the National Police of Colombia, has been notable for its participation in these violent events. [13]
As the hours progress, the National Police opens fire, causing the death of more than 13 people in different parts of the city and leaving more than 54 wounded with firearms, in addition to 400 injured due to blows with blunt elements, kicks and fists. [14]
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Protest_Online Condemnation
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The Post-US Withdrawal Afghanistan: India, China and the ‘English Diplomacy’
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The recent developments in Afghanistan, the impatient Tri-axis and the emphatic India at SCO, with the ‘English Diplomacy’ at display that tends to blunt the Chinese aggressiveness in South China Sea mark a new power interplay in the world politics. It also shows why the US went for AUKUS and how it wants to focus on the Indo-Pacific.
Afghanistan has turned out to be the most incandescent point of world politics today deflecting the eyes from the South China Sea and Gaza Strip. What is more startling is the indifferent attitude United States has shown to the other stakeholders in the war torn state. While Brexit appears to have created fissure in the European Union the AUKUS effects further marginalisation of France and India against the US-British and QUAD understandings. The vacuum that US have created in Afghanistan has invited several actors willing to expand their energy access to central Asia and Afghanistan provides an important bridge in between. The TAPI economics (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline) and huge Indian investments are endangered by the Afghan security question and make it imminent for India to stay in Afghanistan as a reckoning force.
The Taliban and the Troika
While the Russo-Chinese and Pakistani engagement with the Taliban’s takeover was visible the US exit has invited the wrath of other stakeholders like India, Saudi Arabia and Iran. India is significantly affected because of its huge investments of over 3 billion dollars over two decades in Afghanistan that would become target of the orthodox retrogressive Taliban regime. The government of India’s stand on Afghanistan is that an ‘Afghan peace process should be Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-controlled. Any political settlement must be inclusive and should preserve the socio-economic and political gains of the past 19 years. India supports a united, democratic and sovereign Afghanistan. India is deeply concerned about the increase in violence and targeted killings in Afghanistan. India has called for an immediate and comprehensive ceasefire’(MEA).
However, the takeover by Taliban that endangers India’s strategic and capital interests has made it pro-active in the state. Probably for the first time in Afghan history, India has shown aggressive tones against the militant government which may create problem for Kashmir in the longer run. The Pakistani air force’s engagement over the Panjashir assault by Taliban has unravelled the larger plans of destabilisation in South Asia.
In the meantime China has unequivocally expressed its willingness, as was expected to work with Taliban. The visit of Taliban delegation, led by Abdul Ghani Baradar who also heads the office of Taliban at Doha, met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and other officials in Tianjin, on July 28, 2021. The visit followed the Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mahmood Kureshi’s visit to Beijing and unravelled how the two states have been supporting the Talibani cause. Although, China has its own perceptions about Xinjiang and Mr. Wang even told the Taliban “to draw a line” between the group and terror organisations, specifically the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) which has carried out attacks in Xinjiang. Russia too has shown interest in Taliban and it didn’t plan to evacuate its embassy at Kabul. Its foreign ministry official Zamir Kabulov said that Russia will carefully see how responsibly they (Taliban) govern the country in the near future. And based on the results, the Russian leadership will draw the necessary conclusions.
The little Indo-Russian engagements over Afghanistan have minimised the scope of cooperation over the decades now. Although, Russia has been trying to follow a balancing policy between India and Pakistan yet its leanings towards the latter is manifest from its recent policies. “The extent of Russia-Pakistan coordination broadened in 2016, as Russia, China, and Pakistan created a trilateral format to discuss stabilizing Afghanistan and counterterrorism strategy. In December 2016, Russia, China, and Pakistan held talks on combating Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), which were widely criticized in the U.S. for excluding the Afghan government.” (Ramani). The deliberate neglect of Afghan government and Indian role reveals the neo-Russian policy in South Asia that de-hyphenates India and Pakistan and sees Pakistan through the lens of BRI and at the cost of North-South Corridor. The Chinese and Russian belief that by supporting Taliban they will secure security for their disturbed territories and escape from terrorism appears to be unrealistic keeping in view the Taliban’s characteristics which are chameleon like i.e. political, organizational and jihadi at the same time looking for appropriate opportunities.
Is it the Post-Brexit Plan?
The Brexit ensures a better space for Britain; at least this is what Brits believe, in international politics following the future US overseas projects. However, it for sure annoys some of its serious allies with the new takes. The announcement of the AUKUS (Australia, UK, US) pact, a historic security pact in the Asia-Pacific to contain China is an important step in this direction. The Brexit and the US-withdrawal seen together mark a shift in US policy perception of Asia that aims at Asia Pacific more as compared to Central Asia. It has not only betrayed India in Afghanistan but also France through AUKUS which sees an end to its multibillion dollar deal with Australia. France now shows a stronger commitment to support India in its moves against Taliban and Pakistan’s interventions.
President Macron recalled French ambassadors for consultations after the AUKUS meet that dropped France deliberately from the major maritime security deal. The French anguish is not about its absence in the deal by the Canberra, Washington and London but being an allied nation, its neglect in the secret deal. “The announcement ended a deal worth $37bn (£27bn) that France had signed with Australia in 2016 to build 12 conventional submarines. China meanwhile accused the three powers involved in the pact of having a “Cold War mentality”(Schofield 2021). It also reminds one of the Roosevelt’s efforts at truncating French arms in Asia, especially in Indo-China and the consequent sequence of betrayals by the US. AUKUS also symbolises the ‘English diplomacy’ of the English speaking states just like the Five Eyes (FVEY), an intelligence alliance consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Started around 1946 the member countries are parties to the multilateral UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence. Recently there have been voices for taking India, Japan and South Korea also into its fold to strengthen the contain China job.
The Wildered QUAD
While the first ever in-person QUAD summit approaches near, the announcement of AUKUS shows haze that prevails over the US decision making. President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian PM Scott Morrison and Japan’s Yoshihide Suga meet at the White House for the summit on September 24, 2021. This follows the virtual meet held in March 2021. How apposite it would be to declare a maritime deal at a time when the QUAD meet is about to take place with the same motives and plans, notwithstanding the fact that QUAD has a wider platform for discussion like climate change, cyberspace, pandemic and Indo-Pacific. Is there an uncertainty over the realisation of QUAD? However, AUKUS unravels the US intentions of first line preferences and second line associates in its future projects that will further marginalise its allies like France, Germany and many other states in future.
SCO
At SCO meet at Dushanbe India has unequivocally announced its view of the situation that takes Taliban as a challenge to peace and development in Afghanistan and South Asia. Prime Minister Modi remarked that the first issue is that the change of authority in Afghanistan was not inclusive and this happened without negotiation. This raises questions on the prospects of recognition of the new system. Women, minorities and different groups have not been given due representation. He also insisted on the crucial role that UN can play in Afghanistan. India’s investment in the Iranian port of Chabahar and the International North-South Corridor along with TAPI are central to its argument on the recent developments in Afghanistan. Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar had also remarked in July 2021 that the landlocked Central Asian countries can benefit immensely by connecting with the huge market of India and the future of Afghanistan cannot be its past and that the world must not let the new generation of Afghans down (Hindustan Times). The Indian message is clear and received huge support at Dushanbe and India is poised to play a greater role in Afghanistan, where the US and Russia have failed miserably.
The Internal Dynamics
The internal dynamics in Afghanistan presage a government by uncertainty in the coming months as Sirajudin Haqqani of Pak supported Haqqani network, captures Mulla Baradar, the man who settled the deal with US at Doha. It appears from the Pakistani backed government of Haqqani that Baradar has been dumped for his commitment for inclusive government expected to be pro-west against the Sino-Pakistan expectations. The US reluctance to remain engaged in the troubled region marks a shift in US foreign policy but the exclusion of its allies from Indo-Pacific plan are bound to bring new engagements in world power politics. While US dumped Afghans France and Israel appear as new hopes for Indian led moves against the undemocratic terrorist forces in Afghanistan.
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Diplomatic Visit
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Karlslust dance hall fire
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The Karlslust dance hall fire (also known as Loebel's Restaurant fire) occurred on 8 February 1947 in Hakenfelde, a locality of Spandau in what was then the British sector of Berlin. With its death toll of 80[1] to 88,[2] it marks possibly the worst fire disaster in Germany since World War II,[3]
The death toll is today considered to be 81: 80 guests and the owner of the restaurant, Julius Loebel, who died while attempting to save a cashbox. The Karlslust was the largest restaurant and dance hall in Spandau during the first half of the 20th century,[2] a two storied building with ballroom and bowling alley[4] famous for its "legendary" parties. [5] On the evening of Saturday, 8 February 1947, during carnival time in Germany, the first post-war fancy-dress ball was scheduled. [1] The landlord, Julius Loebel, had been granted the concession of a lifted curfew that night, as Berlin was occupied at that time. [5] An estimated 750[5] to 800[4] (or even up to 1,000)[2] mostly young people attended the event, among them a number of British Army staff.
Because of extremely low outside temperatures of −20 °C (−4 °F)[1] or −25 °C (−13 °F),[2][4][note 1] three potbelly stoves had been set up inside the Karlslust to provide heating. At around 22:45, when the party was in full swing, the wooden overhead beams of the structure caught on fire,[2] likely, as was later determined, as a result of the intense heat of the stove pipes. [4] The Karlslust had been used as a prison in the last months of the war in Germany, and windows were barred and doors had been walled up; additionally, a side door was frozen shut. [2][4] In the ensuing rush to the only exit, several people were trampled to death. [1][2] After three minutes, the entire roof of the building was on fire. [2]
Realizing the extent of the fire, several of those who had already escaped returned to retrieve their winter clothing from the cloakroom. [1][2] This behaviour was later met with incredulity by the British authorities, but can be attributed to the tight supply situation in post-war Germany, where people were living on ration stamps. [2] Eventually, the roof of the Karlslust collapsed, burying those still inside. [2]
The first firefighters of the British Army arrived at the scene 15 minutes after the fire had broken out. In an attempt to rescue those trapped inside the collapsed building, three[1][7] or six[2] British soldiers died. A few guests of the Karlslust survived the roof collapse and could be pulled out of the debris; they had found shelter in the cellar. [2]
Summoning firefighters was difficult at that time, as there was no standardized emergency telephone number, and each fire station had to be notified separately. The freezing temperatures and the snow-covered area hampered the firefighting efforts. [2][4] German firefighters arrived at the Karlslust considerably later than their British counterparts, the bulk of them 40 minutes after having been called,[8] for a variety of reasons: the low quality of their vehicles, whose engines needed some time to warm up; the speed limit of 40 km/h (25 mph) for civilians in Berlin, which had been imposed to ensure priority rights for vehicles of the World War II Allies); due to bridges over the Havel river having been destroyed during the war, detours were required to get to Hakenfelde from places in Spandau as well as the rest of Berlin. [4]
In the immediate aftermath of the fire, Der Spiegel reported that 88 bodies had been found, many of them burned beyond recognition, and that another 108 people were missing. [2] 150 people were injured,[4] 40 of which needed hospital treatment. [2]
Later sources put the death toll to 80, 81,[4] or 82. [5] On 25 February 1947, 77 victims were buried at In den Kisseln cemetery,[1] at a dedicated spot called "Loebel field", named after the landlord of the ill-fated dance hall. [5] Until that day, all festivities and dance events in Berlin were cancelled. [1]
The Magistrate of Berlin, from 1945 to 1948 the civilian government for the whole city, ordered the delivery of cloth for 800 winter cloaks; lost ration stamps were replaced. [1] Political parties that collected donations for the victims included the Christian Democratic Union, the Social Democratic Party and the Socialist Unity Party alike. [1]
In order to address issues identified as having slowed down the emergency response to the fire, the speed limit for civilian vehicles was lifted on 13 March 1947, and also the general traffic priority of the allies was given up this day. [8] A standardized, general emergency telephone number for Berlin was re-instated on 20 October of that year,[5] using the number "02". Today, a high-rise building occupies the space where the Karlslust was located, at 8 Hakenfelder Straße. [4]
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Fire
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The United States’ Withdrawal from UNESCO: The Real Reasons
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The United States announced on October 12th 2017 that it will withdraw from UNESCO at the end of 2018, because of claims deeming the organization in need of “fundamental reform,” and accusations of an “anti-Israel bias.” UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. It is “responsible for coordinating international cooperation in education, science, culture and communication” globally. What does this decision really mean? First, it is important to consider the actual power of UNESCO. The sovereignty of international organizations is a somewhat abstract concept, similarly to that of international law. Some claim that these organizations have no power to alter political decisions of sovereign countries. On the other hand, failing to acknowledge the policies that the United Nations is able to negotiate in many countries would be naive. The power of UNESCO stems from the powerful backing of the organization by the United States specifically. Fundamentally, the nations which provide the most economic and military resources to the organization are also those which are internally the most influential. In the case of UNESCO, the United States is the organization’s largest economic contributor. It was also one of the founding signatory countries, and holds the largest military arsenal of the organization. These economic, political, and military assets grant the United States weight in terms of power, persuasion, and blackmail within UNESCO. The United States’ withdrawal is an active manifestation of a mismatch between its own political stance and that of the organization. The United States’ recent clash with UNESCO is not the first occurrence of opposition between both actors. In October 2011, member countries voted to admit Palestine into the organization. The same day, the United States announced that it would end funding. Consequently, the last payment from the United States to UNESCO was on June 23rd, 2011. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that the “reckless action by UNESCO is anti-Israel and anti-peace,” and that she supported the stopping of aid, as mandated under U.S. law. Because the United States provided over 80 million dollars a year of funds to UNESCO, this action was clearly a “painful” cutoff. "Despite UNESCO’s official multilateral stance, it has always promoted American values under the guise of universalism, because the United States has always had the power assets to pressure the organization to support American interest by threatening to leave." The United States was one of the founding members of UNESCO, in 1945. Officially, the organization was founded to reconstruct the education and scientific institutions after the destruction caused by World War II. However, its founding coincided with the beginning of the Cold War; the education programs supported and funded by t he organization were affected by the United States’ capitalist and democratic ideolog ies. Therefore, the organization was historically also built as a tool for ideological expansion. For this reason, any deviation from the United States’ political stance is considered unacceptable by the American government. Despite UNESCO’s official multilateral stance, it has always promoted American values under the guise of universalism, because the United States has always had the power assets to pressure the organization to support American interest by threatening to leave. The United States has a precedent in withdrawing from the organization due to political misalignment with UNESCO. The country left UNESCO once before, in 1984, because of a growing disparity between American foreign policy and the organization’s goals. Gregory Newell, the American Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, explained that this action was taken because ”Unesco policies, for several years, have served anti-U.S. political ends.’ The “political ends” referred to “ time and resources earmarked for projects that the United States (did) not believe should be dealt with by Unesco, such as spending $750,000 in discussing Soviet-inspired disarmament proposals” in the context of the Cold War. Then, in 2003, the United States rejoined UNESCO as President George W. Bush stated: “As a symbol of our commitment to human dignity, the United States will return to UNESCO. This organization has been reformed and America will participate fully in its mission to advance human rights and tolerance and learning.” The United States’ return to the organization coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. This precedent is additional evidence that the United States has a long-standing unspoken policy of economically supporting solely organizations that align perfectly with its own ideals. The only deviation from this American objective was Hillary Rodham Clinton’s visit to UNESCO i n 2011. She was the first sitting Secretary of State to visit UNESCO, where she contributed to the launching of a partnership promoting education for women and girls. This event demonstrates Clinton’s support of UNESCO’s objectives, rather than UNESCO’s channeling of American objectives. It also suggests that under a Clinton administration, the withdrawal may have been avoided. Donald Trump’s presidency and his uncompromising foreign policy is the trigger that led to this dramatic step. Under a Clinton administration, the United States’ universalist approach over UNESCO policies would not have been avoided; however, rather than withdrawing from the organization altogether, a continuation of the refusal to submit payments would have been more likely. Clinton’s demonstration of partnership to UNESCO is evidence for a more lenient approach towards it. John McArthur, a fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the United Nations Foundation, claimed that the United States’ withdrawal from UNESCO “is pragmatic, not a grander political signal.” By leaving UNESCO, the United States will end the accumulation of unpaid dues and take a political stand against some of the organization’s so called “pro-Israel” policies. While these reasons may have contributed to the government’s decision, the history of the United States opposition with UNESCO, specifically the cutoff of American funds to the organization in 2011, clearly indicate a strong political bias for this action. The American government administration has a history of expecting UNESCO to perfectly align its policies with American political, military and economic ideals, since the organization’s founding. In 1945, the organization was initially constructed with the goal of promoting liberalism, in contrast to Communism, during the Cold War. In addition, the United States funded the largest portion of the economic budget of UNESCO. The announcement of withdrawal, contingent to the United States’ permanent end to providing funding, is an active protest to the organization’s political stance which does not fully align with that of the United States.
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Withdraw from an Organization
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Pilot Fire
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The Pilot Fire was a wildfire that burned near Silverwood Lake in San Bernardino County, California. The fire started at about 12:10 pm on Sunday, August 7, 2016, near the Miller Canyon OHV area off California State Route 138. The name "Pilot" refers to where the fire was first reported: the Pilot Rock Conservation Camp, a minimum-security prison camp/fire camp consisting of inmates trained for firefighting. [2][3][4]
The fire was under the management of the United States Forest Service in Unified Command with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), the San Bernardino County Fire Department, and the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department. The estimated full containment date was by 6:00 AM (PST) on August 16, 2016 and burned a total of 8,110 acres. On March 1, 2017 six months after the fire, fire investigators with the San Bernardino National Forest determined the cause was by a vehicle on fire. [5]
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Fire
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Freeway Complex Fire
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The Freeway Complex Fire was a 2008 wildfire in the Santa Ana Canyon area of Orange County, California. [1] The fire started as two separate fires on November 15, 2008. The Freeway Fire started first shortly after 9am with the Landfill Fire igniting approximately 2 hours later. These two separate fires merged a day later and ultimately destroyed 314 residences in Anaheim Hills and Yorba Linda. [2]
The Freeway Fire ignited at 9:01 a.m. PDT on November 15, 2008, along the Riverside Freeway (State Route 91, SR 91) in the riverbed of the Santa Ana River, located in Corona. [3] The fire spread west and north into the hillsides of Yorba Linda and south into Anaheim Hills, where multiple businesses and residences were destroyed. It also burned homes in Olinda Ranch along Carbon Canyon Road in Brea, burned through much of Chino Hills, then spread north into Diamond Bar. The Landfill Fire, also known as the "Brea Fire," was reported at 10:43 a.m. PDT on November 15, 2008, and started near the 1900 block of Valencia Avenue in Brea, just south of the Olinda Landfill. It quickly spread west and eventually jumped the Orange Freeway (SR 57). The Landfill Fire merged with the Freeway Fire at 3:30 a.m. PDT on November 16, 2008. At approximately 7:00 a.m. PDT the two fires were officially renamed the Triangle Complex Fire. Around 12:45 p.m. the Triangle Complex Fire had been renamed once again to the Freeway Complex Fire still using the OCFA incident number CA-ORC-08075221. [3] According to the final cause report released by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) on January 4, 2010, it was confirmed that the Freeway Fire was caused by a faulty catalytic converter. [4]
Over a dozen schools were closed during the fire, including those in the Brea Olinda Unified School District, Chino Valley Unified School District, Diamond Bar schools in the Walnut Valley Unified School District, Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District and Walnut Valley Unified School District. [5] About 40,000 residents were evacuated during the fire. Areas under mandatory evacuation during the fires included Anaheim, Carbon Canyon, Chino Hills, Corona, Diamond Bar and Yorba Linda[6]
As the fire spread, it forced the closure of the Riverside Freeway (SR 91), the Chino Valley Freeway (SR 71), the 241 Transportation Corridor and the Orange Freeway (SR 57) in northern Orange County. It was calculated that 30,305 acres (122.64 km2) were burned during the fire, which included 90% of Chino Hills State Park. [7] The calculated acreage burned would make the fire the fourth largest fire on record in Orange County History behind the 1967 Paseo Grande Fire, Steward Fire of 1958 and the Green River Fire of 1948. [8]
The preliminary cause of the Freeway Fire was thought to be the result of a vehicle exhaust system igniting roadside vegetation. [9] The fire investigation report was completed by the end of March 2009. According to the final cause report released by CAL FIRE on January 4, 2010, the cause of the fire was a faulty catalytic converter. The Landfill Fire was investigated by the Brea Police Department, along with investigators from the OCFA. The fire was determined to have been caused by inadequate maintenance of power lines supplying electricity to equipment in the Brea-Olinda Oil Field. [10] The electrical lines were owned by the BreitBurn Management Company in Los Angeles. Investigators believe arcing or a discharge of electric current from the power lines caused the brush near the lines in the fields northeast of Valencia Avenue and Carbon Canyon Road to ignite.
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Fire
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There were 23 work-related deaths reported in the first half of 2021 compared with 16 recorded in the same period last year.
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There were 23 work-related deaths reported in the first half of 2021 compared with 16 recorded in the same period last year.
Most recently, an explosion at the Tuas Incineration Plant on Thursday (Sept 23) left one man dead and injured two others.
The three Singaporean workers were performing maintenance work inside the electrical switchroom when the explosion occurred, said a Ministry of Manpower (MOM) spokesman.
About 80 people evacuated from the premises. The cause of the fire is being investigated.
An electrical switchroom on the first storey was found to be smoke-logged, said the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF). It noted that the fire involved a chimney fan switch in the electrical switchroom.
The incident, which took place in Tuas Avenue 20 at 3.15pm, adds to a growing list of deadly industrial accidents this year. Senior Minister of State for Manpower Zaqy Mohamad had previously referred to them as a "very alarming trend".
A 25-year-old Bangladeshi worker fell 40m to his death at the building site of an upcoming warehouse - roughly equivalent to falling from the 14th floor of a housing block.
He was working on the building of a stairwell at the site and was crossing the gap between its walls when a structure used to bridge the gap gave way, said MOM.
The authorities are investigating but no foul play is suspected, the police said.
A supervisor and another worker died after they entered a ship's ballast tank and collapsed in the confined space, likely due to lack of sufficient oxygen in the tank.
The supervisor, 31, had entered the tank without wearing appropriate protective gear or checking if it was safe. Some time after he collapsed, a second worker, 37, went in to help him, but also passed out.
A third worker, 39, also collapsed after attempting to help the pair, but the man was rescued in time.
The Workplace Safety and Health (WSH) Council reminded workers not to open manholes of confined spaces without proper authorisation and to avoid attempting a rescue without proper protective equipment.
The council urged that at least one worker inside a confined space be equipped with a portable gas monitor to ensure sufficient ventilation.
A 23-year-old Singaporean mover plunged seven storeys to his death after he fell backwards from a ladder over a parapet wall at a 10th-floor condominium unit.
He was moving and disposing of furniture and electrical appliances at said unit, at 5 Rodyk Street in River Valley.
A Bangladeshi worker was conducting repair work on top of a lift carriage when it ascended and trapped him against the lift's guide rail structure in a building in North Bridge Road.
It took SCDF roughly six hours to extricate the man who was stuck between the lift carriage and the metal support structure of the lift shaft. The rescue team operated a slew of rescue equipment within the tight confines of the lift shaft.
The man was pronounced dead at the scene.
It was one of 11 work-related fatalities in February - the deadliest month with regards to workplace accidents since at least 2018 - leading the WSH Council to call for a safety time-out across the industry in order for necessary control measures to be implemented.
Three men died from severe burns in 90 per cent of their bodies following an explosion in a Tuas industrial building on Feb 24. Ten other workers suffered burn injuries from the explosion.
The blast occurred on the premises of Stars Engrg, a contractor dealing with fire protection systems.
The force of the blast blew out the window panels in the building, caused the rear wall of the workshop to collapse, and ripped a large hole in the adjoining wall of the unit.
The blast was linked to a mixer machine that was bought from Chinese e-commerce retailer Alibaba in 2019. Leading up to the tragic accident, workers complained about oil leaks, heater damage and small fires in the machine.
The explosion damaged the mixer and its oil compartment was ruptured along the welding seams.
The three men were later identified as Mr Anisuzzaman MD, 29, Mr Subbaiyan Marimuthu, 38, and Mr Shohel MD, 23. They were remembered in a minute of silence during the opening of a court hearing on Sept 20.
In another accident in February, construction firm director Koh Kok Heng fell to his death after he slipped through an opening in the floor of a semi-detached house near Dunearn Road that was undergoing renovation.
The 53-year-old permanent resident, who was overseeing construction work at the two-storey house, landed on a staircase nearly 5m below.
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Gas explosion
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A southern Indiana woman is dead and six other people received medical treatment from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning.
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A southern Indiana woman is dead and six other people received medical treatment from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning.
Tom Mulvaney says everyone treats each other like family in the small town of Lexington, Indiana. It's why he's fighting back tears for the neighbors he never got a chance to know on Charlestown Road.
"We didn't know nobody lived there and next thing you know they're putting up caution tape," he said.
It was during the early-morning hours Wednesday that the Scott County Sheriff's Office was notified of a medical emergency at a home on Charlestown Road in Lexington, Indiana.
When the deputies arrived, they learned that a gasoline-powered generator was being used in the home without proper ventilation or airflow.
Terri Hart, 51, died as a result of the lack of ventilation and while the cause of death is pending, authorities believe it's due to carbon monoxide poisoning.
Four other people who were at the home were taken to a hospital for treatment. Their ages were 23 years old, 6 years old, 4 years old and a 3-month-old, according to the sheriff.
"The rest of the folks in the home are going to be okay and as time goes on, they are going to recover," said Scott County Sheriff Jerry Goodin.
He says while they're in the early stages of the investigation, they're hoping to answer several questions in the coming days.
Several neighbors on Wednesday said the home has been vacant for months. Sheriff Goodin says at the time, he can only confirm they moved in Tuesday and there was no working electricity.
"Until we know all the facts and we can talk to the people who we need to talk to, to find out just exactly why they were there, why they should not have been there or why they should have been there, we just don't know," Goodin told WLKY. The sheriff's office confirmed it is conducting a non-criminal death investigation and that there are no signs of foul play.
Additional details have not been released by authorities.
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Mass Poisoning
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UK man Josh Storerthankful for support as he prepares to fly home after lengthy recovery
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UK man Josh Storer thankful for support as he prepares to fly home after lengthy recovery 14 Dec, 2021 04:00 PM Josh Storer, who has spent months recovering from brain injuries in Auckland and recently received a new artifical skull, has been given approval from his doctors to fly home to the United Kingdom in time for Christmas. Storer, 26, was left in a coma after an alleged assault at a North Shore bar on July 9. The right half of his skull was removed during surgery and on November 17, a new artificial skull was inserted, reconstructing the shape of his head. After months of recovery, Storer said he's glad to be alive and excited to be returning home to see friends and family. Josh Storer underwent skull replacement surgery on November 17. Photo / Supplied "I'm very excited to go home and grab mum's mum, my grandma, and give her the biggest hug," Storer said. "I've not seen her for three and a half years. I'm very excited to get back to the UK and see my friends and family." Storer is booked to fly home with his parents on December 21 and the Storer family hope to be reunited with loved ones for Christmas, providing they return a negative Covid-19 test on arrival in time. "I didn't know I was going to make it through alive but I'm so glad I did and I just want to thank you all, and thank my family, it's unbelievable who I want to thank for this," Storer said. "Even the owner of the pub, I want to say a massive thank you to him for what he's done for me." Storer still has a long road of recovery ahead of him in the UK, including issues using his left arm and some cognitive functions, but says recently, he's started to feel like himself again. "I feel normal again. My left arm is going strong, which is improved my confidence. Having my skull back and waking up in the morning, when I'm getting ready or whatever, and I look in the mirror and I've actually got a full head again," he said. "It just brought me down obviously when I didn't have the right side of my head but due to the operation and the surgeon that did it, I just want to thank him massively for the effort that he put in." Josh Storer, centre, said he has appreciated being able to spend time with his parents, Dawn and Ian, since leaving hospital. Photo / Supplied Storer moved to New Zealand in April 2018 on a working visa. He loved fishing in New Zealand, especially the Bay of Islands, and was passionate about his work at a drainage company. He says returning to New Zealand is still "on the cards" after he has recovered. Advertisement Advertise with NZME. "Unfortunately, the situation happened and it's put me in a position where I've got to go back to the UK now, get my recovery out the way, get my fitness back on track, get back into work and potentially [in] two and half years, [I] could come back to New Zealand...I'll just see what happens." When Storer's Derby-based parents, Dawn and Ian, got the call from Auckland doctors six months ago saying their son was in a coma in hospital, they scrambled to get to his bedside. After a desperate plea to be let into the country, they secured a border exemption and arrived in New Zealand on July 22 and were able to see their son after completing MIQ. Storer's sister Sian also came to New Zealand but has since returned to the UK. Storer was released from hospital into rehab on August 18 and into his parents' care on October 1. He said he has appreciated spending "quality time" with his family and creating "good memories" since leaving the rehab facility, including visiting the Sky Tower and the beach. "Me and my dad went swimming in Browns Bay. It was just a good experience, to have a laugh with my dad and got my left arm going a little bit better as well." Advertisement Advertise with NZME. Ian Storer, left, says he is thankful for all the support the family have received during Josh's recovery. Photo / Supplied. It has been a "long and slow" recovery, Dawn said, but the family were thankful for Josh's condition today and the support they have received from the New Zealand public, friends and family back in the UK, and the doctors and nurses that cared for Josh at Auckland Hospital, ABI Rehabilitation and MercyAscot private hospital. Ian said the medical and rehabilitation staff that cared for Josh had been fantastic. "We would like to thank everyone who has helped us through this long and traumatic experience. Josh's New Zealand friends and all the well-wishers, we've had loads of people over here getting in touch with us. They've been incredibly supportive. Josh's friends have more or less become a second family to us all," Ian said. "The people of New Zealand have been absolutely fantastic." Ian said "never in a million years" did he think he would see Josh in the condition he was in today after seeing him in hospital. Medical staff predicted it would take another 18 months to two years before Josh got back to his best state, Ian said. "What that will be, they don't know," Ian said. "He's a stubborn bugger and he will fight all the way to get to his best."
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Famous Person - Recovered
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Police unable to find armed man who attempted bank robbery north of Adelaide
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Police have been unable to locate a man who attempted to hold up the Bendigo Bank at Virginia shopping centre on Old Wakefield Road, north of Adelaide, this morning. The man, who was armed with a machete, entered the bank through the roof. He managed to drop down into the building and hide until staffed arrived to open up the branch just before 9:00am (ACST). A female employee who had opened the door was threatened by the man and told to open the safe. The woman, and another female staff member, managed to escape. They fled to the cafe next door and called police. The centre was evacuated and heavily armed Special Tasks and Rescue group officers were called in the search the building. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.
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Bank Robbery
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China court upholds Canadian's death sentence as Huawei CFO fights extradition
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BEIJING/OTTAWA, Aug 10 (Reuters) - A Chinese court on Tuesday upheld a Canadian man's death sentence for drug smuggling, prompting condemnation from Ottawa, a day before another court is due to rule on the case of a Canadian accused of spying. The court proceedings for the two Canadians come as lawyers in Canada representing the detained chief financial officer of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei (HWT.UL) make a final push to persuade a court there not to extradite her to the United States. read more Meng Wanzhou's hearing is in the final stretch before a Canadian judge makes a recommendation on staying or proceeding with her extradition. A ruling is expected in the autumn. Robert Schellenberg was arrested in China in 2014 for suspected drug smuggling and convicted in 2018. He was initially sentenced to 15 years in jail but subsequently condemned to death by a court in Dalian in January 2019 - a month after Meng was arrested at Vancouver International Airport on a warrant from the United States. The High Court in the northeastern Chinese province of Liaoning heard Schellenberg's appeal against the death sentence in May last year and confirmed the verdict on Tuesday. "Canada strongly condemns China's decision to uphold the death penalty sentence," Foreign Minister Marc Garneau said in a statement. "We have repeatedly expressed to China our firm opposition to this cruel and inhumane punishment." Meng was charged with misleading HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA.L) about Huawei's business dealings in Iran, potentially causing the bank to violate U.S. sanctions against Tehran. Meng, who has said she is innocent, has been fighting her extradition from Vancouver. Her bail conditions mean she can leave her residence during the day and the evening under supervision but must stay home at night. Canada's ambassador to China, Dominic Barton, told reporters the proceedings against Canadian citizens were not a coincidence. Barton said a court in the northeastern city of Dandong is expected to announce a verdict on businessman Michael Spavor as early as Wednesday. read more Spavor and former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig were detained in China days after Meng's arrest. Spavor was charged with espionage in June 2019 and went to trial in March. Kovrig's trial was also conducted in March. Verdicts have not yet been reported. The cases of Spavor and Kovrig could become an issue in a Canadian federal election that Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to call in the next few days. Erin O'Toole, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, says the Liberals are not being tough enough on China. He told reporters on Tuesday that Beijing was "planning to take the life of a Canadian for political reasons" and suggested athletes boycott the Winter Olympics in China next year. Ottawa accused Beijing of engaging in "hostage diplomacy" in a bid to free Meng. China has rejected the suggestion that the cases are linked while warning of unspecified consequences unless Meng is released. "Schellenberg's case is of a completely different nature from Meng's case. Those who link the two together have ulterior motives," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday. Chinese courts have a conviction rate of more than 99%. Some observers have said the likely convictions of both Spavor and Kovrig could ultimately facilitate an agreement in which they are released and sent back to Canada. Since Meng's arrest, China has sentenced at least three Chinese-born Canadians to death for drug offences. On Tuesday, Canadian government prosecutors pushed back on assertions by Meng's lawyers that alleged abuses of process by Canadian and American authorities throughout her case should be taken together to warrant staying her extradition. No significant misconduct took place, prosecutor Robert Frater argued, adding that reviewing each alleged abuse individually would allow the court to decide whether other remedies for each one would be sufficient. Meng's hearings are scheduled to finish by Aug. 20 (This story corrected year Spavor was charged to 2019 from 'last year' in paragraph 11)
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Famous Person - Commit Crime - Sentence
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Alitalia Flight 404 crash
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Alitalia Flight 404 (AZ404/AZA404) was an international passenger flight scheduled to fly from Linate Airport in Milan, Italy, to Zürich Airport in Zürich, Switzerland, which crashed on 14 November 1990. The Douglas DC-9-32, operated by Alitalia, crashed into the woodlands of Weiach as it approached Zurich Airport, killing all 46 people on board. [1]
A Swiss investigation concluded that the crash was caused by a short circuit, which led to the failure of the aircraft's NAV receiver. The malfunction went unnoticed by the crew, who likely believed they were on the correct flight path until the crash. Swiss authorities also blamed inadequate crew resource management, exemplified when the captain vetoed the first officer's attempted go-around, along with the absence of lighting on Stadlerberg Mountain and a known problem with errors in reading the drum pointer altimeter of the aircraft. The final report by the Federal Aircraft Accidents Inquiry Board requested several major changes and made further recommendations. [2][3]
During the approach to runway 14 of Zürich International Airport, the pilot's instrument landing system (ILS) display gave incorrect values due to a faulty receiver. It falsely indicated that the aircraft was about 1,000 feet higher than it actually was, which also prevented the Ground proximity warning system (GPWS) from reading the situation and sounding a warning. The ILS receiver of the first officer was working correctly and displayed the dangerously low approach. Without thoroughly examining which value was correct, the pilot decided to ignore the second device, aborting a go-around maneuver initiated by the first officer. Shortly afterward, at 20:11 CET, the plane struck Stadlerberg Mountain at 1,660 feet, killing all 40 passengers and six crew. The aircraft's first impact was with trees on the right side of the aircraft, causing several essential parts on the right side of the aircraft, such as the right-wing flaps and the outer right wing, to detach. As a result, the aircraft produced an asymmetric lift force and began to roll to the right, finally slamming into the mountain in a nearly inverted position. [4][5]
Firefighters and police were immediately dispatched to the crash site but the fire was so intense that it took an entire day to put out. Eyewitnesses stated that "the plane was burning like a volcano." Linate Airport immediately set up a crisis center to handle the relatives of the victims aboard the flight. [1]
The aircraft involved in the crash was a Douglas DC-9-32, built-in 1974 with serial number 47641 and the registration number I-ATJA. The aircraft was first delivered to Aero Trasporti Italiani,[6] a subsidiary of Alitalia and was transferred to Alitalia in October 1988. According to investigators, the aircraft had accumulated more than 43,400 cycles and also stated that the aircraft had been inspected 10 days prior to the accident. [2]
The aircraft was carrying 40 passengers and 6 crew members. The crew members consisted of two pilots and four flight attendants, all of whom were Italian citizens. Two Japanese officials from the Oki Electric Industry were also on board and many other passengers were laborers heading home after working in Milan's industrial area. [7] Among the passengers on board was Italian actor Roberto Mariano [it]. [8]
The captain was Raffaele Liberti (47), a 20 year veteran of Alitalia with a total flying time of more than 10,000 hours. The first officer (the pilot flying) was Massimo De Fraia (28), who had joined Alitalia in 1989 and was much less experienced than captain Liberti. [9][8]
Swiss investigators were informed about the accident one hour after the crash. The investigation involved at least 80 Swiss investigators. Additionally, Italian Interior Minister Vincenzo Scotti sent a team of investigators to the crash site along with the United States' NTSB and FAA. Both the Flight Data Recorder and the Cockpit Voice Recorder were recovered from the crash site. [2]
In the initial hours after the accident, several witnesses claimed that the aircraft was on fire before it hit Stadlerberg while others claimed that the aircraft had exploded before it impacted terrain. Josef Meier, a spokesman for Swiss air traffic control authorities stated in a news conference that all possible causes, including terrorism, were being evaluated by the investigators. [7]
Italian news media reported that the mountain was covered with cloud and that there was heavy rain in the area, while Swiss investigators claimed that visibility was good during the accident with light showers occurring at the airport. [1]
On 16 November, an official from Swiss investigation team stated that the aircraft was flying at a lower altitude than it should have been: "The plane was 300 meters (990 feet) too low on its approach, and was slightly off course. [The captain] was not following the radio beacon signals." The statement did not say why the plane was too low. [7]
The first officer had initiated a go-around but the captain aborted it. He said, "Hold the glide slope, can you hold it?". The first officer replied, "Yes". Investigators working with McDonnell Douglas concluded that, if the captain had not interrupted the go-around, the disaster would have been averted. Investigators believe that the reason for the bad call was that the captain was completely dissatisfied with the first officer's performance during the flight. As a result, the captain showed a lack of trust in his first officer. [2]
As Stadlerberg Mountain is relatively far from the runway, per International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards, obstruction lighting was not required. The 2,090-foot (640 m) mountain could not be seen during the night, and thus could endanger flights. This issue had been discussed between Swissair, Swiss airport authorities, and the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA) since 1976. Analysis of the cockpit voice recorder did not give any indications that the crew was looking for the cloud-capped mountain during the approach. [2]
Recordings from the black boxes showed that the navigation instrument, the ADI/HSI, had apparently captured the glideslope. At the time when the glide slope was captured, the aircraft was flying about 1,300 feet below the glide path. Examining the receiver with a microscope, the investigation revealed that during the impact, the glide path indicator had been positioned just above the center "on glide" position, which means that the glide path had been captured. Investigators also revealed that all NAV instruments were following the glide path, although the aircraft was flying below the nominal glide path. At the time, investigators didn't find any defects on the instrument.
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Air crash
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Family remembers 26-year-old after deadly zinc mining incident in Strawberry Plains
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by: Blake Stevens Posted: Feb 24, 2021 / 05:05 PM EST Updated: Jul 13, 2021 / 01:52 PM EDT by: Blake Stevens Posted: Feb 24, 2021 / 05:05 PM EST Updated: Jul 13, 2021 / 01:52 PM EDT KNOX COUNTY, Tenn. (WATE) — A 26-year-old man died while working at the Immel Mine on Monday. The mine, which sits off Mascot Road in Strawberry Plains, is one of three underground zinc mining locations in East Tennessee operated by Nyrstar. A general manager with the company confirmed the news in a release Wednesday, which reads in part: “Nyrstar regrets to confirm that Monday February 22nd an incident at the Immel Mine within its East Tennessee operations led to a colleague tragically losing his life while performing his duties…The company extends its deepest sympathies to the family, friends and colleagues of the employee who had worked at the mine for almost 5 years. Nyrstar is offering counseling and other support to colleagues who have been affected by this tragic incident.” We’ve confirmed from close family the miner is Cody Maggard, from Corbin, Ky. His mother, Roxie Jackson, described him as a big teddy bear, who was easy-going, funny, a jokester, and a little shy. She said her son was all about family and loved his wife of four years. Jackson also described him as a hard worker. Maggard drove more than 160 miles back and forth to the mine from his home in Corbin, Ky. She said he liked the job and took safety seriously. While she understands accidents happen, as a mom, she says she needs to know more about how it happened. “I want to know why this happened, how this happened, you know, I just want to know why,” she said. For closure, she would like to know the specifics including if he was hurt, if he suffered, and whether the incident was caused by equipment failure. As to the cause, the company news release also says the possible cause is unknown and the company is “undertaking a review of the accident and is cooperating fully with the relevant authorities.”
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Mine Collapses
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Northern Cape farmers affected by the locust outbreak
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The brown locusts, mostly found in the semi-arid Karoo region of the Northern Cape, Eastern Cape and Western Cape, can migrate over large areas and have been detected in several towns in the province. The Northern Cape Department of Agriculture, Environmental Affairs, Land Reform and Rural Development's (DAEALRRD) Director for climate change and disaster management Ikalafeng Kgakatsi says the locusts often target the green, leafy part of plants. Kgakatsi says: “The brown locust hatches in high rain areas. With the heavy rains around the province, we are experiencing a lot more of them than we normally would have. In the past few weeks, we’ve seen a significant increase in the pests.” Kgakatsi says the spread of the locusts can be managed by spraying a pesticide that DAEALRRD freely avails to farmers. The pest, found in solitude or large groups, is identifiable through its various colours, according to Kgakatsi. The locust begins life as a white locust and then turns red. At this stage, they are still small. Once red, the locust develops the ability to hop. At full maturity, it turns brown and can fly great distances, says Kgakatsi. He says the ability to fly enables the brown locust to damage crops for hundreds of kilometres. “We’re also working with farmers to target farms that have experienced the impact of the locusts. We compensate them for using their spraying equipment to help us combat the pests.” The locusts, which are mostly active during summer, often use unused farmlands as breeding grounds. Kgakatsi says locusts can hatch up to 500 eggs at a time, which can remain undeveloped for months. Kgakatsi has urged farmers to assist by reporting sightings of these locusts, as they could have a serious impact on their production and the general economy of the province. To combat the spread of the locusts, the DAEALRRD has appointed locust control contractors and is distributing insecticides, protective clothing and spray pumps.
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Insect Disaster
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Albania, Croatia join NATO
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Breaking News
Albania, Croatia join NATO
NATO welcomed Albania and Croatia Wednesday as the 27th and 28th members of the world's biggest military alliance, after their ambassadors filed their instruments of accession with the US Government.
less than 2 min read
April 2, 2009 - 2:45AM
Not even United safe in NBL finals dogfight
NATO welcomed Albania and Croatia Wednesday as the 27th and 28th members of the world's biggest military alliance, after their ambassadors filed their instruments of accession with the US Government.
"This is very welcome news," chief NATO spokesman James Appathurai told reporters in Brussels, where the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has its headquarters.
"Albania and Croatia worked very hard to meet alliance standards, with regard to democracy, with regards to the state of their militaries," he said, two days before leaders of the Balkan states take their seats at NATO's table.
"They have overcome what was a difficult period in Balkans history not too long ago, to become contributors to regional stability and to international security through NATO already.
"Now they will take their full place in this alliance," he said.
Earlier, Albanian Ambassador Aleksander Sallabanda and Croatian Ambassador Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic represented their countries at the ceremony in Washington hosted by US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg.
"We are determined to take our share of responsibility for global peace and stability in places such as Afghanistan but also in other parts of the world," Grabar-Kitarovic said.
Albanian Ambassador Aleksander Sallabanda gave a more general statement.
"As a NATO member country, Albania is ready to take up all the challenges and responsibilities that participation in the alliance entails," he said.
"In this context, we will work ... constructively with our partners to strengthen the ... alliance to protect our common values," he added.
In Zagreb President Stipe Mesic welcomed NATO's decision to admit Croatia and expressed hopes of his country joining the European Union.
"The Republic of Croatia has fulfilled one of its two foreign policy targets: to join the European Union and NATO," Mr Mesic was quoted as saying by state-run HINA news agency.
"Today, the first of those goals has been achieved, we are becoming a full member of the NATO alliance and, by doing so, we have ensured security for our country," the Croatian president said.
"However, NATO is not only a military alliance but also protects democratic values, so by joining the alliance it is confirmed that Croatia has adopted and defends high democratic standards," he said.
Mr Mesic also congratulated Albania.
More related stories
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Join in an Organization
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Kelly Clarkson Ordered to Pay Brandon Blackstock Nearly $200,000 in Monthly Support Following Split
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According to court documents obtained by The Blast on Tuesday, July 27, a Los Angeles County Court has ruled that starting on April 1, 2021, the “Miss Independent” singer, 39, was required to pay 44-year-old Blackstock $150,000 per month in spousal support.
The docs also state that Clarkson must pay the talent manager $45,601 per month in child support to “benefit” their children, River, 7, and Remington, 5.
Kelly Clarkson and Brandon Blackstock. Shutterstock (2)
In total, the Voice coach, who earns $1.9 million per month in income, according to the source, must pay Blackstock $195,601 monthly as the two continue their divorce battle. The pair’s final settlement agreement is still being worked out, the insider added.
Us confirmed in June 2020 that the musician filed for divorce from Blackstock, citing “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for their split.
Read article
Following their breakup, the pair, who were married for nearly seven years before calling it quits, became involved in a legal battle with Clarkson’s father-in-law Narvel Blackstock’s company, Starstruck Management. Brandon also works for the management company.
Things got heated after the company sued the American Idol winner in September 2020, claiming she owed them over $1 million in unpaid commissions . Clarkson filed a petition with the California Labor Commissioner’s Office the following month, claiming Brandon and his father defrauded her of millions of dollars by charging her huge fees while she was working with their management company.
At the time, Brandon denied all the accusations made by his estranged wife , alleging that Clarkson was not entitled to any of the money earned by him, his father or their company while working together over the past 13 years. The legal battle is still ongoing.
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Famous Person - Divorce
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Japan, US, France joint military drills set for Kyushu in May
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TOKYO -- Japan's defense minister, Nobuo Kishi, announced at a news conference on Friday that Japan, the U.S. and France will conduct joint military drills on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu in May. Japan Ground Self-Defense Force troops, U.S. Marines, and French Army troops will participate. The drills aim to bolster their ability to conduct joint operations to defend remote islands. With China's increasingly frequent maritime forays in the East China Sea in mind, particularly around the Senkaku Islands, which are administered by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing, Japan hopes to improve its ability to work with allies in defense. The drills will be held from May 11 to 17 at Camp Ainoura, in Nagasaki Prefecture, where the GSDF's Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, a unit specializing in the defense of remote islands, is stationed. Exercises will also be held at the Kirishima Training Ground, in Miyazaki and Kagoshima prefectures, and in the sea and airspace west of Kyushu. According to the GSDF, this will be the first time for Japanese, U.S. and French troops to conduct joint field exercises in Japan. France, which has territories in the Pacific Ocean, has been increasing its training in the Indo-Pacific this year, strengthening its cooperation with Japan and the U.S. This month, India took part for the first time in "La Perouse," a French-led joint maritime exercise with the Maritime Self-Defense Force, the U.S., and Australia in the Bay of Bengal. "France is a comrade in our Indo-Pacific vision. We want to improve our tactical skills in island defense," Kishi stressed at the news conference. The SDF has been strengthening its ties with European nations. The British Royal Navy will dispatch the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth to Asia later this spring. And Germany is sending a frigate to Asia. It is also coordinating exercises to take advantage of port calls.
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Military Exercise
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Strictly's Neil Jones makes surprising revelation about Kevin Clifton
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Gemma Strong Strictly Come Dancing pro Neil Jones has made shocking revelation about his fellow dancer Kevin Clifton Neil Jones and Kevin Clifton might have worked on Strictly together in recent years, but it seems their paths first crossed some time ago. MORE: Strictly's Nina Wadia and Neil Jones joke they were 'robbed' following sudden exit Last year, Neil claimed that his former co-star previously came between him and his then-dance partner, causing them to ultimately split. The 38-year-old told the Sun that he used to compete with a dancer named Laura Jane, and that they had performed together at Blackpool Tower when they were junior competitors. Loading the player... WATCH: Katya Jones reveals what Neil used to say about having a baby All was well until Laura dropped the bombshell that she was secretly dating Kevin – one of the champion dancers at the event. Soon after, Neil and Laura parted ways. Neil revealed: "We were in Blackpool Tower as juniors and she is telling me that she has a boyfriend. She said, 'He is one of the champions. He is Kevin Clifton.' I think we broke up then." Neil was previously married to fellow Strictly star Katya Jones The pro dancer then added: "And I remember thinking, 'I don't want to dance with her.'" Neil famously went on to partner Katya Jones – who later became his wife. The couple tied the knot in August 2013, but after six years of marriage announced their separation in August 2019. Neil is now in a relationship with Luisa Eusse. Neil with his girlfriend Luisa Eusse Neil confirmed his new romance back in August 2020. When asked by an Instagram follower: "Are you still single?" the Strictly star replied: "Nope." A few days later he posted his first photo of him and Luisa, which showed the dark-haired beauty leaning against him, with her eyes closed. He simply captioned the snapshot with a heart emoji. MORE: Neil Jones reveals he and girlfriend Luisa Eusse plan to live apart as they work on their relationship Kevin, meanwhile, has been married three times. His first marriage was to a dance partner when he was 20, and he later married pro dancer Clare Craze. Their divorce was finalised in 2013. The 37-year-old tied the knot with fellow Strictly star Karen Hauer in July 2015. They confirmed their shock split in March 2018. He is now in a relationship with his former celebrity partner, Stacey Dooley .
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Famous Person - Marriage
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Hakim Ziyech: Chelsea reach agreement to sign Ajax winger
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Last updated on 13 February 202013 February 2020.From the section Chelsea
Chelsea have reached an agreement with Ajax to sign the Dutch club's winger Hakim Ziyech this summer.
The 26-year-old was a January transfer target for Chelsea boss Frank Lampard.
Ajax were unwilling to sell the Morocco international in the transfer window as they chase the Eredevisie title.
Ajax have confirmedexternal-link they have accepted a fee of 40m euros (£33.3m) - potentially rising to 44m euros (£36.6m) - with the move subject to Ziyech agreeing personal terms.
The signing is the first by Lampard following Chelsea's transfer ban. The Premier League side were linked with a number of signings in January, including Paris St-Germain forward Edinson Cavani and Napoli striker Dries Mertens.
Lampard's apparent frustration with a lack of new arrivals is understood to have stemmed from clubs refusing to sell rather than any problems with Chelsea's recruitment strategy. Ziyech contributed to three Ajax goals in a 4-4 draw against Chelsea during their Champions League group game in November.
The most memorable came when the winger's free-kick from near the corner flag curled over Kepa Arrizabalaga's head and hit the far post before rebounding in off the Chelsea goalkeeper for an own goal. Ziyech played the final 10 minutes of Ajax's 3-0 win against Vitesse in the Dutch Cup on Wednesday, as he returned from a calf injury.
After the game, Ajax boss Erik ten Hag said:external-link "I am not surprised by the news about Ziyech. I know that our players are very popular with the big clubs in Europe. That is just great.
"I have known for a long time what Hakim wants. He has a picture in mind. He knows exactly which clubs he finds interesting and which not. Chelsea is a fantastic club. When it is final, I am very happy for Hakim, and I am very proud of it."
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Sign Agreement
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Blue Bird Café fire
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The Blue Bird Café fire was a nightclub fire on September 1, 1972, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. In all, 37 people were killed as a result of arson. [1][2]
The fire was the worst in Montreal since 1927, when 77 people perished in the Laurier Palace Theatre Fire. [3]
Montreal’s Blue Bird Café and the Wagon Wheel, a country and western bar above it, were located on the west side of Union Street between Ste-Catherine Ouest and Dorchester (now René-Lévesque) in downtown Montreal, lying within the borough of Ville-Marie. [2] The café and bar were known as places where largely working-class, English-speaking youth[2] could come for an evening of music, dancing, and drinking. [1]
There was lots of pitch black smoke and then a lot of heat and a lot of yellow light ... We knew it was a fire. Everyone began to panic. GEORGE LANCIA, survivor[3]
On the evening of Friday, September 1, 1972, the beginning of the Labour Day weekend, more than 200 people were at the bar celebrating. [2] Around 10:45 PM, three young men (initial reports said four)[3] were refused entry to the upstairs bar, as they appeared excessively intoxicated. Upset by this, Gilles Eccles, James O’Brien and Jean-Marc Boutin set a fire on the staircase that served as the only regular entrance or exit for the Wagon Wheel's customers. [1] "It was either a Molotov cocktail or gasoline spread on the stairs and then ignited," said Montreal Police Inspector Armand Chaille. The entire bar was in flames within a few minutes, according to police. [3]
With the primary escape route blocked by the fire advancing upward toward the crowded[3] bar, its patrons sought out other exits. However, conflicting city building codes and fire regulations had left the upstairs bar with too few fire exits for its capacity of patrons. With the bar's main exit aflame and its sole fire exit blocked,[2] patrons were forced to use one of two escape routes: either through the kitchen onto a folding fire escape (the emergency exit was chained) or by climbing through a window in the women's restroom and dropping some 20 feet onto a parked car. [1] While it was originally reported that 42 people had died,[3] later investigation determined that 37 people succumbed and perished as smoke and fire overtook the bar. [1]
At its peak, the fire was fought by more than 50 firefighters. Five firefighters would be injured by smoke inhalation before the fire was declared out. [3] At the time, the wearing of self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) was a relatively new practice and not as common among firefighters as it is today. The fire was brought under control by 2:30 a.m., and extinguished by daybreak. With the fire out, recovery operations commenced. Police and firefighters found bodies in the washrooms, huddled in a corner that had no exit, and jammed in a rear section of the club close to a back entrance. [3]
At 3:30 a.m. Eccles was arrested and a manhunt was on for Boutin and O'Brien. [4] They were arrested in Vancouver, British Columbia two weeks later. [5]
In the aftermath of the fire, regulations throughout Canada were strengthened to provide for more avenues of escape. [1] Two of the three defendants were convicted of second-degree murder, the third manslaughter. All three were paroled within a decade of their convictions. [6][7] Owing to the blocked fire exit, a lawyer for the victims' families proposed a $9 million civil lawsuit against the Montreal fire department, bar owner Leopold Paré, and the building's owner, with the defence led by Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau. The families eventually accepted a much lower settlement offer of $1,000 to $3,000 per victim. [2]
On August 31, 2012, a memorial was unveiled by the city of Montreal to mark the 40th anniversary. A mass was held as well as a march by families of the victims along with a photo exhibit at city hall, with a vigil on September 1. [7]
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Fire
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1 Child, 2 Adults Hospitalized With Carbon Monoxide Poisoning in Humboldt Park
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Two adults and a child were hospitalized with carbon monoxide poisoning early Sunday in Humboldt Park on the West Side.
The Chicago Fire Department responded to reports of high carbon monoxide readings Sunday morning in the 2500 block of West Cortez Street, fire officials said.
Carbon monoxide levels were over 500 parts per million (ppm) in the building, according to fire officials.
A child and two adults were transported to area hospitals all in serious to critical condition, fire officials said. The age of the child was not immediately known.
People’s Gas was notified to shut off gas in the building, fire officials said. The Building Department was also called to the scene.
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Mass Poisoning
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1867 Virgin Islands earthquake and tsunami
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The Virgin Islands earthquake occurred on November 18, 1867, at 2.45 p.m. in the Anegada Trough about 20 km southwest of Saint Thomas, Danish West Indies (now US Virgin Islands). The 7.5 magnitude earthquake came just 20 days after the devastating San Narciso hurricane killed more than 600 people in the same region. Tsunamis from this earthquake were some of the highest ever recorded in the Lesser Antilles since those produced by the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Wave heights exceeded 10 meters in some islands in the Lesser Antilles. The US Virgin Islands are part of the Greater Antilles that lies parallel to the Puerto Rico Trench; an oblique subduction zone where the North American Plate is underthrusted beneath the Caribbean Plate along the Lesser Antilles subduction zone transits to strike-slip along the Septentrional-Oriente fault zone. Because of this transition, the overriding Caribbean Plate begins to extend, and normal faults starts to break out as a result. Subduction and shallow crustal faults pose earthquake and tsunami risk to the area, although the Lesser Antilles megathrust has not seen any major earthquake along its subduction interface. A possible earthquake along the megathrust may have been the Mw 8.3, 1843 Guadeloupe earthquake. The earthquake consisted of two shocks, 10 minutes apart, and the two tsunamis came 10 minutes after each shock. Shaking reportedly lasted a minute in Frederiksted, where the earthquake stirred a dust cloud that blanketed the town. Shaking reached intensity IX on the Rossi-Forel scale in the Danish West Indies. [3]
The Reid Fault located 17 km south of Saint Thomas on the northern scarp of the Anegada Trough runs for seven tens of kilometers may have ruptured and produced slip no greater than ten meters. Another possible fault is the Zahibo Fault which is 120 km long and 30 km by measured width. [4] The rupture may have initiated at a depth of 3 km along this thrust fault. An underwater landslide triggered by movement on the seafloor would likely be the primary source of the tsunami as the run-up heights of the tsunami were unusually high, and the waves arrived almost immediately after the quake. [5]
At Saint Thomas, the first wave was described as a "straight white wall, about 15 to 23 feet (4.6 to 7.0 meters)" which advanced to the harbor, 10 minutes after the earthquake. The wave picked up steamers along the way and broke to just a few feet in front of the town. Its run-up height was 9.1 meters across the town. A smaller wave came shortly and penetrated further in the island. Thirty people perished when the waves swept them away. [3] Run-ups of 6 meters were recorded at Charlotte Amalie, where 12 people died. [6] The La Plata, a steamship serving the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company was knocked over by the waves, killing nearly all of its crew onboard. Little Saba saw the highest waves at 15.2 meters. A US Navy ship, the USS De Soto which had arrived the day before was ripped from her moorings and beached. The second wave then brought the ship with her bottom seriously damaged back to sea. [7]
At Christiansted, Saint Croix, the 7–9 meter waves drowned five people and inundated the island up to 90 meters inland. The tsunami destroyed 20 houses and stranded numerous boats inland. In some parts of the island, the waves reached a run-up height of 14.6 meters. [8] Frederiksted on the same island was hit by waves up to 7.6 meters. The surging seawater beached many vessels including a US Navy ship, USS Monongahela along the beaches of Frederiksted. [9][10]
Meanwhile, at Road Town, British Virgin Islands, the waves were between 1.2 and 1.5 meters which swept away much of the low-lying towns. In Antigua, the sea level rose 8–10 feet (2.4 to 3.0 meters) at the Saint John harbor. [8]
Eyewitnesses in Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe saw the sea receding and returning, flooding the place up to 2 meters. Deshayes was hit with very high waves, an estimated 18.3 meters (60 feet) in height and a length of 5 km. The tsunami swept away many personal belongings and items. In Saint-Rose however, the waves were determined to be no more than 10 meters when a church said to house fleeing survivors, 10 meters above sea-level remained undamaged. [8]
In Puerto Rico, wave heights of 1 to 6 meters swept through the island's coast. A parish church in Bayamón barrio-pueblo was damaged as a result of the earthquake. [11]
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Earthquakes
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Harbin hotel fire
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Coordinates: 45°47′23″N 126°36′23″E / 45.78963°N 126.60641°E / 45.78963; 126.60641
On 25 August 2018, a fire broke out at the Beilong Hot Spring Hotel (Chinese: 北龙温泉酒店)[1] in Harbin. Located in the city's Taiyang Island [zh] (太阳岛) resort area, the four-storey brick-and-concrete hotel mostly accommodates domestic tourists and was hosting over 100 people at the time, many of whom were visiting for an annual marathon. [2] The fire resulted in 20 deaths and 23 injuries.
At 04:36 on 25 August,[5] a fire broke out in a kitchen of a karaoke bar on the hotel’s second floor. Many of the guests, mostly Chinese tourists staying for the 2018 Harbin International Marathon,[6] were asleep. The fire itself spread over 400 square metres (4,300 sq ft) along the second through fourth floors and first floor main hall. Smoke from combustibles in the kitchen and karaoke bar spread up the stairways and air systems into the hallways,[3] requiring firefighters to evacuate more than 80 guests with at least 20 needing rescue. A survivor of the fire told reporters "I didn't hear any smoke alarm until after the fire was extinguished ... There was heavy smoke in the corridor and no indicator lights pointing to the exit. "[7]
At 07:50 the fire was considered extinguished,[8] and fire officials discovered 18 fatalities inside the resort with one more fatality at the hospital. [9] The death toll rose to 20 a day later, when investigators found one last body under the burned debris. [10] The Beijing Jiufangyuyue Commercial and Trading Co confirmed in the days after the fire that all of the deceased victims were members of a 10-day trip through their company, aged 59 to 85. [7]
All victims of the fire were identified through on-site identification and DNA matching. [11]
105 firefighters and 30 engines attended the inferno. The Ministry of Emergency Management sent a team of workers to assist with investigating the incident. A legal representative of the hotel was detained for questioning by the Harbin public security bureau the same day, and the Deputy Director of MEM's fire control bureau immediately ordered safety checks at hospitals, senior living homes, schools, major venues and other hotels. [12]
Fire officials revealed the next day that the hotel had failed at least five safety inspections in the past two years. Harbin's fire department had deemed the building unsafe in 2016 due to its maze-like hallways and shortage of fire exits and extinguishers, and ordered the hotel to suspend operations until compliant. [13]
The public security bureau of Harbin issued a wanted notice on 29 August 2018, for a female suspect in connection with the hotel camera. The police offered a reward up to 300,000 yuan ($44,000 USD) for information that leads to finding the female suspect. [7] The suspect, 52 year-old Li Yanbin (李艳滨), was arrested on 30 August 2018. [14]
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Fire
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Tsunami and its damages
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They have claimed lives, demolished homes and destroyed communities across the world. In the past 100 years, 58 tsunamis have killed more than 260,000 people, higher than any other natural hazard. Tsunamis are a series of enormous waves usually started by earthquakes below or near the ocean. They can be also caused by volcanic eruptions, submarine landslides, and coastal rock falls, or even a large asteroid. Did you know that the word ‘tsunami’ combines the Japanese words ‘tsu’ (harbour) and ‘nami’ (wave)? They can’t be predicted, and often come with very little warning. The first sign is that the ocean begins to retreat. Then the waves come crashing back – up to 30 metres high and travelling more than 800 kilometres per hour. More than 70 percent of all tsunamis ever recorded have been in the Pacific Ocean around the earthquake-prone “Pacific Ring of Fire”. The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 caused an estimated 227,000 deaths in 14 countries. Caused by an underwater quake that was equivalent in power to 23,000 atomic bombs, it was the deadliest tsunami in recent decades. Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand were the hardest hit. In the Asia Pacific region, thousands of people have lost their lives to tsunamis. A lack of knowledge, awareness and preparation played a significant role in increasing the numbers of dead and injured. BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY Partnering with the Government of Japan, UNDP began working with 90 schools to assess their tsunami risks, design emergency procedures and evacuation plans, and carry out tsunami awareness and safety drills in the 18 Asia and the Pacific countries in 2017. More than 100 schools and 60,000 people took part. Teachers and students were trained so that they’re prepared when the next tsunami hits. As well as evacuation and safety drills, the project has identified at-risk schools and created a number of education materials, identified evacuation routes and shelters, and developed a mobile app, STEP-A, to assess preparedness, as well as a guide which shows school administrators how to prepare for, and respond to, a tsunami. The project focused on the most vulnerable coastal communities of 18 countries: Bangladesh, Cambodia, Fiji, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Myanmar, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor Leste, Tonga, Vanuatu and Viet Nam. HAND IN HAND Local communities and governments have been enthusiastic, adding innovation and partnerships to the mix. In Fiji, the drills tested the mobile application GeoBing App, which gave real time information for early warning, paving the way for the first national tsunami drill. In Samoa, virtual reality headsets were used to prepare children for drills, so they could find out what their surroundings would look like under water. And in Bali, Indonesia, eight hotels signed up to be safe areas in tsunami emergencies, shifting from school preparedness to the whole community. In Pakistan, the drills were combined with shoreline cleaning to highlight the importance of the environment in preparing for disasters. In Vietnam the government is including disaster education in its school curriculum. In Myanmar older students were taught to take care of younger ones during evacuation. EVACUATION DRILLS IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES “Japan has experienced and recovered from countless natural disasters. This is vital, and our responsibility, to share these experiences and skills around the world, and save as many lives as possible,” says Ms. Satomi Okagaki, Senior Deputy Director, Global Issues Cooperation Division, of the Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In Japan every school child knows what to do when a tsunami hits. “We hope this project serves as a good starting point from which tsunami awareness and preparedness, tsunami evacuation drills will take root,” Ms Okagaki says. In preparing for a natural hazard, the more people who participate the better. After the tragic experience of Haiyan in 2013, the strongest typhoon in the history of the Philippines, parents and caregivers were willing to participate in the drills, showing the importance of partnering not only with the local Department of Education, but also with the community, and defining clear roles and communication channels. Twenty schools and 20,000 people took part. READY TO ACT There’s a powerful element of inequality in natural hazards and disasters, such as tsunamis. They disproportionately affect poorer nations, and women and children. Up to 80 percent of the fatalities from the Indian Ocean tsunami were women and children. Disasters drive 26 million people into poverty every year and cost the global economy an estimated US$ 520 billion, according to UNDRR. Yet preparation not only saves lives it also saves money — for every dollar invested in disaster preparedness and prevention, many more are saved in recovery. This regional project is part of UNDP’s efforts to implement the Sendai Framework of Disaster Risk Reduction, a global initiative to work with local governments to reduce deaths, injuries and economic damage from natural and human-made hazards, and prevent them from becoming disasters. The project’s second phase, which started in December, is integrating the tsunami preparedness and drills into school curricula and expanding to five new countries. PREPARING ASIA PACIFIC SCHOOLS Between 1998 and 2017, climate and geophysical disasters--mostly earthquakes and tsunamis--killed 1.3 million people and left a further 4.4 billion injured, homeless, displaced or in need of emergency assistance. (UNDRR) Conducting a drill requires preparation, knowledge of surroundings and evacuation areas, and how to stay safe. Decisions made in the few minutes before that racing wave reaches you can mean the difference between life and death. The evidence is clear: preparation saves lives. Thousands of school children who live in coastal areas across Asia and the Pacific Islands will learn the drill. And when you teach children, they teach everyone else.
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Tsunamis
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Top SA jockey recovering in hospital after HORROR fall – TWO horses euthanised
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Multiple South African jockey champion Lyle Hewitson has returned ‘home’ following a dreadful accident in Hong Kong last Sunday. Multiple South African jockey champion Lyle Hewitson has received some positive news following a dreadful accident in Hong Kong on Sunday. During the running of the Grade 1 Longines Hong Kong Sprint at Sha Tin, Hewitson and three colleagues suffered a fall which led to two horses being euthanised. Doctors are reportedly happy with his CT scan results and are preparing to move Hewitson to a General Ward and then to the Hong Kong Jockey Club Hospital. RIP | LEGEND OF SA HORSERACING POCKET POWER DIES Hewitson’s mother, Samantha, reportedly told the Sporting Post that the news was ‘such a great relief’. Australian star Zac Purton is currently being treated for upper-body injuries at Prince of Wales hospital but both he and Japanese Jockey Yuichi Fukunaga are reportedly in a stable condition. Mauritian Karis Teetan was the only rider in the quartet to continue on the day. Hewitson’s partner Hannah is with him at the hospital. Lyle Hewitson ‘doesn’t recall what happened’ Hewitson’s mother confirmed that her son will stay in ICU for observation overnight as he has small spots of bleeding on the brain. The 24-year-old Hewitson, who is a three-time SA champion, reportedly doesn’t recall what happened, but “feels very sad for the horses and the others that fell”. The incident, in the fifth contest on Hong Kong’s biggest day of racing, came as Hewitson’s mount Amazing Star broke down as the field turned to enter the home straight in the 1 200 metre (six furlongs) contest. Gallopers Lucky Patch, ridden by Purton, Naboo Attack under Teetan and Pixie Knight with Fukunaga on board were caught in the melee and sent sprawling in distressing scenes. Sadly, Amazing Star and Naboo Attack both had to be euthanised humanely as a result of their injuries.
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Famous Person - Recovered
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