Friday, March 31, 2023
The waters of the Amazon
The cloud masses above the Amazon rainforest contain more water than the Amazon itself. When these "flying rivers" hit the Andes they are pushed south and rain down over the cities of South America. The Amazon rainforest is immense, stretching across several countries. Considered the green lung of the earth, it is one of the regions with the greatest biodiversity in the world.
How the World's Oldest Hotel Survived 1300 Years ★ ONLY in JAPAN
Keiunkan is the World's Oldest Hotel, the 2nd oldest business and their secret to surviving so long boils down to a simple explanation - but of course it's more complicated than that. This story will give you much insight into family businesses in Japan and why Japan has 9 of the top 15 oldest businesses in the world.
Investigating Russian crimes in Bucha: Identifying those responsible
We speak with Arie Mora, a lawyer at an NGO called the Ukrainian Legal Advisory Group, which is a member of an alliance of human rights organizations called the Ukraine 5AM Coalition. They collect and document war crimes, and crimes against humanity committed during Russia's armed aggression in Ukraine.
Six In The Morning Friday 31 March 2023
Stampede at food distribution centre kills 11 people in Pakistan
Women and children die when people panic and push each other to collect food in Karachi, officials say.
A stampede at a Ramadan food distribution centre in Pakistan’s southern city of Karachi has killed at least 11 people, all women and children, according to police and rescue officials.
Several people were also injured in Friday’s incident, which happened when hundreds of people panicked and started pushing each other to collect food outside a factory. Some of them fell into a nearby drain, police official Mughees Hashmi said.
Residents said a wall also collapsed near the drain, injuring and killing people amid the stampede.
Local media reported that eight women and three children died.
Oscar Pistorius denied parole over killing of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp
Former Paralympic and Olympic star was automatically eligible for parole consideration after serving half his sentence
The former South Africa athlete Oscar Pistorius has been denied parole over the killing of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp 10 years ago.
Pistorius killed Steenkamp, a model and law graduate, when he fired four times through the bathroom door of his high-security house in February 2013. The parole board’s decision was taken at a hearing at the correctional facility on the outskirts of the capital, Pretoria, where the 36-year-old is being held.
The Department of Correctional Services said the parole board found Pistorius had not completed the minimum detention period required to be let out. “We were … advised at this point in time that it has been denied and it will be considered again in one year’s time,” Tania Koen, a lawyer for the victim’s family, told AFP.
Revealed: How archaeologists are shedding new light on how Hitler was defeated
Operation Cobra was arguably the most successful allied western European military land operation of the entire war
A British archaeological investigation is revealing the true story of one of World War Two’s most important battles.
Known as Operation Cobra, the crucial yet little-researched series of engagements took place in late July, 1944 (just 51 days after the Normandy landings) - and was arguably the most successful allied western European military land operation of the entire war.
The excavation project in Normandy is one of the largest archaeological investigations, into a WW2 battlefield, ever carried out.
Japan accused of failing to block Russia's timber exports
Japanese construction firms are using loopholes to keep buying wood from Russia, despite the sanctions triggered by the attack on Ukraine, activists say.
London-based environmental group Earthsight has accused the Japanese government of not acting to halt imports of more than $410 million (€378 million) worth of what they call "conflict timber" from Russia following the attack on Ukraine.
The activists claim that, despite sanctions imposed by Tokyo, Japanese business continue to buy sawn lumber (processed wood) from Russia's Far East.
Sam Lawson, Earthsight director and the report's author, said Japanese consumers are unwittingly helping to fund the war in Ukraine.
"After international timber certification bodies scaled back or ended operations in [Russia] following Putin's aggression, EU officials declared it impossible for overseas buyers to reliably trace Russian wood to the point of harvest," he was quoted as saying by Earthsight.
TEPCO visually confirms melted nuclear fuel at Fukushima plant
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
March 31, 2023 at 18:16 JST
A robotic study provided the first visual confirmation that melted nuclear fuel broke through a pressure vessel at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. said March 30.
Images taken by the robot under the No. 1 reactor at the plant also confirmed heavy damage to a concrete “pedestal” under the pressure vessel.
The inspection by the robot started on March 29. It was the first such study at the No. 1 reactor, one of the three reactors that melted down at the plant following the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
Syrian children traumatized by war are listening to a special lullaby to fall asleep
Syrian radio stations are broadcasting a new kind of lullaby every evening to help traumatized children across the country fall asleep.
The Frequencies of Peace lullaby project is the work of neuroscientists and music therapy application Spiritune aimed at Syrian children.
Ghaliaa Chaker, a Syrian singer based in Dubai, wrote and recorded the lullaby in Arabic. The 24-year-old was used to writing songs, but never a lullaby. She says the subject pulled her in.
“Writing a lullaby never crossed my mind. But the thing that influenced me was the topic. To be able to help Syrian kids and refugees,” Chaker told CNN.
Thursday, March 30, 2023
Inside the Empire of Terror
Between January 7 and 9, 2015, France experienced horror. Behind the shock, questions. Does France have the financial means to fight, whether to protect us with Vigipirate, or to monitor and track on our territory? And it has considerable financial means. How is this organization funded? How did it manage to multiply its sources of profit? How does his marketing allow him to constantly recruit new fighters in the West?
Donald Trump indictment: Ex-US president to be charged over hush money
Former US President Donald Trump will be charged over hush money payments made to a porn star just before the 2016 presidential election.
The details of the charges he will face have not yet been released.
A grand jury voted to indict him on criminal charges, after investigating a $130,000 pay-out to Stormy Daniels in an attempt to buy her silence over an alleged affair.
Mr Trump, the first US president to face charges, denies wrongdoing.
He is also being investigated in several other cases.
The Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg - who has been pursuing the case - is expected to inform Mr Trump and his lawyers about the indictment shortly.
Mr Trump - who lives in Florida - will be required to appear in New York City for his formal arrest and first hearing in court. He faces the prospect of having his fingerprints recorded and his mugshot taken, like all defendants in criminal cases.
Six In The Morning Thursday 30 March 2023
‘Vulkan files’ leak reveals Putin’s global and domestic cyberwarfare tactics
Documents leaked by whistleblower angry over Ukraine war
Private Moscow consultancy bolstering Russian cyberwarfare
Tools support hacking operations and attacks on infrastructure
Documents linked to notorious Russian hacking group Sandworm
Russian program aims to control internet and spread disinformation
by Luke Harding, Stiliyana Simeonova, Manisha Ganguly and Dan Sabbagh
The inconspicuous office is in Moscow’s north-eastern suburbs. A sign reads: “Business centre”. Nearby are modern residential blocks and a rambling old cemetery, home to ivy-covered war memorials. The area is where Peter the Great once trained his mighty army.
Inside the six-storey building, a new generation is helping Russian military operations. Its weapons are more advanced than those of Peter the Great’s era: not pikes and halberds, but hacking and disinformation tools.
The software engineers behind these systems are employees of NTC Vulkan. On the surface, it looks like a run-of-the-mill cybersecurity consultancy. However, a leak of secret files from the company has exposed its work bolstering Vladimir Putin’s cyberwarfare capabilities.
Climate change helps breed springtime wildfires in Spain
Firefighter Manuel Rubio had never seen a blaze like the one that raged for the past week in eastern Spain
In his more than a decade battling wildfires, firefighter Manuel Rubio had never seen a blaze like the one that raged for the past week in eastern Spain. Not this early in the year.
The forest fire that that broke out last Thursday near the village of Villanueva de Viver surprised Rubio and fire experts by displaying an unusual ferocity for spring, when in previous years lower temperatures helped keep fires manageable. That doesn't bode well for a country that led Europe in burned land during a record-hot 2022.
“I was expecting a fire like the ones we normally see in March, which can consume 100, 200 hectares, not the more than 4,300 hectares (11,600 acres) that this one has burned,” Rubio, 39, told The Associated Press hours before going back into the fray. “We are dealing with weather conditions appropriate for the summer and have a fire that is behaving like a summertime fire.”
Senegal opposition leader gets suspended sentence for libel
The libel trial and another separate case against Ousmane Sonko have spurred violent protests nationwide. Sonko was given a suspended prison sentence and a fine for libel of a government minister.
Senegal's opposition leader Ousmane Sonko has been given a two-month suspended prison sentence and a fine for libel.
The 48-year-old was found guilty of defaming Tourism Minister Mame Mbaye Niang, a member of President Macky Sall's party.
Sonko had claimed the tourism minister stole $47 million (€44 million) from a government agency.
The opposition leader also faces separate charges of sexual abuse.
There were fears that the trial's outcome could disqualify Sonko from running in the next year's presidential election.
But lawyers representing Mbaye Niang said it would not.
New rules bar human rights abusers from owning Premier League clubs
An individual who has committed human rights abuses will be unable to be an owner or director of a Premier League football club under new rules approved on Thursday.
Human rights abuses, based on the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations 2020, will be one of a number of additional "disqualifying events" under a strengthened owners' and directors' test for England's top flight.
The new rules, approved by clubs, also mean a person or company subject to British government sanctions would be disqualified.
Relocating 70 of Pablo Escobar’s ‘cocaine hippos’ to cost around $3.5 million
Colombia’s plans to relocate 70 “cocaine hippos” descended from drug trafficker Pablo Escobar’s private menagerie will cost approximately $3.5 million, officials said in a press conference Wednesday.
It will form part of a deal that the local Antioquia government signed with various institutions including the Colombian Agricultural Institute, the Colombian Air Force and the Ostok Sanctuary in Mexico where 10 hippos will be transported, a statement released on Wednesday said.
A sanctuary in India will provide a new home for the other 60 hippos since it is impossible to transport them back to their native Africa and risks upsetting the local ecosystem there.
Russia arrests US journalist Evan Gershkovich on spying charge
By Paul Kirby
BBC News
A US journalist working for the Wall Street Journal has been formally arrested in Russia and accused of spying.
Evan Gershkovich, an experienced Russia reporter, was working in Yekaterinburg at the time of his detention.
The Wall Street Journal said it was "deeply concerned" for his safety and vehemently denied the allegations against him.
The Kremlin claimed the reporter had been "caught red-handed".
Russia's FSB security service said it had "halted illegal activities" and that the reporter had been "acting on US instructions" and "collecting state secrets".
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