From The Alpha and the Omega - Chapter Eight
by Jim A. Cornwell, Copyright © 1995, all rights reserved "Global Environment 2019 JULY-SEPTEMBER"
    This file is attached to http://www.mazzaroth.com/ChapterEight/2014-2017.htm from “Astronomical Events To Appear Between 2014 Through 2017 A.D.” - Chapter Eight by Jim A. Cornwell, Copyright © 1995, all rights reserved.
    This link will return you to Global Environment 2019 April-June

---

Global Environment 2019 JULY-SEPTEMBER
2019 World Disaster and Environmental Issues

• Environmental Changes and Pollution and Extinction 2019:
  • Ecology affected (Fish, Frogs, Trees, Deforestation, Rivers, Oceans and Coral reefs), Industrial waste products released (Mercury, Cyanide, Dioxins, Cadmium, Pesticides, Atrazine (weed killer), antibiotics, steroids, hormones, bacteria, sulfur dioxide, arsenic, irradiation [Cobalt 60], DDT, Ammonium perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) or C-8)
• Environmental Changes and the Global Warming Controversy 2019:
  • "Greenhouse Effect", Ice Age Reversal, Climatic Changes, Ozone Layer.
  • This file is to bring to light how many global wild fires, earthquakes, severe rainstorms and flooding, diseases, mudslides, volcano eruptions, structure collapses, cyclones, typhoons, chemical leaks, high winds, hurricanes, tornados and solar-lunar-planet-asteroids-comets movements that have occurred in the year 2018.
    
  • And as will be seen in the changes being made from the Obama-era policies verses the Trump changes.
    
• Environmental Changes and Biotechnology, Genetically Designed Crops, etc., 2019:
• Environmental Changes and World-Wide Diseases 2018:
  • Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs), Mad Cow Disease, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), West Nile Virus, Tuberculosis, and other that might come along.

• JULY 2019
  • 7/1/2019 G20 plastic trash reduction goal doesn’t address ‘excessive’ production: activists by Malcolm Foster
    A worker sorts out plastic waste for recycling at Minato Resource Recycle Center
    in Tokyo, Japan June 10, 2019. Picture taken June 10, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon     TOKYO (Reuters) – Activists welcomed a goal set by the Group of 20 major economies’ to reduce additional plastic trash leaking into the ocean to zero by 2050, but said it avoided getting at the heart of the problem – slashing the output of wasteful, single-use plastics in the first place.
        They also said the target date was too far away and the limited number of steps to proposed by the G20 was voluntary, not legally binding, limiting their effectiveness.
        “It’s a good direction,” said Yukihiro Misawa, plastics policy manager at WWF Japan.    “But they’re too focused on waste management."
        “The most important thing is to reduce the excessive amount of production on the global level,” he said.
        The world produced about 242 million tons of plastic waste in 2016, according to the World Bank.    Some 8 million of that enters the ocean annually, with China and Indonesia being the biggest offenders, a study in the journal Science showed.
        Plastic ocean trash has sparked public outrage with the spread of images of plastic debris-strewn beaches and dead animals with stomachs full of plastic.
        G20 host Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wanted to make tackling the issue a priority at the G20 summit in Osaka this past weekend.    He has said he wants Japan to lead the world in this mission, including by developing biodegradables and other innovative alternatives.
        The final communique released on Saturday said the group had adopted an “Osaka Blue Ocean Vision” to reduce additional marine plastic litter to zero by 2050, but provided few details on how that would be achieved.
        Members would adopt a “comprehensive life-cycle approach” by improving waste management and finding innovative solutions, it said.
        At a gathering of G20 environmental ministers two weeks before the summit, delegates drew up a framework of steps that countries could take to address plastic ocean waste, but made it clear the measures were voluntary.
        For these goals to stick, they need to be legally binding, activists said.
        To reach this objective, Japan said it will provide developing countries with financial and practical help to develop capacity to cope with plastic garbage and draw up national action plans.    It will also provide waste management training for 10,000 officials in countries around the world by 2025.
        Many countries, including more than two dozen in Africa, have banned plastic bags, and the EU has voted to outlaw 10 single-use plastic items, including straws, forks and knives, by 2021.
        Japan, which is the world’s No. 2 consumer of plastic packaging after the United States, is considering a bill that would require retailers to charge customers for plastic bags.
        While steps to improve recycling and waste management and change consumer behavior are important, authorities are avoiding taking steps to restrict plastic waste and plastic production, activists said.
        “Ultimately, this is very disappointing,” said Neil Tangri, global plastics policy adviser at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives in Berkeley, California, said of the G20 statement.
        “The focus is on collecting and disposing of plastics instead of reducing the quantity produced,” he said.    “Japan has the opportunity to lead on this issue by reducing the production and use of plastic. They’re fumbling the opportunity.”
    (Reporting and writing by Malcolm Foster; Editing by Nick Macfie)
  • 7/2/2019 Heavy rains in India kill 27, cripple financial capital by Rajendra Jadhav
    People stand among the debris after a wall collpased on hutments due to heavy
    rains in Mumbai, India July 2, 2019. REUTERS/Prashant Waydande     MUMBAI (Reuters) – Monsoon rains caused wall collapses that killed 27 people in India on Tuesday, as a second day of bad weather disrupted rail and air traffic in the financial capital Mumbai, prompting officials to shut schools and offices, though markets were open.
        During every monsoon season, which runs from June to September, India experiences fatal incidents of building and wall collapses as rainfall weakens the foundations of poorly-built structures.
        Heavy rain brought a wall crashing down on shanties built on a hill slope in Malad, a western suburb of Mumbai, a fire brigade official said, killing 18 people.
        “Rescue work is still going on,” the official added.    “So far we have rescued more than two dozen people.”
        Three people died when a school wall collapsed in the city of Kalyan, 42 km (26 miles) north of Mumbai.
        In the nearby western city of Pune, six people were killed in a wall collapse on Tuesday, a fire brigade official said, after a similar incident on Saturday killed 15.
        Mumbai is looking to turn itself into a global financial hub but large parts of the city struggle to cope with annual monsoon rains, as widespread construction and garbage-clogged drains and waterways make it increasingly vulnerable to chaos.
        More than 300 mm (11.8 inches) of rain fell over 24 hours in some areas of Mumbai, flooding streets and railway tracks, forcing the suspension of some suburban train services, which millions of commuters ride to work each day.
        About 1,000 people stranded in low-lying areas of the city were rescued after a swollen river began to overflow, municipal authorities said.
        As weather officials forecast intermittent heavy showers and isolated extremely heavy rainfall, authorities called a holiday for government offices and educational institutions.
        “Rain is expected to remain intense even today,” city authorities said on Twitter.    “We request you to stay indoors unless there’s an emergency.”
        Financial markets were open on Tuesday, though trading volumes were expected to be lower than normal.    Many firms asked employees to work from home.
        The main runway at Mumbai airport, India’s second biggest, was closed from midnight after a SpiceJet flight overshot the runway while landing, an airport spokeswoman said.
        The secondary runway is operational, but 55 flights were diverted and another 52 were canceled due to bad weather, she said.
        In 2005, floods killed more than 500 people in Mumbai, the majority in shantytown slums home to more than half the city’s population.
    (Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Darren Schuettler)
  • 7/3/2019 Antarctic sea ice hits an all-time low by Doyle Rice, USA TODAY
        Sea ice around Antarctica has shrunk to record low levels over the past few years, a new study suggests, after decades of expansion.
        “Things have been crazy,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center.    He called the plummeting ice levels “a white-knuckle ride.”
        Sea ice is frozen ocean water that melts each summer, then refreezes each winter.    It floats on top of the ocean. Using satellite images, the study took a look at changes in Antarctic sea ice over the past 40 years.
        Sea ice loss – especially in the Arctic but less so in the Antarctic – is one of the clearest signals of global warming, according to the National Climate Assessment.
        Around Antarctica, sea ice averaged 4.9 million square miles in 2014.    By 2017, it was a record low of 4.1 million square miles The difference – about 770,000 square miles – covers an area three times the size of Texas.    Losing that much in just three years “is pretty incredible” and faster than anything seen before, said study lead author Claire Parkinson, a NASA climate scientist.
        Waleed Abdalati, a scientist at the University of Colorado, told the Independent, an online newspaper, “The fact that a change this big can happen in such a short time should be viewed as an indication that the Earth has the potential for significant and rapid change.”
        In addition to human-caused warming of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans, several factors – including the geography of Antarctica, the region’s winds and air and ocean temperatures – affect the ice around Antarctica.
        The National Snow and Ice Data Center said that even though sea ice occurs primarily in the polar regions, it influences global climate and weather patterns around the world.    “Sea ice also affects the polar ecosystem, including penguins and whales and seals, petrels and albatrosses, krill and a whole range of additional animals and marine plant life,” Parkinson told CNN.
        The study was published in the peerreviewed journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
    Contributing: The Associated Press
  • 7/3/2019 Japan, hit by torrential rains, orders 800,000 to evacuate
    Local residents take a rest at a shelter in evacuation centre as heavy rains threatened to trigger landslides and
    cause other damage, in Kagoshima, Japan, July 3, 2019, in this photo taken by Kyodo. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS
    ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. JAPAN OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN JAPAN.     TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan ordered nearly 800,000 people on the southern island of Kyushu to take shelter in evacuation centers and other safe areas on Wednesday as heavy rains threatened to trigger landslides and cause other damage.
        Some parts of southern Kyushu have received up to 1,000 mm (39.4 inches) of rain since Friday, and forecasters expect as much as 350 mm to fall in some areas by midday on Thursday, NHK said.
        Evacuation orders were issued for nearly 600,000 residents of Kagoshima city and two smaller cities in the same prefecture, the broadcaster said.
        Another 310,000 residents of the island were advised to find shelter, Kyodo News reported.
        In Tokyo, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said residents should “take steps to protect their lives, including early evacuation” and he ordered the military to prepare for rescue operations if needed.
        Abe was criticized for the government’s slow response last July when heavy rains triggered landslides and floods, killing more than 200 people in Japan’s worst weather disaster in 36 years.
    (Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim and Linda Sieg; Editing by Michael Perry and Darren Schuettler)
  • 7/3/2019 Indonesia’s parliament delays approval for levy on plastic bags
    Rubbish, most of which is plastics, is seen along a shoreline in Jakarta, Indonesia, June 21, 2019. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan     JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesian members of parliament have decided to delay confirmation of a government plan for a levy on plastic bags, but the finance minister said she was optimistic the legislation was on track to be adopted this year.
        The archipelago of 17,000 islands churns out 9.85 billion of the bags each year, making it the world’s second biggest contributor of plastic pollutants in the oceans, Sri Mulyani Indrawati told members of parliament.
        She proposed excise duties starting from 30,000 rupiah ($2.12) for each kilogram of plastic, or 200 rupiah per bag, saying she hoped the measure would cut the number of plastic bags Indonesia used and the waste it produced.
        “God willing we will implement it this year, we are optimistic,” Indrawati told reporters late on Tuesday.
        “The right fiscal instrument to reduce a tendency to consume something dangerous is an excise duty.”
        The comments followed a decision by parliament’s finance commission to take more time to deliberate on the issue, after a hearing where the minister ran into resistance from both the ruling coalition and the opposition.
        “Why plastic?    It’s not fair if it’s just plastic,” said Misbakhun, a ruling coalition MP.    “Many other things damage the environment, like rubber, for example.”
        First introduced by the government in 2016, the plan for the levy has been delayed several times because of opposition from plastic producers.    But it was not immediately clear when the panel would make its decision.
        The excise plan presented to parliament will hurt the industry, said an official of a grouping of plastics manufacturers, adding that government support for efforts to recycle waste would be a better alternative.
        “(Recycling) is more effective for zero waste, there will be no waste,” Budi Susanto Sadiman, deputy chairman of plastic makers association Inaplas, told Reuters.
        “An excise duty on plastic bags is useless,” Sadiman said, adding that the levy would boost producers’ costs while not cutting consumption of plastic bags.
        Most of Indonesia’s marine plastic debris is caused by the mismanagement of waste on land, so that it often flows into landfills or rivers, the World Bank said in a report on Monday.
        In its report, the Washington-based lender backed the excise duty plan while also suggesting that Jakarta invests more in solid waste management and water treatment to stem flows into the ocean.
    ($1=14,140.0000 rupiah)
    (Reporting by Maikel Jefriando and Tabita Diela; Writing by Gayatri Suroyo; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
  • 7/4/2019 Indonesian president sued over congested capital’s air pollution
    Indonesian government offices are seen as smog covers the capital city of Jakarta, Indonesia, July 4, 2019. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan     JAKARTA (Reuters) – Environmental groups sued the Indonesian president and several government officials on Thursday over worsening air quality in the capital, Jakarta, one of the world’s most congested cities.
        Jakarta is consistently ranked among the top 10 most polluted cities in the world, according to Air Visual, a Swiss-based group that monitors air quality.
        Pollution levels in the city of over 10 million have spiked in recent weeks to nearly five times the level recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
        “We are suing the government so they will investigate where the pollution comes from and take actions based on their findings,” climate campaigner Bondan Andriyanu told journalists at a central Jakarta district court.
        Greenpeace and Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation are suing President Joko Widodo, the environment minister and home minister and three governors on Java island, including that of Jakarta.
        Representatives for Widodo and Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan were not immediately available for comment.
        In recent weeks, Jakarta’s PM2.5 levels – the amount of tiny particulate matter under 2.5 micrograms found in every cubic meter of air – have reached as high as 152.    Anything above 35 is considered “unhealthy” by the EPA.
        Some residents have complained of respiratory problems.
        “I can see so much haze at night,” said 23 year-old Cintya Ladyana who lives on the 25th floor of an apartment building in western Jakarta.    “I have also caught the flu and cough.”
    (Reporting by Jessica Damiana; Editing by Kanupriya Kapoor and Nick Macfie)
  • 7/4/2019 Volcano erupts on Italian island of Stromboli, kills one person by Angelo Amante
    An aerial still image taken from police helicopter video shows ash and smoke rising after a volcanic eruption,
    seen over Stromboli, Italy July 3, 2019. Coat of arms graphic added at source. Polizia di Stato/Handout via REUTERS     ROME (Reuters) – A volcano on the Italian island of Stromboli erupted on Wednesday, releasing hot trapped magma in a powerful explosion, killing one person and enveloping the popular tourist destination in ash, witnesses and local officials said.
        The person, believed to be a tourist, was killed by falling stones during a walk, a rescue service official said.    A second person was injured.
        The unexpected eruption started fires on the western side of the small Mediterranean island, which lies north of Sicily, off the toe of Italy.    Fire crews were being called in from nearby locations and a Canadair plane was already in action.
        “We saw the explosion from the hotel.    There was a loud roar,” said Michela Favorito, who works in a hotel near Fico Grande, on the east side of the island.
        “We plugged our ears and after this a cloud of ash swept over us.    The whole sky is full of ash, a fairly large cloud,” she told Reuters.
        Fiona Carter, a British tourist on the island of Panarea, some 27 km (17 miles) from Stromboli, heard the blast.
        “We turned around to see a mushroom cloud coming from Stromboli. Everyone was in shock.    Then red hot lava started running down the mountain towards the little village of Ginostra,” she told Reuters.
        “The cloud got bigger, white and gray.    It enveloped Ginostra and now the cloud has covered Stromboli entirely.    Several boats set off for Stromboli,” she added.
        Stefano Branca, an expert with the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology (INGV), said there had been a “paroxysmal eruption” on the island, when high-pressure magma explodes from a shallow, underground reservoir.
        “These are events of great intensity and quite rare,” he told Reuters.
        Tourists often climb to the 924-metre (3,000-foot) summit of the volcano and peer into its crater, with small puffs of molten rock regularly blasted into the sky.    It was not clear if anyone was on the crater at the time of the blast.
        According to the geology.com website, Stromboli is one of the most active volcanoes on the planet and has been erupting almost continuously since 1932.
        The island was the setting for a 1950 movie starring Ingrid Bergman and, with other islands in the Aeolian archipelago, has become a favorite location in recent decades for holiday homes for the rich and famous.
    (Writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Hugh Lawson, Frances Kerry and Peter Graff)
  • 7/4/2019 6.4 Earthquake hits Southern Calif. by OAN Newsroom
        The biggest earthquake in 20 years rattles Southern California and parts of Nevada Thursday.
    Seismologist Lucy Jones talks during a news conference at the Caltech Seismological Laboratory in
    Pasadena, Calif., Thursday, July 4, 2019. A strong earthquake rattled a large swath of Southern California
    and parts of Nevada on Thursday morning, making hanging lamps sway and photo frames on walls shake. There were
    no immediate reports of damage or injuries but a swarm of aftershocks were reported. (AP Photo/John Antczak)     The 6.4 quake struck near the Mojave Desert about 150 miles northeast of Los Angeles, near the town of Ridgecrest, California.
        Several aftershocks were reported and local fire crews are responding to multiple incidents requiring medical assistance.
        The U.S. Geological Survey warns there is a chance for another five magnitude quake Thursday.
        In a tweet, President Trump said he’s been “fully briefed” on the earthquake, adding the situation seems to be under control.
  • 7/5/2019 Strong quake rocks California by John Bacon, USA TODAY
        A magnitude 6.4 earthquake rocked Southern California on Thursday, igniting fires, triggering a hospital evacuation and shaking the area for hundreds of miles.
        The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered near Ridgecrest, an inland Kern County city about 150 miles northeast of Los Angeles.    Multiple large aftershocks rolled through the region in the minutes that followed.
        The quake was felt in Los Angeles all the way to Las Vegas, more than 250 miles northeast of L.A. Social media lit up, and photos showed debris shaken from shelves in the Ridgecrest area.
        Christine Goulet, executive director for Applied Science at the Southern California Earthquake Center, said the quake was felt over such a wide area because it was relatively shallow, only 5 or 6 miles deep. Goulet was in Los Angeles, west of downtown, and told USA TODAY she knew immediately it was an earthquake.
        “Everything was swaying, it felt like being on a boat,” she said.
    Contributing: Joseph Hong, Palm Springs Desert Sun; Associated Press
    
  • 7/6/2019 Strong aftershocks rock California by John Antczak and Olga R. Rodriguez, ASSOCIATED PRESS
        LOS ANGELES – Aftershocks from Southern California’s largest earthquake in 20 years rumbled beneath the Mojave Desert on Friday as authorities tallied damage in the sparsely populated region.
        The strongest aftershock thus far hit shortly after 4 a.m., registering magnitude 5.4 and awakening people all the way to the coast.
        Thursday’s 6.4 magnitude quake struck at midmorning about 150 miles northeast of Los Angeles, near the town of Ridgecrest and a sprawling Navy installation.
        Multiple injuries and two house fires were reported in the town of 28,000.    Emergency crews dealt with small vegetation fires, gas leaks and reports of cracked roads, said Kern County Fire Chief David Witt.
        He said 15 patients were evacuated from the Ridgecrest Regional Hospital as a precaution.
        Ridgecrest Mayor Peggy Breeden said that utility workers were assessing broken gas lines and turning off gas where necessary.
        Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake said in a statement late Thursday that no injuries were reported and so far all buildings had been found to be intact but assessments were continuing across its 1,875 square miles.    Its workforce was ordered to not report on Friday. Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency for Kern County.
        Breeden noted at a news conference that other nearby governments have offered to help the recovery effort.
        Lucy Jones, a seismologist with the California Institute of Technology’s seismology lab, has said the earthquake was the strongest since a 7.1 quake struck another area of the Mojave Desert on Oct. 16, 1999.
        “This has been an extremely quiet abnormal time,” Jones said.    “This type of earthquake is much more normal … The long term average is probably once every five or 10 years somewhere in Southern California.”
        Jones said that the 6.4 quake was preceded by a magnitude 4.2 temblor about a half hour earlier.
        “This is an isolated enough location that that’s going to greatly reduce the damage,” she said.
        There was little likelihood the quake raised the risk of a quake on the San Andreas Fault, the sleeping giant that runs through much of California and is expected to be the source of the feared “Big One,” the scientists said.
        “We have never seen a foreshock more than 10 kilometers, 6 miles, away from its mainshock and this is substantially farther than that to the San Andreas,” Jones said.
        The quake was detected by California’s new ShakeAlert system and it provided 48 seconds of warning to the seismology lab well before the shaking arrived at Caltech in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena but it did not trigger a public warning through an app recently made available in Los Angeles County.
        USGS seismologist Robert Graves said the ShakeAlert system worked properly.    He said it calculated an intensity level for the Los Angeles area that was below the threshold for a public alert.    The limits are intended to avoid false alarms.
    Authorities are still assessing damage and counting aftershocks from an earthquake near Ridgecrest, Calif., on Thursday. ETIENNE LAURENT/EPA-EFE
  • 7/6/2019 New study finds planting trees best way to fight climate change by Seth Borenstein, ASSOCIATED PRESS
        WASHINGTON – The most effective way to fight global warming is to plant lots of trees, a study says.    A trillion of them, maybe more.
        And there’s enough room, Swiss scientists say.    Even with existing cities and farmland, there’s enough space for new trees to cover 3.5 million square miles, they reported in Thursday’s journal Science. That area is roughly the size of the United States.
        The study calculated that over the decades, those new trees could suck up nearly 830 billion tons of heattrapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.    That’s about as much carbon pollution as humans have spewed in the past 25 years.
        Much of that benefit will come quickly because trees remove more carbon from the air when they are younger, the study authors said.    The potential for removing the most carbon is in the tropics.
        “This is by far – by thousands of times – the cheapest climate change solution” and the most effective, said study co-author Thomas Crowther, a climate change ecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
        Six nations with the most room for new trees are Russia, the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil and China.    Before his research, Crowther figured that there were other more effective ways to fight climate change besides cutting emissions.    But, he said, tree planting is far more effective because trees take so much carbon dioxide out of the air.
        Thomas Lovejoy, a George Mason University conservation biologist who wasn’t part of the study, noted that planting trees is not a substitute for weaning the world off burning oil, coal and gas, the chief cause of global warming.    “None of this works without emissions cuts,” he said.
  • 7/7/2019 California begins assessing damage after 2nd big quake - Aftershocks continue to rock desert area by John Antczak, Daisy Nguyen and Marcio Jose Sanchez, ASSOCIATED PRESS
        RIDGECREST, Calif. – Crews in Southern California assessed damage to cracked and burned buildings, broken roads, leaking water and gas lines and other infrastructure Saturday after the largest earthquake the region has seen in nearly 20 years jolted an area from Sacramento to Las Vegas to Mexico.
        No fatalities or major injuries were reported after Friday night’s 7.1 magnitude earthquake.    But warnings by seismologists that large aftershocks were expected to continue for days – if not weeks – prompted further precautions.
        The California National Guard was sending 200 troops, logistical support and aircraft, said Maj. Gen. David Baldwin.    The Pentagon had been notified, and the entire California Military Department was put on alert, he said.
        The quake struck at 8:19 p.m. Friday and was centered 11 miles from Ridgecrest, the same area of the Mojave Desert where a 6.4 magnitude temblor hit just a day earlier.
        April Hamlin, a Ridgecrest native, said she was “already on edge” when the second quake hit.    At first she and her three children thought it was another aftershock.
        “But it just kept on intensifying,” she said.    “The TV went over, hanging by the cord.    We heard it break.    We heard glass breakage in the other rooms, but all we could do was stay where we were until it stopped.”
        In San Bernardino County, which saw significant damage, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency amid “conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property.”
        State highway officials shut a 30-mile section of State Route 178 between Ridgecrest and the town of Trona southwest of Death Valley because of a rock slide and severe cracking.
        Just north of Ridgecrest, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake said it was not fully operational after the back-toback earthquakes, and that nonessential personnel had been evacuated.
        In Ridgecrest, local fire and police officials said they were initially swamped by calls for medical and ambulance service.    But police Chief Jed McLaughlin said there was “nothing but minor injuries such as cuts and bruises, by the grace of God.”
        Two building fires – one involving a mobile home – were quickly doused, he said.    Natural gas leaks were reported, but the lines were shut off.
        Antoun Abdullatif, 59, owns liquor stores and other businesses in Ridgecrest and Trona.
        “I would say 70% of my inventory is on the floor, broken,” he said Saturday morning in Ridgecrest.    “Every time you sweep and you put stuff in the dust bin, you’re putting $200 in the trash.”
        But he has stopped cleaning up, believing another earthquake is on the way.
        There is about a 1-in-10 chance that another 7.0 quake could hit within the next week, according to Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology and a former science adviser at the U.S. Geological Survey. The chance of a 5.0-magnitude quake “is approaching certainty,” she added.
    Tammy Sears of Ridgecrest, Calif., cleans up her kitchen after Friday night’s earthquake. Sears said she and her husband
    had spent a day cleaning up from a 6.4 magnitude quake on Thursday, which severely damaged their mobile home. ROBYN BECK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
  • 7/8/2019 Calif. governor estimates $100M in quake damage by Nicole Hayden, Palm Springs Desert Sun USA TODAY NETWORK
    PALM SPRINGS, Calif. – Roads cracked, but have been repaired. Rock slides littered highways, but have been cleared. A water shortage was announced, but it has been remedied.
        Although the earthquake has caused devastation in the small California towns of Ridgecrest and Trona, experts said it could have been much worse considering the size of Friday night’s quake. Gov. Gavin Newsom estimated more than $100 million in economic damage, the Associated Press reported.
        Although it appears the structural toll on the community was minimal, officials said the deeper devastation is the personal financial burden of recovering from the destruction that occurred behind closed doors. And that destruction might not be over – there is a chance that a sizable quake could hit in the coming week, undoing any recovery work.    The damage could be even greater as the prior quakes have weakened building structures.
        The magnitude 7.1 earthquake that struck Ridgecrest on Friday night – a day after the magnitude 6.4 Fourth of July quake hit the same area – traumatized many as homes shook, windows broke and small appliances flew off shelves.
        “We are looking at what our total losses are, what was destroyed, major damage or minor damage.    We need to know that before we can make a request for major disaster assistance,” said Mark Ghilarducci, director of California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, during a Saturday morning news conference.
        “This is a socioeconomic issue,” said Newsom during a news conference late Saturday afternoon.    “In the mobile home park ... people don’t have a place to go once they have been red-tagged.”
        Newsom said the state and federal governments are committed to the community’s recovery.    The president needs to declare a national emergency before emergency funds can be allocated. Although President Donald Trump hasn’t made that declaration yet, Newsom said Trump had called him to offer federal support in the rebuilding effort.
        Centers will soon be set up in Ridgecrest to provide assistance for locals on how to navigate financial recovery, educating residents on what kind of assistance they might qualify for, even without insurance.
        Newsom also expressed concern in addressing the recovery needs of Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, which is responsible for 86% of local economic activity, he said.    The base is also the largest land naval base in the country.
        The base, which is located in Ridgecrest, had evacuated all nonessential personnel following the initial July 4 quake.    Naval spokesman Paul Dale said crews on the base started recovery efforts after the initial quake, but have to start over following Friday’s nights larger event.
        For the immediate future, though, scientists have said there is a 27% chance for a magnitude 6 quake within the next week, said California Institute of Technology seismologist Dr. Egill Hauksson. And officials are warning residents to prepare for this possibility.
        The probability for another magnitude 7 quake within the next week in Southern California is 3%, experts said.
    California Gov. Gavin Newson, right, inspects earthquake damage inside a Sears in
    Ridgecrest, Calif. Officials expressed relief that damage and injuries weren’t worse after the largest earthquake
    in the region in nearly 20 years. CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR’S OFFICE OF EMERGENCY SERVICES VIA AP
  • 7/8/2019 Indonesia issues tsunami warning after Molucca Sea quake
        JAKARTA, Indonesia – Indonesian authorities issued a tsunami warning after an earthquake struck Sunday night in the Molucca Sea between North Sulawesi and the Maluku archipelago.    The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude 6.9 quake was centered 115 miles southeast of Manado at a depth of 15 miles.    A graphic posted on Twitter by Indonesia’s geophysics agency predicted waves of 1.6 feet for nearby islneds.    The quake caused panic in the city of Ternate in the Maluku island chain, as people ran to higher ground.
  • 7/8/2019 Toxic algae bloom closes all Mississippi’s beaches by Greg Hilburn, Monroe News-Star USA TODAY NETWORK
        MONROE, La. – All of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast beaches have been closed for swimming as the expanding bloom of toxic blue-green algae blankets the state’s waters.
        Sunday, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality announced the closures of Pascagoula Beach West and Pascagoula Beach East, the final two state beaches that were open for swimming.
        All of Mississippi’s 21 beaches, popular spots for Southern vacationers because of their close proximity, have been closed.
        A water contact advisory for a segment of the Jourdan River in Hancock County, Mississippi, was also issued.
        Closures don’t prevent the use of beaches for sunbathing or recreation, but people and pets shouldn’t swim in the water.    The agency advises anyone exposed to wash with soap and water and to refrain from eating fish or any other seafood taken from affected areas.
        The algal bloom, or rapid growth, was caused in part by the opening of the Bonnet Carre spillway in Louisiana, which introduced an excessive amount of freshwater to the coastline.
        The blue-green algae is technically not an algae, but cyanobacteria, which produces toxins. Exposure can cause rashes, stomach cramps, nausea, diarrhea and vomiting.    The Mississippi Department of Marine Resources has not detected toxins at harmful levels, but that can quickly change. The agency’s tests are ongoing.
        Joe Spraggins, executive director of the agency, stressed that the advisory against eating seafood is limited to the impacted areas.    “The other areas, we don’t think there’s an issue,” Spraggins said.    “The other seafood in the Gulf should be perfectly fine.”
    Contributing: Brian Bloom, Mississippi Clarion Ledger.
  • 7/8/2019 Report: Schools teach pro-climate change beliefs with no training by OAN Newsroom
        Teachers in many K-12 schools are reportedly teaching students the supposed dangers of climate change despite no formal training or appropriate textbooks on the subject.
        Teachers in Oklahoma have decided to teach about so-called climate change, while claiming to be under funded and not knowledgeable on the subject.    That’s according to a report published by the Washington Post over the weekend.    Oklahoma is a state with many workers in the oil and energy industry.
        “So, I don’t think that climate change denial’s the main problem. The problem that teachers face around this topic is that it’s complicated, it’s hard to teach, it’s hard to learn and it’s not part of the curricula that they’re accustomed to teaching.” — Charles Anderson, professor – Michigan State University
    FILE – In this Thursday, Aug. 3, 2017 file photo, a glacier calves icebergs into a fjord off the Greenland
    ice sheet in southeastern Greenland. Scientists from 17 nations are preparing for a year-long mission to the
    central Arctic to study the impact that climate change is having on the frigid far north of the planet. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)     Many teachers have defaulted to searching online, while discussing “cherry-picking” as a tactic used by climate change skeptics.
        “If you were to just do a Google search, I would say a lot of stuff, it would be difficult to filter through that stuff,” said 8th grade science teacher Sarah Ott.    “There is a lot of information, worksheets, materials out there that have been crafted specifically to misinform people.”
        A review process done by the ‘Clean Project,’ an institution funded by the Department of Energy and founded during the Obama administration, found only 700 out of 30,000 resources deemed “acceptable” for educational purposes heavily favor pro-climate.
  • 7/9/2019 Russia’s Putin says wind power harmful to birds and worms
    Russia's President Vladimir Putin makes comments on the country's bilateral relations with Georgia as he attends the Global
    Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit (GMIS) in Yekaterinburg, Russia July 9, 2019. Sputnik/Alexei Druzhinin/Kremlin via REUTERS     MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin questioned on Tuesday the use of wind power, saying wind turbines were harmful to birds and worms.
        Russia, a world-leading producer of fossil fuel, is lagging other countries in its development of renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind-powered energy.
        Wind power is rarely used in the country to generate electricity. Enel Russia pledged 90 million euros to build a power generation facility by 2024 with a capacity of 71 megawatts.
        “Wind-powered generation is good, but are birds being taken into account in this case?    How many birds are dying?”     Putin said at a televised conference on industry in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.
        “They (wind turbines) shake, causing worms to come out of the soil.    This is not a joke,” he said.
        Putin added that people would not like to live on a planet dotted with “rows of wind-powered generators and covered by several layers of solar panels.”
    (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
  • 7/10/2019 Soviet sub that sank off Norway in 1989 still emitting radiation by Gwladys Fouche
    A view shows the control room for the remotely operated vehicle called Aegir 6000 as it examines the wreck
    of the Soviet nuclear submarine "Komsomolets", southwest of Bear Island in the Norwegian Arctic, Norway in this handout image
    released on July 10, 2019. Stine Hommedal/Norwegian Institute of Marine Research/HI/Handout via REUTERS     OSLO (Reuters) – A Soviet nuclear submarine which sank off Norway in 1989 is still emitting radiation, researchers said on Wednesday following an expedition that used a remotely controlled vehicle for the first time.
        The wreck of the Komsomolets lies on the bottom of the Norwegian Sea at a depth of about 1,700 meters (5,577 feet).
        Authorities have conducted yearly expeditions to monitor radiation levels since the 1990s but this year’s inspection was the first one to use a remotely operated vehicle called Aegir 6000 to film the wreckage and take samples which will be further analyzed.
        The scientific mission’s samples show levels of radioactivity at the site up to 800,000 higher than normal, the Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority said in a statement.
        “This is of course a higher level than we would usually measure out at sea but the levels we have found now are not alarming,” said expedition leader Hilde Elise Heldal of the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research.
        Radioactivity levels “thin out” quickly at these depths and there are few fish in the area, she said.
        The Komsomolets sank on April 7, 1989, after a fire broke out on board, killing 42 crew.
        On July 1, 14 Russian sailors were killed aboard a nuclear submarine operating in the Arctic.
    (Editing by Jason Neely)
  • 7/11/2019 At least seven killed as freak storm lashes Greek resorts by Alkis Konstantinidis and Alexandros Avramidis
    People make repairs at an amusement park following heavy storms in the village
    of Nea Plagia, Greece, July 11, 2019. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis     NEA PLAGIA, Greece (Reuters) – At least seven people, including six tourists, were killed and more than 100 others injured when a violent, short-lived storm lashed northern Greece overnight, felling trees and ripping off rooftops.
        Witnesses said the storm had come and gone in a matter of minutes. Winds of over 100 kph (60 mph) were reported on the Halkidiki peninsula, popular with tourists in the summer.
        Two elderly Czech tourists were killed when strong winds and water overturned their travel trailer, police said.
        A woman and an eight-year-old boy from Romania were killed when a roof collapsed on a restaurant in the beach resort of Nea Plagia.    And a man and a young boy, both Russians, died when a tree fell near their hotel in the seaside town of Potidea, authorities said.
        A seventh, unidentified victim’s body was found in the sea.
        “It was so windy …it is really disastrous,” said a Serbian tourist who gave his name as Bratislav.
        The storm was a “supercell,” Theodoros Karakostas, a professor of meteorology and climatology at Aristotelion University, told the state Athens News Agency.    “It’s a rare phenomenon,” he said.
        Supercells are the least common kind of thunderstorm, but the most violent.
        Nefeli Minovgidou, a Greek tourist, described the scene as chaotic.    “Chairs were flying everywhere, trees were falling .. everyone inside was screaming, it was chaos,” she told Reuters.
        Streets in the area were dotted with uprooted pine trees and overturned motorcycles. Wooden rooftops were torn off and dumped on beaches.    A Reuters correspondent saw sun loungers strewn in mangled heaps with other debris across Nea Plagia’s beaches.
    “ABRUPT AND SUDDEN”
        Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, whose government was sworn in this week after winning elections on July 7, cancelled his schedule and was being continually briefed, a government official said.
        Civil Protection Minister Mihalis Chrisochoidis, at the scene, said Greece was mourning the loss of life, adding: “In coming days all damage will be repaired.”
        Such severe storms are unusual in Greece, where summers are usually hot and dry.    But the tragedy had echoes of a wildfire almost a year ago that raced through the resort of Mati with little warning. Fanned by hot winds, it trapped many inhabitants before they could flee and killed 100 people.
        “It is the first time in my 25-year career that I have lived through something like this,” Athansios Kaltsas, director of the Nea Moudania Medical Centre, where many of the injured were treated for fractures, told Greek television.    “It was so abrupt, and so sudden.”
        Kaltsas said patients taken to the clinic ranged in age from eight months to over 70.    Some had head injuries from trees and other falling objects.
        Authorities said around 100 people, mostly tourists, had been injured, and 23 had been admitted to hospital.    There were widespread power cuts.
        “Here we dealing with a new situation,” geology and natural disasters expert Efthymios Lekkas told Skai TV.    “Climate change is an accelerated and self-sustaining cycle that creates new hazards, with increased duration and intensity.”
    (Additional reporting by Karolina Tagaris, Reuters TV, Angeliki Koutantou and Renee Maltezou; writing by Michele Kambas; editing by Kevin Liffey, Larry King)
  • 7/11/2019 China reports African swine fever outbreak in Hubei province
    FILE PHOTO: Piglets are seen by a sow at a pig farm in Zhoukou, Henan province, China June 3, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer     BEIJING (Reuters) – China confirmed a new outbreak of African swine fever in Hubei province, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said on Thursday.
        The disease, which kills almost all pigs it infects, occurred on a farm of 102 pigs in Tuanfeng county in the east of the province.
        China has reported more than 140 outbreaks of the deadly disease since the first case in August last year, although many believe it is much worse than officially reported.
    (Reporting by Dominique Patton; editing by Christian Schmollinger)
  • 7/11/2019 Texas governor urges residents to prepare for storm off Gulf of Mexico by OAN Newsroom
        As Texas braces for a massive storm building off the Gulf of Mexico, the state’s governor is preparing for the worst.    According to Governor Greg Abbott, projections show the storm could hit along the Louisiana-Texas border region and could dump up to 10 inches of rain in the coming days.
        In a press conference Wednesday, Abbott urged Texas residents to stay alert:
        “We have elevated the state emergency response center to make sure that we will have all tools and resources and personnel needed to help both the state of Texas as well as all the local governments, as well as individuals, in all the potentially affected regions.    Be prepared to respond to the storm to maintain safety and to protect property.”
        This comes as hurricane weather continues in New Orleans, flooding streets and submerging cars.
    Motorists try to maneuver around flooding at the intersection of Franklin Ave. and 610 following
    heavy rain, Wednesday, July 10, 2019, in New Orleans. (Max Becherer/The Advocate via AP)     President Trump has provided storm relief and vowed full support for Texas in the past, and is expected to release a statement in the coming days.    For now, Governor Abbott is telling residents to expect to evacuate.
        “Begin preparing your property, begin preparing your supplies, begin preparing your lines of communication to your family members, begin preparing to know exactly where it is that you will be going to in the event that you have to evacuate,” he urged.
        While preparations for the storm are underway across Texas, FEMA is on standby until further notice.
  • 7/12/2019 Japan says space probe landed on asteroid to get soil sample
        TOKYO – Japan’s space agency said data transmitted from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft indicated it successfully landed on a distant asteroid Thursday and completed its historic mission of collecting underground samples that scientists hope will provide clues to the origin of the solar system.    Hayabusa2 had created itself a landing crater in April by dropping a copper impactor.    Thursday’s mission was to land inside that crater and collect underground samples that scientists believe contain more valuable data.
  • 7/12/2019 Floods and landslides kill 15 in Nepal, six others missing by Gopal Sharma
    Residents walk towards dry ground from a flooded colony in Kathmandu, Nepal July 12, 2019. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar     KATHMANDU (Reuters) – More than 20 people have been killed or are missing due to landslides and floods as monsoon rains lashed Nepal, the government said on Friday.
        Heavy rains since Thursday have hit 20 of Nepal’s 77 districts, in the hills as well as in southern plains.
        A Home Ministry statement said 15 people had been killed, while six others were missing and 13 were injured as incessant rains caused landslides and triggered flash floods in rivers originating in the Himalayas.
        In the capital, Kathmandu, three members of a family were killed when the wall of their house collapsed.
        Television channels showed police evacuating residents from flooded homes in rubber boats in some parts of Kathmandu where roads were flooded.    Families carrying their belongings on their heads waded through waist-deep water.
        “We have evacuated more than 150 people and are on the standby for rescue in different areas,” army spokesman Bigyan Dev Pandey said.
        Officials said the Kosi River in eastern Nepal, which flows into the eastern Indian state of Bihar, had risen above the danger mark.
        The weather office asked residents to remain alert saying heavy rains were expected to continue through the weekend.
        The annual monsoon rains, which normally start in June and continue through September often result in casualties in Nepal, a country of 30 million people.
    (Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
  • 7/13/2019 China’s manned space lab to re-enter atmosphere on Friday
    FILE PHOTO: A model of Tiangong 2 space laboratory by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation is displayed
    at China Beijing International High-tech Expo in Beijing, China June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee     BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s manned space lab Tiangong-2 has finished experiments and will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on July 19, authorities said on Saturday.
        A small amount of debris is likely to fall into the designated safe waters of the South Pacific Ocean, the China Manned Space Engineering Office said in a statement.
        China launched Tiangong-2 on September 15, 2016, after Tiangong-1, its first manned space lab.
    (Reporting by Yilei Sun and Norihiko Shirouzu in Beijing; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
  • 7/14/2019 Monsoon rains kill 30 people in Nepal, others missing by Gopal Sharma
    A man walks past gas cylinders in a flooded colony in Kathmandu, Nepal July 12, 2019. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar     KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Flash floods and landslides in Nepal triggered by monsoon rains killed 15 people and injured 12 overnight while another 18 have gone missing, officials said on Saturday.
        The latest deaths took to 30 the number of people killed in incessant rain that since Thursday has pounded much of the Himalayan nation tucked between China and India.
        Officials said the Kosi River in eastern Nepal, which flows into the eastern Indian state of Bihar, had risen above the danger mark.
        The Kosi has been a serious concern for both India and Nepal since it broke its banks in 2008 and changed course, submerging swathes of land and affecting more than two million people in Bihar.    About 500 people died in that disaster.
        Thirty of the 56 sluice gates at a barrage along the Kosi at the Indo-Nepal border have been opened, and rescue teams deployed to evacuate villagers, officials said.
        The weather office urged residents to remain alert, saying heavy rains were expected to continue through the weekend.
        “Though rains have eased in some areas, people should remain very careful as there are chances of heavy rains through Sunday,” weather department official Bibhuti Pokharel told Reuters.
        The annual monsoon rains, which normally start in June and continue through September, are crucial for Nepal, a country of 30 million people, and India, which both depend on the annual downpours for farming.    But landslides and floods often result, killing scores of people every year.
    (Reporting by Gopal Sharma; Editing by Martin Howell and Mark Heinrich)
  • 7/15/2019 Man dies after being infected with flesh-eating bacteria
        MEMPHIS, Tenn. – A Tennessee man died last week after being infected with a flesh-eating bacteria.    According to reports, the man became ill shortly after returning from vacation in Destin Beach.    Cheryl Wiygul, the man’s daughter, said the family discovered that a large sore had developed on his back, as well as red bumps on his arms and legs.    He died on July 7, just 48 hours after his last swim in Florida.    Wiygul added that her dad had a compromised immune system due to cancer treatments and that may have put him at greater risk.
  • 7/15/2019 Heavy rain leaves scores dead in Nepal, India, Bangladesh
        KATHMANDU, Nepal – Flooding and landslides triggered by heavy rainfall killed at least 50 people in Nepal in the past few days, with more deaths reported across the border in India and Bangladesh, officials said Sunday.    At least 30 other people were missing in Nepal, either swept away by swollen rivers or buried by mudslides since monsoon rains began pounding the region on Friday, Nepal’s National Emergency Operation Center said.    The center said nine key highways remained blocked by floods and mudslides.
  • 7/15/2019 Magnitude 7.3 quake damages homes in eastern Indonesia
        JAKARTA, Indonesia – A strong, shallow earthquake struck eastern Indonesia on Sunday, damaging some homes and causing panicked residents to flee to temporary shelters.    There were no immediate reports of casualties, and authorities said there was no threat of a tsunami.    The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.3 quake was centered 103 miles southeast of Ternate, the capital of North Maluku province, at a depth of just 6 miles. Shallow quakes tend to cause more damage than deeper ones.
  • 7/15/2019 Quake causes panic in eastern Indonesia; one killed
    People look over a bridge as they flee after an earthquake in Ternate, North Maluku, Indonesia
    July 14, 2019 in this still image taken from social media video. Egon Enviro Batu Bacan via REUTERS     JAKARTA (Reuters) – A magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck the Moluccas islands in eastern Indonesia on Sunday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reported, killing one person and causing panic among residents.
        The quake occurred at a depth of 10 km (6 miles) in an area 168 km south-southeast of the city of Ternate, the USGS said.
        Indonesia’s meteorology agency (BMKG) recorded the quake at 7.2 magnitude and was not in danger of causing a tsunami.
        The country’s disaster mitigation agency said on Twitter a woman in South Halmahera died due to the quake, without giving further details.
        Within less than four hours since the main quake, the disaster agency recorded at least 30 aftershocks, it added.
        The quake hit hours after a magnitude 6.6 struck offshore Western Australia, south of Indonesia.
        Iksan Subur, an official with Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency based in the regency of South Halmahera, near the earthquake’s epicentre, said people in the area panicked and ran out of their houses.
        People who lived near the ocean left for higher ground despite reassurances from officials that the quake did not have tsunami potential.
        In a video uploaded on Twitter a few hours after the quake, authorities asked people to return to their houses.
        The BMKG said the main quake was felt in other parts of Indonesia, including cities on Sulawesi island and in Sorong on Papua island.
        Last week, the BMKG issued a tsunami warning, which was later lifted, after a magnitude 6.9 quake hit off the northeastern shore of Sulawesi, west of Sunday’s quake.
        Indonesia is situated on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, which is frequently hit by earthquakes and sometimes accompanying tsunamis.
        The most devastating in recent Indonesian history was on Dec. 26 in 2004, when a magnitude 9.5 quake triggered a massive tsunami that killed around 226,000 people along the shorelines of the Indian Ocean, including more than 126,000 in Indonesia.
        Last year, a tsunami hit the city of Palu in Sulawesi, killing thousands.
    (Reporting by Tabita Diela, Fransiska Nangoy; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Ed Davies and David Evans)
  • 7/15/2019 Climate activists disrupt British cities with ‘summer uprising’
    Extinction Rebellion climate activists raise a mast on their boat during a protest outside the
    Royal Courts of Justice in London, Britain July 15, 2019. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls     LONDON (Reuters) – Environmental activists sought to sow chaos in five British cities on Monday in a bid to force the government to act to help avert what they cast as a climate cataclysm.
        The Extinction Rebellion group disrupted London with 11 days of protests in April that it cast as the biggest act of civil disobedience in recent British history.    Iconic locations were blocked, the Shell building defaced, trains stopped and Goldman Sachs targeted.
        “This emergency mobilization of ordinary citizens, driven to action by the threat of climate breakdown and ecological collapse, will demand the government take immediate action to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gases to net zero by 2025,” the group said.
        It said it was holding protests in Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds and London.    In each city, a large boat with the words “ACT NOW!” will be unveiled.
        Bristol said it had closed Bristol Bridge due to the protests and South Wales Police said roads in Cardiff city center were blocked.    Outside the Royal Courts of Justice in central London, activists parked a blue boat and sat on the road doing yoga.
        “Through a host of non-violent protests, communities around the UK will be coming together to stage a series of creative acts of civil-disobedience – blocking specific locations, bridges and roads – while also holding talks, workshops, trainings, family friendly activities, peoples’ assemblies and more,” Extinction Rebellion said.
        Extinction Rebellion wants non-violent civil disobedience to force governments to cut carbon emissions and avert a climate crisis it says will bring starvation and social collapse.
        It is a revolt against the extinction of species including, the group says, our own.
        With largely peaceful stunts – such as blocking some of London’s most iconic locations, smashing a door at the Shell building and shocking lawmakers with a semi-nude protest in parliament – the group has garnered massive publicity.
        The group is demanding the government declare a climate and ecological emergency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025 and create a citizen’s assembly of members of the public to lead on decisions to address climate change.
        Last month, the government announced it would enshrine into a law a commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050.    In 2017, total United Kingdom greenhouse gas emissions were 43 percent lower than in 1990 and 2.6 percent lower than 2016, according to government statistics.
    (Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Peter Nicholls; editing by Michael Holden)
  • 7/15/2019 Barry downgrades to Tropical Depression, flood & tornado warnings still in effect by OAN Newsroom
        Weather experts say Storm Barry hasn’t been as devastating as originally predicted, but are still heeding southerners to take caution.    The storm downgraded to a tropical depression late Sunday, shortly after making landfall as a Category One hurricane.
        11 million people were still under flash flood watch late Sunday night, and at least 55,000 people across Louisiana still remain without power.    Tornado warnings are also still in effect.    Three to six inches of rain are expected in the lower Mississippi River Valley into Arkansas Monday, while meteorologists say parts of south central Louisiana could see up to 12 to 15 inches of rain.
        First responders reportedly conducted rescues for more than 90 people, but no weather-related deaths have been reported so far.    Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan paid a visit to Nation Guard members Sunday to thank them for their hard work.
        “The FEMA team supporting the state in technically executed response has indicated that there are no unmet needs — all of our life lines, transportation, power, communications are all up and running, going well,” he stated.    “Our shelter numbers are dwindling already, which is a very good sign — so, we are going to keep monitoring it closely, but the response, I think, is going very well I would credit local officials and the governor of Louisiana for their efforts.”
    Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan speaks during a briefing about a storm system, in a visit to the
    National Response Coordination Center at FEMA headquarters in Washington, Sunday, July 14, 2019. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)     In the meantime, Louisiana Governor John Bell Edwards said rescue officials should remain vigilant despite weather conditions being less serious than expected.
        “Right now, we are very much in the response mode, not the recovery mode, and I don’t want to venture a guess as to what areas were impacted the most,” he explained.    “So, we are going to be out and about and that’s why this really isn’t over — it’s also one of the reasons why the National Guard can’t just all go home tonight.”
        Around 3,000 National Guard members remain deployed across Louisiana in the event the weather worsens.
    Barry Williams talks to a friend on his smartphone as he wades through storm surge from
    Lake Pontchartrain on Lakeshore Drive in Mandeville, La. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton)
  • 7/15/2019 Britain tells Canada and France to pull their weight on Ebola by Tom Miles
    FILE PHOTO: PM hopeful Rory Stewart speaks to the media as he emerges from TV studios
    in Westminster, London, Britain, June 19, 2019. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls     GENEVA (Reuters) – Britain’s international development minister Rory Stewart called on France and Canada on Monday to offer more help in tackling the Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo.
        Stewart, who visited the Ebola zone earlier this month, told a U.N. meeting that Britain had donated $45 million towards a previous Ebola outbreak and the current one, and that he had authorized a further $63 million of British spending.
        “We are going to have to put a lot more money into this on a ‘no regrets’ basis,” he told the meeting, adding that governments must stop using security concerns as an excuse not to send staff to the Ebola front line, where armed groups have frequently attacked aid workers.
        The United States, Britain and Germany had all donated generously, but other members of the G7 group of countries needed to do more, Stewart said.
        “We would be hugely grateful if our dear friends from the other G7 countries really stepped up,” he added.
    Money was the priority, but French language expertise was also valuable, and francophone France and Canada could make a special contribution.
        “It would be wonderful if some francophone countries could provide more staff on the ground. We desperately need more French speakers deployed in the field,” he said.
        Stewart told BBC radio that he would be asking the French and Canadian governments to make more generous contributions.
        The World Health Organization’s emergencies chief, Mike Ryan, said Canada had contributed $750,000 directly to the WHO effort, but had also donated to other agencies.    It was also Canadian government money that funded the development of the Ebola vaccine that has saved many lives.
        “With regard to the government of France, we rely on the government of France for a lot of technical cooperation, but as of this moment WHO has not received any financial contributions from the government of France,” Ryan said.
        Stewart said some donors at the packed U.N. meeting believed the response was well funded.
        “The World Bank has been making very positive comments about how they’ve got it all under control.    They haven’t,” he said, adding that money was needed to double the number of WHO staff helping Congo’s neighbors, such as Burundi and South Sudan, prepare for a potential outbreak.
    (Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Catherine Evans)
  • 7/16/2019 Rising temps could break heat index - Study predicts extreme, extended warmth by Doyle Rice, USA TODAY
        If you think it’s hot now, just wait awhile.
        As the globe warms in the years ahead, days with extreme heat are forecast to skyrocket across hundreds of U.S. cities, a new study suggests, perhaps even breaking the “heat index.”
        “Our analysis shows a hotter future that’s hard to imagine today,” study coauthor Kristina Dahl, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement.    “Nearly everywhere, people will experience more days of dangerous heat in the next few decades.”
    Micole Felder cools off at a fundraising car wash in Phoenix where temperatures have hovered around 110 for a week. ROSS D. FRANKLIN/AP     By 2050, hundreds of U.S. cities could see an entire month each year with heat index temperatures above 100 degrees if nothing is done to rein in global warming.
        The heat index is what the temperature feels like to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature.    This is the first study to take the heat index – instead of just temperature – into account when determining the impacts of global warming, Dahl said.
        The number of days per year when the heat index exceeds 100 degrees will more than double nationally, according to the study, which was published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Communications.
        On some days, conditions would be so extreme that they’d exceed the upper limit of the heat index, rendering it “incalculable,” the study predicts.
        “We have little to no experience with ‘off-the-charts’ heat in the U.S.,” said Erika Spanger-Siegfried, lead climate analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists and report co-author.    “These conditions occur at or above a heat index of 127 degrees, depending on temperature and humidity.    Exposure to conditions in that range makes it difficult for human bodies to cool themselves and could be deadly.”
        Man-made global warming, aka climate change, is caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as gas, coal and oil, which emit greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide ( CO2 ) and methane into the atmosphere.    This extra CO2 causes temperatures of the atmosphere and oceans to rise to levels that cannot be explained by natural factors, scientists say.
        Extreme heat is one of the clearest signs of global warming, according to the National Academy of Sciences.
        “Nearly everywhere, people will experience more days of dangerous heat in the next few decades.” Kristina Dahl, Union of Concerned Scientists.
  • 7/16/2019 ‘Breathtaking’ jellyfish is as big as a human - Divers caught video of ‘majestic creature’ by Ryan W. Miller, USA TODAY
        A jellyfish the size of a human was spotted off the coast of southwest England, and a video shows the marine creature swimming by divers.    The giant barrel jellyfish was found swimming Saturday near Falmouth when Lizzie Daly, a biologist and ambassador for the United     Kingdom’s Marine Conservation Society, and underwater cameraman Dan Abbott were diving.
        The two were finishing up their expedition, Wild Ocean Week – an effort to raise awareness and money for the conservation group – when the jellyfish appeared.
        “It was breathtaking,” Daly told USA TODAY.    “We had been diving for about half an hour, and out of the murky water was this single enormous jellyfish.”
        Daly said she and Abbott swam with the marine creature for about an hour.
        Though seeing these jellyfish off Cornwall’s coast is not uncommon during the summer months as waters warm in the area, Daly said she had never swam with one this large. She estimated its length at almost 5 feet, about as tall as she is.
        “It was very humbling to be swimming alongside of it,” she said.
        The animal isn’t a threat to humans and has only a mild sting, she said.    “It was just a pretty majestic creature.”
        The encounter came on Daly and Abbott’s last leg of their Wild Ocean Week.    As part of the project, they set out to film wildlife encounters for a week and pushed to raise money for the Marine Conservation Society, a marine nonprofit group that works on cleanups, education and legislation to protect the oceans and coasts.
        According to the Dorset Wildlife Trust, the barrel jelly is the largest jellyfish that can be found in the U.K.’s waters, measuring up to almost 3 feet across their bell and weighing up to 75 pounds.
    Conservationist diver Lizzie Daly says it was “very humbling” to swim
    alongside a jellyfish that was almost her size. DAN ABBOTT/WILD OCEAN WEEK
  • 7/16/2019 Over 100 killed, millions displaced from floods in India, Nepal and Bangladesh by Zarir Hussain and Gopal Sharma
    Villagers use a makeshift raft to cross a flooded area on the outskirts of Agartala, India July 15, 2019. REUTERS/Jayanta Dey     GUWAHATI, India/KATHMANDU, Nepal (Reuters) – Floods have forced more than four million people from their homes across India, Nepal and Bangladesh and killed more than 100 people as torrential rains in the initial days of monsoons wreaked havoc.
        The poor Indian states of Assam and Bihar have been among the worst hit.    Some 4.3 million people have been displaced from their homes in     Assam in the last 10 days due to rising waters across the mostly rural northeastern region, according to a government release on Monday.
        Television channels showed roads and railway lines in Bihar submerged, with people wading through chest-high, churning brown waters, carrying their belongings on their heads.
        Floods in South Asia cause mass displacement and deaths annually, and the death toll and damage from the current monsoon season, which has just begun, is likely to increase in coming weeks.    Floods in Nepal, India and Bangladesh during the 2017 monsoon https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-floods/floods-landslides-kill-more-than-800-people-across-south-asia-idUSKCN1B10YQ killed at least 800 people and destroyed food crops and homes.
        An impoverished agrarian province with rickety infrastructure and poor healthcare services, Bihar has a history of flooding in its northern areas bordering Nepal.
        Flood waters in Assam rose overnight with the Brahmaputra River, which flows down from the Himalayas into Bangladesh, and its tributaries still in spate.    Most of the Kaziranga National Park, home to the rare one-horned rhino, was underwater, authorities in Assam said, adding that four people drowned on Monday.
        “The flood situation has turned very critical with 31 of the 32 districts affected,” Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal told reporters.    “We are working on a war footing to deal with the flood situation.”
        Assam, known for its tea industry, is hit by seasonal flooding each year, and the state and federal governments have spent millions of rupees on flood control.
        Army and paramilitary personnel have been deployed across the state for rescue and relief operations and makeshift shelter camps have been set up, while the airforce is on standby, Keshab Mahanta, Assam’s water resources minister, told Reuters.
        The Indian weather office has forecast widespread rains across Assam and Bihar over the next two days.
    LANDSLIDES SWEEP HOMES AWAY
        In neighbouring Nepal, 64 people were killed and 31 were missing, with around a third of all districts hit by heavy rains, authorities said.    Many of the deaths were caused by landslides that swept away houses.
        In southeast Nepal, water levels on the Kosi River, which flows into Bihar, had receded, an district official said.
        In 2008, the Kosi broke its banks and changed course, inundating huge tracts of land and killing 500 people.
        “Our analysis is that the danger is over now that the water level has come down,” Chiranjibi Giri, assistant district administrator of Sunsari district, told Reuters.
        In Bangladesh, floods forced an estimated 190,000 people out of their homes, government officials said.
        In Cox’s Bazar district, shelter to some 700,000 Rohingya refugees who fled violence in neighbouring Myanmar, more than 100,000 people have been displaced.
        Since early July, flooding and landslides have damaged thousands of shelters at the refugee camps, killing two people, including a child, Human Rights Watch said in a release last week.
    (Reporting by Gopal Sharma in Kathmandu, Zarir Hussain in Guwahati, Serajul Quadir in Dhaka and Devjyot Ghoshal in New Delhi; Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal and Zeba Siddiqui; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani, Nick Macfie and Frances Kerry)
  • 7/17/2019 Millions stranded in India as early monsoon downpours bring flood havoc by Zarir Hussain
    An ariel view of a flooded area is seen from a plane during a flight from Kathmandu to
    Biratnagar, Nepal July 13, 2019. Picture taken July 13, 2019. REUTERS/Saroj Baizu     GUWAHATI, INDIA (Reuters) – Millions of people are stranded by flooding in northeast India with concern growing about food and water supplies, and officials said on Wednesday that water levels of a major river were rising even further.
        At least 5.8 million people have been displaced – a million more than on Monday – and some 30 have died in the past two weeks in the tea-growing state of Assam due to the monsoon rains, local government officials said.
        “The water level of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries have started showing a rising trend since midday and flowing above the danger mark in at least 10 places,” an Assam Disaster Management Authority official said.
        Many thousands in the state are making do with only the most meagre food supplies and dirty water.
        “We’ve just been surviving on boiled rice for almost seven days now,” said Anamika Das, a mother at Amtola relief camp in Assam’s Lakhimpur district.
        She said she was having difficulty breastfeeding her baby boy.
        Assam has been the worst-affected part of India. Floods have also hit neighbouring Nepal and Bangladesh.
        At least 153 people have been killed in India, Nepal and Bangladesh.    Parts of Pakistan have also seen flooding.
        Subhas Bania, also sheltering at Amtola, said authorities had made no provision for the supply of drinking water.
        “We’ve been forced to drink muddy water,” he said.
        The rains in north India usually last from early June to October, with the worst of the flooding usually later in the season.
        Assam is frequently swamped by floods when the Brahmaputra river, which flows down from the Himalayas through northeast India and Bangladesh, sweeps over its banks.
        Water levels on the river and its major tributaries were beginning to fall, although they were still above the danger mark, the government said.
        “We’re trying our best to reach out to the affected people in whatever way possible but yes, the situation is indeed very bad,” said Assam’s Social Welfare Minister Pramila Rani Brahma.
        The government has yet to assess the impact of the floods that have battered thousands of settlements.
        Bhabani Das, a village elder in Golaghat district, who has been living under a plastic sheet for four days, said the flood had swept away his home.
        “Where do we go from here?”
        In the state of Bihar, which has also been hit by severe flooding, beginning last week, officials said that flood waters were beginning to recede after killing 33 people.
        “Things are gradually becoming normal, people are returning home,” Bihar’s Disaster Management Minister Lakshmeshwar Roy said.
        Water levels in four rivers in Bangladesh, including the Brahmaputra, were above the danger mark, with some northern parts of the low-lying country flooded.
        Road and railway links between the capital city Dhaka and at least 16 northern and northwest districts had been severed, officials said.
    (Reporting Zarir Hussain in GUWAHATI, Jatindra Dash in BHUBANESWAR, Serajul Quadir in DHAKA; Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani, Robert Birsel, Peter Graff)
  • 7/18/2019 Days that feel 100 degrees to rise drastically by 2050, study says by Ben Tobin, Louisville Courier Journal USA TODAY NETWORK
        Sure, it will feel hot in Louisville over the next couple of days. But the worst is yet to come.
        In a recent study, the Union of Concerned Scientists found that heat indexes — or the “feels like” temperature — will drastically increase across the United States throughout the rest of the century.
        For example, if there is no reduction in heat-trapping emissions by 2050, the average number of days per year with a heat index of above 100 degrees will more than double, and the number of days per year above 105 degrees will quadruple.
        According to the study, historically, Kentucky has had an average of six days per year with a heat index above 100 degrees.    But if no action is taken, that number will increase to 45 days by 2050 and 76 days by 2100.
        Of the cities with a population of at least 50,000 in Kentucky, Bowling Green, Louisville and Owensboro would experience the highest frequency of these days.
        The Louisville area has had a heat index of at or above 100 degrees for six hours of 2019 ...
        If we crank up the heat, while Kentucky has historically only had an average of one day with a heat index above 105 degrees, by 2050 and 2100, those averages will rise to 26 days and 55 days, respectively.
        Louisville hasn’t been too scorching this year, according to the North Carolina Climate Office, which has a tool for searching historic heat indexes nationwide.    The Louisville area has had a heat index of at or above 100 degrees for six hours of 2019, according to the office.
        National Weather Service meteorologist Evan Webb said Louisville had at least briefly hit a heat index of 100 degrees on three days so far this year.
        The total number of hours and days with a high heat index will increase very soon in Louisville, as meteorologists predict the heat index to reach above 100 degrees Thursday and possibly even 110 degrees on Friday and Saturday.
  • 7/18/2019 Bangladesh floods worsen after breach, death toll nears 100 in India by Serajul Quadir and Zarir Hussain
    One-horned rhinos rest on a highland in the flood affected area of Kaziranga National Park in Nagaon district,
    in the northeastern state of Assam, India, July 18, 2019. REUTERS/Anuwar Hazarika     DHAKA/GUWAHATI, INDIA (Reuters) – One of Bangladesh’s main rivers breached an embankment, flooding a northern district and forcing thousands from their homes, an official said on Thursday, as the toll from monsoon rains in neighboring India climbed to 97 in two flood-hit states.     Several million people are living in camps and makeshift settlements in India’s eastern state of Bihar and northeastern Assam, officials said, with heavy rains and flooding since last week driving even animals to seek shelter in people’s homes.
        The monsoon brings heavy rains to South Asia between June and October, often triggering floods later in the season.
        In Bangladesh, the Jamuna river broke through an embankment on Wednesday night, inundating at least 40 villages and displacing more than 200,000 people, government official Rokhsana Begum said.
        “We have enough supply of dry food and drinking water but we cannot reach many areas due to high water levels,” said the official in the district of Gaibandha, one of 21 hit by floods.
        Inadequate supplies are also a concern in the Indian state of Assam, where more than 5.8 million people have been forced out of their homes, but the situation is improving.
        “No fresh areas have come under floodwaters since Wednesday night,” Assam’s health and finance minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, said.
    POACHING
        The state’s Kaziranga National Park, home to endangered one-horned rhinos and tigers, was waist-deep in water, with animals sheltering in higher areas, and some straying into villages.
        On Thursday, an adult tiger was found sleeping on a bed in a house on the edge of the sanctuary.    “It appears the tiger strayed into a human settlement area to escape the floods and now appears very tired,” park director Shiv Kumar told Reuters.
        “We are preparing to tranquilize the tiger.”
        The floods have killed at least 43 animals, but authorities worry that poachers could take advantage of the deluge to target animals, especially one-horned rhinos, whose numbers are down to about 3,500 worldwide.
        “The biggest worry during the floods is from poachers who might take advantage of the rhinos moving to the hills and kill the animals for their horn,” said Assam Forest Minister Parimal Suklabaidya.
        The death toll in Bihar, which was swamped by waters from the neighboring Himalayan nation of Nepal, jumped to 67, as rescuers reached further into flood-hit areas.
        “I still feel the chances are that the number may again increase,” Pratyaya Amrit, a state disaster management official, told Reuters, referring to the death toll.
    (Additional reporting by Jatindra Dash in BHUBANESWAR; Writing by Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
  • 7/18/2019 WHO sounds Ebola alarm as risks intensify by Tom Miles
    Congolese health workers collect data before administering ebola vaccines to civilians at the
    Himbi Health Centre in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, July 17, 2019. REUTERS/Olivia Acland     GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization on Wednesday declared Congo’s Ebola outbreak an international health emergency, sounding a rarely used global alarm after the virus threatened to spread to a major city and into neighbouring countries.
        Despite a highly effective vaccine and a swift international response after it was declared 11 months ago, the outbreak has proved tenacious in an unstable region beset by violence, becoming Congo’s worst ever, with almost 1,700 dead.
        A vast campaign of vigilance and vaccination, with almost 75 million screenings, has kept the highly infectious virus almost entirely confined to two provinces in northeastern Congo.    The emergency committee of international health experts that advises WHO had thrice declined to declare an emergency.
        But this month a pastor died after travelling to Goma, a city of 2 million and a gateway to other countries in the region.    On Wednesday, the WHO reported a fisherwoman had died in Congo after four vomiting incidents at a market in Uganda, where 590 people may be sought for vaccination.
        “The committee is concerned that a year into the outbreak, there are worrying signs of possible extension of the epidemic,” the committee’s report said.
        The committee had been under pressure from many experts who felt the scale of the outbreak and the risks meant it had to be given the emergency status – only the fifth such disease outbreak since the WHO introduced such designations in 2005.
        “It shows no sign of coming under control,” said Peter Piot, a member of the team that discovered Ebola and is now director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
        “I hope that today’s decision serves as a wake-up call to drive high-level political action, improved coordination, and greater funding to support DRC in their efforts to stop this devastating epidemic,” he said.
    NO BORDER CLOSURES
        The previous international emergencies, under a system introduced after the 2004 Asian SARS epidemic, were the 2013-2016 West African Ebola epidemic that killed over 11,300 people, the 2009 flu pandemic, polio in 2014 and the Zika virus that caused a spate of birth defects across Latin America.
        The WHO committee’s chairman, Robert Steffen, tempered the outbreak’s designation as an emergency by saying it remained a regional, rather than a global threat, and stressed that no country should react to Ebola by closing borders or restricting trade.
        The WHO has warned that the nearby countries of Rwanda, South Sudan, Burundi and Uganda are the most at risk, while Central African Republic, Angola, Tanzania, Republic of Congo and Zambia are in a second tier.
        Earlier this week the WHO said hundreds of millions of dollars were needed immediately to prevent the outbreak billowing out of control and costing far more lives and money.
        But WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who convened the emergency committee after viewing the Goma case as a “potential gamechanger,” said the designation as an international emergency was not meant to suggest that some countries had been withholding funds and would now unlock them.
        One priority was to accelerate production of the vaccine, which is in short supply.    It is produced by Merck and still unlicensed, which means it can only be used in a clinical trial overseen by Congo’s health ministry.
        WHO has already begun using smaller doses to ration supplies and the committee recommended taking “all measures to increase supplies,” including contracting supply to other manufacturers and transferring Merck’s technology.
    (Reporting by Tom Miles, Kate Kelland and Nairobi newsroom; Editing by Gareth Jones, John Stonestreet and Dan Grebler)
  • 7/19/2019 Hand-washing enforced amid Ebola by Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY
        Congolese authorities said Thursday that soldiers and police will begin enforcing hand-washing and fever checks after the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over the long-simmering Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
        Dr. Aruna Abedi, coordinator of the outbreak response at Congo’s health ministry, said soldiers and police will “force” people to take the key steps to help contain the disease that has killed more than 1,600 people since August.
        “It’s not possible that someone refuses to wash their hands and have their temperature checked at a very critical moment in this outbreak,” Abedi told reporters in Goma, the city of more than 2 million where a first Ebola case was announced this week.    The major regional crossroads is on the Rwanda border and has an international airport.
        The Ebola outbreak is the seconddeadliest in history, WHO said.    More than 30 new cases are being reported each month in northeast Congo, which is largely a regional war zone.
        The epicenter is the city of Beni, where 46% of all new cases have been reported in the past three weeks, according to the WHO emergency committee.    It was the fourth meeting of the committee since the outbreak was declared on Aug. 1, 2018.
        The committee reported 2,512 confirmed or probable current cases, including 136 health workers affected, and 40 deaths.
        This is the fifth global emergency declaration in history.    Emergencies also were declared for the devastating 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa that killed more than 11,000 people, the emergence of Zika in the Americas, the swine flu pandemic and polio.
        Ebola is a highly contagious virus that spreads through direct contact with body fluids.    It kills about 50% of those infected, many of them by bleeding internally and externally.    There is no cure or specific treatment approved for market, although some vaccines have showed promise.
        The pastor who brought Ebola to Goma used several fake names to conceal his identity on his way to the city, Congolese officials said.    WHO said that the man had died and that health workers were trying to track down dozens of his contacts, including those who had traveled on the same bus.
        WHO’s emergency committee said the challenges in combating the outbreak included gaining community acceptance of the threat.    It warned against wholesale shutdown of border crossings that it said could cause economic distress and stifle cooperation.
        Dr. Joanne Liu, president of Doctors Without Borders, said she hoped the emergency designation would prompt a radical reset of Ebola response.
        “The reality check is that a year into the epidemic, it’s still not under control,” she said.    “We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect different results.”
    Contributing: The Associated Press
    A nurse vaccinates a child against Ebola last week in Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo. JEROME DELAY/AP [THE CAT IS OUT OF THE BAG AND IMMIGRATION COULD BE THE THING WHICH WILL KILL OFF 50% OF SOME NATION IN THE NEAR FUTURE.].
    
  • 7/20/2019 Strong quake hits near Greek capital; 4 people injured
        ATHENS, Greece – A strong earthquake centered northwest of Athens shook Greece on Friday, causing frightened residents to run into the capital’s streets and damaging several buildings.    Authorities said four people were hospitalized with injuries, none of them serious.    The Athens Institute of Geodynamics gave the earthquake that struck at 2:13 p.m. local time a preliminary magnitude of 5.1.    The U.S. Geological Survey reported a magnitude of 5.3.    The Acropolis Museum was evacuated and closed for the rest of the day as a precaution.
  • 7/21/2019 Monsoon flooding death toll climbs to 164 in South Asia
        GAUHATI, India – The death toll in monsoon flooding in South Asia has climbed past 160 as millions of people and animals continue to face the brunt in three countries, officials said Saturday.    At least 90 people have died in Nepal and 62 in northeastern India’s Assam state over the past week.    A dozen have been killed in flooding in Bangladesh.    Shiv Kumar, a government official in Assam, said 10 rare one-horned rhinos have died in Kaziranga National Park.    Some 4.8 million people spread over 3,700 villages are still affected.
  • 7/21/2019 Villagers, firefighters battle huge blazes in central Portugal
    A firefighting plane dumps water on a forest fire next to the village of Vila de Rei, Portugal July 21, 2019. REUTERS/Rafael Marchante     VILA DE REI/MACAO, Portugal (Reuters) – Blazes in central Portugal reached houses on Sunday, forcing locals to take matters into their own hands as they tried to protect their homes from huge wildfires with buckets of water and hosepipes as strong winds fanned the flames.
        Two of the three wildfires which broke out on Saturday in Castelo Branco, a district 225 kilometers (139 miles) northeast of Lisbon, are still burning.    Having spread to the nearby Santarem district, they are threatening several villages in the Vila de Rei and Macao municipalities.
        Portugal’s Civil Protection said some houses were hit by the flames but did not give a specific number.
        More than 1,150 firefighters are on the ground, according to the National Authority for Civil Protection.    However, a Reuters photographer in Vila de Rei said few firefighters were visible and the wildfire there was spreading.
        Authorities have evacuated villages and fluvial beaches as a precaution and 30 people have been injured.    One civilian is in serious condition and remains hospitalized with first and second-degree burns.
        The fires stirred memories of a devastating wildfire in the central town of Pedrogao Grande in June 2017, the worst disaster in modern Portuguese history, which killed 64 people and injured more than 250.
        “The fire is out of control, without resources on the ground, and the population at risk,” Vasco Estrela, the mayor of Macao, told Portuguese radio station TSF.    “We never thought we would live through this again.”
        Images broadcast by Portuguese TV channel TVI showed villagers in Macao trying to protect their houses and animals as smoke filled the air, forcing many to wear masks.
        “(It will be) an afternoon of intense work,” Belo Costa, a Civil Protection official, told reporters earlier on Sunday.
        Sixteen airplanes and 354 firefighting vehicles on the ground are battling the blazes, along with 20 soldiers and four bulldozers, according to the agency.
        Internal administration minister Eduardo Cabrita said police had opened an investigation on the fires, adding that local authorities considered it unusual that all the blazes had started in a narrow time frame between 2:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. local time (1330-1430 GMT) on Saturday in the same area.
        Portugal’s judiciary police has collected some evidence and artifacts that could be related to the fires’ origin, an official told Lusa news agency.
        In a statement, police said that a 55-year-old man was detained on suspicion of starting a blaze in the Portuguese district of Castelo Branco.
        Quoted by Portuguese newspaper Observador, a police source said the detention was not related to the ongoing fires.    The police did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment.
        A number of municipalities in Santarem and Castelo Branco are still considered at maximum risk of fire, according to the national meteorological agency.
        In the municipality of Macao, temperatures reached 34 degrees Celsius (93.2°F) on Sunday and are expected to increase to 37 degrees Celsius (98.6°F) on Monday.    The fires’ smoky clouds could be seen from the Spanish border.
        On Twitter, European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides said he is following the situation closely, adding that the European Union is ready to provide help.
    (Reporting by Catarina Demony in Lisbon and Miguel Pereira and Rafael Marchante in Vila de Rei; Writing by Catarina Demony and Joan Faus; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Louise Heavens, Kirsten Donovan and Dan Grebler)
  • 7/22/2019 Flake news: Man-made snow for Antarctic - Study suggests it would preserve melting ice sheet by Doyle Rice, USA TODAY
        Could artificial snow really save the world?
        Well, this plan is so crazy it just might work.
        Piling billions of tons of man-made snow on top of the West Antarctic ice sheet could prevent it from melting and thus collapsing into the sea, a new study suggests.    Such a “hail-Mary” effort could stop an eventual global sea-level rise of 10 feet, which would inundate coastal cities around the world, according to the study authors.
        “Snow can indeed push the ice sheet back toward a stable regime and stop the instability (of the ice sheet),” said study lead author Johannes Feldmann of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.    In practice, he said, it could be done by pumping sea water out of the ocean and “snowing it” onto the ice sheet at a rate of several hundred billion tons a year over a few decades.
        West Antarctica is “ground zero” for global sea-level rise, according to the science and technology website Gizmodo.    The eventual collapse of the region’s ice sheets might happen even if the world meets the Paris Agreement goals of putting the brakes on temperature rises, and if the collapse happens, it would reshape the world’s shorelines.
        Would the snowmaking plan be worth it?
        Study co-author Anders Levermann, also of the Potsdam Institute, told Reuters: “We are already at a point of no return if we don’t do anything.    We can bring it back to the stable point by a small interference now – or by larger and larger interference later.”
        In a statement, Levermann said, “The fundamental trade-off is whether we as humanity want to sacrifice Antarctica to save the currently inhabited coastal regions – and the cultural heritage that we have built and are building on our shores.    It is about global metropolises, from New York to Shanghai, which in the long term will be below sea level if nothing is done.”
        The amount of snow needed to stabilize the glaciers is staggering: At least 7.4 trillion tons of snow, which is the equivalent in mass of about 500 billion large tractor-trailers.
        An expert on Antarctic ice, who was not involved in the research, was skeptical of the proposal.
        “In addition to the massive infrastructure required to achieve what they are discussing, the snow produced would be derived from saltwater, (which is) far more prone to melt and additional impacts if the surface air temperature rises, as expected, in the coming several decades,” Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado, told USA TODAY.
        He said the slushy saltwater snow on top of the ice could actually make the ice more unstable, basically worsening the original problem.
        “I think overall the value of the study is to strengthen the case of simply addressing decarbonization,” Scambos said, alluding to plans to reduce carbon emissions by curtailing humanity’s use of fossil fuels.
        The study was published last week in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances.
    Artificial snow can bolster ski season at resorts such as the Greek Peak Mountain Resort
    in Virgil, N.Y. Maybe it can save the Antarctic. WAYNE HANSEN/AP
  • 7/22/2019 Portuguese fires under partial control, weather raises concerns
    Trees are seen after a forest fire near the village of Cardigos, Portugal July 22, 2019. REUTERS/Rafael Marchante     VILA DE REI/MACAO, Portugal (Reuters) – Fires that swept across central Portugal for nearly 48 hours were under partial control on Monday, but adverse weather conditions are raising concern they will flare up again.
        The last of three wildfires that broke out on Saturday in Castelo Branco, a district 225 km (140 miles) northeast of Lisbon, is now 90% under control, a Civil Protection official said early on Monday.
        Reminding that firefighters have a “very difficult day” ahead, the official said the wildfire is still 10% active and the remaining flames require “a lot of attention.”
        Around 1,040 firefighters are on the ground, backed up by 332 firefighting vehicles and five airplanes, according to Civil Protection.
        After spreading to the neighboring Santarem district, the three wildfires threatened several villages in the Vila de Rei and Macao municipalities, forcing evacuations and injuring 31 people, one in serious condition.
        A number of municipalities in Santarem and Castelo Branco are still considered at maximum risk of fire, according to the national meteorological agency.    Temperatures could reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas on Monday.    Low humidity and moderate wind is also expected.
    (Reporting by Catarina Demony in Lisbon and Miguel Pereira and Rafael Marchante in Vila de Rei and Macao; editing by Axel Bugge, Larry King)
  • 7/22/2019 Death toll from India, Nepal, Bangladesh floods jumps to over 300 by Serajul Quadir and Sudarshan Varadhan
    A flood-affected woman wades through flooded area in Jamalpur, Bangladesh July 21, 2019. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain     DHAKA/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – The death toll from severe flooding in parts of India, Nepal and Bangladesh rose to more than 300 on Monday, even as heavy rains are starting to ebb and water levels started to recede in some of the worst-affected areas.
        Heavy rains and overflowing rivers swamped vast swathes of eastern India more than week ago, and officials on Monday said so far 102 people have died in Bihar state, 35 more than what the state government had estimated on Thursday.
        Torrential rains in Bangladesh killed more than 47 people in the last two weeks and at least 120 are missing and feared dead following severe floods and landslides in mostly mountainous Nepal, authorities from the two countries said.
        Parts of Pakistan have also been flooded.
        In Bangladesh, at least 700,000 people have been displaced.
        Deaths due to flooding in the region more than doubled in the last five days.
        At least five districts in central Bangladesh are at the risk of being flooded, as water levels of two rivers are still rising, an official at the Bangladesh Water Development Board told Reuters.
        Authorities are struggling to deliver relief supplies to marooned people.
        “We have enough relief materials but the main problem is to reach out to the people,” Foyez Ahmed, deputy commissioner of Bangladesh’s Bogra district, said.    “We don’t have adequate transport facilities to move to the areas that are deep under water.”
        In India’s tea-growing state of Assam, close to the border of Bangladesh, severe flooding has displaced millions of people and killed more than 60, officials have said.
        Separately, at least 32 people were killed on Sunday in lightning strikes in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state in the north.
        India’s weather office on Monday forecast “extremely heavy” rain in four of the 14 districts of the southern state of Kerala.
        Kerala last year faced its worst floods in about a century, with heavy rain and landslides killing nearly 500 people, destroying houses and wiping out farmlands.
        Monsoon rains, which deliver 75% of India’s annual rain, have not been evenly distributed.
        The Himalayan region has received substantially more rain than some of the areas in the plains, where rainfall deficiency has widened to 60%, according to the state-run India Meteorological Department.
    (Writing by Sudarshan Varadhan; Editing by Mayank Bhardwaj & Kim Coghill)
  • 7/22/2019 Heatwave across U.S. cooling down, power being restored by OAN Newsroom
        A cold front is coming and power is slowly being restored after a heatwave affecting 195 million people across the U.S. comes to a close.    However, it didn’t come without tragedy.
        At least seven people died from weather-related incidents, including former New York Giants lineman Mitch Petrus. The former NFL player died from heat stroke in Arkansas while under heat advisory.     Temperatures hit the high 90s and into the 100s for some areas over the weekend. That sweltering heat was believed to be the cause of a power outage affecting 53,000 people in New York on Saturday, and more than 300,000 people in Michigan on Sunday.
        “Everything started to dim out, the lights were dimming, the air conditioner was getting slower and slower, and then full no power — my fridge, my oven, everything went off, same time.” — Lynne Sabag, resident – New York.
    A woman drinks water in Times Square as temperatures reach the mid-to-upper 90s Saturday, July 20, 2019, in New York. Americans
    from Texas to Maine sweated out a steamy Saturday as a heat wave spurred cancellations of events from festivals to horse races
    and the nation’s biggest city ordered steps to save power to stave off potential problems. (AP Photo/Jonathan Carroll)     Utility companies were able to restore power for many in New York, but officials said power may not be restored for everyone until Wednesday.
        According to the National Weather Service, cooler temperatures and low pressure will be relieving much of the U.S. as early as Monday and Tuesday.    However, this may prompt heavy rains and thunderstorms.    These storms are putting areas from Tennessee to New England on high alert for flash flooding with the possibility of even more power outages.
        While the heat wave is cooling down, officials are still urging those under a heat advisory to stay hydrated and look out for those most vulnerable.
  • 7/23/2019 New shark species is just a little squirt by Ryan W. Miller, USA TODAY
        A tiny shark captured in the Gulf of Mexico was identified as a new species of pocket shark that shoots glow-in-the-dark fluid from pouches near its gills, researchers said.
        A team of scientists from universities and research groups around the Gulf and New York identified the 5 1/2-inch male shark as the American pocket shark, or Mollisquama mississippiensis.
        The only other pocket shark to be captured was caught in the eastern Pacific Ocean in 1979, but researchers identified five unique features in the male shark that make it a new species.
    The new species of what’s known as a pocket shark was caught in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s able to
    shoot clouds of glow-in-the-dark fluid to hide itself or attract prey. MARK GRACE/AP
  • 7/23/2019 Strong winds reignite wildfires in central Portugal
    Firefighters help to put out a forest fire next to the village of Vila de Rei, Portugal July 21, 2019. REUTERS/Rafael Marchante     VILA DE REI/MACAO, Portugal (Reuters) – More than 1,000 firefighters battled wildfires in central Portugal on Monday, forcing the evacuation of several villages as the authorities hoped to limit the number of residents at risk.
        So far 33 people have been injured, including one who is in a serious condition.    Portugal’s Civil Protection said some houses had been destroyed in the fires.
        The fires are small in comparison to a massive fire which hit the same region in June 2017 that killed 64 people and burnt about 55,000 hectares in a few days.
        But with temperatures set to reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas on Monday, a number of municipalities in Santarem and Castelo Branco districts, northeast of the capital Lisbon, are on high alert.
        Civil Protection said earlier on Monday the fire, which broke out on Saturday afternoon, was 90% under control but warned that the remaining blazes required “a lot of attention” as the winds whipped up later in the day, fanning the flames in tinder dry conditions.
        Covered in eucalyptus and pine trees, central Portugal is frequently hit by summer blazes, with hilly terrain making it especially difficult for firefighters to reach.
        Villagers, as well as local authorities in Macao and Vila de Rei, areas in the heart of the fire zone, said there were not enough firefighters and resources to combat the flames.
        Sheep farmer Joaquim Ribeiro told Reuters there were no firefighters when the blaze arrived at his village in Macao, forcing him to transfer his animals somewhere else.    “It was a pandemonium,” he told Reuters.
        Around 1,053 firefighters are on the ground, backed up by 328 firefighting vehicles and 13 airplanes, Portugal’s Civil Protection department said.
        “We have the capacity to respond (to the wildfire), both terrestrial and aerial, because the whole focus is on this operation,” Civil Protection commander Pedro Nunes told reporters.
        Spain announced late on Monday that it was sending two aircraft to help tackle the fires.
        Data from the European Union fire mapping service showed about 8,500 hectares burnt over the weekend.
    (Reporting by Catarina Demony in Lisbon and Miguel Pereira and Rafael Marchante in Vila de Rei and Macao; Writing by Catarina Demony; Editing by Axel Bugge and Alison Williams)
  • 7/23/2019 Singapore seizes ivory from nearly 300 elephants in record haul
    Pangolin scales and elephant ivory that were seized by Singapore's National Parks Board, Customs and Immigration
    and Checkpoints Authority from a shipment from the Democratic Republic of Congo are seen in Singapore, in this undatedz
    handout released on July 23, 2019. Singapore National Parks Board/Handout via REUTERS     SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Singapore said on Tuesday it had seized 8.8 tonnes of elephant ivory, a record haul by authorities in the city-state, which conservation groups say is a transit point for the illegal wildlife trade.
        The elephant ivory, estimated to be worth $12.9 million, came from nearly 300 African elephants, and was heading to Vietnam through Singapore from Democratic Republic of the Congo.
        The haul also contained the third major seizure of pangolin scales in Singapore this year.
        The pangolin, a scaly anteater, is one of the most trafficked mammals in the world.    Its meat is considered a delicacy in Vietnam and China, and the scales are used in traditional Chinese medicine, though the benefits are disputed by medical scientists.
        “The seized pangolin scales and elephant ivory will be destroyed to prevent them from re-entering the market,” the Singapore Customs, Immigration and Checkpoints Authority and the National Parks Board said, adding that the July 21 seizure came after a tip-off from China’s customs department.
        The ivory haul falls just short of 9.1 tonnes seizure in Vietnam in March, which non-government organization Environmental Investigation Agency said was thought to be the largest ever globally.
        There has been a flurry of seizures, including of rhino horns, in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Vietnam in recent months.
        “Singapore has always been inadvertently implicated in the global ivory trade for two reasons: its global connectivity, as well as the presence of a small domestic market where pre-1990s ivory can be legally sold,” said Kim Stengert, chief communications officer for WWF Singapore.
        “The consistency of these large-scale seizures is strong evidence of organized crime behind illegal wildlife trade coming through or into Singapore.”
        Singapore authorities said the latest seizure also contained 11.9 tonnes of pangolin scales, worth about $35.7 million and equivalent to close to 2,000 pangolins.
        Singapore has seized a total of 37.5 tonnes of pangolin scales since April, including one raid which was the biggest of its kind worldwide in five years.
        The city-state is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and says it is committed to the global effort to curb the illegal wildlife trade.
    (Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan and John Geddie; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
  • 7/23/2019 Greta Thunberg to French MPs: you can ignore children, not scientists by Simon Carraud and Geert De Clercq
    Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, Ivy-Fleur Boileau, Virgile Mouquet, Adelaide Charlier
    and Alicia Arquetoux, French activists from the Youth for Climate movement, attend the questions to the government
    session at the National Assembly in Paris, France, July 23, 2019. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer     PARIS (Reuters) – Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg said on Tuesday it was ok for some members of the French parliament to ignore her and other children’s warnings about global warming but she implored them to listen to scientists.
        Ahead of her speech to a group of MPs, conservative and far-right lawmakers hurled insults and said they would shun the 16-year-old, who has inspired a global network of young climate protesters.
        Invited by a cross-party group of politicians, Thunberg and several other children spoke to a French parliamentary committee meeting and later watched from the public gallery as parliament voted on a controversial EU-Canada trade agreement.
        “Some people have chosen not to come here today, some have chosen not to listen to us and that is fine, we are after all just children, you don’t have to listen to us.    But you do have to listen to the scientists, that is all we ask,” Thunberg said.
        Two leading MPs for the conservative Les Republicains party of former President Nicolas Sarkozy had called Thunberg a “guru of the apocalypse,” “Nobel prize of fear” and other insults.    One of them called on fellow MPs to boycott her speech.
        Recent months have seen millions of young people worldwide walk out of school on Fridays to back Thunberg’s demands for urgent action from governments to curb carbon emissions.
        Thunberg began a climate protest outside the Swedish parliament last August.    The Fridays for Future school strike movement has since spread to more than 100 countries.
        A European MP for the far-right Rassemblement National said it was wrong to bring in “the Joan of Arc of climate change” while parliament is voting on the EU-Canada trade deal.”
        Green activists have criticized the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) saying it undermines the European Union’s social and ecological regulations by importing products made under conditions that would not be allowed in Europe.
        “Greta or CETA, your choice,” said MP Francois Ruffin of the far-left La France Insoumise.
        Parliament approved the CETA agreement with a relatively small majority of 266 to 213 votes, with 69 MPS of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance either abstaining or voting against it.    The alliance has a total of 349 seats in the 577-seat parliament.
        “Those who are turning a deaf ear to the warnings of youth are making a mistake,” said independent MP Matthieu Orphelin, who had organised Thunberg’s visit.
    (Writing by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Catherine Evans and Frances Kerry)
  • 7/23/2019 More than 60 killed, hundreds of thousands displaced by flooding in Bangladesh by Ruma Paul and Serajul Quadir
    People cross a flooded road in Jamalpur, Bangladesh, July 22, 2019. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain     DHAKA (Reuters) – Severe flooding has killed at least 61 people, displaced nearly 800,000 and inundated thousands of homes across a third of Bangladesh, government officials said on Tuesday, after two weeks of heavy monsoon rains.
        Nearly 3 million people are struggling with flooding, the worst in two years, according to the disaster management and relief ministry.
        As water levels began to recede, authorities expressed concern about outbreaks of infectious diseases in the country of more than 160 million.
        “With the receding flood waters across the country, there is a possibility of outbreaks of water-borne diseases,” Shah Kamal, secretary of the disaster management and relief ministry, told Reuters by phone from Sirajganj, a flood-hit district 130 km (81 miles) from the capital Dhaka.
        “That’s why we are setting up water treatment plants in the flood-affected areas on a priority basis,” he said.
        At least 22 patients with symptoms of diarrhoea and some other ailments were admitted to hospital in the northern Bogra district, said surgeon Gowsul Azam.
        Raqibul Alam, spokesman of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Society in Bangladesh, said about 700 volunteers, including 100 staff, were engaged in relief operations in the northern and northwestern parts of Bangladesh.
        The Red Cross is providing food, drinking water and other aid, including 4,500 taka ($54) per family to help flood victims, Alam said.
        Kamal said the government had earmarked 45.80 million taka ($543,684) to help people rebuild houses.
        Two officials from the agriculture department said early estimates suggested farmers had lost agricultural produce worth more than $40 million.
        “The losses will be substantially higher when we get a full list from different flood-affected areas,” said one official.
        About 9 km of embankments, 172 km of roads and nearly 250 bridges and culverts had been damaged by the floods, according to a preliminary assessment by the disaster management and relief ministry.
        In neighboring Nepal, torrential rain caused landslides that swept away five houses on Tuesday, killing eight people in Gulmi district in the west, police said.    Four others were missing and two were injured, police official Dipak Basnet said.
    .     Authorities said the latest deaths take to 100 the number of people killed in rains in the past two weeks in the Himalayan nation.    Thirty others are missing across Nepal.
    (Additional reporting by Gopal Sharma in KATHMANDU; editing by Mayank Bhardwaj and Janet Lawrence)
  • 7/23/2019 Portugal wildfire under control, firefighters remain on the ground
    An orange tree is seen after a forest fire at the village of Roda, Portugal, July 23, 2019. REUTERS/Rafael Marchante     LISBON (Reuters) – More than 1,000 firefighters managed to bring a major wildfire in central Portugal under control on Tuesday, and the operation will carry on to avoid reignitions, officials said.
        After around 70 hours, the last of three wildfires that broke out on Saturday in Castelo Branco, a district 225 km (1 40 miles) northeast of Lisbon, is under control, with firefighters now keeping an eye on adverse weather conditions.
        Strong winds, high temperatures and low humidity are expected later on Tuesday, the Civil Protection said.
        So far, 41 people have received support from emergency services, including 16 people who suffered minor injuries and one who was in serious condition.    Portugal’s Civil Protection department said some villagers had been evacuated as a precaution and houses had been destroyed.
        Villagers, as well as authorities in Macao and Vila de Rei, areas in the heart of the fire zone, said there were not enough firefighters and resources to combat the flames.
        “A tractor burned, a jeep burned and a house burned.    No firefighter showed up, no police, nobody showed up,” a local resident, Carlos Martins, told Reuters.    “We were alone.”
        Covered in eucalyptus and pine trees, central Portugal is frequently hit by summer blazes, with hilly terrain making it especially difficult for firefighters to reach.
        Around 1,020 firefighters remain on the ground, supported by 320 firefighting vehicles and three aircraft.    No more firefighters will be mobilized, Civil Protection said.
        Data from the European Union fire-mapping service showed about 8,500 hectares (21,000 acres) burned over the weekend.
        The fire was small in comparison with a massive blaze that hit the same region in June 2017, killing 64 people and burning about 55,000 hectares (136,000 acres) in a few days.    That was the worst disaster in modern Portuguese history.     Internal Administration Minister Eduardo Cabrita said police had opened an investigation into the fires.    Portugal’s judiciary police have collected evidence that could be related to the fires’ origin, an official told Lusa news agency.
    (Reporting by Catarina Demony in Lisbon and Miguel Pereira and Rafael Marchante in Vila de Rei and Macao; Writing by Catarina Demony; Editing by Axel Bugge and Peter Graff)
  • 7/23/2019 Indonesia to close island in bid to save Komodo dragons by Tabita Diela
    A Komodo Dragon is seen in Komodo National Park, Indonesia April 6, 2018. REUTERS/Henning Gloystein     JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia plans to close its eastern island of Komodo to the public next year in a bid to conserve rare Komodo dragons, the largest living species of lizard, a provincial official said on Tuesday.
        The island is part of Komodo National Park, a conservation area between the islands of Sumbawa and Flores visited by more than 176,000 tourists from all over the world in 2018.
        As well as the beautiful beaches and scenery, many visitors came to see the dragons, only found in the wild in eastern Indonesia.
        “We have to save Komodo dragons from extinction, that’s the point,” Josef Nae Soi, deputy governor of the province of East Nusa Tenggara, told Reuters.
        Even after the closure of the island, where about 1,700 of the animals are estimated to live, others in the national park that are home to Komodo dragons, such as the islands of Rinca and Padar, will stay open, he said.
        Closing the island to tourists aims to avert interference and cut the risk of poaching to allow a recovery in the numbers of the animals’ preferred prey, such as deer, buffalo and wild boar.
        “People come wanting to see… how (the dragons) mate, how they lay their eggs, how they hatch, and how the young Komodos fight for their life,” Soi said.
        The island could reopen a year later, but it was planned to be a premium tourist destination, he said.
        Media had previously suggested the province planned to charge tourists an entrance fee of $500, but Soi said no fee had been decided.
        Plans to limit visitors have sparked controversy in the island’s tourism industry as well as among residents who depend on visitors for their livelihood.
        Soi acknowledged some resistance, but said President Joko Widodo approved the plan and authorities were holding talks with local leaders on how best to relocate residents.
        “We want Komodo island to be intended for conservation,” Widodo was quoted on the website of the cabinet secretary as saying after a visit to the nearby island of Rinca last week.    “If you can’t afford it, you don’t need to go there.”
    (Editing by Ed Davies)
  • 7/24/2019 Japan’s Tepco to decommission second Fukushima nuclear station by Aaron Sheldrick
    FILE PHOTO: A reactor building (R) and turbine building are seen at Japan Atomic Power Co's Tokai Daini nuclear power plant during a
    media tour in Tokai village in Ibaraki prefecture, about 120 km (75 miles) north of Tokyo, April 19, 2011 REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao/File Photo     TOKYO (Reuters) – Tokyo Electric Power <9501.T> said on Wednesday it plans to decommission its Fukushima Daini nuclear station, located a few miles south of the bigger Fukushima Daiichi plant where three reactors melted down after an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
        Scrapping the reactors could mean Japanese nuclear operators would decommission 21 units, or nearly 40% of their pre-disaster fleet, saddling them will billions of dollars of costs to dismantle and decontaminate the facilities.
        Before the March 2011 tsunami, nuclear power served about 30% of Japan’s electricity requirements.    The nuclear station shutdown forced Japan to use record quantities of imported thermal coal and liquefied natural gas to replace the lost generation capacity.
        The company, also known as Tepco, said it would forward a proposal to its board on decommissioning the Daini station.
        A company spokeswoman declined to provide further details or specify when the meeting would be held.
        Tepco President Tomoaki Kobayakawa has plans to visit Fukushima on Wednesday and update prefecture and municipal officials on Daini station, the company said earlier in the day.
        The company had said in June last year it was considering decommissioning the reactors at the Daini station.
        A Reuters analysis late last year showed it was unlikely that Daini would ever restart.
        Japan has eight reactors operating and many are still going through a relicencing process under new safety standards imposed after the disaster highlighted regulatory and operational failings.
        Three reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, which had six reactors and is located about 12 kilometers (7 miles) north of Fukushima Daini, suffered meltdowns after the giant March 2011 earthquake and tsunami shut down the plant’s cooling systems.
        The 2011 disaster forced 160,000 people to evacuate areas near the Fukushima plant and many of them have not returned to the most contaminated areas.
        Japan’s government estimated in 2016 that the total cost of dismantling Fukushima Daiichi, decontaminating the affected areas, and paying compensation would amount to about $200 billion.
        The Daini station, which has four reactors, also came close to a disaster, but retained enough back-up power to keep cooling going.    Successive Fukushima governors had called for it to be scrapped.
        Scrapping the Daini station will leave Tepco with just one potentially operational nuclear station, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, where the company is trying to revive two of the eight reactors under new safety regulations against strong local opposition.
        It will also leave Japan with 33 reactors, compared with 54 before the disaster: many operators decided to scrap older units that would cost too much to meet new safety standards imposed after the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl in 1986.
    (Reporting by Aaron Sheldrick and Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
  • 7/24/2019 Thousands evacuate in northern Ariz. as massive wildfire continues to burn by OAN Newsroom
        Thousands of residents in Arizona are under evacuation as rescue crews continue to fight a massive wildfire.    According to reports Wednesday the ‘Museum Fire’ is now at 10-percent containment.    The blaze, which started Sunday night, has already consumed nearly 2,000 acres of land.
        Governor Doug Ducey issued a state of emergency Tuesday for both the city of Flagstaff and Coconino County.    There have been no reports of damaged homes or structures so far.
        “Right now, in terms of some statistics for you, we’ve got 500 firefighters on the ground, 11 hot shot crews, several helicopters and air tankers as needed with additional resources on the way,” stated Governor Ducey.    “1,800 acres, so far, have been burned — this risk is very real.”
    Officials are continuing to investigate how the fire started, with some believing it was caused human-caused.
        In this Sunday, July 21, 2019, photo, a tanker releases a wave of fire retardant into the crest of a
    wildfire line in Flagstaff, Ariz. Crews on Monday were trying to keep the wildfire in a
    popular Arizona vacation area from homes and a ski resort. (Ben Shanahan/Arizona Daily Sun via AP)
  • 7/25/2019 Lightning kills 39, strands many in India by Indrajit Singh, ASSOCIATED PRESS
        PATNA, India – Lightning killed at least 39 people during thunderstorms and heavy rains that lashed eastern India, where thousands of people were stranded on high ground, an official said Wednesday.
        Disaster Management official Amod Kumar Sharan said the deaths occurred Tuesday, raising the overall death toll in Bihar state to 123 from lightning and flooding since the monsoon season started in June.    As rain stopped in some areas Wednesday, helicopters dropped food for villagers.
        On Sunday, 33 people were killed by lightning in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.    They were mostly farmers working in fields.
        Millions of people were hit by floods, their homes and crops devastated by surging waters in the worsthit Bihar and Assam states.
        The flood situation in northeastern Assam state continued to be grim on Wednesday with the toll mounting to 74 since early this month, the Press Trust of India news agency said.
        Floodwaters have inundated vast swaths of land in 20 of 33 state districts in Assam.
  • 7/25/2019 Earth’s hottest month on record? July 2019 is being called a climate change beacon by Doyle Rice, USA TODAY
        Fueled by record-breaking warmth in Europe, the U.S. and the Arctic and supercharged by global warming, scientists say July 2019 will be the hottest month for the Earth since records began in 1880.
        In other words, of the past 1,675 months since January 1880 – during the administration of President Rutherford B. Hayes – July 2019 likely will be the hottest.
        Such extreme heat is a calling card of human-caused climate change: “Climate change made such a record hot month ‘far more likely,’” Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann said in an email to USA TODAY.
        The previous hottest month was July 2017.
        Though final official data won’t be available until early August, numerous scientists have weighed in with their predictions on Twitter:     “July is going to be the warmest month on record globally,” University of Oklahoma meteorologist Jason Furtado said.    “That is a big deal.”
        BAM Weather’s Ryan Maue said, “July 2019 will be *hottest* month on record ... up my odds to 90% likely.”
        “Earth ... (is) on track for (its) warmest July,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, head of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
        According to data from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000, a trend that scientists have tied mainly to emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities, the Capital Weather Gang said.
        Global warming, aka climate change, is caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal, which release heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
        And 2019 is almost certain to end up as one of the three warmest years on record, NOAA said.
        It’s been a brutally hot summer around the globe. Europe suffered through an intense heat wave in late June that saw the highest temperature ever recorded in France.    The extreme heat in Europe contributed to the Earth’s hottest June on record.
        And this past weekend, tens of millions of people across the USA were under heat alerts as temperatures in cities such as New York City, Little Rock and Memphis rocketed above 100 degrees.
        Another heat wave is scorching Europe this week, and an all-time record high is possible in Paris and the United Kingdom on Thursday.
        Heat waves are happening more frequently in large parts of Europe, Asia and Australia, experts say.    As the world warms, scientists say there will be more – and hotter – heat waves.
        A team of European scientists did a quick analysis of Europe’s June heat wave and found man-made warming made it at least five times more likely.
        “Either of the two European heat waves this summer would have been remarkable in isolation,” Mann said.    “But now we are seeing multiple episodes of record heat in a given summer. By mid-century, we will simply call these episodes ‘summer’ – if we continue on this trajectory.”
  • 7/25/2019 Climate records fall as Europe bakes in heatwave
    People catch a wave at the Eisbach river during a sunny day in downtown Munich, southern Germany, July 25, 2019. REUTERS/Michael Dalder     PARIS/LONDON (Reuters) – Soaring temperatures broke records in Germany, France, Britain and the Netherlands on Thursday, as a heatwave gripped Europe for the second time in a month in what scientists said were becoming more frequent events as the planet heats up.
        As a cauldron of hot air from the Sahara desert moved across the continent, drawn northwards by high pressure, Paris saw its highest temperature since records began and Britain reported its hottest weather for the month of July.
        An all-time high was measured in Germany for a second day running, at 41.5 degrees Celsius (106.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in the northwestern town of Lingen – similar temperatures to those in some Gulf Arab capitals on Thursday.
        The unusual conditions brought a reduction in French and German nuclear power output, disrupted rail travel in parts of Britain and sent some Europeans, not habitual users of air conditioning in their homes, out to the shops in search of fans.
        Health authorities issued warnings to the elderly, especially vulnerable to spikes in temperature.    In cities, children splashed about in water fountains to cool off.
        “It’s very hot at the moment. I saw 42 degrees (Celsius) is forecast for today,” said 19-year-old French tourist Ombeline Massot in the capital’s Montmartre district, where visitors drank chilled bottles of water and fanned themselves.
        The mercury in Paris touched 42.6 C (108.68 F) in mid-afternoon, above the previous Paris record of 40.4 C (104.72 F) recorded in July 1947.
        In Britain, the temperature reached its highest for July, hitting 38.1 C (100.58 F), said the Met Office, the national weather service.    The temperature, recorded in Cambridge, beat the previously July record of 36.7 C (98.06°F) in 2015.
        This was the second highest temperature recorded in the country.    The hottest day, in August 2003, saw 38.5 C (101.3 F).
        In the southern Netherlands, the temperature peaked at 40.4 C (104.7 F), topping 40 C (104 F) for the first time on record, Dutch meteorology institute KNMI said.    That broke the national record of 39.3 C set the previous day. Before this week, the national heat record of 38.6 C had stood for 75 years.
        The heat is expected to persist until Friday.
    GLOBAL WARMING
        Climate specialists said such heatwaves are becoming more frequent as a result of global warming from greenhouse gas emissions.
        Britons faced travel disruption, with trains being forced to slow down to prevent tracks buckling in the heat.    Several train operators asked commuters not to travel or set off very early.
        A Met Office study found that a heatwave like one that broke records last year was 30 times more likely to occur than in 1750, because of the high amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.    Since the pre-industrial period the Earth’s surface temperature has risen by 1 degree Celsius.
        “There is a 40-50% chance that this will be the warmest July on record.    This heatwave is exactly in line with climate change predictions,” said Dr Karsten Haustein at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford.
        Peter Inness, senior research fellow at the University of Reading, said: “The fact that so many recent years have had very high summer temperatures both globally and across Europe is very much in line with what we expect from man-made global warming.”
        In northern Poland, toxic algae in the Baltic sea led to the closure of more than 15 beaches this summer, authorities said.
        “The Baltic sea isn’t the cleanest and when the temperatures are so high, then these organisms multiply at lightning speed and beaches need to be closed,” said Jan Bondar, a spokesman for Poland’s Chief Sanitary Inspectorate.
        Very high temperatures across Europe coupled with prolonged dry weather has cut French nuclear power generation by around 5.2 gigawatts (GW) or 8%, French power grid operator RTE’s data showed.
        Electricity output was curtailed at six reactors by 0840 GMT on Thursday, while two other reactors were offline, data showed. High water temperatures and sluggish flows limit the ability to use river water to cool reactors.
        In Germany, PreussenElektra, the nuclear unit of utility E.ON, said it would take its Grohnde reactor offline on Friday due to high temperatures in the Weser river.
    (Reporting by Nina Chestney and Susanna Twidale in London, Richard Lough in Paris, Thomas Escritt in Germany, Alexandra Regida in Brussels and Bart Meijer in Amsterdam, Joanna Plucinska and Agnieszka Barteczko in Warsaw, Editing by William Maclean and Jon Boyle)
  • 7/25/2019 Deployment of second Ebola vaccine would not be quick fix, experts warn by Fiston Mahamba, Kate Kelland and Aaron Ross
    FILE PHOTO: A Congolese health worker administers ebola vaccine to a child at the Himbi Health Centre
    in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, July 17, 2019. REUTERS/Olivia Acland/File Photo     GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – The resignation of Congo’s health minister in the midst of the country’s worst Ebola outbreak could clear the way for a second experimental vaccine to be deployed. But the new shot would likely take months to win the trust of frightened locals and show results, health officials say.
        Oly Ilunga, who opposed using the vaccine developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, resigned as minister on Monday after being bumped off the Ebola response team.
        The World Health Organization recommended the two-dose shot to complement a vaccine by U.S. drugmaker Merck, which has proved highly protective but is in relatively short supply.
        Proponents, including medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and the Wellcome Trust, said the new vaccine could be deployed to areas not yet affected by Ebola to create a firewall against the virus, which the WHO declared an international health emergency last week.
        But Ilunga said the J&J vaccine had not been proven effective and could confuse people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where wild rumours are hampering the response.
        “Congolese have the right to have the gold standard, the best vaccine,” he told Reuters on Thursday, in his first public comments since resigning.    “They don’t need to be the subject of experimentation.”
        “You can’t have a group of promoters, producers of the vaccine (and) university researchers wanting to introduce the vaccine without contacting the health authorities,” he said, without elaborating further.
        Paul Stoffels, J&J’s chief scientific officer, denied there were any efforts to secretly introduce the vaccine and said the company had been in full communication with Congolese authorities.
        But scepticism about new medicines can resonate strongly on a continent where some pharmaceutical trials have faced accusations in the past of failing to obtain informed consent and providing subpar care to participants.
        For example, some U.S. government-funded trials of HIV drugs in the 1990s were accused of double standards for giving placebos to women in Africa when effective therapies existed, a practice that is not generally allowed in the United States and other Western nations on ethical grounds.    Researchers defended the use of placebos as scientifically necessary.
        Jean-Jacques Muyembe, an epidemiologist and Ebola expert named to lead Congo’s response team, dismissed Ilunga’s concerns and said authorities would revisit whether to deploy a second vaccine. However, he downplayed the importance of the decision.I don’t think that a vaccine is what’s holding back the response,” he told Reuters, noting that previous Ebola outbreaks had been contained quickly without a vaccine.
        “We could use or not use.    It won’t change the evolution of the epidemic,” he said.
    “NOT ETHICAL”
        The nearly year-long outbreak has infected more than 2,500 people and killed more than 1,700, numbers topped only by a 2014-16 outbreak in West Africa that killed more than 11,300.    This month, a case was detected in Goma, a city of 2 million on the border with Rwanda, heightening fears about the spread of the haemorrhagic fever.
        Efforts to contain it have been undermined by mistrust of health workers and violence by armed militias.    Treatment centres have been attacked.
        Local campaigners say people are scared and confused about the various medicines being used.    In addition to the vaccine, four experimental treatments are being given to Ebola patients.
        All are still unlicensed, which means they can only be used in clinical trials overseen by Congo’s health ministry.
        “We should not introduce a second vaccine when we don’t yet have scientifically-proven conclusions from the one currently being tested,” said Matina Mwanack, the administrator of an advocacy group in the eastern Congo city of Butembo called Families United Against Ebola.
        “(We) have suffered a lot from the lack of needed information about the vaccines and treatments being tested.”
        Omar Kavota, who heads a group of religious and political leaders in eastern Congo, said “introducing a second vaccine would amplify rumours,” including over why some patients got one while others received the second.
        Muyembe said communicators had been appointed to make the process more transparent.
    STOCKPILES
        Proponents of a second vaccine argue it can only be tested in a live outbreak, since it would be unethical to deliberately infect trial volunteers.    They propose deploying it where the disease has not yet spread, while the Merck vaccine continues to be used to protect contacts of suspected cases.
        “Both vaccines should work hand in hand,” said Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and one of the scientists who first discovered the Ebola virus.
        Since the West African outbreak, J&J has tested its vaccine on more than 6,000 volunteers in a dozen trials, confirming its safety and ability to generate an immune response.
        It requires two injections 56 days apart – another obstacle cited by Ilunga – in an area where fighting causes frequent displacement, but should last longer.
        “The goal is to give a long-term safe profile for people who may never be exposed to Ebola,” said J&J’s Stoffels, adding that 1.5 million doses were available.
        Josie Golding, head of epidemics at the Wellcome Trust, said “we could run out of Merck vaccines” if the outbreak extends into a second year. Health authorities have already begun using smaller doses to ration supplies.
        Congo’s health ministry disputes there is a shortage of the Merck vaccine.    The company said it expects to have about 900,000 doses available over the next six to 18 months, in addition to the 195,000 doses it has already donated.
  • 7/25/2019 EU asks court to force Spain, Bulgaria to tackle air pollution
    FILE PHOTO - Smog is seen over central Madrid, Spain, December 28, 2016. REUTERS/Paul Hanna     BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The EU executive on Thursday asked the bloc’s top court to take action against Spain and Bulgaria over their poor air quality, warning that the countries were failing to protect citizens against pollution.
        Spain exceeded limits of nitrogen dioxide, specifically in the two big cities of Madrid and Barcelona, where the legal levels are constantly exceeded, the European Commission’s decision stated.
        “The newest air quality data provided by Spain confirms the systematic breach of EU rules on nitrogen dioxide values, which have been legally binding since 2010,” the Commission said, referring the matter to the Court of Justice of the EU.
        The decision could complicate an attempt by Madrid’s new conservative council to lift a low-emission scheme that permits only certain vehicles, primarily electric and hybrid cars, to enter the restricted central area.    A judge last week blocked the council’s attempt to lift the restrictions.
        Nitrogen dioxide causes about 9,000 premature deaths every year in Spain, according to the European Environment Agency.
        In Bulgaria, data showed that the country was exceeding sulfur dioxide levels, its second instance of non-compliance with the bloc’s air quality standards.    In 2017, the court ruled the country was not within the limits for particulate matter.
        The Commission did not say in its statement if it has asked the court to consider fines, but under the EU’s so-called infringement procedure, financial penalties of either a daily payment or a lump sum can eventually be imposed.
        The Commission also said on Thursday it had sent a letter to Poland warning of legal action for failing to comply with a 2018 air quality decision, notably in transport and the replacement of what it said were outdated solid fuel boilers used for heating households.
        The EU executive also urged Croatia and Romania to address failures in monitoring pollution.
    (Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis, editing by Robin Emmott)
  • 7/26/2019 Tanzania to shut part of wildlife preserve to big game hunters by Fumbuka Ng’wanakilala
    FILE PHOTO: A herd of elephants is seen at the Singita Grumeti Game Reserve, Tanzania,
    October 7, 2018. Picture taken October 7, 2018. REUTERS/Baz Ratner     DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) – Tanzanian President John Magufuli on Friday ordered the sprawling Selous Game Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site, to be split in two to restrict the access of big game hunters.
        Covering 50,000 sq km (19,000 sq miles), the Selous reserve is one of the largest protected areas in Africa, and is famed for its elephants, lions, black rhinos, hippos and giraffes.
        About 8% of the Selous, which is larger than Switzerland, is dedicated to photo-tourism while the rest is a hunting reserve.
        “Tourists come here and kill our lions, but we don’t benefit a lot from these wildlife hunting activities,” Magufuli said.
        “I want the Selous Game Reserve to be split into two.    A bigger area of the wildlife sanctuary on the upper side should be turned into a national park where hunting activities are not permitted.”
        Magufuli said some 47 hunting blocks licensed to tourist hunting companies would be allowed to continue to operate in the lower part of the game reserve.
        He did not specify the size of either area but said the move would “preserve our wildlife species and boost the growth of the tourism sector.”
        Tourism is the main source of hard currency in Tanzania, which is known for its beaches, wildlife safaris and Mount Kilimanjaro.
        The sector brought in $2.43 billion last year, up from $2.19 billion in 2017, according to government data.
        Magufuli made his announcement at the inauguration of construction work for the $3 billion Rufiji hydroelectric project at Stiegler’s Gorge, inside the Selous reserve.
        The World Wildlife Fund said the proposed dam would put the site and the livelihoods of over 200,000 people at risk, and that UNESCO had warned that any resulting damage would put the Selous’s status of World Heritage Site at risk.
        Magufuli said the project would take up only 3 percent of the wildlife sanctuary.
        “Tanzania is among global leaders in conservation activities, having allocated over 32 percent of our country’s total land to conservation,” he said. “Nobody can teach us about conservation.”
    (Editing by Katharine Houreld and Kevin Liffey)
  
  

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